Anyone ever had a problem turning their FE OFF?
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Ford's road to victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2016 was not paved with ease or perfection, but it all worked out in the end.
The Blue Oval's assault on the world's most famous motor race started with a pole position, produced the race's fastest lap, and earned a dominant result as the twin-turbo V6-powered GTs crossed the finish line first, third, and fourth.
From the outside, the winning No. 68 piloted by Joey Hand, Dirk Muller, and four-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais—a Le Mans native—appeared to be on cruise control throughout the grueling 24-hour contest. And while that was true for a large portion of the two-day contest, there was a stretch where Bourdais thought it might come crashing down thanks to a car-wide revolt by the GT's electronics.
It wasn't exactly a case of Skynet becoming self-aware, but as the Frenchman tells it, driving a Ford GT-gone-rogue made for what he calls "the stint from hell." Cut off from the team at night, unsure if he could trust the amount of fuel the GT says he has left to use before pitting, Bourdais began sweating bullets inside the cockpit.
"That triple stint was the most stressful I've ever had in my life," he told Road & Track. "By a long shot. We were obviously fighting for the lead, then all of a sudden the radio goes off. And it goes off for 40 minutes. I'm gone. I'm on my island. I have no idea if the fuel [tank accuracy] is good, wrong, bad, terrible; no idea. I'm going to have to pit on my own. The (team's handheld) signboard—I can't really see it. The reflection at night makes it hard to see it. So I was on my own deciding when I was going to have to pit."
With no information coming into the No. 68 at a critical juncture, Bourdais was presented with two different ways to lose the race, one way to stay on the right path, and the need to trust the fuel-remaining number on the digital dash mounted to the steering wheel. Running the car down to a point where it has enough to make it to the pits, but would not have enough to complete another lap, was the bullseye he had to hit.
"I tell you what, when you decide you've got one-and-a-half laps of fuel supposedly in the car, you want to pit because you don't want to run out of gas," he said. "In the meantime, you don't want to pit because it's too early and you know that—the number tells you it's too early. And you're like, 'I hope the fuel error is accurate, is not worse than it's supposed to be,' because if I run the car out of gas, I'm going to be the dumbest [...] ever. And you don't want to pit early either, because if you do that, that adds a stop to the end with a one-lap splash-and-go, and you lost the race on that. And that ain't any better. The stress at that moment was just though the roof."
Bourdais may have aced his first trial, but the No. 68 Ford wasn't done having fun at his expense.
"Then on the second stint, the radio comes back," he continued. "On the third stint, after the safety car period, all the electronics freezes in the car. I've got no dash, no display, no nothing. The only thing that works is the radio and the paddle-shift. So there is no pit speed limiter, and I can't stop the car, either. The kill switch on the steering wheel isn't working anymore. So, the [traction control] is just going bananas; whatever is happening is just making a mess of everything. That was the stint from hell."
Although he was now able to speak with the Ford Chip Ganassi Racing team, they were incapable of holding a GT exorcism while Bourdais was fending off the other cars vying for the win. After surviving the Ford's mid-race demonic possession, he was due to pit and hand over the car to co-driver Dirk Muller. More comedy was on the horizon, along with two more chances to earn penalties.
With a strict pit lane speed limit to stay below, and a rule requiring engines to be turned off during refueling, Bourdais attempted to comply with both rules and had a 50 percent success rate.
"I came into the pits with no speed limiter, watching the Aston Martin pitting behind me trying to gauge my speed so I'm not speeding on pit lane," he said. "Obviously, when I get to [our] pits, because I'm doing this, my [seat] belts aren't undone, Dirk is trying to yank me out of the car, and the car is still on because I'm still trying to find a way to shut it off but the master switch doesn't work ... It was tough, that's all I can say. Man, it ain't so easy sometimes."
During the stop, the Ganassi team replaced the gizmo-laden steering wheel with a spare, which cured the electronics failures. Bourdais did a perfect job of avoiding a speeding infraction, but with his inability to cut the engine during the stop, the No. 68 was given a drive-through penalty for refueling with the motor running.
That one miscue did cost the No. 68 some time, but Bourdais, Muller, and Hand rallied back to give Ford the win on the 50th anniversary of its first Le Mans triumph in 1966. For the Frenchman's sake, one can only hope that faulty steering wheel was burned at the stake and buried behind the garage.
http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a29714/sebastien-bourdais-ford-gt-le-mans-winner-2016/
