Danish article from 10 years ago today, on John Nielsen's Le Mans experience as a #2 Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9 driver.

It is an amazing read on the physical conditions that drivers of the C-group dealt with. Article is in Danish, below is an English translation.

Shut up, did I drive 390 km/h in that?

The driver of the shiny black Jaguar XJ has barely opened the door for John Nielsen before six white-haired Jaguar enthusiasts crowd in to get an autograph.

With a hearty smile, he writes greetings on books, programs and posters from 1990 on this windswept summer day at Blyton Park, a privately owned racetrack in northwest England, which was a base for bombers during World War II.

The older enthusiasts are former Jaguar employees and volunteers at the Jaguar Heritage Foundation, which keeps the brand's history alive by getting its historic racing cars out on the road.

It wasn't until the third attempt that they managed to find a racetrack where John Nielsen could unleash the 750 hp or so of the winning car from the Le Mans race. Even in car-loving Britain, noise and environmental regulations make it an ordeal to rev up an older racing car, but now we're here, and John Nielsen is ready for the reunion.

In the 1980s, anyone could buy a Porsche race car capable of winning Le Mans. In 1983, there was a Porsche in the first eight places in the 24-hour race, and Jaguar had a somewhat strained relationship with that. So Jaguar got the English motorsport guru Tom Wilkinshaw to run the factory team, and the goal was clear: beat Porsche at Le Mans.

He succeeded in 1988, when John Nielsen was in the leading car until he had to retire five hours before the finish with a blown cylinder head. And again in 1990, when he became the first Dane to win Le Mans – the world's greatest motorsport event – in the #2 Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9.

“In 1990, I drove for Jaguar in the USA and came to Le Mans with an American team. When you look at the car today, I think: Shut up, did I drive 390 km/h in that one?,” says John Nielsen.

The Le Mans circuit is 13.629 km long. The permanent racetrack on the outskirts of the city 200 km west of Paris has fine asphalt, but the rest of the track is a public road that is closed off once a year. Back then, the Mulsanne side was a rough country road with one crash barrier and truck tracks in the asphalt.

You have the speed record at Le Mans measured during the race at 389 km/h. How fast did the fastest cars go?

>“The record of 407 km/h was set during qualifying by a French team in 1988. They came down there to break the speed record, but their car couldn’t do anything and they retired after a short time.”

Could you keep up with Porsche’s turbo cars?

>“During the race, yes, but not during qualifying. Those who had turbos on their cars just turned up the boost pressure. Back then we were running on special qualifying tyres that only lasted one lap. You just had to forget everything you had learned and believe in it – they just stuck with it no matter what, and they lasted one lap. In 1990, Mark Blundell came into the pits in his Nissan during qualifying, put dry ice in the intake and put qualifiers on. Then he set the turbo to the maximum pressure they wanted to run with. At that time they had about 1,200 hp on the car.”

>"When he has driven barely a lap and is three or four turns from the start/finish line, he picks up speed to get ready to set his time. Then the turbo regulation kicks in, so there is no regulation. There is full pressure the whole time. It goes up fine past the start and finish, but when he comes out on the long side, he gets the message “abort, abort” over the radio. They could see on the telemetry that something was wrong. The engine was running at at least 1,500 hp and probably a lot more, so they shouted “stop!” to prevent the engine from jumping."

>"Do you know what Mark does? He thinks “shut up, it’s running well”, rips out his eardrums and goes on pole with eight seconds to the nearest car. Eight seconds! It was the most sensational pole position at Le Mans ever.”

Doesn't the V12 engine get terribly hot when it's that big?

>"No, it wasn't any worse than the other cars. We were driving with a seven-liter 12-cylinder engine, but it doesn't develop more power than a two-liter turbo engine with the same horsepower. The problem was that the radiator is at the front of the Jaguar, so the heat from it has to go up over the windshield. That's why it got so hot in the cockpit. It was very different back then. We didn't have air conditioning in the cars, and in 1990 we were driving with an average temperature of 74.6 degrees (note: celsius) in the cockpit. I weighed 89 kg when we started, and 84 kg when we crossed the finish line. I drank 25 liters of fluid."

Was there any cooling on the fluid?

>"No, it didn't matter. The water was 70 degrees, but you don't notice that when you're driving."

How could you concentrate at 74 degrees?

