Evening with a Legend: Andy Pilgrim

For those that don’t know Andy’s origin story, we encourage you to check Break/Fix episode #136 where we covered his story from the early days of AutoCross, to Renault Fuego Cup, Firestone/Firehawk series through where you’re racing today. 

• But let’s fast forward to 1996 – Tell us about how you got to LeMans? Was it always a goal of yours to go endurance racing? What kind of deal was made to get you there?
• You were there during the “new Era” of LeMans which is the configuration that we’re still using today. Did you get any advice about racing at LeMans (if so from who) or did you have to figure it all out on your very first lap of practice?
• 1996-1997 – Driving for Porsche in GT class under two different teams. 1996-4th (your first attempt, and only non-podium finish). 1997 was your first podium at LeMans (this would have been the 993-based GT2, correct?)
• 3 years later, you return as part of the GM Factory Team racing for Corvette, and then back-to-back from 2000-2003, each time with a podium finish – tell us about that. 
• What do you feel is the most challenging part of driving at the 24 hours of LeMans? 
• If you could go back to LeMans today and drive any of the 2023/24 season cars, what would that be? 

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Evening with the Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to Legends of the Famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving us an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you. By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance to become part of the Legend of Le Mans, with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight, we have an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you, sharing in the legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing. And as your host, I’m delighted to introduce. Andy Pilgrim, whose resume includes wins at the 12 hours of Sebring, the Petit Le Mans, the Rolex 24, GT races on five continents, the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, NASCAR, and six finishes with [00:01:00] five podiums at the 24 hours of Le Mans.

He is best known for his days racing with Cadillac and Corvette Racing, and we’re honored to have him with us tonight to share his stories about racing at Le Mans. And with that, I’m your host, Crew Chief Eric from the Motoring Podcast Network, welcoming everyone to another Evening with a Legend. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Pilgrim: Thanks so much, Eric. It’s really a privilege to be here. It’s an honor to be here. Thank you.

Crew Chief Eric: For those of you that don’t know Andy’s origin story, we encourage you to check Break Fix podcast episode number 136, where we covered his story in detail from those early days of autocross, to the Renault Fuego Cup racing, to Firestone Firehawk series, and all the way up to what you’re doing today.

But before we jump right into your Le Mans story, tell us about how you got into endurance racing, because those other series that I mentioned were just stepping stones into endurance. Was it always your goal to become an endurance driver?

Andy Pilgrim: When I started in a series like the Renault Cup series, you could buy the car for 6, 500.

You could [00:02:00] actually drive it to the racetrack because they were street legal and maybe six or seven of us used to drive the cars to the racetrack. I did the West Coast Series first. It cost me 6, 500 bucks second hand and I could just about sleep in the car if I needed to, maybe get a cheap hotel. That’s how you kind of start.

To move up, I didn’t have a sponsor and I certainly didn’t have the budget. Luckily, when I sold the car, got the 3000 for the car, I bought two rides in what was then the Firestone Firehawk series. And that bought me two weekends in a Pontiac and that was in 1986. It was gosh, there were probably 50 cars in the Grand Sport class at that point, which was the top class.

And we ended up getting a couple of top 10 finishes, the gentleman driver who owned the team and myself, he wasn’t a bad driver at all. You know, he sort of said after two races, nice job, we’ll see you again in a few weeks. And I said, well, probably not because you know, I only managed to buy the two weekends because he wasn’t managing the team, somebody else’s managing it.

And so he said, Oh, well, okay, Andy, it’s been fun. I got a call literally on the [00:03:00] Tuesday the following week and it was him. And he said, Hey, can you get yourself to the races? And I said, yes. And he said, look, for the rest of the season, I’d like you to be my teammate. And if you can get yourself there, that would be wonderful.

And if we can do that, does that work for you? And I said, ah, yeah, it works for me. That’s great. And that’s how I got in, but really and truly getting into an endurance series. And there were so many teams from the touring car class. To the sport class to the grand sport class at that point, sometimes over a hundred entries for race weekend, a lot of us had that opportunity to get a little bit of money, get a weekend or two and try to get into a series.

And there were enough gentlemen drivers around at the time, cause you didn’t need 5 million to do the series. It was a great place for me to get in. It was really economics. And the fact that there was so much opportunity for me to be able to get in and the Firestone Firehawk series was just a great series at that time, just not super competitive, but the opportunity was there.

That’s why it was really economics.

Crew Chief Eric: In [00:04:00] that 10 year span between 1986 and the Firestone Firehawk series up until your first time at Le Mans, obviously you got more and more involved in endurance racing. How did you physically have to change your driving style, building up the tolerance to do endurance racing?

Was it something that you got more and more, let’s say, conditioned to?

Andy Pilgrim: I was an athletic kid. I was not an Olympic athlete, but high school, I would play soccer. I would play cricket, play tennis, play rugby for my school, all kinds of stuff. I was an athletic kid. Driving gave me the, you know, you get car fit.

Do you know what I mean? It’s like you don’t have to necessarily as a race car driver look like an Olympic athlete. Yeah, I’m fit, but there’s a lot of guys that may not look the fittest guy in the world, man, they are car fit. What I needed to do understanding the racing was there was a mental side of it.

In endurance racing, sometimes you do a stint and then you have to do another stint. Because somebody is either not ready or somebody gets sick or something like that, especially in the 24 hour races of which there were quite a few [00:05:00] between the world challenge series and also the Firestone Firehawk series.

There were a lot of 24 hour races. And sometimes honestly, if you happen to be the quickest guy on the team, you would get an opportunity to run potentially like 10 hours. 12 hours because they would just keep putting you back in the car because you were making time up or you were holding position better than somebody else might have done.

