The understated Le Mans legend who has earned a testimonial

Motorsport is renowned for its lack of sentiment. Handshake deals are routinely forgotten and binding contracts discarded when a better offer comes along, while savage boardroom budget cuts are made with little regard to imminent technical breakthroughs.

Drivers with an apparently indefinite shelf-life slip away without the fanfare afforded to long-serving footballers at testimonials, years before their actual retirement. Nothing lasts forever in this ruthless, dog-eat-dog world.

So it is that one of the Le Mans 24 Hours’ great stalwarts will be absent next month for only the third time in the past 25 iterations of the event.

After 23 unbroken appearances at the world’s most famous endurance race between 1995 and 2017, which includes an outright pole in 2005, two class victories and several heart-breaking near-misses, Emmanuel Collard skipped the two editions that fell under the auspices of the 2018-19 World Endurance Championship superseason.

But the former Toyota, Cadillac, Pescarolo and Porsche ace was back for the 2019-20 WEC, making his 24th participation in the great race last year. That put him equal fifth on the all-time list with Francois Migault and Jan Lammers, behind only his former boss Henri Pescarolo (33), Bob Wollek (30), Yojiro Terada (29) and Derek Bell (26).

Collard marked the occasion with a strong drive to third in GTE Am, alongside long-time co-driver Francois Perrodo and factory Ferrari gun Nicklas Nielsen, a result that was key in securing the class title for their #83 AF Corse machine at the end of the campaign. The second GTE Am title for Collard and gentleman driver Perrodo, following the one they’d secured in 2016 alongside Rui Aguas, went some way to showing that the softly-spoken Collard still had plenty left to give even on the eve of his 50th birthday.

Collard drove 93 laps at Le Mans last year, as the #83 Ferrari claimed third in GTE-Am

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

But GTE Am rules state that only one driver per car can have a professional (Platinum or Gold) driver rating, along with one Silver or two Bronze amateurs. And, with 24-year-old Nielsen reclassified from Silver to Gold, Perrodo faced a difficult decision over which he would pick as his designated Pro.

Collard, now 50, drew the short straw and, although he’s continued racing alongside Perrodo in the European Le Mans Series (with Alessio Rovera the new up-and-coming Silver alongside), it is the WEC entry that Perrodo shares with Nielsen and Rovera that will be on the grid at Le Mans.

“It was a surprise for me because we won the championship last year, so I didn’t expect this,” admits Collard, who claimed his most recent ELMS class victory at the Red Bull Ring in wet/dry conditions in May. “But sometimes there is a plan and the plans change in the last moment.

“Normally, I think Nicklas should drive in a [GTE] Pro car, but he couldn’t do it, he had not so much option to replace this programme and it was for Francois I think a good thing to get Nicklas because he’s a top driver, very nice person and he can do the job.

"Since five years I asked to go down to Silver because there is so many drivers my age who go down to Silver and for me it’s always a problem" Emmanuel Collard

“For me it was not so nice when I received the news but I still have a good programme with Francois in ELMS so it’s good for me. I’m 50 years old and I’m very lucky to race in such a good level.”

Collard is right that he’s among a very small minority of drivers in their sixth decade who are still earning a paycheck for their skill behind the wheel, when most have long since given up the unequal struggle to compete for seats against much younger talents.

Nielsen wasn’t even born when Collard lifted the 1996 Porsche Supercup title that first put him on Porsche’s radar. But Collard’s pace and a bulky CV that includes outright victories in the sportscar classics at Daytona (2005), Sebring (2008), Petit Le Mans (1998) and Spa – during its period as a touring car race in 1999 – means his case to be downgraded to a Silver has been repeatedly rebuffed by the FIA.

Collard hopes to receive a downgrade in his FIA driver grading to Silver now he's reached 50

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“It’s a problem for me at the moment,” he says of his Gold driver grading. “Francois is a good friend and he helped me a lot so I can still race, but since five years I asked to go down to Silver because there is so many drivers my age who go down to Silver and for me it’s always a problem.

“The answer is always, ‘because you have such a good CV’, but I try to explain to them that at 70 years old I will still have the CV, I don’t know what to do! But this is the answer of the FIA every year.”

