At 14:51h on June 1st, while negotiating one of the Porsche curves of the Le Mans racetrack, the Peugeot 908 Hdi-FPA number 7 flew into the air going 270 km/h. Spaniard Marc Gené was driving. When watching the violence of the crash, no one could have imagined that the Catalan driver would drive the car again, especially not for the 2008 edition of Les 24 Heures du Mans.

“To be honest, I thought I wouldn’t survive the crash,” Gené comments. “I’m lucky the car had a closed body, because having a look at the state of the car after the crash, I’m sure I wouldn’t have survived if it had been an open body”.

It’s less than two weeks after the accident, and the Peugeot mechanics have been working very hard in order to have a new car ready for this weekend’s race. “They’ve done a fantastic job. I can’t find the words to thank them for the effort,” Gené said.

After the initial fright, and once he jumped from the car, Gené received the first prognosis: “The guys at the ambulance told me that should I have broken my toes, I would not have been able to recover for the start of the race. Luckily, it was just a sprain. I couldn’t feel any other pain, but they told me that it was likely that I would feel pain in my back over the next few days. And they were right: a couple of days later, I had a terrible pain in my back. I think my body was compressed at the accident.”

After such an experience, it’s easy to wonder why a person would take the same risk again. But after having a look at Gené’s track record, one understands that there are few things that can keep him away from such a big event. “I never think about the risks of flying with the car. For that to happen you need a combination of circumstances, and I don’t even think about that… not even now!.”

The next question for Gené is obvious: what was on your mind when you first took that bend again? “To be honest, the first time I was a little bit slow, and it was the same for the whole day. Yesterday I recovered the rhythm, and it’s fair to say that I regained confidence both in the car and in myself.” The best lap for Marc Gené in yesterday’s practice was 3:23,128, the 4th best time of the series, showing that the Spaniard semms to have completely recovered from the accident. “What I’ve learned from this is that now I turn the Porsche curves with a little bit of margin. It’s a 24 hour race, and it’s not worthy to take the risk in order to gain barely one second.”

Even though 55 teams will take off under the Rolex countdown for the start of Les 24 Heures du Mans at 3pm on Saturday, Marc Gené will not be behind the wheel of his Peugeot 908 among them. “After the accident, we decided that it would be better for us not to have me at the start, because we still didn’t know what my status would be. Now I feel fine, with only a slight pain in my back,” he explains as he touches his back. “On the other hand I don’t feel any pain in my foot, even though that’s where I thought I would have the most problems.”

This will be Gené’s second participation in the most famous endurance test in the world. In 2007 Gené competed for the first time at Les 24 Heures du Mans, with the same team mates he will share the car with next weekend. “Last year, the car just said ‘it’s enough’ after 22 hours of racing; I was about to cry! On this occasion, the 908 has already shown its reliability, meaning we have a great chance to reach our goal.”

Marc Gené is back, and his intention is to make one of his dreams come true: win Les 24 Heures du Mans.

Rolex is the Official Timekeeper for Les 24 Heures du Mans and the Le Mans Series. In North America, Rolex has been a partner of the Rolex 24 At Daytona since 1992.

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