And so that conditioning in those cars was something because there was no AC, there was no real thought about getting air in the car, they were hot. Yeah, that was a very good training ground. They were street tires. To start with in those series, like shaved street tires. So the grip levels, there wasn’t really a tremendous amount of downforce.

And it was actually Tommy Morrison in the Corvettes later on. I got into a car in the early nineties, 91, 1991 from the endurance racing in the Firestone series or the world challenge. Tommy, John Heinersey, Don Knowles, people like that. We were given an opportunity to run with Morrison. I started understanding [00:06:00] how to run on slick tires, and then the World Challenge, it got a little bit more serious, where you had front diffuser and you had a rear wing.

Lo and behold, we were talking downforce. And suddenly the setup of which I had become quite known, I guess, as being a setup person, I could relate well with engineers. And my background is more physics and computer science, if you like. And I made it my business. And you know who told me that? It was Rob Wilson, the legend in my mind, Rob Wilson, the coach to F1.

Rob told me when I was at Miami 1988, and I was running there and I was just talking to him. And he was very, very straight guy. You know, he’s always smoking on a cigarette and stuff like that. He’s just a brilliant guy. And he said, you know, Andy, he says there’s 20 guys in any series that are really quick.

He said, you don’t have a budget. We were talking about things like that. He said, make sure you really understand cost setup. And I made it my business from that point to understand cost setup. And that’s a big deal. And it’s understanding that difference. So there’s the mental side, there’s the car fit side and things like that.

But it was [00:07:00] those years gave me that opportunity.

Crew Chief Eric: And you’ve mentioned some of your colleagues. There in that part of your story. And you also made friends with folks like Johnny O’Connell and you ran with Tommy Kendall and all these other names that we know from this side of the pond. That graduating class of drivers.

I mean, you saw them everywhere and all sorts of different races. How was the deal constructed that you ended up going to Lamont? There’s a lot of people that hope and pray. And one day I’ll get there and it’s a bucket list thing, but you got there not once, but six times, but that first time is always the toughest.

How did you get to Lamont?

Andy Pilgrim: The weirdest thing was that there were teams looking for drivers and they had to have some kind of funding, but also if you were somebody that had a resume, then you could bring a sponsor and you could then give a little bit of money. And they would give you a potential opportunity.

I had a couple of friends in England, and one of them basically told me that this in 1996, the new hardware team, they had a spot. And if there was a little bit of [00:08:00] sponsorship, then you could bring that, then there was a potential opportunity. I spoke to Bill Farmer, very, very nice guy from New Zealand.

Bill and I spoke, and we came up with a deal for me to be able to do the race in 96. And that’s really how it started. But my resume at that point was really important. The fact that I’d driven on slick tires, I had a little bit of experience with Porsche, thanks to super guy, you may remember Larry Schumacher, Larry gave me a first opportunity in 1995 in a 911.

So the timing was perfect. I mean, honestly, I dreamed about, Oh, I’d love to sit in a Porsche one day, just because the legend of the name of Porsche, and he gave me that opportunity and I drove with him in 95, a few times that all helped. The fact that I had 911 experience, even though 96, the car was a twin turbo, wasn’t the, uh, the GT3 type car, the GT2 class.

It wasn’t like the GT1 car, twin turbo Porsche, which I drove in 1997. Those things were ridiculously fast there, especially at Le Mans. They were, they were so [00:09:00] much more horsepower, you know.

Crew Chief Eric: Coming up through Firestone, Firehawk, driving a Pontiac. You got your first experience with the 911. Had you driven a Corvette yet by that point?

Andy Pilgrim: Yeah, 1991, Tommy Morrison, cause he went from the Camaros to the Corvette. And if you remember, the Lotus Head ZR1, that was the first car that Tommy made into a GT car. In fact, one of them is still in the, uh, Smithsonian, as an example of an American GT car. I don’t know if it’s on permanent display, but it was on display for quite a few years, and I know it’s still with the Smithsonian.

And that was one of Tommy’s cars. That was the car I drove, actually, that the Smithsonian has.

Crew Chief Eric: Did that leave a lasting impression for you, Corvette and GM and all that? What did you think comparing it to the 911?

Andy Pilgrim: It’s so different because even though they were sort of in the same class early on like that, the Porsches were a more complete race car at that time.

And the Corvette was like, we’re taking a street car, a very much a street car. And Tommy’s crew tried to make this thing into a GT car. But it was still extremely heavy. There was no way they could get it down to the lightweight of a [00:10:00] 911, a tailor made GT car, if you like, right from the factory, it was different.

You had to drive it differently. The Porsche was much more nimble, yet the Corvette was pretty fast on the straights, you know, and things like that.

Crew Chief Eric: So first impressions are everything. So you get to Le Mans.

Andy Pilgrim: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: And you’re no stranger to endurance racing at this point, Rolex, all these others. But Le Mans is something different.

It’s grand just in the lap itself, let alone everything else. So what were your first thoughts when you got there? How were you received? What did you think about the Circuit de la Sarthe?

Andy Pilgrim: It’s hard to describe, but there were no simulators. I had looked at a map. I really had no idea. It was awe inspiring.

The thing that struck me the first time out was finding my way through the Dunlop Bridge, down to Tetrouge, and out onto Tetrouge, going down towards the first chicane, because we had the, the chicane’s already there, obviously. And it was just like, when am I going to get there? It’s like, you know, the straightaways on normal road courses.

These things are twice as long each time before you get to a chicane. They’re twice as long. [00:11:00] So I’m like going down this thing and it was just that. And then it’s like, so you come through the chicane, you figure out the chicane. come out and then there’s another one. It was just the immensity of the track.

