At the age of 42, Anthony Davidson has ended his 23-year career as a professional driver, finishing his final endurance race, the 2021 Bapco 8 Hours of Bahrain, in fifth place overall and second in the LMP2 class. Though he has 24 starts in Formula 1, it was in endurance that he really made a name for himself.

His first participation in the 24 Hours of Le Mans dates back to 2003 at the wheel of a Ferrari 550 fielded by Team Veloqx (retirement). Davidson returned in 2009 with a Lola-Aston Martin (13th overall) before joining Peugeot, finishing fourth two years later with Alexander Wurz and Marc Gené. Starting in 2012, after the French marque withdrew from competition, he began representing Toyota for six seasons, earning a world endurance champion title in 2014, two second place finishes in 2013 and 2017, and third in 2014. During the last three years, he shared an ORECA 07-Gibson LMP2 with Mexican driver Roberto González with as best result second place in the class in 2020.

Anthony Davidson explains his decision to retire: "It was an easy decision to come to at 42 years old. It's not the first time that people have retired at that age. I remember speaking with David Coulthard a long time ago when he retired and I asked him how do you know? How do you know when it's time to retire? As a young driver, back then, you're obsessed with it, you live and breath racing, and I could never imagine getting to that stage where you didn't want to drive a racing car anymore. And he just looked at me and went 'when you know, you'll know.' It comes to you and I think it was probably my last year at Toyota where I started to feel like that. You question...life gets more complicated the older you get. Your family comes along and you want to spend more time at home. I'm a family man, I love my time at home with my kids and you start weighing up all the different options. You start realizing actually there is more to life than just racing. At that moment, that's when you realize yeah it is just a sport, it's not your world anymore, completely your world.

Everybody is different, but that's honestly how I felt at the time and on top of that there were other things going on which I won't go into detail, and I kind of fell out of love with the sport a bit. It was a fantastic car, a fantastic environment, but yeah for reasons I won't go into now, other things at play, which, like I say, kind of made me fall out of love with the sport as a whole. I met Roberto (González, Ed.) and Elton Julian and the DragonSpeed opportunity came along in LMP2. I weighed up the options and thought long and hard about it, but I felt like I should give it a go to go racing to enjoy it again. Roberto is a gentleman driver, an Am driver, and I didn't know much about LMP2 but I saw their racing was always good fun, very close battles. I wanted to be a part of that and enjoy going racing again like a lot of the Am drivers do. It's not their main thing in life, it's a hobby for them. They want to do well at it, don't get me wrong, but they go racing for a different purpose than other drivers like myself and the pros. I had the best time and completely fell back in love with everything racing has to offer. It's thanks to him and Elton to give me that chance, not only to be on the track again, but also to be out there in a lighter head space I'd say.

I still feel like I was able to operate at my best. I had a pole position in Fuji with DragonSpeed, second place at Le Mans with JOTA, and race wins as well. I really feel I was able to operate at my best and that's how I wanted to end. I didn't want to end slipping down gradually as I got older and older. I wanted to end while I knew I could still mix it with the lap times of the younger guys, which there are many of, and girls I should say, sorry to the lady car crews out there, mix it with the best of them, mix it with young generation who are half my age. It feels quite bizarre at points, but you see their energy, their enthusiasm. At the end of it, I just had to be honest with myself and say I've had a great three years since Toyota. Three years I never would imagine I'd have, honestly speaking, and I can now leave on my terms how I wanted to."

The British driver also shares what a career as a professional driver is really like: "Drivers go through an emotional roller coaster during their careers. I've been lucky enough, been blessed with lots of good opportunities, but there are always sad times as well, and points where you feel like all hope is lost. What do you do in your 20s? You can't retire, there's nothing else to do. The phone goes silent. You're left alone. You have Christmases coming when you don't know if next year you're going to have a job or not. They're sad, lonely times. You feel very vulnerable.

It is an emotional roller coaster, but when you get those phone calls eventually that give you a new lease of life, like Peugeot for example in LMP1, wow it's a really high moment. We went to Sebring and won the first time out with the team. I didn't quite appreciate it at the time to win the 12 Hours of Sebring was a great achievement, let alone your first attempt. Now I know to look back with experienced eyes and I can look back and go wow, that was a good drive and what a race to win for your first one with Peugeot. So that was a really high moment from a really low point in my career.

Then, we all know the story about Peugeot and they folded, and I got my Toyota to drive and the opportunity. But then you have the crash at Le Mans and you're sitting in hospital, again after 2003, a familiar place for me unfortunately. You're sitting there thinking will I ever come back? You see many drivers who don't. It's a very hard head space to be in for any driver going through recovery. I've been there and done that. Then you do recover and you get back behind the wheel, you win races and then a championship came along in 2014, another massive high after that low of 2012.

Some beautiful, fast cars that I've had...to be blessed to have driven in my time, and they are the good moments that you look back on. It's funny, when you're in it and you're doing it, I always tended to look at the negative side, I don't know about anybody else, but I was always hard on myself, overly critical. I'm a very self-analytical person anyway and I was overly critical of myself, really focused mainly on negatives. But now I'm stopping and I can look back on the career I've had and, actually it's weird you look back and all you can remember are the good times. I never realised it would be that way. When you're going through it, you don't want to look back, you only look forward to when's the next contract coming, the next race, what do I have to do? How did you perform at that race? You've got to do better in the next one. You don't reflect, you don't look back. Now I can look back. It's kind of like looking through rose-tinted glasses. It's a nice feeling actually."

Take a look in the gallery below at some of the cars Anthony Davidson drove across his participations in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.