Scotland’s Colin Noble has been a regular feature on the Michelin Le Mans Cup grid since 2017 with Nielsen Racing, with all bar one of those seasons driving alongside his English teammate Tony Wells.
The British pairing are currently second in the Michelin Le Mans Cup standings, just two points behind the championship leaders after winning at Le Castellet in June. We caught up with Colin as he prepares for his 9th and 10th Road to Le Mans races.
Q: How has the season gone so far for you and Tony?
Colin Noble: “The season is going well.We were pretty unlucky at the start in Barcelona where we were looking for a podium, but a late Full Course Yellow caught us out and dropped us from P3 to 8th in the last ten minutes, so that was a little frustrating.
“However, we’ve been in contention in every race, and we got a win at Paul Ricard, where we had a lot of pace in the car, and at Monza as well where we came through the pack to take a podium. We’ve had plenty of battles and we’ve come out of it pretty well.”
Q: You’ve competed in 8 of the 9 RTLM races held since 2016, 6 of those with Tony, including a podium finish in 2019.What makes Le Mans special for you as a driver?
CN: “Le Mans is such an iconic track, it’s the whole atmosphere and the history; it’s certainly a special place to drive around. To have the chance to racing on it is fantastic and it’s all the sweeter when you make it onto that famous podium.”
Q: MLMC races are usually 2-hours and each of the RTLM races are just 55-minutes.Do you approach the races at Le Mans any differently than a usual MLMC event?
CN: “Not particularly, the biggest thing in these events is the number of guest entries where the championship doesn’t matter to them, so you really have to try and keep your nose clean and keep out of trouble. It’s such a short race that if anything does go wrong there is no time to recover; it’s such a sprint.”
Q: The 2021 RTLM grid is going to feature 35 LMP3 cars.Who do you see as your main opposition and what are your expectations for the RTLM weekend?
CN: “It will be the normal suspects who are there or there abouts in the championship.We will be in contention, but we don’t worry too much about that, we just try and do as good a job as we can.We’ll just worry about ourselves and hopefully we’ll come out near the top.”
