LM24: Driving a modern P1 car is ‘like being a jet fighter pilot’

Mental bandwidth is at an all-time low inside the cockpit of modern prototypes. The high-tech LMP1 Hybrids, with complex energy recovery systems (ERS) to serve and a maze of buttons and dials to adjust, has turned drivers from Audi, Porsche and Toyota into some of the busiest racers in the world.

The act of driving a cutting-edge prototype, in the purest sense, has been partially replaced by the need to constantly manage ERS charging and deployment, to tune the chassis for optimum performance through the digital dash and the functions stored on a separate cockpit panel and, thanks to the ACO's latest reduction of fuel usage per lap, to fly around the 8.5-mile Le Mans circuit while conserving previous drops of petrol whenever possible.

Simply looking ahead and going like hell, according to Toyota TS050 Hybrid driver Anthony Davidson, is only part of today's equation.

"In the cockpit we are obviously hunting around all the time, by the engineer of course, telling us which modes to be in," he told RACER. "Always trying to keep the [ERS] battery in a happy equilibrium. As time has gone on, people are understanding the technology of the battery more and more and they realize that keeping that just the temperature constant but also making the charge constant is beneficial to the battery's lifespan, [and] therefore, power as well. Keeping all those things in check means that it is pretty busy in the cockpit; changing switches on the steering wheel all the time.

"Unfortunately, the really taxing stuff comes when you are already at maximum capacity. When your eyes are wide open and the rain starts to fall and you are on the wrong tire, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose because you are overcharging the battery too much because you're living on the brake pedal more because the grip has suddenly reduced. And you're flying through the [steering] wheel, changing switches from the engineers input because they can see things spiraling out of control.

"That is really where we earn our money these days, because you have to know not just where the switches are of course, but what you are changing. And sometimes – I find it happening quite a lot at the moment as we're all learning the new car - preempting what the engineers going to ask you, or better still, giving them advice on what you should be changing or what to account for. More and more it is like being a jet fighter pilot. There's an incredible amount to learn technically with the car."

And it takes a driver like Davidson, whose mind is always working overtime, to relish racing an LMP1 Hybrid while acting as a cockpit-based computer specialist and problem solver.

"Yeah, there is certainly an element that I enjoy," he said. "I love technology anyway, not just in racing but in everyday life. I've always been interested in where things are going for the future. So racing cars, being hybrid now and having such a technical element to it, it really floats my boat. I do enjoy that side of racing now. But you do find sometimes it all becomes a bit too much and you can get frustrated. You can get as frustrated by it as much as you find pleasure in it as well."