My Life & Cars – Mike Conway, Le Mans winner and WEC champion
The British driver has won the Le Mans 24 Hours and is a two-time WEC champion. We find out what propelled him there
Mike Conway has just disembarked the steps of Gazoo Racing’s towering hydraulic simulator. It’s the culmination of the latest World Endurance Championship in which he and his fellow drivers finished second behind their Toyota teammates, seeing the Japanese manufacturer scoop its fifth WEC trophy in a row. But the next season promises to be trickier as the wealth of Hypercar entrants swells yet further and new circuits are added to the calendar, some of which he’s been getting to grips with this morning.
‘Qatar is new to me,’ he says. ‘It’s quite tricky with lots of long, medium- to high-speed corners; definitely a place we can improve the car. Balance of Performance may be set differently by the time we get there, too. We’ve had a good year so I’m sure they’ll want to slow us down.’
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Mike and his teammates make frequent visits to Gazoo headquarters (née Toyota Team Europe) in Cologne, but while he understands the benefits of sim time, he’s no addict. ‘I had a sim delivered to the house to compete in virtual Le Mans during Covid. But once that was done, I had it picked up – I didn’t want anything else to do with it! The new era of drivers love it. They’ve grown up with online racing.’
Conway was born on the outskirts of London in 1983, ensuring a more traditional career trajectory beginning aged eight in go-karts. ‘I’d always seen pictures of my dad in a kart,’ says Mike. ‘He took me for a fun day at Rye House and the instructor reckoned I was a bit of a natural and should come back. So we went a few more times before Dad surprised me with our own kart, which we took racing.
‘We had an old three-door Range Rover which we’d squeeze it into. Me and Dad sat in the front, go-kart in the back. If my mum or any friends wanted to come then I’d have to sit in the kart for the entire journey! We eventually got a little trailer to hook onto the car.
‘That was racing, you know. That was how everyone did it. Lewis Hamilton was also my era; they had a purple Vauxhall Cavalier. Many of the guys are still around now. It was a real family environment in the paddock with barbecues in the evening and all the drivers knocking about while their parents hung out together. It started to grow with bigger camping set-ups and motorhomes. Then we got to 16 and it was time to think about going into cars.’
After testing a Vauxhall Junior at Snetterton, Mike’s debut season in single-seaters was in the ultra-competitive Formula Ford championship. ‘I didn’t like it the first year,’ he confides. ‘You go from a light, nimble kart with super-sticky tyres to this heavy car that doesn’t stop. Initially I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. I was learning to drive a road car at that point, too, and was having to get used to gears and a heavy engine. As I figured out how to drive the race car it became a lot more fun – and racing is still racing once you’re out there with everyone else. My dad was working really hard to fund doing go-karts with me. Going to race cars meant doubling the budget so he needed to be even more resourceful.
‘Lewis did another year in karts then went straight to Formula Renault, which I joined in 2003. You always have that goal of getting to Formula 1, carving away at the best route there. When I got to Formula Renault the cars had downforce and proper grip, I really enjoyed those. Maybe if I’d skipped the Fords and gone straight to those… But back then the accepted route to F1 was winning the Formula Ford Festival, getting to Formula 3 and winning that.’
Mike made some of his closest friends competing in Formula Fords, however, while his stint in Formula 3 led to a meeting with Gil de Ferran, the man leading Honda’s F1 efforts, who sadly passed away in December 2023. ‘He liked what we were doing in Formula 3 so he signed me to their junior programme which guaranteed some testing. I thought: “Awesome. I’m finally going to drive an F1 car.” It was a dream coming true.’
He won the British F3 International Series in 2006 then graduated to GP2 the following season, when his Honda contacts led to an IndyCar test at Sonoma Raceway with Panther Racing. ‘I was quickest both days,’ he recalls. ‘I knew the Scottish mob – Dario, Marino, di Resta – so I was already a big fan and it opened my eyes up to competing. I was offered a deal to go to IndyCar the following year but it fell through at the last minute. Dan Wheldon had been in karts a few years before me so was a couple of categories ahead at that point; he got “my” Panther seat when he was released by Chip Ganassi. But luckily another chance came through with Dreyer & Reinbold.’
Conway’s relationship with Honda continued, which brought its own delightful benefit when the team morphed into Brawn GP and dominated the 2009 F1 season in unforgettable fashion. ‘Brawn blew everyone out of the water and I got to do a three-day test at Jerez in a world-championship-winning car,’ he smiles. ‘It was on another level to the Honda I’d driven before it. The seamless shift of the Mercedes ’box was amazing and the downforce was really dialled in – the best thing I’d driven. It cost me money to do that test as I spent loads on preparation to get my neck strong, but I’m glad I did. Those three days were perfect.
‘We weren’t just testing performance, but different downforce, tyres and bigger fuel tanks ready for the ban on refuelling. It went very well and I was going to do more sessions in 2010 until I had a crash at the Indy 500 and broke my leg, which ruled me out of driving anything.’
