My endurance story: Alex Brundle

In the first of a new series, Alex Brundle, describes how he fell in love with endurance racing and of his passion for sportscar racing which was cemented by being immersed in the sport from a tender age. 

The 26-year-old has been the lynchpin in the No.37 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca-Gibson’s strong start to the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship campaign. Here, he looks back at the formative days of his racing story and how a strong foundation was set by simply being around endurance racing as he grew up.

“One of my earliest memories of endurance racing was being at the Lurcy Levis airfield test track in France with my Dad (Martin Brundle),” recall Brundle. “It was bizarre. The Toyota GT-One, which ended up being a great car, was having problems at the time. Dad (Martin Brundle) said to me ‘do you want to come down to the test’. I was only a little fella at the time. I don’t know quite what year it was, 1998 probably, so I would have been about eight years old.

“We flew down there and slept in a little B&B and I remember running the Team Manager’s 4x4 out of fuel doing laps of the airfield on my Dad’s knee,” says the current Jackie Chan Dc Racing Jota driver. “That was exciting. In fact, I was way more excited about that than what was going on in the garage I think. I was too young to grasp what was happening, I was just playing football with Ukyo Katayama whilst they were doing set up changes. It was quite cool and certainly one of my earliest memories.”

For Brundle Jnr it was a proud time as his father was enjoying driving one of the most exciting prototype cars ever built.

Photo:  Toyota UK - 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans - Toyota GT-One

“The second memory which jumps out of the haze is the overall pole at Le Mans in 1999 which was cool,” continues Brundle. “I remember the trophy presentation, it was exciting seeing Dad get a trophy for that.

“I slept overnight in Dad’s driver area at Toyota. I can recall the race very vividly and the atmosphere. In fact, it is probably the atmosphere that I remember the most as I can’t really describe necessarily specific events of what happened, but I certainly remember the feeling of Le Mans and so I got the bug very early on.”

After a second Le Mans victory proved elusive for Brundle Snr, his young son got hooked in to the atmosphere of Le Mans again when the iconic Bentley Speed 8 emerged as one of the most instantly recognisable and beautiful sports-prototypes to grace Le Mans.

Photo:  Supercars.net - 2001 24 Hours of Le Mans - Bentley EXP Speed 8

“Obviously the Bentley programme in the early 2000s is probably the one I remember more in specific racing terms and loving that car. They just looked awesome and in fact they still do. It was there at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed in July and I just cannot help but poke my head in and have a look around and marvel at the environment of that car.”

So, Le Mans and endurance racing in general were central to Alex Brundle’s racing education. It was one which had a rich seam of knowledge for him to study as he started to make his own way on his motorsport journey.

Photo:  martinbrundle.com - Alex and Martin Brundle at 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans

“My ‘young man questions’ were about the specifics of driving a sports car over a long distance or about Formula One, probably because of its popular appeal,” says Brundle. “But I knew this path in motorsport was available to me and as soon the financial scenario was not going to work out to continue moving through the single seater ranks, it wasn’t even really a discussion, the next direction was always going to be towards Prototype racing.

“A career in motorsport is about how other people see you, rather than how you see yourself, I think. Le Mans has been very kind to me with two podiums in class and now an overall podium, but I haven’t taken the win yet, which is something that will happen before I leave, that is for sure!”

Photo:  WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps 2017 - No.37 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA 07 Gibson

The future looks bright for Brundle who has consistently impressed during the 2017 season, scoring two podium positions with his teammates David Cheng and Tristan Gommendy, including that unforgettable third overall at Le Mans. Sharing the same burning ambition to constantly better himself and his performance on the FIA WEC global stage, he is already planning his next ascent.

“I want to keep doing what I am doing in pushing towards LMP1, I want to win the Le Mans 24 hours overall and to be World Endurance champion. These are all the aims I have and they are the primary goals I have in my sport at this point. I am very happy with where I am right now and feel like I am on the precipice of finding the next level. This is where I want to build my career.”