>“We asked the designer of the car, Tony Southgate, to make a hole for ventilation, but it takes performance, so there was nothing to do, get on with it, boys. There were different demands on the drivers back then, and we were sweating like pigs. My average heart rate was 140 for the 14 hours I was driving.”

It must have taken several days to get back to yourself?

>"Yes, it did. The noise, the heat and the physical demands – we had wider tyres and no power steering, so physics was more important. If you got to the third or fourth stint (full tank of fuel, ed.), it wasn't a question of how fast the car could go, but how fast the man could drive the car. That's why physics was more important than today. Those were some men's cars. We had brakes with a thick steel disc, which got cold when you got down to the end of the long side. Then you jerk EVERYTHING you can, and at first nothing happens. You think "come on", but then the disc gets hot, and THEN it brakes. We stepped on the brake pedal with 140-160 kg and wore out two pairs of shoes during a 24-hour race," says John Nielsen.

Did the car have a manual transmission?

>"Yes, it was an old-fashioned H-gearbox. At the end of the long side you used three toes to brake, your left hand to steer, your right hand to change gears, your left foot on the clutch, and with the last two toes you tilted the accelerator to give intermediate throttle. We weren't better Le Mans drivers, but we worked more with the car. We struggled to get this damn thing to slow down in every corner and get it in the right gear."

Whether you drive 300 or 390 km/h doesn't really matter, does it?

>"No, because there's no speedometer in a racing car. You know it's about max. revolutions before you step on the brake. You drive 100 percent all the time, and that's why you don't think about the speed. We drove up to 390 km/h before the chicanes on the long side came, and just under 350 km/h after."

Was there a problem with the Group C racers, who had trouble taking off?

>"Down the long side the car went a little faster if you raised the front a little. But there's a limit where it gets dangerous! In 1987, when Martin Brundle and I were racing, a technician said he couldn't understand the telemetry. It said the rear wheels were going 386 km/h and the front wheels 210 km/h on the long side. How could that be? It was because it was just about to take off, and it was also light at the front end. It's a delicate balance, but it only becomes really dangerous if you drive close to another car, so the airflow changes. The first time I took off at Le Mans was in a Sauber-Mercedes in 1985."

Didn't that make you speak out?

>"No, but the first time I drove over the hill the following year, it was enough that you just thought, "well, is it going well this time?" But you live in it, and it was also my dream to be in it, to be a racing driver. I have never wanted to be anything else and never became anything else. So it is also your hobby and dream. The danger is secondary."

A sports car at Le Mans must have two seats. In the Jaguar XJR-9, there is a bucket seat with H-belts for the driver on the right side and a seat without a chair or belts on the left. It is quite a task to get Børsen's 190 cm tall reporter in next to John, but it must be successful.

In the claustrophobic cockpit, the seven-liter engine is located 30 cm behind the helmet. John Nielsen turns on the ignition and fuel pump and presses the start button. At first the starter motor whines in vain. Then he tries again, after which the engine wakes up with a dry cough and the characteristic choppy idle of a racing engine that is really bad at running at low revs.

You drove the maximum allowed 14 hours per driver in 1990. Was that agreed in advance?

>"We came with three cars. The team manager took his three best drivers and put them in different cars as captains to spread the risk. Then we got the drivers who were in the stable. I got my American partner Price Cobb and a test driver called Elizio Salazar. I wasn't happy with that because he was hard on the gearbox during practice. Back then, you had to move a driver from a car that had retired, so I bet that one of the other cars would retire so I could avoid Salazar."

>"Then the race started, and Price was fantastically talented. But he had the problem that he was sweating an insane amount. He couldn't recover quickly enough after being in the car, and it took him much longer to be ready. At night I did two triple stints and had to get out of the car. On the way into the pits the team manager called over the radio and said that Martin Brundle's car had broken down, and asked if I wanted him on my team. Of course I said yes."

>"When I get into the pits, Salazar is ready with his seat insert – I was the biggest, so the others had to have an insert to fill the seat – and just as he's about to jump in the car, Martin comes from behind and pulls him away, jumps in the car and drives off. And then we win Le Mans! Today Salazar won't talk to me if I meet him. His name is on the car, but he didn't do a single lap."

All it takes is one tiny mistake and all is lost?

