The Triple Crown

When I was a teenager in the early 1970s, I was a firm and faithful follower of motor sport, although (probably more so than today) I had many other interests besides. What I don’t remember is much of a fuss being made in 1972 about Graham Hill achieving the “Triple Crown of Motorsport”.

According the The Sun (in June 2018), the Triple Crown is “one of the most sought after in racing”, and it is claimed “by winning the three most prestigious races in the world… the Monaco Grand Prix, the Le Mans 24 hour and the Indianapolis 500”.

Not being one to argue with Jim Sheridan (who wrote the piece), I thought I should double-check on Wikipedia, which agrees with The Sun and notes that it is an “unofficial motorsport achievement”, and that the only driver to have achieved the feat is Graham Hill, who won Monaco (for the first time) in 1963, the Indianapolis 500 in 1966 and Le Mans in 1972.

So I went back and checked Autosport magazine, which had eight full pages devoted to the race, as well as a full page tribute to Jo Bonnier, an editorial and various news items in its Pit and Paddock section. There was no mention of the fact that Graham Hill had gained the distinction of adding the Le Mans trophy to those he already had from Indianapolis and Monaco, nor did it speculate as to how long it would take another driver to record the same achievement.

Then I went to Motor Sport magazine, and was pleased to note that at least the Le Mans report in 1972 was penned by Denis Jenkinson, as I recalled that in 1971, ‘Jenks’ did not even attend the Vingt-Quatre Heures, preferring instead to head to Hockenheim for a non-championship Formula One race that was being held on the same weekend.

I have to admit Jenkinson’s report left me somewhat open-mouthed, as I was reminded not merely of the dangers of the sport in those days, but of the way in which they were viewed. This, remember, was the type of prose I was reading as an impressionable, fifteen-year-old budding motor-racing enthusiast. Hopefully, I am not infringing any copyright laws by pasting it in below:

On the next page, DSJ went on to describe the start, but before he did, he noted changes that had been put in place for the 1972 race:

If you have nothing better to do, then I wholeheartedly recommend that you go to the Motor Sport archive, here, where you can read the whole report for yourself. Trust me, it is worth it.

And if you don’t have the time, you will just have to accept my word for it that there is no mention at all of the Triple Crown, or how worthy the achievement of Graham Hill by winning it. Nor even, it has to be said, the hint of a suggestion that team orders in the dominant Matra team allowed “Hill’s car” to win the race ahead of its sister cars. Far more to the point was that the French drivers, Pescarolo and Cevert were put into the blue cars to bring them to the chequered flag in the first two places, 19 and 9 laps ahead of the third-placed car.

If Fernando Alonso equals Hill’s achievement by winning the Indianapolis 500 later this year, I will be very pleased for him, for he is unquestionably a great driver, whose record does not adequately reflect his talents (although he is not unique in that – there are many such drivers). What I will be sad about is the media frenzy that will no doubt be unleashed with all the extreme hyperbole of which today’s writers are capable.

I found it fascinating, researching this piece, getting lost in the articles that were written in 1972 (even the letters pages, which included one from an indignant Ian Titchmarsh!). I am well aware of course that we no longer live in the 1970’s, and that times have changed, but nevertheless I think the writers of today would do well to take a step back and look things from a different perspective from time to time.

I wonder if anyone will still be reading this in 46 years’ time? And if they do, I wonder if anyone will think it as relevant and entertaining as DSJ was in 1972?

Bathurst Ruminations

The 2019 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12-hours was a remarkable race – it would have been good to have been there. However, the coverage was excellent, so it was possible to follow the action from far away, and despite the virtual jet-lag, it was still possible to get a good flavour for the race.

It was particularly pleasing to see so little of the race disrupted by caution flags – only nine caution periods accounting for just 22 of the 312 completed laps (or 313 if you count the pace lap, which arguably you should, since that is when the timing for the 12 hours started). With some justification, much was made of the fact that driving standards were high, and serious incidents were few and far between. However, it should also be recognised that still there was 1h 48m of running behind the Safety Car.

Compare this to 19 Code-60 interventions for a total of 3h 57m for this year’s Dubai 24-hours and it is not that different (provided you divide by two to account for the different race lengths!). But at Dubai, there was little talk of how few caution periods there were – most people I spoke to were more eager to say that the number and frequency of the Code-60 periods were much more than they had expected (or wanted). In a way, I suppose this merely puts Bathurst in context – one really expects to have more cautions, so close are the walls and so tortuous is the track.

Another way to look at it is to consider that six of the nine pit stops made by the race winning Earl Bamber Motorsport-entered Porsche were made under green flag conditions. Certainly, that meant that strategy played a bigger role in this year’s race that it often does.

In both 2014 and 2012, there were also just nine safety car periods, and in 2012 those accounted also for just 22 laps. However, in 2012, there were only 25 starters, and only 8 of those were proper GT3 cars. In some ways, it is hardly surprising that they kept out of trouble, despite the atrocious weather that blighted that year’s race.

