My Second Le Mans Ultimate Race Ended in a DQ Before I Learned the Real Lesson

My second Le Mans Ultimate race taught me something I should have understood before I ever worried about lap times: racing safely starts before you reach the first corner.

In fact, my biggest mistake at Spa-Francorchamps happened while starting from the pits.

I thought the space behind my Ferrari was clear. I allowed the car to roll backwards, didn’t see another competitor behind me and rolled into their car.

It was a mistake. There isn’t really another way to describe it.

By the end of the event, I was classified 19th out of 20 drivers and the results recorded a disqualification with a high negative impact on my Safety Rank.

What makes Race 2 more interesting in hindsight is what happened before that.

I had completed three clean qualifying laps.

Race 1 had produced two.

Yet, for the second race in succession, I completed zero clean race laps.

A pattern was beginning to appear.

Unfortunately, I still wasn’t paying attention to it.

My second Le Mans Ultimate race came almost immediately

There wasn’t much reflection between Race 1 and Race 2.

My first Le Mans Ultimate race had been an LMGT3 Fixed event at Circuit de la Sarthe. I qualified 14th out of 19 drivers in the McLaren 720S LMGT3 Evo and was classified 18th after failing to complete the opening lap.

That first race included zero clean race laps, contact with another vehicle, three barrier contacts and a DNF.

It should have encouraged me to stop and practise.

Instead, I registered again.

That decision brought me to Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps for Race 2.

The event took place on 30 July 2026 at 21:20, shortly after my disastrous beginning at Le Mans.

So, rather than taking time to understand what had gone wrong, I was already preparing to do it again.

Race 2 took me to Spa-Francorchamps

This time, the LMGT3 Fixed event took place at Spa.

The official Le Mans Ultimate Spa-Francorchamps circuit page lists the Belgian circuit at 7.004km with 20 turns. It is one of endurance racing’s most recognisable venues, with corners including La Source, Eau Rouge, Raidillon and Blanchimont.

I was still Bronze 3 in Driver Rank and Bronze 0 in Safety Rank.

Those numbers meant far less to me at the time than they do now.

Le Mans Ultimate says all drivers begin at Bronze 3 Driver Rank. Its Driver Rank system uses an Elo-style calculation based on results against the other drivers in a session, with qualifying contributing 15% of the post-race DR calculation and the race accounting for the remainder.

Safety Rank measures something different: how cleanly you race.

I was about to learn why that distinction mattered.

Three clean qualifying laps gave me the wrong confidence

Qualifying actually went reasonably well from a safety perspective.

I qualified 15th out of 20 drivers.

More importantly, I completed three clean qualifying laps.

The results screen rated those clean laps as having a high positive impact on my Safety Rank.

That meant I had now produced five clean qualifying laps across my first two events.

Race 1: two.

Race 2: three.

Therefore, I was demonstrating that I could circulate without constantly hitting something when I had space around me.

However, qualifying position was still the number that attracted my attention.

P15 wasn’t impressive, but once again I had qualified for the race and had another opportunity to compete.

Then came the pit lane.

I thought it was safe to roll backwards

This is the incident from Race 2 that I remember clearly.

I was starting from the pits.

At some point while preparing to leave, I allowed the Ferrari to roll backwards because I believed the space behind me was clear.

It wasn’t.

Another car was behind me, and I hadn’t seen it.

I rolled backwards into that car.

There was nothing tactical about it. It wasn’t an attempted overtake, an argument over racing room or a desperate braking move into a corner.

I simply thought there was nobody behind me.

I was wrong.

Looking back, that makes the incident particularly embarrassing because the race hadn’t even properly become a race for me yet.

I was already making contact with another competitor.

The results recorded the contact — but they don’t establish blame for everything

The post-race analysis records contact with Vaclav Havlis.

Interestingly, the Safety Rank breakdown shown in my results records zero impact against that vehicle contact.

I know from my own recollection that I rolled backwards into another car because I hadn’t seen it. However, I don’t want to use that memory to claim things the available evidence doesn’t prove.

Most importantly, I cannot establish from the result screen alone that this specific contact was the reason for the eventual disqualification.

The race ultimately records a DQ with a high negative Safety Rank impact.

Those are two facts.

Connecting them directly without evidence would be speculation.

Le Mans Ultimate’s current guidance says disqualifications can occur for several reasons, with formation-lap violations among the common triggers. Therefore, a DQ result by itself doesn’t establish the specific offence that caused it.

Unless additional footage or evidence establishes exactly why Race 2 produced the DQ, I am leaving that question open.

What I don’t need to speculate about is my own pit-lane mistake.

I thought it was clear behind me.

I didn’t check well enough.

I rolled backwards into another driver.

That part belongs to me.

Race 2 ended P19 with a DQ

The result was even worse than Race 1.