And it was like you were, you were leaving a racetrack, you know, the Bugatti circuit, you leave the Bugatti circuit, and then you go onto the back and it’s like, you know, you’re going off to see grandma. Here we are out in the country, you know, it was just an amazing experience. I did three laps total in practice, four maybe, before the race started, because they didn’t have all the money to fix the car, they didn’t have engines.

And honestly, that was the deal. It was like, we do as few laps as possible, you’ll learn it through the race. Stefan Noateli was with me as a teammate, and also Andrew Bagnell, who’s a gentleman driver from New Zealand. Now Stefan was really quick. I mean, the kid was an F Formula driver. He won Le Mans overall with Alan McNish, I think in 99 in the GT1 Porsche, maybe 98 actually.

But it was just an amazing experience. I, I had such a smile on my face. It was such a smile on my [00:12:00] face. And once I’d done those three laps, then it was get your book out, write each corner, visualize each corner, try and remember each corner because you’re not going to get much time. Then I got three laps in night practice.

I had to learn the track as best I could because night practice is pretty serious. You’ve got to do your lap, so you need to finish, but you also, I wanted to get my speed up. And I kept getting faster each lap, even though it was only six laps, I got to a respectable place, not as quick as Ortelli, but not that far off.

And it was like, I could do my job. It was hard work. I mean, I really worked at it to try and make sure that I was doing it. I was playing it out in my head, visualizing parts of the track, visualizing another part of the track, realizing the parts where I could really lose some time, other parts where I could make time.

It was a fantastic experience.

Crew Chief Eric: And one of the things I often think we take for granted in thinking about races like this is there’s a lot to it when it comes to traffic management as well. And you running in the GT class, you’ve got at the time, the prototypes and some of the faster cars up on top [00:13:00] of you all the time, and in 1996 and 97 and so on.

You’re there with other big name drivers. Like Mario Andretti was there with the courage team in LMP one. So what was that like? You’re trying to learn the track and manage all of these bees that are buzzing around you basically.

Andy Pilgrim: Absolutely. And you know, what really helped the fact that I’d done enough racing and touring cars in the Firestone series.

60 70 percent of the lap, honestly, in a touring car in the series, you’re in a Honda Civic Si, and you’re up against Camaros and Pontiacs with much greater straightaway speed, possibly 40 or 50 miles an hour. Well, guess what? It was similar there, but just at higher speed overall. And you’re running 60, 70 percent of the time in your mirrors.

So I was really comfortable with using mirrors and the Porsche does have pretty good rear visibility. It’s not like suddenly you’re going into only rear view mirrors. You have the rear view mirror and that experience helped a tremendous amount.

Crew Chief Eric: So 1996 was the only year you didn’t podium out of the six times you went to Le Mans.

So you finish, you’ve got all your [00:14:00] notes, the race is over, everything that happened in 96. How did 97 happen? Did you just get a phone call again and say, Andy, we want you back in the car?

Andy Pilgrim: Yeah. And again, it was like, okay, not the new hardware guys. They only went there the one time from New Zealand. It was a big New Zealand operation.

It was super to be part of it. But then I was looking to do some more racing in Europe if I could possibly do it. So I had a little bit of sponsorship that I gained and I was really trying hard to figure it out. Well, a Porsche factory connected team was the Rook racing team and the Rook racing brothers out of Poland, Germany.

I called them and asked, you know, if there was any chance of doing something. put together a deal for Le Mans. I mean, it was fairly close to Le Mans. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it with them because people have more budget and things like that. But essentially that’s what happened. And their car was a little bit different to the new hardware car.

It was a little more prepared. If you like, it was a lighter, at least it felt lighter to steer the car. When I went back, I was instantly on [00:15:00] pace. Pre qualifying was a big deal back then, of Olivier Barretta and Wendlinger, and those people were in the, the Vipers were there then, the factory team. And also, like, Jean Pierre Jarrier was in a Porsche there, the Formula One guy.

And at pre qualifying, I can still remember, I put a pretty good lap together and ended up being on pole for pre qualifying, ahead of Barretta and, uh, Jean Pierre Jarrier. And that was a big turning point because people started, who is this guy, you know, this American slash English person, but it was the big turning point.

More things that came after, you’re going to ask me about anyway, came from that. My time at Le Mans, we almost won. We had a turbo failure within the last hour of the race. That cost us enough time that we unfortunately finished second. That first year, I think working as hard as I did to memorize, figure it out, work on things when I wasn’t there.

And when I came back, I was ready. And I didn’t have a simulator or anything like that, but I think you can do a lot of visualization. If you [00:16:00] make good notes from the time, contemporaneous notes really help you come back to that moment. I was just. Chewing over my notes before I got there for 97. And I was very happy with that.

I think Andre Alla and Bruno Eichmann, who was a Porsche Carrera Cup champion. He was a extremely quick guy as well. So I was really, really happy with that deal because it showed me a progression, you know.

Crew Chief Eric: And you’re very humble about that second place finish because it’s actually also a 10th place finish overall, which is nothing to shy away from as well.

So it absolutely amazing.

Andy Pilgrim: One thing on that, which I just remembered was we lost the power steering with eight hours left to go and they never got fixed. And that made it tough.

Crew Chief Eric: And it’s really funny how some of these stories very much parallel with other drivers, because as I think back, we had Rob Dyson on and he talked about studying Brian Redmond’s notes and getting all this information for other people and the same thing.

They had turbo issues with the 956 and they limped it to [00:17:00] the end, but they placed well, there seems to be this common thread.

