“Remember that feeling”

Looking back, the debrief at Silverstone’s FIA World Endurance Championship season-opener set the tone for the ultimate result at Le Mans this year, second in GTE Am.

Silverstone was very challenging on multiple levels. Besides arriving late, it was also my first time in the new car. Patrick Long and Marco Seefried had done the WEC preseason test at Paul Ricard, but I couldn’t attend due to my final commitments to Grey’s Anatomy. In addition to the tremendous amount of sponsor obligations, we all had to get used to working together. Marco was a new co-driver and Jacques Hendrikse our new engineer.

I’d never been to Silverstone, so learning a very fast track that is devoid of obvious reference points was very challenging. We were off the pace overall and certainly I was the furthest off. The question was, how do we close the deficit? Patrick hadn’t been there in a long time and the track configuration had changed since then. Our third driver, Marco, and I were learning each other’s backgrounds and also learning to communicate. His background as a mechanic and his ability to communicate with Proton mechanics was measurable and impressive.

The first thing that struck me on arriving at Silverstone was the seriousness of the Porsche Team. There’d been a great deal of stress and major challenges just getting to the UK, and I knew the stakes were high and there was huge pressure on everybody to make this program succeed. When I was summoned to the Porsche Motorsports hauler I knew it was serious, but when I looked at Patrick Long, I realized just how serious it was. His eyes lacked their usual little twinkle, so I knew at that point this meeting was all business.

Jacques is the perfect race engineer. He’s zero bullshit; a guy you want to go into battle with. If he can’t lead you, he’s going to push you where he wants to go. He’s committed, focused, even obsessed by winning. But he’s also supportive. Once you get past his gruff nature, he can be understanding and funny. The third person was Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser, head of GT Motorsports at Porsche.

Down to the business at hand: What did I need as a driver to improve my times?

A simple question, and a simple answer – I needed more seat time and testing.

Patrick was in control of overseeing my development as a driver and I couldn’t be in better hands. He had a plan in place and calmly explained it to the team. Two weeks prior to Silverstone, he took me to a rally school outside Seattle and we spent the entire day pounding around in the dirt. He felt that learning car control in a rear-wheel-drive rally car would help my road racing. We had a blast and made great progress.

In Seattle we also discovered a simple video game-based simulator that didn’t make me ill – something I’ve suffered from in the past. The 2015 WEC schedule includes six tracks I’d never been to before. Just learning the rhythm of the track on a simulator would help me the first time I saw a new track in person. We developed a testing program that would help us get more seat time and also learn the tracks. First up was Bahrain.

"At this moment, I realized I was now a race driver. No longer an actor racing when I could, but a race driver"

The plan was to test in Bahrain, then do some marketing and PR for Porsche in Dubai. Lee Newton, who I met many years ago in Atlanta, set up the promotional event for the Porsche Panamera in Dubai.

The Bahrain track is notorious for being brutal on tires. You get two good laps and then the tires fall off. When I rolled out for my first session in the car, on another new track, knowing I only had two laps to set a decent time, that turned up the pressure to perform. Add some heat, dust, and the pressure to match my teammates’ times and it would be an intense experience.

After Patrick and Marco went out and set a baseline, I did my first run to get to know the track, and I knew I had time to make up. We looked at the data, and we set a lap time goal for me. It was called a goal, but in reality it was a time I had to achieve. It was at this moment that I realized I was now a race driver. No longer an actor racing when I could, but a race driver. The future of the program depended upon me hitting this lap time.

This experience gave me a much better perspective on what top drivers do on a daily basis. The pressures they’re under; the pain they undergo. It was humbling, but I was still pleased to be there! Would I be able to achieve the lap time required? I focused on the mental aspect of racing, using visualization to increase my confidence. I knew what I had to do.

I finished my six-lap run, pulled into the box, and got out of the car. I knew from the dash display that I’d achieved the target time. Jacques nodded, Marco smiled, and Patrick pulled me aside to a private location in the garage. He spoke quietly and said, “Remember that – that’s what you need to do every time you get in the car. Remember that feeling. Remember what you just did.”

My first test completed, and the sense of satisfaction was immense. You can only imagine what it means to be accepted by these guys. We did more long runs in the afternoon. The heat was brutal, but important to my conditioning. At the end of the day, I’d made no mistakes. No spins, no offs. I proved that I could be fast enough. We headed off to Dubai for the Porsche event and then Belgium to race at Spa.