Collard is hopeful of getting back on the Le Mans grid next year – “normally it should be easier because I’m 50 years old and then you go down [in grading] automatically” – but is he motivated by inching higher up the list beyond the likes of five-time winner Bell?

“No, not really,” he says matter-of-factly. “I have been very lucky to do so many 24-hour races, but I am not looking for this record. It should be OK next year, but we will see. It would be good news for me!”

Collard has a complex relationship with Le Mans. He has taken GT and LMP2 class honours in 2003 and 2009 – “even if it’s not the overall win, but for me I was really pleased to win these categories” – but rues two races that got away from him and ended up in Tom Kristensen’s lap.

The Pescarolo-Judd Collard shared with ex-Formula 1 drivers Jean-Christophe Boullion and Erik Comas in 2005 was capable of times five seconds per lap faster than the quickest of the Audi R8s in race trim and was over two minutes ahead in the third hour when mechanical dramas hit.

“A recurrence of a problem, caused by a tightening of the linkage mechanism, that hit Pescarolo at Le Mans last year forced the team to change the gearbox internals with the loss of 26 minutes, or just over five laps,” wrote Gary Watkins in Autosport’s magazine report.

Pescarolo was comfortably the quickest package in 2005, but gearbox delay meant Collard finished runner-up

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Such was the Pescarolo’s pace advantage that it had whittled the deficit to Kristensen’s Champion Audi down to three laps by Sunday morning and within two during the 17th hour, before eventually settling for a bittersweet second as engine temperatures mounted.

Even harder to swallow was 1997, when the Porsche 911 GT1 he shared with Yannick Dalmas and Ralf Kelleners caught fire while almost a full lap clear with a little over two hours remaining, elevating Le Mans rookie Kristensen to his first of nine successes.

“That was terrible,” Collard laments of 1997. “I had also disappointment with Toyota [in 1999] because we did so many tests before the race, I think we did three or four times 30-hours testing with no problem at all and you came to the race and you have a problem with the puncture [which pitched pole-winning co-driver Martin Brundle into the wall]. But this is Le Mans, you have to be also a bit lucky.”

"I have been very lucky to do so many 24-hour races, but I'm not looking for this record. It should be OK next year, but we will see" Emmanuel Collard

After the promising but disappointing Toyota GT-One programme was folded, Collard became a regular for Cadillac, but the Riley & Scott-built NorthStar was on a hiding to nothing based on a design that was already out of date by the time it arrived in 2000. Then, the new version that appeared in 2002 was behind schedule and only started to show its potential after GM’s decision to axe the programme.

There followed more successful times with Pescarolo, winning back-to-back Le Mans Series titles in 2005 and 2006 and ending the second of those years alongside the underrated Boullion unbeaten across the five-race championship. He cites the “family” atmosphere in the team relative to the factories as the reason for picking it as his favourite period in his career, despite the disappointment of Le Mans 2005.

“The best for me was when I was with Pescarolo,” says Collard, who also finished third at Le Mans in 2007 with the French team. “The pressure was there, but it was a more family team. Compared to what I had before with official Porsche, official Toyota, it was not the same spirit.

“It was a big, big team, impossible to know every guy inside because there are so many, but with Pescarolo it was different – it was more a human team, you know all the guys. The car was so very efficient, always fast and very nice to drive also.”

Collard (middle, with Boullion and Comas on 2005 Le Mans podium), cites Pescarolo period as his favourite

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Another chance to win Le Mans outright came with a one-year contract offer from Peugeot, but Collard turned it down. Although the French turbodiesel triumphed over Audi to win Le Mans in 2009, Collard has no regrets.

“I couldn’t see the future with them,” he says. “I didn’t want to leave Porsche for just a one-year contract. For sure I would have the chance to win Le Mans overall, but I was looking for more long-term so it didn’t happen. But I think my choice was the best.”

Collard is realistic enough to know that he won’t get another opportunity to win Le Mans outright now. But, even if start statistics don’t mean an awful lot to him, he does care about making more memories for as long as he can.

Motorsport may not be sentimental, but Collard has earned his status as an understated Le Mans legend. Let’s hope we’ve not seen the last of him at La Sarthe just yet.

#83 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE EVO: Francois Perrodo, Emmanuel Collard, Nicklas Nielsen

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images