Andy Pilgrim: Absolutely. You’ve just, you’ve got to finish. You gotta finish.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s just part of it too. You know, you talked about pre qualifying, and how well you did, and where you were against everybody else, but we all know the race is not won in turn one.

It’s a 24 hour race. There’s a lot to get done.

Andy Pilgrim: Yeah, some drivers seem to have a hard time learning that.

Crew Chief Eric: 1997 and then we’ve got a bit of a three year gap and then you start to put on the GM racing suit. Your whole career changes from that point. You get instantly recognized iconic cars. Not only the Corvette number three that you shared with Dale and Dale Jr at Rolex. But also the Cadillac you drove and all the other things you’ve done with GM over the last 20 plus years, how did we get to GM in 2000?

And what was it like being part of the birth of team Corvette racing and Jake and the C5R and all this whole new program that they established?

Andy Pilgrim: Okay. So they [00:18:00] were looking for drivers, obviously, as they put the program together, Ron fellows, John Heiner see, and I think Chris knifel also. But mostly Ron and John Heinersey were involved in the development of the car from like 1997, 98.

And I got a call halfway through 1998 from Doug Feehan, not with an offer per se, it was like, do you have an interest? If we can put something together, something Corvette related, and we’d like to put your name in the hat if you’re interested, and we’re going to be doing endurance races. You’d be doing the long races next year if it all comes together.

And I said, of course, I’d be super happy. That came from the guy that was running and working with Pontiac. When I started running with the Pontiacs, there was a connection with Pontiac factory there through a gentleman called Gary Claudio. And Gary was a manager at General Motors. He was responsible for the drag racing part, but I think they sort of moved him to the road racing side when I was at Pontiac.

And we became [00:19:00] friendly at that time, but Gary was such a great guy. And I genuinely believe that Gary was the person that said, Hey, we should give Andy Pilgrim a shot to try out type of thing. Cause it was one of those things where you’re going to try out. Then they had tryouts at Rotorlanta in October, November of 1998.

And that’s the first time I drove the car. And there were two cars there. And funnily, at that time, Pratt Miller really didn’t exist in a way. It did, but it was really small. There were probably nine guys there or 10 guys there with Gary Pratt. So the other car was actually run by Bill Riley. Riley Engineering ran the second car, even though they were both cars under GM, obviously.

At that time, Gary needed help, and so they brought in, uh, Riley to run the car in 99. So, I was running the car that was being done by Bill Riley, and Ron Fellows, and Kneifel, and John Paul Jr. was the other one that was on that car. And we had, on Heinrich C, we had Scott Sharp as well. So that’s kind of how that started.

We had to do a test at, uh, Road [00:20:00] Atlanta. That’s how that started. Now there was no Le Mans in 99, because they were putting the car together. They were doing the research, doing the development work through that whole year. And again, Ron Fellows had done most of that development work. That’s where it started.

But driving with the Porsche, having done Le Mans, the Le Mans thing was thought about at that time. Maybe that was part of it. Because I had done Le Mans twice. Ron had never done it, and I thought never done it. They had Justin Bell coming as well in the other car. John Paul Giugni didn’t run Le Mans in 2000.

So we had drivers, Frank Freon had run Le Mans. He was in our car. And I was the one that told Feehan that, Hey, you should consider Callie Collins. Kelly and I were friends and he tried out and he did a super job. So it was Kelly, Frank, Freon, and myself in our core.

Crew Chief Eric: Kelly did such a super job that he was your teammate for the next three Le Mans after the initial one.

Andy Pilgrim: Absolutely. As was Frank. And then Ollie Gavin came in, I think. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: You got your first taste of Corvette with the C4 base ZR1 before you started with the 911s. Yep. But now the [00:21:00] C5R, totally different car, totally different engineering. It’s a devoted race team. They’re really trying to build a program around this.

How does the C5R compare to the 993 base GT2 911 that you had run at Le Mans previously?

Andy Pilgrim: Oh, well, first of all, the Corvettes acceleration and the downforce was significantly more, significantly more. So you had to get up to speed through the Porsche curves, for instance, that was big. Tetra Rouge, although it was always bumpy, that was a corner.

Dunlop curves was always kind of small, the S’s after Dunlop. That was a place also where the downforce had an effect. I had to work my way up because it was like, okay, this is a lot more downforce. And you’ve got to be careful because obviously we had crashes at the Porsche Coupes throughout practice and everything else.

There’s always issues there. So you have to really have your game together and learning that the sound of the car, the Porsche was loud, but not really. The Corvette was deafening. The funny thing when we were first there in [00:22:00] 2000 with the car, the cars were on pit lane. My car was on pit lane first and we were sitting there ready for practice to start.

And then I’m thinking, wow, there’s a lot of people around now. I didn’t realize that they have so many people are allowed around on pit lane and things like that at the time. And a ton of journalists were around the car from wherever they were. And a lot of the French people, some of the officials were there probably from ACO was standing there and the car was completely surrounded.

And they said on the radio, okay, fire it up and the car, you fire it and turn it. And then the exhaust pipes, you know, uh, this thick, you know, this, they round. And when it goes, it’s bah, bah, and it just bop, bop, bop, bop, bop like this. And everybody around the car jumped. And then it was all these big smiles, like, Oh, Magnifique, you know, it was super.

I mean, they was like going, Oh, this is superb. You know, you could, I could see them all talk and I was like, great. It was so cool. I was being the first one in the car. It was so cool because pre practice hadn’t quite started yet.

Crew Chief Eric: So [00:23:00] you had had some seat time in the Corvette because of ALMS. What was it like turning your first practice laps in the C5R at Le Mans?