The only other occasion since then when there have been fewer than 40 starters was in 2016, when 36 cars started, 58% of which were GT3 class cars, and 27 laps were lost due to Safety Car periods. This year the race boasted 38 starters, two fewer than were initially expected, but 66% of them were GT3 cars. To me, there seems to be a pretty strong correlation between number of starters and number of Safety Car periods. Although to be fair, it depends as well on the mix between GT3 cars and the ‘others’.

Year	Starters	%age GT3	SC periods	SC laps
2019	38	66%	9	22
2018	50	56%	16*	47
2017	51	61%	16	35
2016	36	58%	13	27
2015	50	54%	20	73
2014	40	30%	9	31
2013	53	34%	15	43
2012	25	32%	9	22

*In 2018, the race was terminated early with a red flag.

Note that in the calculation of the percentage of GT3 cars above, I have not accounted for whether the drivers were Pro or Am or a mixture of the two. Clearly, this also can influence matters. This year was the first that there were no GT3 cars driven only by amateur crews.

In any event, this year’s Bathurst 12 hours was a race to be savoured. The international aspect that the race has acquired in recent years was joined this year by an injection of youth. Matt Campbell (just 23 years of age) drove a storming stint after the final SC, moving from third to first in the final twenty minutes, passing first the Mercedes of Raffaele Marcielllo (at 24 years of age) and then the R-Motorsport Aston Martin in the hands of Jake Dennis (another 23-year old). But neither the Aston Martin nor the Porsche that were battling over the lead of the race at the end were really the quickest cars out there, although you would be forgiven for thinking so, based on that last frenetic hour.

The overall fastest lap of the race went to Josh Burdon in the no. 35 Nissan GT-R Nismo, at 2m 03.5382s, although this was almost two seconds slower than Shane Van Gisbergen achieved in during the 2016 race in the Tekno Autosports McLaren 650S.

The best average laps (looking at the best 20% of green laps) went to the two M-Sport Bentleys, the no. 107 being the quicker of the two. Mercedes, Audi, Ferrari and Nissan were all quicker, using this metric, than either the Aston Martin or the EBM Porsches. It should be noted that the difference between the GT3 field (as used by the wizards of BoP) was less than 0.5%, however, so I don’t think that any complaints are warranted.

Let’s look at some other numbers from Bathurst and compare them to Daytona and Dubai:

	Dubai	Daytona	Bathurst
No of lead changes	15	50	30
No of cars that led	8	7	13
No of cars in 'top' class	13	11	15
Winner's average speed	136 km/h	154 km/h	162 km/h
No of starters	74	47	38
Cars outside 70% of winner's distance	24 (32%)	4 (9%)	13 (34%)
Cars within 5 mins of winner	1	2	7
Winning margin	1 lap	13.5s	3.4s

I present this data as it stands, without wanting to make any point in particular. You can read into it what you want. Certainly I am guilty of comparing apples with oranges – Daytona is for prototypes, Bathurst runs to a 12-hour duration, Dubai does not use Safety Cars – all this impacts the numbers shown, to varying degrees. Nevertheless, I found it interesting to compile, so I hope you find it interesting to read.

And to close, a couple of maverick thoughts. A lot of the appeal of endurance racing is the fact that it is multi-class racing. Different categories of cars racing at the same time on the same track – involved in different battles, but fighting on the same battlefield. Dubai this year had fewer non-GT3 cars than ever before, Bathurst too. The Spa 24 hours runs pretty much exclusively to GT3-specification cars (albeit with different grades of drivers) and has done for several years now. Personally, I don’t think this spoils the spectacle. It unquestionably changes the dynamic of the race; it changes the appeal and the spectator impact. It alters the way that teams and drivers have to approach matters of strategy.

But here we are in 2019 – things are anyway different in endurance racing from how they were thirty or forty years ago. Maybe there is a place for single-class endurance races? Not as a replacement for the multi-class ones, but as an addition.

And second, what about the “holy mantra” of a 24 hours race distance? I think Bathurst proves that you can have a perfectly good 12 hour race. There are more 24-hour races these days than ever there used to be in the past. I have argued before that having more events has the overall effect of devaluing the status of the individual event. I admit that there is something very special about staying up all night, experiencing the exhilaration of completing 24-hours non-stop racing and the fatigue that goes with it. But you can have too much of a good thing. Dubai, Daytona, Le Mans, Nürburgring, Spa, Portimao, Barcelona…it all gets a little too much.

Races of eight, ten, twelve or even eighteen hours all require strategy, fortitude, durability and consistency. And would provide race organisers with a little more variety with which to spice up their seasons.

Alonso at Daytona

It was a pity that so much of the Daytona 24 hours this year was lost through caution and red flag periods, for it means that less data is available for analysis. But still there is enough to draw some conclusions, and I particularly wanted to look at the evidence regarding the performance of Fernando Alonso.

Alonso is news-worthy, no question about it. Whenever a Formula One World Champion shows up in another form of racing, it is going to pull in the crowds and invite microscopic analysis. What’s great with Fernando is that he seems to relish the challenge, much as fellow world champion Jenson Button does.

