Free practice finished last night at midnight. As predicted, the weather made everything extremely difficult as the circuit was raining on and off the entire 6 hours of the session.

Although the weather wasn’t great, the experience was still absolutely fantastic. Just to be on the Le Mans circuit was a tremendous feeling and I really enjoyed challenging myself each and every lap I drove.

We started the session in daylight and the track was looking to dry, but soon after, the rain started to come down hard again. This track has only one way to describe it… High Speed! I have to continue to build up my confidence on this circuit and really work to build up my speed. It was difficult with the conditions but I managed to get quicker every single lap with my best lap time in the rain coming on the final lap of free practice just before midnight.

It is a strange feeling going down the straight at night. With no one around you in the dark, and just flat out for a long long time at 280km/h in the rain, it is just an interesting feeling that I never felt before. I guess you would describe it as feeling very alone and in the zone….

The LMP1 cars come extremely fast so it is important we always keep our eyes in the mirror as the speed difference is immense. Sometimes it is even difficult to see them coming which makes it extremely challenging as to not get into an incident with the quicker cars.

The qualifying session is today and I hope it will remain dry. So far, it has been sunny this morning, but as we have seen the last few days, the weather can change really quick here at Le Mans. Most the corners here will have to be taken with extreme confidence in 4th or 5th gear so it requires a lot of focus and concentration to carry the speed, hit your driving lines on the mark, and NOT crash the car!!

More to come…..









Meeting the famous and legendary Jacky Ickx, 7 time winner at Le Mans.. He actually helped to deliver my helmet from Bell Helmets..what a great surprise...

I have been now at Le Mans for two days. It has all been about preparation the past few days as the entire team is working flat out to get things ready for the big race. The atmosphere continues to grow as people begin to make their way to the circuit 24 hrs du mans and the rain continues to come down hard.

The car looks great and the final adjustments are being made on the car. Basicly there are alot of small details the team has to work hard on as they prepare such as the drivers seat position, belts, car setup, radios etc etc etc...yes, alot of work.

The car went through scrutineering on Monday which was an exciting event. People came out in big crowds to witness this event as all the cars were being inspected. I found it quite amazing as the crowds were so big. You can imagine, there was no driving at this event, only car inspection!

Yesterday, I spent time with my co-drivers to walk and study the race track. The track spans 15km and the corners are all extremely fast and challenging. It seems to be a track where the highspeed never stops and the driver must stay alert in order to be prepared to take yet another high speed corner.

The Porsche curves look especially fun as this series of corners are all taken in 4th gear and it is extremely narrow. Another thing to note is the length of the straights. We spend a high percentage of time on full throttle, which gets us up to speeds of around 290km/h!

Now for the weather. Since I have arrived, there has been nothing but rain! Every hour it rains hard and stops which should make for extremely tricky driving conditions. As all 3 of the drivers on our team are at Le Mans for the first time, we are each required to complete 10 laps in the free practice session today. Practice begins at 6pm and will go all the way to midnight so 6 hours of free practice.

We will be extremely careful in the first few hours of practice to ensure all the drivers complete our mandatory 10 laps. Then we can begin to work on the car setup and push harder to learn the circuit and improve.

The practice session will be live in Hong Kong today on Eurosport. Remember to catch the action and follow here for more updates about practice soon.

Also, please stay up to date on www.enduranceasiateam.com for the latest!!!

Darryl

I am just about to take off to Le Mans France for the big race. It is my first experience at the 24 Hours Du Mans and I expect it to be simply fantastic.

I have to arrive very early for the Le Mans race with my arrival set for Monday afternoon. That means I'll be in Le MAns for the entire week. It is necessary as it will be the first time I drive together with my new team mates and also the first time I work with this team, Endurance Asia Team.

We have to get there early to prepare the seats, belts, and for scrutineering. I will also spend time preparing to learn the new circuit which spans just under 14km. I will probably use a bicycle to go around the track!!

The past week has been extremely busy. We had our press conference for the Le Mans, followed by trips to Shanghai and Guangzhou for some promotional events for my sponsor, A-Ha Coffee.

This year, we are doing a promotional campaign around the different universities around China. I hope to inspire the youth to chase their dreams and work hard to achieve their goals...It is a message both A-Ha coffee and myself want to get across to the younger generation. It was a great experience as I got to meet many of my fans. 4 lucky students were fortunate enough to win a lucky draw which will give them the chance to attend one of my races this month!

I ended the week with two days for Porsche Center Hong Kong at the Porsche sports driving school This was held at Zhu Hai and is a customer event Jebsen offers to their Porsche customers. It is an introductory program to driving on a circuit and equips the customers with a basic understanding of how to handle their Porsche's. We had great weather and a fantastic two days of driving.