Andy Pilgrim: Well, it had been three years since I was there because it was 2000 and I remember that I was sort of told from the gearbox in just be easy with the gearbox, be easy with the differential. So actually I got to do some laps at a slower speed because of running that stuff in. And I was really glad I had because they gave me two laps to run everything in and then I came in, then I could go out at full chat and I was on it.

Just sighting at a slower speed made a big difference. But what struck me immediately was the braking because you could brake so late, you know, we had a lot more downforce. I mean, honestly, some of the Porsches at the end of the straightaway, you could catch them coming onto the straightaway and then at top speed, you’d be basically at the same speed as some of the Porsches that were not in your class.

It was amazing because they have just so much less drag and less downforce. But then you go into the brake zone, they might brake at a [00:24:00] 300 and you’re braking at like 175. So you just fly to the brake point, you know, and then the prototypes are going to the 100. So it was, it was crazy. It was really crazy.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve talked about Viper. Yes. You were in the throes of what I saw at the time as one of the more interesting rivalries, because the Porsche Corvette rivalry has been around since the beginning almost.

Andy Pilgrim: Certainly in the street car sense. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: For sure. But Viper versus Corvette at Le Mans in ALMS and all the series.

What was that like going head to head with Viper teams?

Andy Pilgrim: They were the world champions. They’d been world champions in 97. They were champions 98 and they were champions in 99. And in 2000, it was like, here they are. They’re still the world champions. And we knew that we were against it. We really were. I mean, the Viper was quick on the straightaways.

They weren’t as good as us through the curvy bit. Um, I had some good battles like early morning. I think it was like five o’clock in the morning to like seven o’clock in the morning. I had a really good battle with one of the Viper drivers. I forget who it was, but we had a really good run and [00:25:00] he would just kill me on the straightaways through Porsche curves and all the way through the start and finish line.

I could make it back up. It was getting really old. And then as my tires went off, Halfway through, I couldn’t do it anymore. And he was just pulling away at that point. But it was tremendous. And they had tremendous support. But they were just so together. I think we did a pretty fair job, honestly. But they were the mark to beat.

They won Daytona. They won Sebring. They won Le Mans in that year. We got our first Corvette win in Texas. But the one after that, we got Petit Le Mans in 2000. And that was actually stopping them getting their four big ones in one year. Took from 99 all the way to the end of 2000 for us, literally two seasons, really, to get to where they were, you know, I heard a conversation that had happened between the ACO and I believe the Corvette team at that time manager was talking about it and said, so there’s so much faster than us on the straightaway.

I said, yes, yes, we’ve been talking to ACO about it. And the ACO gentleman official, he said, You have to [00:26:00] work on your car. You are just coming here. They are four years in their development work on your car. And it was like, okay. All right, fair enough. That’s what it was. We knew we were up against it, but, uh, we did the best we could, and there’s really not a comparison between the Porsche because of the downforce.

The straightaway speed, yeah, at the end of the straight, was similar, around 185 to 190 miles an hour, power drag related, but the cornering speeds were totally different, the braking points were different. Because of the downforce.

Crew Chief Eric: So no balance of performance for you guys that first year.

Andy Pilgrim: Yeah, it was actually great.

I mean, it was, it was all good.

Crew Chief Eric: You still podiumed, you came in third, and then the three subsequent years, second place every time with the Corvette. So when you look back at that fourth time with Team Corvette in the C5R in 2003, and you look back at 2000, four seasons prior, now you’ve got those four years under your belt, just like Team Viper did.

How much had the Corvette changed in that time?

Andy Pilgrim: It had become [00:27:00] better because there was an update on the car that gave us a bit more track. And also we had the gearbox became a transactional gearbox. That made a big difference as well. So the things that were coming. Along from the engineering side made a huge difference.

It wasn’t that the car was any quicker on the straightaway. It wasn’t, but it just became much easier to manage it. We needed less drag so we could use less wing. If you like, we create less downforce and we still had a little bit better aero, but the King of aero was still the Ferrari. I think that Lamont was crazy.

The Ferrari that we ran against later, 2001 to that thing was fast in the straightaway. It was crazy. I think 311 kilometers. I mean, they were close to 200 miles an hour. It was crazy. They were fast.

Crew Chief Eric: And that was the 360 Modena chassis, I believe. I think it

Andy Pilgrim: was. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Talking about that initial time out with the C5R was how you had to sort of bed the car in, you know, let everything come to temp.

You got your sighting laps in slower. It reminds me of a theme that comes up with every driver. Like we said, you don’t win Le Mans turn one, it’s a [00:28:00] 24 hour race, but there’s also multiple drivers. So one of the things that it’s super important is the concept of mechanical sympathy. Reliability of the vehicles also really, really important.

And you’ve got a new car on a new chassis. It’s untested, right? No turbos to worry about, like in the 911 that would fly. fail, but did you have any issues with the Corvette or was it knock on wood, just reliable all the way through?

Andy Pilgrim: There was some issues along the way, but nothing that was a nagging single issue.

There was one point where I think it was a sump plug. Somehow somebody maybe gone over a curb or something and something was leaking underneath and they realized. That it was a plug, one of the mechanics, genius. So once they realized what it was and they pulled out the piece, they realized there was negative vacuum.

So they basically put some packing material on the outside. They stuck it there. And basically, as long as the car was running, it pulled it in and it was like, it was solid enough and it fixed it for the whole rest of the 24 hour race. I remember [00:29:00] that the suspension say solid. I mean, the thing was built.

Because I think Pratt Miller knew enough about the Daytona and Sebring in particular. Le Mans doesn’t beat the car up like Sebring. Sebring is ridiculous. So I think when they built the car, they built it really tough. And the gearbox, yes, there was no real issue with the gearbox at all. But once we got in the transactional, it was just a better shift.

