Racer - Fall 2013

LL Well, that’s good to hear at least one of us feels that way! I was never a big fan of training in my early career. I always train, but to the minimum. But since a couple of years ago, it’s not so much the training, it’s what Ollie says, the suffering that you prepare for in the car. I don’t run so much anymore – now I prefer cycling. You don’t go so much to the point of exhaustion, but physical endurance training helps you drive with neck pain or whatever cramps you might have in the car.

It sounds like Olly’s plan is about total fitness and yours is about pain thresholds, Lucas…

LL Maybe I’m a little bit crazy, but I like this aspect of the training more – that you have to push yourself; and it’s the same in the racecar, you have to push yourself. If you’re not willing to push yourself, then I think you should quit. Especially in sports car racing. And the willingness to push myself developed over the years. Early, when you’re younger, you don’t really need it. But as you get a little bit older, for me, my training went up a lot.

As two of the most recognizable names in the American Le Mans Series, what are your feelings about the United Sports Car merger? Is it a good thing? A bad thing?

LL I think only two classes are very secure. Drivers, team owners, sponsors only know what they will be getting in [Le Mans] GT and LMPC. All of the other things, nobody really knows what’s going on, or they haven’t been told. So when I heard about this merger last year, I had strange words in my head which I don’t want to repeat... (Laughs)

You have to look at it with an open mind.

I think it can be a good thing. Will it be a good thing? I’m not so sure, just because we have a lot of the people who come to see LMP1 cars racing against GT cars. It always makes for very intense racing, especially since these guys, the GT cars, are fighting so tough. In an LMP1, you try to cut your way through traffic, but you don’t want to screw up the GT race and you don’t want to have to hit each other. So I think that made the racing very intense.

I don’t know if that’s really going to be

Synonymous as Oliver Gavin and Lucas Luhr are with Corvette Racing and Muscle Milk Pickett Racing, respectively, it’s sometimes easy to forget the variety of cars each has experienced in their careers. For example...

Oliver Gavin was a test driver for the Renault F1 team in

2002 (LEFT).

Earlier, he tested for the short-lived Pacific Grand Prix team in 1994.

Luhr and Marco Werner (LEFT) were the ’08 ALMS LMP1

champs in a factory Audi R10 TDI. Same year, Luhr finished

4th at Le Mans - his best overall result.

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