Racing Is Life...

...everything else is just waiting.

I doubt Steve McQueen knew how legendary his line in the film, Le Mans, would be when he spoke those words some forty years ago. McQueen was the kind of actor who always had a knack for encapsulating big moments in small amounts of dialogue. In fact, if you watch Le Mans, you'll notice he only talks for about three minutes during the whole film. But when he did speak, he made it count.

I won't bore you with a long, rambling, hyperbole filled post about why the 24 Hours of Le Mans is the greatest race in the world, the history of the event or why you should watch it. As we approach another 24 Hours next month, I thought I'd share my thoughts from last year's race and distill the last remarkable 24 hours down into some life lessons that I took away from it.

1. Life is a race. It really is. I don't know if this is a human trait or an historian's curse, but I have an acute awareness of time. And we don't get much of it while we're here. This years Le Mans was a reflection of the human understanding about the lack of time we all have. How? Because the 24 Hours of Le Mans ran as a sprint race. It was as if no one told the drivers, when the flag dropped and the race began, that they had a whole day to jockey for position. Every driver, from the fastest Peugeot to the most middling Porsche 911 drove flat out, against the sun, against their opponents, the odds, and time itself. They made every fraction of a second count. If only we could find that kind of efficiency in our everyday lives - we'd wring every nanosecond out of the years we have.

2. Life is unpredictable. Just like the Circuit de La Sarthe itself, life winds its way organically through the world. Le Mans is no pre-planned oval, it is no cookie cutter road course, it is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Part of the circuit is built for racing, but the other 90% of Le Mans is winding roads snaking their way through the French countryside. The circuit, much like life, hands you the twists and turns as you find them. How you adapt is up to you. One thing is guaranteed, the journey will be unique.

3. Life is unpredictable. Did I mention life, like racing at Le Mans, is unpredictable? It's not just the track that's unpredictable, it's also everything else! It's the weather; heat, cold, and rain. It's the unexpected events of the day. A blown tire, a broken upright, a failed alternator. Life, like Le Mans, throws obstacles in your way. Be they little hurtles or overwhelming gauntlets, you never know what you'll encounter in those 24 hours. Will it rain? Will I survive the heat after being strapped in the car for three hours? How well can I drive at night when it's so dark that I have to steer the car from memory? What if the car in front of me crashes; can I avoid him? Le Mans, and life, are filled with thousands of questions. What separates you from the victims on the side of the circuit, is all down to how you react.

4. The race is long... and often with yourself. Audi lived this lesson today, having learned it years ago. Their opponents, a rather imposing convoy of four Peugeot 908's, effectively left them in the dust when the race began yesterday afternoon. With the 908's pulling away a few seconds every lap, Audi was left to run their own race. Each driver knew that somewhere out ahead of them, beyond the next series of corners, over the next hill and beyond, were their opponents. But catching them was nearly out of the question. How do you react?

5. Run your own race. As hard as it was for them to do, Audi dug in, remembered what their original plan was, and stuck to it. Even when it seemed like their plan wasn't working; when the Peugeot's had long since disappeared, Audi's boss, Dr. Wolfgang Ulrich, reminded the drivers to run their own race. Push the car, yes, but do so smartly. Don't take any stupid chances, don't go beyond your limits. You'll never make up the three seconds a lap Peugeot is putting on you. But stay within touching distance of them and see if an opportunity comes along. The patience required for this over 24 hours is immense, especially when exhaustion and a deepening feeling of hopelessness and panic sets in. Ultimately, you must...

6. Be patient. There are times when life, just like the 24 Hours, will not give you what you want when you want it. Only by sticking with your plan do you hope to win. Why? Because...

7. Pushing beyond your means is a surefire recipe for disaster. Peugeot learned this in short order. Feeling unsure of whether or not they could beat Audi, and forgetting that ultimately they should run their own race, Peugeot upped the power on their turbo-diesel engines, sending clouds of black soot into the air as their motors were pushed to the absolute limits of their ability. Even though they qualified on pole and filled the top four slots on the grid. Even though every odds maker within 100 miles of La Sarthe had their money on Peugeot, they pushed anyway. While they saved a few seconds on the track, and stayed ahead of their more patient adversaries, they ultimately paid the price. And what a terrible toll it was.

8. Learn from your mistakes. When the first Peugeot to retire with engine failure expired, smoldering on the side of the road, Peugeot should have immediately pulled up the car's telemetry and looked into what went wrong. After all, if all of their remaining runners had the same engines, perhaps it would behoove Peugeot to find out what caused their lead car to spit flames and shrapnel all over track at Indianapolis corner before retiring from the race. Sadly, Peugeot, now even more paranoid about maintaining their gap over Audi, put their heads down and pushed like hell. In a matter of ten hours, they would go from leading the 24 Hours of Le Mans and clinching a one-two-three finish, to losing all of their remaining cars - as each machine suffered the same horrible fate. Flames, oil, and metal spewing from the back of the car as its powerplant exploded into bits of shrapnel - leaving their pilots stranded - heads hanging, in tears at the side of the road.

9. Have faith. Audi kept theirs, even when all looked dark. How does a team do that? Years and years of lessons from Le Mans. You don't learn everything from your first outing. Much like life, the only way you master Le Mans - if you can ever truly master it at all - is to learn from every experience. Audi has done just that. They knew that while Peugeot looked untouchable, the plumes of fine black soot hanging in the air as the 908's blew by was a telling sign. Peugeot was pushing; they were running scared. Audi had faith in their drivers, their mechanics, their engineers, and their machines. At the end of the day, having faith - that deeply planted, secure knowledge that things are going to work out despite everything - paid off with Audi driving home in first, second, and third, and leaving four charred Peugeot 908's in their wake.

10. Life is beautiful. Ultimately, what makes Le Mans so magical is that, when looked at by those of us who get it, Le Mans is life distilled down to its most basic and amazing elements. Faith, trust, endurance, confidence, patience, celebration, and loss, all were on display brilliantly today - not just in the Audi camp, but everywhere. Every mechanic who struggled to stay awake at 4 in the morning showed these virtues. Every engineer out on the pit wall that fought sleep deprivation and worked their brains in overdrive to plan for any eventuality showed these virtues. The drivers who shared the same car, compromised with each other, worked together, and refused to let ego get the better of them (though some drivers failed to do just that), showed these virtues.The team managers, the corner workers, and yes, even those determined die-hard fanatics in the stand (or watching from thousands of miles away), all took part in the great human drama of life at Le Mans.

I'm not sure if Steve McQueen knew just how right he was. Racing really is life, and everything else - all of the detractions and distractions that keep us from truly living - is just waiting.