It wasn’t like an age pattern, which it was initially, it was an age pattern. And then it became more of a sequential pullback. And then of course, later became the paddles with the C6R, which I drove just one time in 2007.

Crew Chief Eric: So why does your Le Mans story stop in 2003? Why didn’t you go back?

Andy Pilgrim: That’d been moved to Cadillac.

Cadillac wasn’t going there, right? They gave me the opportunity to drive the Cadillacs for another, gosh, 10, 11 years, which was amazing. But we didn’t go to Le Mans, right? So they had Corvette drivers there. And I was now a Cadillac driver, if you like. Any opportunities I had at Le Mans with another team had to be approved.

And there was one year in particular I had a chance to go, but it wasn’t a GM [00:30:00] vehicle. And I would have been running in the same class. against the Corvettes, not that they were worried about me specifically. They didn’t want a GM driver driving against the GM car. It was as simple as that. So it was something that I’d done.

I didn’t have the wherewithal. I didn’t have the context to potentially set that up again. It was just the reality. I didn’t. Obviously, I was busy in the States doing the series that I was doing with Cadillac and things like that.

Crew Chief Eric: So had you had the opportunity to campaign the CTS V, how do you think it would have fared at Le Mans?

Andy Pilgrim: That’s a great question. It was a lot more complicated than the Corvette. It was a great sprint race car, and it was reliable for most of the time, especially the first generation and second generation cars were quite, quite reliable. The car would have done well, but it didn’t have the downforce. It wasn’t set up to be a high downforce car in World Challenge.

It wasn’t really until 2011 12 when the first generation of Amoligated GT3 cars came out, and it was a whole different world. And the second generation Cadillac had to compete a year or two against those first gen [00:31:00] GT3 cars. And it did a pretty fair job up to 2014. But you can get a good idea how it would have done because we were running against the Porsche, we were running against Ferraris, we were running against those Vipers.

That car did a pretty good job. So in World Challenge car, it was very similar at that point to a GT3 car, or the cars that we would have been competing against. In 11, 12. So I think it would have done well, but it wasn’t designed to do 24 hour races. It was a more complicated car. If things went wrong, it wasn’t a quick fix.

The Corvette was built more to do quick fixes and the Cadillac certainly wasn’t that way. It was, I mean, the engineers are telling me that I didn’t work on it, but they told me there’s a lot, you know, it takes a while to do things. And I, obviously there’s no reason to go prototype. Sure. The prototypes were there in 2001, 2002 with Cadillac.

That’s a whole different class. Yeah. But for another GT car to go there, I can understand why that wouldn’t even been on the cards.

Crew Chief Eric: So a lot of drivers have said that Le Mans changed them, them personally changed their driving style. They learned a lot. You know, [00:32:00] there’s many challenges to driving at Le Mans.

What did you take away from Le Mans? How did it change you?

Andy Pilgrim: You look at physical racetracks. Sebring is a physical racetrack. There are tracks that are physical and there are tracks that are not so physical. But Le Mans, for me, I started using the word, it’s a mental racetrack. And I don’t mean mental by the fact that it’s nuts.

I mean mental by the fact that you can easily lose concentration. And it’s a strange place because you’re in the lights when you’re in the Bugatti area, and you’re coming through there at night. In particular, night is what I’m gonna really say. There’s 55 cars on the track. If you have like a restart, at the time, you know, you’d have a restart after a yellow or something.

There were three pace cars. In 1996, For instance, I was on my own, literally on my, I mean, I could barely see lights behind me and I could see nothing in front of me. And there were two instances where it wasn’t like I lost concentration by any means, but my perspective wasn’t good. I was coming out of the second chicane at Molson and I was like coming [00:33:00] towards where you have the hump before you cut into Molson corner, the right hander there.

And I’m coming along and before I can see the horizon of the road because behind it is an orange glow thinking like something’s on fire. I can understand that. So I’m concentrating on this orange glow and I’m doing 185 miles an hour close to it and I’m coming up there. I’m in left lane because I’m coming up to a right hand corner and then I notice, luckily, there was a guy with a standing on the white line in the middle of the road.

And I’m on his left, and he’s pointing, go around me this way. I had perspective on the orange glow, and I almost missed him. And it scared the bejesus out of me. And I missed him, and I went over the top. I was still going way quick, but I was off the gas, obviously, going over the top. And this car was just an Inferno.

It was a GT1 Porsche. I think it was actually the France Conrad car burning up. You’re thinking, God, did someone crash? Is everybody okay? [00:34:00] You’re going by and then you’re still doing 160 and suddenly you’ve got to go into Moson corner and you’re like, Hey, get your head back. It was a real huge wake up call.

Those things, when you’re going that fast for that long, and especially at night, that change in perspective, boy, it woke me up. I realized that you cannot relax. You cannot relax because strange stuff happens in the dark and it’s so, so dark in the back there. There’s no lighting whatsoever. It’s amazing.

And the same thing happened later in the race. And when I was coming up to Indianapolis, and again, you know, coming out of Mulsanne Corner, all you do is cranking it up all the way as fast as it’ll go towards Indianapolis. You have the little kink, then you have the look slightly bigger kink, but you can still do it flat.

And I’m coming up to the second kink, and it just goes uphill very, very slightly, and the barrier is quite close to you on the left. And in my lights, I just saw some grass, just grass floating in the wind. I suddenly went, whoa, and I got off the gas. Because I thought, I don’t know, I don’t see [00:35:00] anything. And I went around the next kink, and there in the middle of the track, on the left side, where I was, was a car sideways.

