Drivers have different criteria they prioritise when it comes to choosing a favourite team-mate. For some, longevity is a crucial factor, as with time the relationship evolves naturally, while others relate most to drivers that they learned from.
Erik Comas falls into the latter category. One race working alongside Jan Lammers was enough for the Dutchman to make a lasting impression that earned him the 1990 Formula 3000 champion’s pick.
After four seasons of Formula 1 with Ligier and Larrousse, never managing to land himself in a worthy car, Comas switched to sportscars and made his Le Mans 24 Hours debut in 1995 with a Larbre-run Porsche. The same year, Comas entered the All-Japan GT Championship now known as Super GT with Toyota, before joining Nissan for 1997 in a move that also took him back to Le Mans.
The TWR-developed R390 GT1 had lacked reliability on its Le Mans bow, perhaps unsurprisingly given it had only committed to the project in September 1996. Two of its three cars were withdrawn, while Comas’s sole-remaining mount needed two gearbox changes to see the finish.
Tony Southgate’s considerably updated package boasted a new gearbox, improved cooling and driver ventilation for 1998, but it again lacked race-challenging pace, although its best entry finished third after late heartbreak for Toyota. Comas, Lammers and Andrea Montermini finished a delayed sixth, nine laps down on the winning Porsche, after qualifying over six seconds off the pace set by the fast-but-fragile Mercedes CLK-LM. Delays caused by changing an upright meant it was always playing catch-up.
PLUS: How a 128-day Mercedes miracle crushed its opposition
That Comas has positive memories of 1998 has much to do with Lammers, who had won Le Mans in a TWR-prepped Jaguar XJR-9 in 1988, and was according to Comas “the car captain because of his experience”. The Frenchman quickly warmed to Lammers, who had spent a fruitless 1997 campaigning the Lotus Elise GT1, and describes him as “a gentleman” who impressed on his team-mates the importance of handing the car back “in the same condition as you find it before”.
Source: Autosport