Please follow here all this week as I will be updating frequently with my progress during Le Mans week. Remember, the free practice starts on Wednesday, so for all those in Hong Kong, you can start to catch the action right from the begining of the week, live on Eurosport.

Back soon with more updates!!

It was a great day for all of us as my team mate, Marco Holzer and I finished round 2 of the FIA GT Championship in fourth position in the GT2 category..

The competition was extremely fierce as the the top 7 cars qualified with less than 0.4 tenths of a second between them. This is a testiment to how competitive this class truly is. Marco qualified the car and did a fantastic time putting our Porsche in 4th place in qualifying.

With all the cars so close in the qualifying session, it was important for the team to make a good race setup so that our car could be quick for an entire stint.

At the race start, Marco got off well, however, in Turn 1, he was stuck on the inside and everyone overslowed in front of him. This gave many of the cars behind him an opportunity to overtake him on the outside. He was unable to do anything about this.

We dropped back to 8th place after the first lap. Marco had good pace and was now stuck behind a train of 6 cars. The two leaders were able to pull away while we were stuck in traffic.

Our team made a quick decision to change our strategy. We called Marco in early and made an early driver change and pit for fuel only. This was in hopes that I would be able to get out of traffic and get some clear laps.

I drove hard for a 40 min stint well behind the GT2 field. It was a bit strange as I wasn't battling with anyone because we were on a different strategy, just trying to put down consistenly fast laps for the entire stint. I knew that every tenth of a second would count so I pushed for every bit of time.

At around the 1 hour mark, Marco got back into the car and he was scheduled to finish the race with a 1 hour stint. We made our driver change and pit for fuel and tires.

Marco drove a very strong stint. At first, it still looked like we were very far back in the pack...but as we reached the final 30 minutes, many cars went in for their final pit stops. We started to jump up the leader board and at the end, we were fighting for fourth position.

He started to close in on P3 and had to fight off Ragginger behind him. At the end, we were able to keep our fourth place but finished only 2 seconds behind the final podium position.

It was a hard fought race and we were all very pleased with the result. I feel the all of us as a team have made big improvements as we have been able to get used to working with each other more. Our experience keeps building up and both Marco and I feel like we have alot more confidence with the FIA GT Championship and the Porsche GT3 RSR.

Much to our delight, we are currently tied for 3rd position in the GT2 driver classifications and Prospeed Competition was able to extend our lead in the team championship table.

I'm on my way home back to Hong Kong now. I will get a much needed rest over the next 2 weeks before I head for my next race.

More updates to come soon! Cheers!

Hey everyone! I’m in Adria, Italy this weekend for the 2nd round of the FIA GT Championship. Adria is just outside Venice placed in the country sides of Italy. I was able to get 2 days rest in Hong Kong before flying over here to Italy on Wednesday night.

On a side note, just before I flew here, I was able to join a charity fund raiser for F.O.C.U.S. which was held at Dragon I and Sideways Driving Club, a race simulator club. I was glad to be a part of it as this charity has an aim to help children with learning disabilities. Many people gathered to participate in a silent auction over drinks as well as compete in a competition in race simulators. I didn’t race that night but I was just giving driving tips to help the competitors drive faster!! It was great fun…

Now back to the racing in Italy! I went straight to the circuit after arriving in Italy via London… I flew in with one of my team mates Richard Westbrook and we shared a rental car(an Opel Corsa, the car has absolutely no power!) to make the drive to the track…

It’s quite interesting as this circuit is a lot smaller than I had expected. For those that know the Asian race circuits, its bigger than the Beijing circuit, however, it reminds me of a smaller version of the Zhu Hai circuit with many hairpins and braking zones.. The main difference is that the braking zones all seemed to be curved making it a bit more difficult than straight brake zones..

I’m generally quite quick on the smaller circuits so I’m hoping that this circuit will fit my driving style.

As I qualified the car in Silverstone, we have decided that my team mate Marco Holzer will qualify the car this wknd which means he will also start the race. In that case, the driver that starts the race means they will drive 2 stints in the competition and I will drive the middle stint. As my team mate and I are very equal in lap times, we will continue to rotate amongst different circuits.

The weekend schedule in Italy this weekend will be very tight as our race will be on Saturday night! The race runs from 8-10pm so it will be a proper night race. Therefore, on Friday night, we will have a Friday night practice…

I will give you all an update when I can and I’ll also try to snap a few photos from around the pits etc…
Ciao!!