And I was like, jeez LPs. And they had just happened, and they didn’t have flags out. Somehow I missed it, because I got off the gas enough, and I moved the car to the right, and just missed the front of this guy’s car. And it was sitting there, he done, just done a big spin, he must have dropped a tire off or something.

Again, it was like twice, and that was two different stints. And it’s a, you know, it’s a short night there, and I did two nightstints that race in 96, and it was like, oh, you know, this is crazy. You know, you suddenly start doubting yourself, like, why am I doing this? I’m a semi intelligent person. Yeah, those kinds of things stay with you, really.

I mean, it gets my heart racing just thinking about it telling you right now.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, you’re not the only one that doesn’t like running in the dark. We’ve had many other people say that, but you have no choice at Le Mans, right? It’s a 24 hour race.

Andy Pilgrim: No, I, I don’t mind running in the dark, but Le Mans lets you know, you really can’t see me.

The lights are good for like 80 miles an hour. Let’s be honest, [00:36:00] especially back then, you were out running the lights by twice the speed. So, you know, you’re just hoping you get something. So it just lets you know, your eyes have to be as far into that dark as you can possibly get. And then forget about raining.

2001, the rain. Oh my goodness.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m glad you brought that up because weather conditions are so variable at Lamar on one side it could be raining the other side it could be dry you know you experience everything there’s some other tracks that are like that too Watkins Glen Spa etc where they’re so big they have these microclimates to what we were talking about before a lot of people don’t like running in the dark But more so running in the rain at Lamar is treacherous.

So what is that like?

Andy Pilgrim: Oh, it’s mad. It’s completely mad. I mean, you come out onto the straightaway, even when it’s daylight, it’s foggy because of the spray. Now, if you’re running on your own, it’s not too bad. The rain tires are pretty good. As long as you don’t have standing water, you know, you just go flat out and obviously breaking earlier, you less lateral grip and all the rest of it.

But you run hard in the rain. It’s not a problem per se, but if suddenly you’re in a pack of cars and you’re [00:37:00] the fifth car in line or. Cars are side by side, you’re running in fog, you can’t see. There’s a pink tinge of a car’s light in front of you, but that’s about it. You can’t see much else. And in the Corvette, in 2001, I would basically get the car into the left lane, coming out of Tetra Rouge, and out of the peripheral vision in my eye, I could see the white line at the side of the road.

Because if I looked ahead, I could literally see nothing but fog and mist. Nothing. And so all you were looking for is the light in the mist getting brighter. And if it is, then you, you start backing it off. And that was it. But honestly, you had to keep the peripheral vision in the side because I really couldn’t see ahead.

You were definitely questioning your sanity after each stint. You really, and truly, it was crazy. It was a crazy race because most of it was pouring rain. And it literally started on the first lap of the race. Ron’s car was on wets, I was on dries, and I almost completely crashed the car out on the first lap.

I just got lucky that I clipped [00:38:00] another car that was basically crashed in the road, clipped another car because where we were it had suddenly rained, and literally I was aquaplaning, sliding, and I just teased the car through a gap, and I just clipped. The left front wheel. So the steering was like that for the rest of the race.

But luckily that’s all that happened. Luckily. And we ended up finishing, I think, second or something. It was crazy.

Crew Chief Eric: You had an illustrious career under the GM flag and running both Cadillacs and Corvettes.

Andy Pilgrim: 21 years in GM.

Crew Chief Eric: You saw a lot of change from your initial driving a C4 to the C5, 6s, 7s, and the birth of the C8, especially with your ties to the National Corvette.

But I always wondered if you had a hand in the design of the National Corvette Museum track itself, because there’s certain parts of that that emulate Le Mans. Does that come from your experience?

Andy Pilgrim: No, not at all. They had several people work on that track together. I was not one of those people, but they purposely did put in pieces.

Of like the Le Mans chicane, right? The Le Mans chicane in their [00:39:00] turn 1A, 1B is a replica of the first Le Mans chicane. You know, it’s got a long straightaway piece as well, but no, I wasn’t part of that. But I did do some consulting work there for four years, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a lot of fun, but that track is a great track at the museum.

It’s a super, super track. It’s fun, really, really fun track.

Crew Chief Eric: So if you could go back to Lamont today and you’re still racing, you know, you’re still out there, you’re turning laps. If you could drive any car and turn laps at Lamont again, what would it be?

Andy Pilgrim: I think I’d like to drive the 1998 Porsche GT one that my good, good friend, Alan McNish won the race in.

Cause he said it was just such a fun car to drive. I got to drive the Evo version of that car in 99 with Alan. And I also drove in 97 with Alan in the first generation car. I don’t even know what they call it. I guess it would have been third generation car of that GT1. That was such a beautiful car. I would have loved to have raced that one.

And also I would have to say the current C8. I, I’ve never driven the C8 race car [00:40:00] and I would love to have a go in that car as well. Absolutely. That would be fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Looking at the success of team Corvette, who just now privatized everything, right? It’s no longer officially Jim Pratt and Miller took over officially and kind of the same model that Ferrari and Porsche follow.

What are your thoughts on team Corvette? You were there at the beginning. You were there at the end, seeing the completion of that whole story.

Andy Pilgrim: Yeah, I think it’s a great move. I think it’s a great move for Pratt and Miller to build those cars. Yeah. I’ve heard good things about the new car. It’s certainly under development.

Some of the guys that have been involved in the development, you know, working hard on that car. I, in fact, I ran into the guys at Paul Ricard this year. They were there testing after we were done testing there. They were testing the next day, which was really great to see some of the engineers and Garcia was there as well, which was great.