Mike admits to some rocky patches during his IndyCar career, citing ‘too many crashes on the ovals’ for his decision to call time on full seasons in the States in 2012. ‘It’s the best decision I could have made; I wasn’t enjoying racing at that point. When you’re not comfortable every corner, the laps just take forever, and it’s a 200-lap race! You end up getting in the way.’
His focus turned to sportscar racing and by 2014 he’d secured a reserve-driver role amidst Toyota’s burgeoning World Endurance campaign, even scoring a victory at the 6 Hours of Bahrain. In 2015 he committed to a full-time driving role right as LMP1 prototype racers entered their stratospheric hybrid era. ‘The technology involved in this programme was F1 level,’ he recalls. ‘It was where I wanted to be.’ He ended the season – and the career of Toyota’s naturally aspirated V8 TS040 that he remembers driving so fondly – with a podium at Bahrain before clinching third in the 2016 title standings with its V6 turbo TS050 successor. A first championship win came in 2019/20, then a second in 2021, along with his (thus far) sole 24 Hours of Le Mans victory.
‘I felt like I should have won it several times but I’m sure loads of drivers say that. It’s the one everyone wants to win but it’s only one race on the calendar. But that race picks you when it comes to luck.’ Which leads us neatly to 2018, when the rival Toyota of Fernando Alonso et al took victory on the Spaniard’s blockbuster La Sarthe debut. ‘An issue with the sensors meant we changed the wrong tyre,’ Mike says when I drag up internet-bred conspiracy theories of Toyota favouring an Alonso win after the pit-stop blunder. ‘It was just one of those weird circumstances. Those pit boys work hard. You fight for them, you all fight for each other.
‘One thing about sportscars that really appealed to me was the whole team environment. It took a couple of races to “get it” – to be open and share everything with my teammates – but now I wouldn’t want to change it.’
So how does this new Hypercar era compare to the high watermark of LMP1? ‘Everyone is getting used to the extra weight and lower downforce,’ acknowledges Conway. ‘But it’s a cool era to be in with lots of manufacturers coming back. The rulebook they’ve made is obviously very attractive. We had years of competition against ourselves. It’s more tense that way, really battling for those super-fine margins when you know each other’s strategies. But then in 2023 we had Ferrari, Cadillac and Porsche and it was exciting to be making so many fun moves and overtakes – I’m enjoying having wheel-to-wheel battles, knowing who’s in each car and what they’ll be like on track.’
As well as a full WEC calendar, Mike often dips into the American IMSA season by kicking off his year at the 24 Hours of Daytona, guesting in a GT-class Lexus RC F in 2023. ‘It lets me blow the winter cobwebs out and it’s a good chance to try new techniques. Driving a GT car also meant looking in my mirrors more, seeing how the prototypes overtake me, where they’re lining themselves up. We feel like we give good margins in our Hypercars but driving a GT makes you realise how much you’re relying on others to slow down for you as a prototype driver.
‘You let a 24-hour race come to you, a little bit. It’s better to give up a position than bring the car back in pieces. The first stages of Le Mans 2023 were wild. All these crashes as people were trying to win the race in the first hour. There were a few moves I backed out of, aware I had to keep the car in good shape.’
Mike now lives close to teammates in Monaco but drives a company Lexus NX rather than peacocking around in a supercar – a choice rubber-stamped by the birth of his daughter mere weeks before last year’s Le Mans. ‘I’ve got a few toys in the UK,’ he assures me. ‘My dad had Porsches when I was a kid, so a 930 Turbo became my dream car. In 2020 my idle mind found an example I really fell in love with. Continental Orange with a brown interior – that’s what really sold it to me. It’s my daily driver when I get back home.’
He speaks with great affection for his dad, who clearly fostered a profound love of cars and racing them. ‘My dad taught me all my mechanical skills. I’m not really interested in new Ferraris or suchlike – I’ll collect older cars rather than new. Maybe I’d stretch to something as modern as a 993 Turbo. The last of the air-cooled, that’s more my cup of tea.
‘When I was 17 I had a Citroën Saxo VTR bought by Mum and Dad – I couldn’t get insured on a VTS. I did the massive rims, bodykit and sound system that blew out the rear window. I crashed it on the Dartford one-way system by the police station. That didn’t write it off, but impatience coming out of a junction on another occasion did. I had a string of Renaults and Hondas through my race seats so the first car I bought was when I lived in Arizona during IndyCar, aged around 30. A 1963 single-carb Beetle with 63 horsepower. It’s since been shipped to the UK. I’ve revised it so many times and put loads of different engines in it. It’s now running a 330bhp 2276cc turbo.’
His love of classics also encompasses the race cars he really wants a shot in, several of them surrounding us beneath Gazoo’s wind tunnel. ‘I’d love to drive the Toyota 222D Group S prototype,’ he says. ‘It looks wicked – 750bhp, under a ton and a short wheelbase. Then there’s the ground-effect Leyton House Group C car. And of course the GT One…’ After all those hours on the sim, who’d begrudge him a day exploring the Toyota toy box?
This story was first featured in evo issue 318.
