Video: What it's like driving an LMP1 car into the night

03rd November 2023

Simon Ostler

It’s easy to think back to endurance racing from the early 2010s and forget about cars like this. The Pescarolo 01 was so often overshadowed by the dominance of the Peugeot 908 and the Audi R18 that it never really got much of a look in when it came to outright results.

It was a widely used chassis between 2007 and 2015, as a car that was built to fit both LMP1 and LMP2 regulations, it competed in various forms under various team banners, and overall took 23 class victories, 76 podiums and won the 2013 WEC Teams’ Championship with OAK Racing.

It’s performance in LMP1 wasn’t quite on that level, but we’d still be very jealous of anyone who got have a go. Someone like Jamie Constable, the proud owner of this particular Pescarolo 01, powered in this form by a 4.4-litre Judd V8, and resplendent in a fabulous Gulf livery.

Constable has been around a fair bit, he’s driven classic F1 cars, but one of the words he used to describe the experience of driving this particular Le Mans Prototype was “terrifying”. This exact car is known to have competed at Spa during its tenure, so it’s certainly got some heritage.

We caught up with him during the Classic 24 Hour at Daytona, as he was one of a very lucky few to be out there in an LMP1 car as the sun began to set.