What’s good folks, I’ve done myself a little bit of talking and a little bit of recording, and I’ve ended up with a severe hatred of myself, my voice, and everything else about me. This is the story behind Baptism of Tire, about the wonderful world of Sports Car Endurance Racing, and specifically, Le Mans 2023, which was one of the best heists of the 2020s. (Still outclassed by 2008 for heist of the century), where Ferrari drove around in circles for a day straight. Listen to my podcast to find out what happens while you read this.

I should start by explaining what endurance racing is. Basically, cars go around a track for a set amount of time, anywhere between 4h and 32h, whoever completes the most laps/goes the furthest wins. Simple.
Le Mans is part of the WEC or World Endurance Championship, which travels all around the world to places like Sebring :(, Monza :(, and most importantly Le Mans, which is a sleepy town in France with nothing big about it most of the year.

This project was all about our voices, which is one of the things about me I’d want to cut out of my life. So I was obviously excited. We started by listening to podcasts and identifying what made them good, basically you need to add elements past just talking, such as background noise and sound fx.

With my love of all things external about cars, Le Mans was an obvious think to talk about, because it would be one race to watch for research, I’d seen it live to I knew more about it, and Le Mans is a good race most of the time, at least in one class. (Except for say 2013, or when Toyota dominated between 2018-22)

Anyways, LeBron James was there, and after 24 hours the race was over.

I think that podcasting helped me realise just how disgusting my voice feels and also sounds, and how good the Ferrari 499p sounds. (Better than my voice at least)

I’ll close off the learning before I talk more about cars. Spotify for podcasters is the tool we used to public our podcasts. It allows us to put music effects into our podcasts. It is useful, however it can be sometimes annoying to deal with as it’s still somewhat unfamiliar to me.

The 2024 WEC season is shaping up to be an excellent successor to 2023, however, with Sebring and Monza, as well as Glickenhaus gone (rip funny hat man), and with Imola, COTA, Qatar, and Sao Paolo being brought in, as well as several new manufacturers joining in BMW, Isotta Fraschini, and Lamborghini.

Vanwall pioneered the external combustion engine in endurance racing, however, their efforts in testing the untried tech led them to be slower than LMP2 Cars, as well as their removal from the WEC.

Thanks so much for watching baptism of tire