As per the Le Mans 24 Hours sporting regulations, Force India F1 team driver, Nico Hülkenberg, who will race for Porsche Team at Spa-Francorchamps on 2 May and in the forthcoming blue-riband event in the World Endurance Championship on 13-14 June, has had a special training session on a simulator.
Even when you are one of the big hopes in world motor sport with 81 Formula 1 Grands Prix under your belt, you can still find yourself having to do a driver training course!
This is what happened to Nico Hülkenberg on Wednesday in Saint-Pierre-du-Perray on the outskirts of Paris when he had a session on the AOTech company’s simulator. He was on his way back from taking part in the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix, via a stopover at Paul Ricard, where Porsche was testing its LMP1 cars.
In compliance with the Le Mans 24-Hours sporting regulations a debutant driver in the event, or one who hasn’t raced in it for more than five years, must spend a day there to familiarise him/herself with the innovative safety procedures in place during the Sarthe classic.
24 Heures du Mans 2015 - Nico Hülkenberg à l’école by lemans-tv
As Hülkenberg has never raced on the big Le Mans 24 Hours circuit, he had to do three hours driving divided up into six 30-minute sessions to learn the layout and its pitfalls. During this time he had to familiarise himself with the positions of the marshals’ posts, work on how to manage the traffic, learn about safety car and slow zone procedures in both daylight and night, and cope with ‘surprises’ such as a sudden change in grip on a section of the track, which often happens at Le Mans. It’s an excellent learning tool, and offers a big gain in time for when he will actually be at the wheel of the Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1.
Every evening, AOTech sends the reports on each debutant to the ACO. These documents give the Le Mans 24 Hours sporting department a different take on the on-the-spot behaviour of these debutants during the test day (this year on 31st May), in which they must take part before they can hope to be allowed to compete in practice and then in the race itself.
This highly-developed professional tool is comparable to aviation simulators or those used by the big F1 teams. AOTech, in collaboration with the ACO, is already working on a new version which will see drivers installed in cockpits very similar to those in LMP and LMGTE cars, whereas today they are strapped into a single-seater chassis. In 2014 some 40 Le Mans drivers passed the test and a similar number is expected for this year’s event (the full list of drivers taking part in the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours will be announced at the end of May).
The German driver enjoyed himself very much during this special day, and said that he was now looking forward to tackling the real and not the simulated version of the Le Mans 24 Hours circuit: “Over the past four or five years I’ve become very interested in endurance racing,” he summed up, “ and above all the Le Mans 24 Hours. I’m impatient to measure myself against the challenge posed by the circuit."
Hülkenberg will find out what it’s all about on 31st May during the test day. But before that he has the challenge of the WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps on 30 April to 2 May, and then between the test day (31 May) and the Le Mans 24 Hours (13-14 June) the Canadian Grand Prix.