Race 2	Result
Event	LMGT3 Fixed
Circuit	Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
Date	30 July 2026
Event time	21:20
Car	Ferrari LMGT3
Qualifying	15th of 20
Classified	19th of 20
Positions gained/lost	-4
Expected finish	16th
Clean qualifying laps	3
Clean race laps	0
Recorded vehicle contact	Vaclav Havlis
Vehicle-contact SR impact shown	Zero
Race result	DQ
DQ Safety Rank impact	High negative
Driver Rank shown	Bronze 3
Safety Rank shown	Bronze 0

The Driver Rank analysis also recorded that I beat one driver with a higher Driver Rank while losing to eight drivers with a lower rank.

Again, however, finishing position wasn’t actually my biggest problem.

After two races, another statistic was becoming far more revealing.

Zero clean race laps.

Again.

Race 1 and Race 2 were starting to look remarkably similar

This is where revisiting the races individually becomes useful.

Race 1:

Two clean qualifying laps.

Zero clean race laps.

DNF.

Race 2:

Three clean qualifying laps.

Zero clean race laps.

DQ.

After only two events, I had completed five clean qualifying laps but not one clean race lap.

That’s a much more useful measurement of where I was as a beginner than simply saying I finished P18 and P19.

When nobody was immediately around me, I could apparently put together clean laps.

Add other competitors and the situation changed.

At Le Mans, I hadn’t completed the opening lap.

At Spa, I managed to make contact while starting from the pits.

There was clearly something I wasn’t understanding.

Safety Rank was trying to teach me something

Le Mans Ultimate’s official explanation of Safety Rank says SR measures on-track etiquette and records contact with both other vehicles and barriers. More severe impacts result in larger penalties, while unclean laps can also negatively affect the rating.

Importantly, the system does not attempt to determine fault for normal contact. Both drivers involved can be penalised because determining responsibility automatically would be difficult.

The official advice for improving Safety Rank is almost painfully relevant when I read it now.

Le Mans Ultimate recommends giving other racers room, remaining smooth and predictable, avoiding unnecessary risks and prioritising a sustainable clean pace rather than constantly pushing beyond your limits. It also specifically recommends reviewing mistakes after races.

I wasn’t doing much reviewing.

I was racing.

The official beginner advice was almost the opposite of my approach

There is another piece of official LMU guidance that stands out now.

The game’s current first online race guide tells new drivers to focus on Safety Rank first.

Its message is straightforward: clean laps in the midfield can be worth more than fast laps that end in contact.

That was almost the exact opposite of my mentality.

I wanted positions.

I wanted pace.

I wanted another race.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t yet proved that I could complete a clean race lap.

After Race 1, I should have noticed.

After Race 2, the evidence was getting harder to ignore.

I still ignored it.

Starting from the pits wasn’t automatically safe

The pit-lane incident also exposed another flaw in my thinking.

I believed I was safe.

I wasn’t attacking another driver into La Source. I wasn’t trying an ambitious overtake through Eau Rouge. I wasn’t defending a position.

I was in the pits.

Mentally, that probably made the situation feel less dangerous.

However, another competitor was still there.

My responsibility to know what was around the car didn’t disappear simply because I wasn’t racing wheel-to-wheel through a corner.

That’s one of the first genuine lessons I can take from Race 2.

Safety isn’t something that starts at Turn 1.

It begins the moment you’re responsible for moving the car around other people.

Yet I still thought I needed more races

After Race 1, I had a DNF.

After Race 2, I had a DQ.

Five clean qualifying laps had produced zero clean race laps.

A sensible beginner might have looked at that record and decided it was time for practice.

I didn’t.

Instead, I kept entering events.

That’s what makes these early races important when read alongside my later article, 10 Races in Two Days: How My Le Mans Ultimate Career Ended in a Suspension.

By the end of that run, I had attempted ten races across four cars and three circuits. Seven became DNFs according to my race log, and my account was eventually suspended.

The suspension felt sudden when it happened.

Going backwards through the evidence makes it feel much less sudden.

Race 1 gave me the first warning.

Race 2 gave me another.

Two races in, I still didn’t understand the real problem

I could easily tell this story as though I immediately learned something profound from rolling backwards into another car.

That isn’t what happened.

I didn’t suddenly become a safer driver.

There wasn’t a dramatic moment where I decided that finishing cleanly mattered more than finishing quickly.

Instead, I continued racing.

That’s important to preserve because this series isn’t supposed to be me applying everything I know now to the person I was during Race 2.

At this point in the journey, I was still learning from scratch.

My Driver Rank said Bronze 3.

My Safety Rank said Bronze 0.

Race 1 had ended in a DNF.

Race 2 had ended in a DQ.

And I still believed experience meant entering another race.

Race 2 should have made me stop

Looking at it now, the lesson seems obvious.

Before worrying about becoming faster, I needed to become predictable.

Before worrying about finishing position, I needed to finish.

Before worrying about Driver Rank, I needed to understand Safety Rank.

And before moving the car, I needed to know whether somebody was behind me.

That final point sounds embarrassingly basic.

In Race 2, I learned it by rolling backwards into another competitor.

Unfortunately, knowing that a mistake happened and actually changing your behaviour are two different things.

I still wasn’t ready to stop.

Race 3 was next.