As well as winning Florida’s enduro classic, Briscoe has also won the Petit Le Mans and come first in the LMP2 class at Sebring in 2013, but he says the emotion of being involved with Glickenhaus has compared with little else in his career.
“There’s just so much passion on the team,” he says. “Everyone is just so proud of what this small group has been able to put together.
“One of the great memories I have is at Monza during the first test I went to. I just remember rolling out the car in the morning, starting it up, Romain driving out the garage, and feeling just so much pride in all the team, the engineers, the deign engineers, everyone there just watching it roll out.
“There was an applause – we weren’t even concerned about performance that day. That’s something special that you don’t see so often in motor sport anymore. I think that’s what makes this programme so different, it’s close to the heart of a lot of people.”
Briscoe was speaking to Motor Sport after a successful test day at Le Mans in preparation for the big race. The 007 understandably had a race that was more troubleshooting than headline-grabbing debut at the WEC season-opening 8 Hours of Portimão, whilst the next round at Monza saw a marked improvement, with one car leading before having to stop for a precautionary brake change. Now, at the particularly low-downforce Le Mans circuit, the car looks to be within striking distance of the Toyota and LMP1-running Alpine team.
In the current issue of Motor Sport, a bullish Jim Glickenhaus said he believed a car built with Le Mans in mind could give anyone a run for their money.
“We’re gonna try to win this year, and I think it’s possible,” he said. “We’ve built a low-downforce car on purpose with Le Mans in mind. We are absolutely as fast as Toyota on [maximum speed]; the only time they were quicker than us at Portimão was when they were slipstreaming each other.
“We weren’t disappointed by the lap-time differential. We know we are going to be better at Monza and better again at Le Mans. So why can’t we beat Toyota?”