Whatever you were doing when you were 16 years old will definitely not be anywhere near as cool as what Matt McMurry will be doing this week.

At 16 years and 202 days old, McMurry, a native of Phoenix, AZ, is on schedule to become the youngest driver ever to compete at Le Mans, eclipsing the great Mexican, Ricardo Rodriguez, who took part in the 1959 event, aged 17 years and four months.

McMurry races with Chris Dyson and Tom Kimber-Smith in the #42 Greaves Motorsport-run, Zytek-Nissan. The car is entered under the Caterham Racing banner and finished the recent test day in 11th place in LMP2, with a best lap of 3:41.086.

“It seems crazy to be here but over the last two years I have done somewhere in the region of 60 races,” said McMurry.

“Physically, I have been training a lot off the track too to be ready. I have been working with a trainer but do a lot of stuff with my Dad (ex-Autocon racer Chris McMurry) too so it is actually quite good fun.

“I also work with Gerardo Bonilla (ex-BK Motorsports racer) closely and he is a great influence about how to approach things on the track,” continued the teenager.

“The team have been fantastic and the whole experience has made me just want more and more.”

McMurry has gone about his quest to be inserted in to the Guinness World Book of Records in a thorough and structured fashion, one which is befitting of his mature approach to racing. So far he has two ELMS (Silverstone and Imola) races under his belt, the last of which saw McMurry and his team mate Tom Kimber-Smith come home in an impressive fourth place overall.

“I was pushing but also not trying to do anything crazy in a four hour race which I think was sensible,” said McMurry.

“I had never even done a pit-stop in a race before the first round at Silverstone so it was all very new to me but they all seemed to go well. I can definitely get quicker with the pit-stops though, but that will come with practice I guess. It is hard to replicate the pit-stops in the heat of a race but I am looking forward to the whole Le Mans experience, on and off the track.”