By alley - Jun 13, 2017, 5:33 PM ET

Matt McMurry: From school to Le Mans

When it comes to pre-event Le Mans preparations, Matt McMurry is in a world of his own.

While most of the 150-plus drivers spent untold hours in the gym, liaising with their engineers, and making final fitment checks inside their cars over the past week, the 19-year-old American LMP2 racer was busy lifting a different type of weights and completing an endurance race from Southern California to Arizona.

With his aerospace and mechanical engineering studies completed until school resumes after summer, McMurry is finally free to place his full concentration on the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Portuguese Algarve Pro Racing team, where he'll share the No. 45 Ligier JS P217-Gibson with Vincent Capillaire and Mark Patterson.

Along with his ELMS/Le Mans duties, McMurry is also part of the Park Place Motorsports IMSA GT Daytona team (pictured below at Daytona) as its third driver for the long-distance races, which means partying and all the other norms of college life between semesters will be replaced with racing around the globe.

Ambition, as you might have surmised, isn't lacking within McMurry.

"It's all sort of crazy, since I'm only going to be home this summer for two weeks after Le Mans," he said. "After the Watkins Glen IMSA race with Park Place (on July 2), I'm heading to Portugal for the summer to live with the Algarve Pro team in the Albufiera area. I'm looking forward to working on the car, as well as a load of testing and having an easier take-off place for the ELMS rounds."

McMurry made history in 2014 as the youngest driver to compete at the 24 Hour of Le Mans. At 16, he impressed as an LMP2 newcomer, and with more seasoning to draw from, McMurry is now among the featured drivers in the packed class. With 25 cars in LMP2, almost half the overall field is represented in the category, and for those who intend to win, the sheer volume of cars to contend with is a nightmare.

The odds for each LMP1 entry is favorable; with only six cars, there's a 1:6 chance of victory. LMP2's 1:25 odds are downright silly.

"Since the LMP675/LMP2 era started in 2000, there have never been more cars in this class, and all 25 cars are new 2017-spec LMP2s that are significantly faster than last year's cars due to increased power and downforce," he said. "Just at the Test Day, when the track is dirty and slow, last year's LMP2 qualifying times were smashed by over seven seconds! It's the heyday for the class, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an LMP2 crack the top five overall – and maybe even better if the LMP1s slip."

The recent Le Mans test day also revealed a clear delineation within the LMP2 class. For those who are armed with the ORECA 07 chassis or its Alpine A470 derivation, life is good. For everyone else, including McMurry's Algarve team with its Ligier JS P217, the gap to ORECA – a giant 3.7 seconds – could split the class into first- and second-tier outcomes.

"For my team, our efforts during the practice and qualifying will be focused on improving our top end speed," said McMurry, whose hopes of using of a new low-drag kit for the JS P217s were dashed over the weekend by the Le Mans organizers. "All of the Ligiers have been struggling for top end all season long in the ELMS. We've been able to be competitive in the short track sprints because the Ligier has had superior tire wear. At Le Mans, however, tire wear isn't as drastic, and the top speed advantage that the ORECAs have over us really compounds with the miles and miles of straightaways."

Left to improve the areas they could influence, McMurry says the Algarve team made great gains with Dunlop tire consumption.

"We focused on assessing tire wear at the Le Mans test day," he said. "Based on the results, we should be able to run our tires longer than others manufacturers and do fewer changes to gain some of what we lose in lap times to the ORECA entries, in particular. I've heard that the Dallara entries, which topped the time trap speeds at 212mph, are planning to switch to their sprint kit because their low-drag kit was too low on drag and their cornering and tire wear suffered. I'm thinking that is going to help us, as I'm guessing the Dallara lap times will stay similar to their test times, but the change will make their cars more comfortable to drive."

McMurry expects the ORECAs will be hard to beat.

"They are the odds-on favorites," he said. "That car has a one-year development advantage over the Ligier and Dallara, and most of the WEC teams."

Potential results aside, the teenager should benefit from learning to fulfill a new role at the world's greatest endurance race.

"One thing that is new for me at Le Mans is that I'm playing the role of the 'pro' in the car, along with Vincent," he said. "Mark Patterson is our gentleman driver, and I'm really liking this change and the expectations that come with it. I've worked really hard over the past few years and have always been the 'young kid' in the car. This year, the team is counting on me to turn the fast laps and to do some heavy lifting. It's a really positive evolution. I think back to 2014, and everything was new to me – Le Mans was my third-ever LMP2 race! This time, when I got in the car on the Test Day, I just went to work. I knew what to do.

With a French co-driver in Capillaire and heavy local business support for the No. 45 car, McMurry looks forward to all that awaits the team this week. It's not a bad change of pace for a kid who was moving out of his dorm a few days ago...

"The other thing that is kind of cool about what we're doing this year at Le Mans is that the team's primary sponsor is Sarthe Objectif 24!, and it's a consortium of local Le Mans area businesses that supports a Le Mans-raised driver, that being Vincent," he said. "So, along with our Flexbox sponsorship, we'll be something of the local favorite. That should make the parade and autograph sessions a lot of fun before we race in front of more than a hundred thousand people. It's a big change of pace from what I was just doing in school."

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