And also my old friend, Stefan Altelli as well. He was there, which was crazy. I think it’s the way to go for them. It means that they can get more Corvettes out there. People will have more access to it. They still have the factory engineers helping out these teams to [00:41:00] help develop the car further. So I think it’s a super way to go because honestly, GM want more people in these cars, more people racing these cars, just like they did with the C5s.

A lot of the cars ended up overseas, C6s and also the C7s they passed these cars on. I think it’s great because I had a meeting where I work for Motortrend sometimes on and off over the years and I’m still with them if you like. I was there a couple of years ago when they introduced the new Cayman with the GT3 engine and I was sitting next to Andres Pruninga.

It was funny because we were at dinner. Andy, he said, how’s the, how’s the C8 coming along? And I said, no, I said, it’s great. I said, it’s, it’s, it’s a good car. I said, it’s a really nice car. He said, yes, we were very, very happy to see the C8. I said, really? He said, Andy, there’s not many of those cars left. He said, if Corvette doesn’t make a C8 or a C9 or something like that, it’s hard for other companies to make a case for their sports cars.

Sports cars are becoming rarer and rarer. And I was just thinking, you asked me that. It’s [00:42:00] nice to see that because it means that race car versions of this thing are going to keep going. And Porsche can keep going and Toyota can keep going with a Supra, the BRZ and the, and the, uh, 86 and the Nissan 400Z.

I love to see sports cars out there because it’s a big thing to get in a sports car. I don’t care. You know, I love low power cars as much as high power cars. Obviously there’ll be the really high end cars, but more accessible ones is great because there’s nothing like doing a track day, go to an autocross.

Enjoy your cars and they’re just so much fun to drive.

Crew Chief Eric: This past year, the 2024, the hundred and first lama, we really saw the bridge beginning to get closer between WEC and imsa. We saw Toyota there with the Lexus. We saw BMW In the GT classes, there were a lot more cars. It looked more like an IMSA race in some respects.

Mm-Hmm. . And like you, I get excited about that because I do want to see more sports cars. Exactly. At Lama.

Andy Pilgrim: And it was so cool for Porsche guys to tell me, Hey, cause he knew, you know, it was [00:43:00] related, if you like to call that. And it was a wonderful conversation with him. He was so enthusiastic about the C8 and he said, yes, yes, this is good.

This is good for all of us, all of us. He said, so, you know, and he meant it.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, we have reached that point where I would like to turn the microphone over to the ACO USA president, David Lowe, for a couple of words.

David Lowe: Andy, it’s been an honor and a privilege to have you on tonight. I personally enjoyed it.

Particularly this last part about sports cars. I’ve been really pushing my wife. I’ve told her, you know, I’m getting to that age that I’m probably capable of driving a sports car more regularly.

Andy Pilgrim: Yes.

David Lowe: So I’ll just tell her that Andy really suggests that I go to look at one seriously. Now, especially a

Andy Pilgrim: Corvette.

Highly recommended. Ben

David Lowe: Keating has been a personal friend. He’s also one of our legends. Just a wonderful guy.

Andy Pilgrim: Super, super nice guy. I don’t know him well, but he’s such a nice guy. Absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: Andy Pilgrim, racer, educator, and journalist. He continues his work in traffic safety. He’s a professional racing driver in [00:44:00] series like SRO World Challenge.

He also writes vehicle test articles and creates video content. If you want to catch up with Andy, be sure to check out www. AndyPilgrim. com for all the details or follow him on social media at Andy Pilgrim on Facebook and YouTube, or at Andy Pilgrim number eight on Instagram and Twitter. And on behalf of everyone here and those listening at home, thank you for sharing your story with us.

We hope you enjoyed this presentation and look forward to more evenings with the legend throughout the season. And Andy, I can’t thank you enough for coming on evening with a legend. It’s been an honor to call you a friend for over 10 years now. I’ll never forget the first time I got in the car with you.

And it’s always great to get together and share stories.

Andy Pilgrim: Eric, thank you so much, mate. Thanks a lot. It’s really been fun for me to go through this. It’s been a long time since I’ve had so much discussion about Lamar. It’s just been great. Just churning things out of the back of my head. It’s awesome.

Cheers, mate.[00:45:00]

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and the ACO USA. From the awe inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance, the 24 Hours of Le Mans is an automotive spectacle like no other. For over a century, the 24 Hours Le Mans has urged manufacturers to innovate for the benefit of future motorists.

And it’s a celebration of the relentless pursuit of speed and excellence in the world of motorsports. To learn more about, or to become a member of the ACO USA, look no further than www. lemans. org, click on English in the upper right corner, and then click on the ACO members tab for club offers. Once you’ve become a member, you can follow all the action on the Facebook group, ACO USA members club, and become part of the legend with future evening with the legend meetups.[00:46:00]

This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast Network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, The Motoring Historian, Brake Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.

patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. Please note that the content, opinions, and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the

episode.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to the Legend of Le Mans
• 00:46 Meet Andy Pilgrim: Racing Resume and Early Career
• 01:40 Starting in Endurance Racing
• 02:20 The Firestone Firehawk Series
• 03:59 Building Endurance and Racing Skills
• 07:18 First Experience at Le Mans
• 10:19 Challenges and Learning at Le Mans
• 17:32 Transition to GM and Corvette Racing
• 24:09 Rivalries and Racing Dynamics
• 24:57 Racing Rivalries and Challenges
• 25:25 Corvette’s Journey to Success
• 26:56 Technical Evolution and Engineering Insights
• 31:52 Le Mans: The Mental and Physical Challenge
• 35:46 Racing in the Dark and Rain
• 38:21 Reflections on a Racing Career
• 40:04 The Future of Sports Cars and Team Corvette
• 43:10 Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements