A dirty weekend

TUESDAY MORNING

I'm invited by Nicolas Gondard to assist Team First, Renault Middle East's two car entry in the Dunlop Dubai 24 Hour race. My head was filled with visions of gastronomic delights, sparkling French beverages and a few minutes spent chatting "en français" to drivers about the good old days in Le Mans. I'm sure I replied "Why, thank you" but apparently Nicolas heard "I'd love to be an unpaid apprentice in the pits and go without sleep for two days. Merci".

THURSDAY MORNING

I'm working on Clio Sport No 95 with Stephane and Thomas. Our first job is to push the car 800m to the refuelling point and the guys make fun of my lack of fitness. I point out that I'm twice their age and that they're being paid to work on the car while I volunteered. Soon we were practicing wheel changes and driver changes. I took the wheel nuts off without gloves and discovered that "three fingers burnt is a lesson learnt".

THURSDAY AFTERNOON

Second practice session, still no cheese baguettes in sight, and I'm famished. During every driver change I have to check tyre pressure and clean the windscreen. I've trained years for this...

Next I'm taught the difference between "la roue" (road wheel) and "le volant" (steering wheel) which is good, in case I have to change them during the race. The car came in with traces of light oil under the engine, so there'll be no early finish for us tonight.

THURSDAY — NIGHT PRACTICE

The car did six laps, then stopped at the side of the track. With every gear change it briefly cuts out. At 7:30pm I learnt that the French word for fuel is "l'essence" and it is apparently "l'essential" that your fuel gauge works or your car will stop at the side of the track. Pushed the car to the fuel area again — I'm too old for this! Left at 10pm — trés fatigué.

FRIDAY MORNING

I return at 9am and discover the guys were up changing car 95's transmission until 1am, then came back to the circuit at 8am. Start parade is at 1pm and the race gets underway an hour later.

Everyone's relaxed but I suspect that's the calm before the storm.

FRIDAY @ 2PM

The race is on, it's "go, go, go" or, as we say in pit 8C "allez, allez, allez".

FOUR HOURS LATER...

So much for a relaxing time spent enjoying the ‘entente cordial'. By 6pm we'd spent four hours maniacally stripping and rebuilding cars. Just 25 minutes into the race our car came in with suspension damage. We relieved Mohammad Al Motawa's TAM Clio of the front right suspension and just as No 95 drove away, car No 94 came in. It had been hit by someone, causing identical damage. So we stripped the suspension off Nicolas Gondard's personal Clio Sport and transferred it to the race car. Well at least it proves the race cars are based on the road cars! I'm not sure Nicolas quite saw it that way, but "all for one and one for all" as we say in pit 8C.

FRIDAY NIGHT

Car 95 was delayed during a driver change with a problematic headlight. Three technicians descend on the car and soon... "many hands make light work". We haven't stopped to eat yet, though I grabbed a large handful of crisps two hours ago. The Australians in the pit next door are barbecuing steaks, which is really unfair!

At 11pm we stripped the exhaust off the TAM Clio, then took the exhaust off the 95, and swapped them over. I don't know what the problem was with ours, a cracked header maybe? Trouble is the car comes in, everyone yells instructions in French and I find myself ripping bits off cars but not always knowing why. I'm shattered and we're only eight hours into the race, though I've put in 14 hours so far today. No sign of any gastronomic delights yet.

SATURDAY — EARLY HOURS

It's 1:15am and I'm helping Stephane and Thomas rebuild the donor car. At one point the socket wrench slips, Stephane's knuckles crash into the steering rack and I learn the French for "Goodness me that hurts quite a lot". At least I think that's what he said.

By 2:30am we are into a regular routine of driver changes, tyre changes and fuelling and I am now "trés trés fatigué".

At 3:36am everything goes bad. First, car 94 has another suspension collapse and since we don't have any more spares, that's the end of its race. Now 95 is coming in on the back of a recovery truck. We hope it's just an alternator belt failure, if so, that's easy to replace, but if it's more than that it could mean that at 3.36am, our race comes to a grinding halt. Fortunately, after five minutes, we discover it's just an electrical fault. The guys plug in the computer, shake all the leads, and send it on its way. I'm not exactly sure what was wrong but it had something to do with those words Stephane taught me.

Next we spend an hour stripping the exhaust off No 94, which involves dropping the now oil-covered subframe — a very messy job. I feel like I'm suffering from really bad jet lag, but "there's only 8 hours to go" so I'll be fine I'm sure!

DAYBREAK ON SATURDAY

Major drama, we were bolting down a full English breakfast (I was too tired to explain the irony to the guys from Renault) when the car arrived unexpectedly. On the start-finish straight it had suffered a double puncture, so it had to be driven for a complete lap on the rims.

The tyres were shredded, the rims destroyed. When it arrived there was a rush to get both fronts changed and I stupidly grabbed the old wheels with my bare hands. Big mistake, because of course they were scalding hot! So now I have burnt fingers again. Didn't learn, did I?

The number 8 pits must be the unluckiest ones at the circuit. We've had Team First No 94 retire, problems with No 95, Team 930 Rush were out for four hours following a crash, and ST Racing No 71 is constantly under repair. At least Mal Rose Racing's No 44 Holden Commodore is doing well, then we've got the Gomez competition cars One (retired) and Two (pitted about 20 times), so only the Holden is running perfectly reliably. Good luck to them. I've been working for 24 straight hours now, and I am dead on my feet. I am not enjoying myself, can barely keep my eyes open and I've had just about enough but "there's only five hours to go". The question is; can I stay awake?

SATURDAY MORNING

The pit eight gremlin finally bit the Holden Commodore at 11am, when it ground to a halt in front of us. The team hadn't put a foot wrong and suddenly they were having to strip the engine. I tried to explain the concept of gremlins to Christophe but I fear we lost quite a lot in translation. Then the No 44 Commodore retired from the race — it seems a piston blew through the block with just three hours to go — that's endurance racing for you. Or as we say in pit 8C "c'est la vie".

With 40 minutes to go to the end of the race, we refuelled the car again but the starter motor failed so five of us push started it, and you're only supposed to have four people attend to any car. Silly mistake, blame our exhaustion.

SATURDAY @ 2PM

"Bravo" we finished! What a difference half an hour makes. I was shattered at 1:30pm but by the end of the race I joined hundreds of others who'd climbed on the pit wall fencing to wave and cheer every time the cars passed. What an amazing sight — and feeling. It doesn't matter that we've not won, just finishing feels brilliant, a real achievement.

Did I enjoy it? Well not for 23 hours and 59 minutes, no. It was a constant stream of hard physical work while coping with fatigue. And yet, the excitement and sense of achievement as ‘my car' crossed the line was amazing, and made the other 1,439 minutes of back pain, burnt fingers, cut hands, oil soaked arms and aching eyes, well worth while.

Now, where's my bed... je suis trés trés trés fatigué".