>"Yes, a small correction in a corner can be enough for you to crash into another car and then it can go completely wrong. It's part of Le Mans, no, it's part of sports car racing, that there are different classes in the same race."

John Nielsen has driven so many kilometers in the Silk Cut Jaguar that he skips the warm-up lap and blows to attack. You don't ask a racing driver to drive slowly, just as you don't ask a pianist to play 80 percent as well as she can. "Just give it a go," I said, so he does.

After the first hard acceleration in the short first and second gears, we come to a 90-degree left-hand bend. John slams on the brakes, steers in and is surprised by the extra 88 kg of dead weight in the car as he opens the throttle. The Jaguar is so stiff that it doesn't lean at all, but the wide rain tires start to scrub slightly over the front end.

Rather than adjust the speed to the increased weight, he takes up the challenge and runs the huge engine up to 6000 rpm in second gear. Here the sound changes to a mixture of noise and thunder as we exit the bend with a symbolic skid on all four wheels and the car gets into third gear. It happens in beautiful balance and with the tiny quick corrections on the steering wheel that racing drivers execute with grace and that make everyone else who shifts a steering wheel look like idiots. How fast we're going, I have no idea, but there's a good speed in the car despite its age.

What did you have to protect your ears from the noise?

>"We had molded earmuffs with a radio like today, and then foam rubber on the outside. That takes the worst of it. But a racing engine in a carbon fiber body and a cabin without lining – it's as noisy as sitting in an oil drum with 500 men standing around beating on it. You get used to that. Noise can be distracting and take away concentration, but the Jaguar wasn't bad in that regard. From the outside it sounds like it's doing 70,000 rpm, but it only revs up to 7,000 and has a fairly lazy sound inside the car. It didn't stress the drivers."

You must know every nuance of the sound when you drive so many kilometers in the car?

>"Yes. You don't change gears with the rev counter either, you know exactly when it's at 6200 or 6400 if you have to overtake. When you're not in the car, you can hear when that car comes by, even if there are three identical Jaguars in the race. In Le Mans I changed gears 14,000 times and wore out three pairs of gloves in 1990."

Were you in good basic shape?

>"Yes, but it takes more than that. Before the Miami Grand Prix in Florida, where it's just hot and humid, I trained with shoes, a racing suit, gloves and a helmet in a sauna set to 80 degrees and 90 percent humidity. Then I rode an exercise bike for two hours with a heart rate of 140. If I had done that today, I would have dropped dead. When you got 40 minutes into the race, it was all a question of how fast you could drive the car. I had a resting heart rate of 36; cyclist Endurain had one of 32."

>"But I mostly used swimming to stay in shape. When you swim, you have to be able to breathe, because you can't do it underwater. You can only swim with a heart rate of 140-150 if you can breathe at the same time. If you get out of breath in a racing car, you get tired, and then your concentration goes away. That's why I was able to directly transfer my breathing technique to the racing car. But a lot has happened since I first drove Le Mans."

>"At first we bought some Cokes and Mars bars, and that was fine. Later I got a personal trainer and health tests three or four times a year. On Friday, the day before Le Mans 1990, we had to eat 8,000 calories, and do you know how much that is? It's a 30 cm high pile of spaghetti, and it just had to go down. We sat at a communal table and just had to eat it up."

The car we're driving today is the one that won Le Mans in 1988. Jaguar has sold John Nielsen's winning car from 1990 to a private collector, but in fact the only difference is the wing. The 1988 car has a flat rear wing for high top speeds on the seven-kilometre long straight, while the 1990 car has a more upright one to optimise aerodynamics for the three new chicanes.

The 1988 winner is exactly as it was when it crossed the finish line at Le Mans, and has never been cleaned. It has been serviced and maintained, but only the tires are new. The smile on John Nielsen's face looks as if it will stay there for several days after driving the old Jaguar again. Not something many Danes have experienced live 25 years ago, when John Nielsen won.

In 1990, there were over 50,000 English people at Le Mans, because they loved Jaguar, but there were not very many Danes.

"When I stood on the victory podium in 1990, there were a few Dannebrogs, and I was really proud. When I stopped in 2008 and came second with Team Essex in the small prototype class, there were probably 20,000 Danes, so it was a nice finish. It's strange that it's already 25 years ago."

u/Kataoaka

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