Twelve Hours of Sebring

Subscribers to DailySportsCar.com will have been able to read, earlier this week, my analysis of Audi’s lap times at the Sebring Twelve Hours. As usual, the team will be staying on at Sebring for a further three days' testing – a tremendously useful way to gather information ahead of what promises to be a closely fought season for the World Endurance Championship.

Races these days tend to create a huge amount of data. Having not been at Sebring, I have no particular access to anything private, but there is still a huge amount of information out there, and for teams that gather telemetry information, the trick is not in gathering the information, but in working out how to use it to draw sensible conclusions.

The trouble is that the data never tells the whole story. There are always other parameters; other factors, that influence what is going on, which it is often extremely difficult to get to the bottom of. Things like engine mappings, tyres, driver technique and so on, can have a massive effect on a car’s lap times (or even sector times), and from the outside you can end up tying yourself in a knot, trying to get to the bottom of it all.

With that in mind, there are some observations about the individual driver performances in the Audi Sport Team Joest cars that time did not permit me to investigate in the dailysportscar article, that I thought were worth sharing. As always, I would welcome your comments.

In the winning Audi, number 1, Oliver Jarvis’s fastest lap time was almost 1.9 seconds slower than Benoît Tréluyer’s fastest lap in the same car. The best that Marcel Fässler could manage, having set pole position, was to lap within a second of the flying Frenchman, but he was still 0.8 seconds quicker than Olly.

Taking the average of the fastest 10 laps of each driver shows a similar pattern:

Tréluyer - 1m 45.544s

Fässler - 1m 46.724s

Jarvis - 1m 47.643s

And the average of the fastest 50 laps of each driver is no different either:

Tréluyer - 1m 46.633s

Fässler - 1m 47.857s

Jarvis - 1m 48.852s

Looking at the same information for the number 2 Audi, gives:

Average of fastest 10 laps

Kristensen - 1m 45.681s

McNish - 1m 46.324s

Di Grassi - 1m 47.176s

Average of fastest 50 laps

Kristensen - 1m 46.951s

McNish - 1m 47.391s

Di Grassi - 1m 48.645s

In each case, the order matches the driving order in the car, so the fastest driver started the car, the slowest drove third. Both Audis also copied each other in terms of driving stints, so let’s analyse each stint:

Audi #1

Stint No.	Driver	Laps	Best lap	Average of best 10 laps	Caution laps
1	Tréluyer	44	1m 45.061s	1m 45.758s	None
2	Fässler	49	1m 46.111s	1m 46.937s	5
3	Jarvis	48	1m 46.952s	1m 47.682s	4
4	Tréluyer	78	1m 45.211s	1m 46.098s	5
5	Fässler	65	1m 46.216s	1m 47.183s	6
6	Jarvis	46	1m 47.699s	1m 48.609s	None
7	Tréluyer	34	1m 47.121s	1m 48.227s	None

Audi #2

Stint No.	Driver	Laps	Best lap	Average of best 10 laps	Caution laps
1	Kristensen	43	1m 44.870s	1m 45.704s	None
2	McNish	62	1m 45.572s	1m 46.399s	5
3	di Grassi	59	1m 46.537s	1m 47.176s	4
4	Kristensen	49	1m 45.956s	1m 46.798s	5
5	McNish	69	1m 46.227s	1m 47.390s	6
6	di Grassi	44	1m 48.356s	1m 49.146s	None
7	Kristensen	38	1m 48.024s	1m 48.454s	None

All this seems to suggest quite strongly that both di Grassi and Jarvis were significantly slower than their team-mates, which, based on their performances in largely similar cars last year, is surprising to say the least. Maybe it is purely that they were less familiar with both the team and the track?

Also, while I would expect Tréluyer to be quicker than Fässler, I am surprised that Tom Kristensen managed consistently to lap quicker than Allan McNish.

Like I said before, the data doesn’t tell you everything. But if there is an explanation for this, then I’d like to hear it.