At Le Mans last year, just as at Indianapolis the year before, Fernando Alonso demonstrated that his talent behind the wheel is matched by his competitiveness and will to win. Don’t forget either that he has raced at Daytona before – in the 2018 Rolex 24 hours he drove a United Autosports LMP2 Ligier alongside Phil Hanson and Lando Norris. And it should be recorded that in 2018 the Spaniard was not (quite) as quick as young Norris, not in terms of best lap, average lap or even best stint.

And if one just looks at the drivers’ best laps from Daytona this year one finds the drivers of the Wayne Taylor Racing-run, Konica Minolta-sponsored Cadillac DPi as follows. (The list is in the order that they drove the car):

Driver	Laps Completed	Best Lap
Jordan Taylor	219	1m 34.643s
Fernando Alonso	177	1m 35.182s
Kamui Kobayashi	86	1m 34.598s
Renger Van Der Zande	111	1m 35.135s

Does this suggest some over-hyping of Alonso? Possibly, but readers here should know that I don’t hold a lot of store by outright best lap times: rather I like to look at average lap times.

Driver	Average of best 50 laps	Average of best 25 laps	Average of best 10 laps
Jordan Taylor	1m 35.730s	1m 35.450s	1m 35.184s
Fernando Alonso	1m 35.853s	1m 35.547s	1m 35.394s
Kamui Kobayashi	1m 36.362s	1m 35.720s	1m 35.294s
Renger Van Der Zande	1m 36.550s	1m 36.156s	1m 35.860s

Again, in none of the columns above is Alonso the quickest driver in the car. However, there is an argument that says that since Jordan Taylor had more laps in the car, then he had more chances to improve his average lap. In order to get a fair comparison, you need to look – goes the argument – at the average of the best 20% of green-flag laps.

Now the numbers look like this.

Driver	No. of green flag laps	Average of best 20%
Jordan Taylor	180	1m 35.438s
Fernando Alonso	126	1m 35.557s
Kamui Kobayashi	76	1m 35.438s
Renger Van Der Zande	102	1m 36.072s

All of which seems to suggest that Alonso, far from being the ‘star performer’, merely drove pretty much to the same pace (to within a tenth) as his team-mates. (The fact that Van Der Zande is slightly slower on all counts is perhaps a reflection of the accuracy – for once – of the FIA Driver Categorisation, which lists him as a Gold, the others are all Platinum).

Please don’t construe this as my criticising Alonso in any way, the point here is merely to analyse his performance in the car in relation to his team-mates and put some of the media hype into context.

The trouble with all this analysis of ‘fast laps’ is that it sometimes overlooks overall consistency. No good in being quick over 10, 25 or 50 laps and then losing time with spins or hesitancy in the traffic. To look at this, it is worth looking at lap times averaged over a full driving stint – thus taking into account tyre degradation, traffic management, etc. This table shows the best stint for each driver (ignoring in laps, out laps and those laps under caution).

Driver	Stint Length (green laps)	Stint time (time of day)	Average lap for stint
Jordan Taylor	20	02:36 to 03:16	1m 36.293s
Fernando Alonso	22	18:34 to 19:17	1m 35.871s
Kamui Kobayashi	22	20:25 to 21:09	1m 36.834s
Renger Van Der Zande	19	00:35 to 01:22	1m 36.728s

All of a sudden, Alonso looks a bit more impressive, doesn’t he? After all, it is the stint time that is a true measure of the driver’s effectiveness, surely? Except that any advantage over the competition is ruled out every time there is a full course caution.

But talking of the competition, let’s look at where Alonso was compared to the drivers who were in other cars at the same time. Fernando had three runs at the wheel of the Konica-Minolta car. The first was from lap 62 to 155. Here’s a graph showing the gaps to his car during this phase:

The comparison cars are numbers 6 (Cameron, then Pagenaud in the Penske Acura), 31 (Curran, then Derani in the Whelan Cadillac), 55 (Pla, then Tincknell in one Joest Mazda), 77 (Rast, then Nunez in the other Mazda) and 85 (Goikhberg then De Francesco in the JDC-Miller Cadillac).

And a word of explanation, in case the “Gap Graph” is not clear: a line with an upward slope means that the ‘control’ car (the no. 10 Wayne Taylor Cadillac) is increasing its gap, a downward slope means a decreasing gap. Put simply, when Alonso was in the car, he was always quicker than his competition.

Alonso got in the car for the second time, just before 5am, as the rain was beginning to fall. Almost immediately, it was back to full course caution, and the green flag wasn’t given until the beginning of lap 485. At this point, the Konica-Minolta car led from the two Acuras – Dane Cameron in the #6 and Ricky Taylor in the #7 – with Eric Curran in the Whelan Cadillac the only other car on the lead lap. Admittedly, all three are only “Gold” drivers, but by the time the yellow flags came again after just 32 minutes racing (15 laps), Alonso had opened up a gap of nearly 50 seconds to Cameron and over a minute to Taylor(R).

And crucially, having followed the Whelan Cadillac for eight laps in the final green phase of the race, Fernando made the move for the lead of the race on track, just two laps before the caution flag was shown for the final time, having opened up a lead of 12 seconds over Felipe Nasr in two laps.

That’s impressive stuff.