A Day Out at Castle Combe

The Guild of Motoring Writers organised their annual Big Day Out recently – once again at the pretty, if unforgiving, Castle Combe circuit in Wiltshire. It is not every day that I get the chance to drive my road car on a race track, so I jumped at the opportunity to participate.

I had previously done this in my Audi S4, which has been my road car for nearly ten years now, but last October, I purchased an Abarth 124 Spider, and although I still have the Audi, the Abarth was the obvious choice to take to the track.

Its 1.4 litre four-cylinder turbo engine may ‘only’ have 170bhp, but it is such a well-balanced car to drive on normal roads that being able to unleash its full potential was something I was looking forward to. When it came to driving it on the circuit, I have to confess I was a little fearful, and did my braking much earlier and more gently than I needed to, and accelerated with caution. Nevertheless, it was a great deal of fun, and brought home to me the courage and precision demonstrated by proper racing drivers in real racing situations, to get the best from their cars.

The day was supported, as always, by a number of manufacturers. I have to admit that when I read the list of names, I was not particularly inspired. That said, it was great to catch up with Scott Brownlee, from Toyota, a long-time supporter of Radio Le Mans, and looking resplendent in his Toyota Hybrid Denso race jacket. The main support for the day came from Suzuki, with some additional cars being provided by Peugeot.

I had a go in the new Peugeot 508 GT, actually quite a good-looking car I thought, although I have never been a fan of the brand. The car is powered by a 1.6 litre four-cylinder turbo using petrol and provides a handy 225bhp. Its basic price is just over £36,000 and although relatively heavy, it provides a pleasant ride with adequate, but not startling, performance. The strangest thing for me was the instrument layout, with a rev counter that goes anti-clockwise. I found this most disconcerting. Surely analogue dials go clockwise to indicate increases?

In practically head-on competition was the offering from Toyota – or rather Lexus. This was the new ES 300h. At a price of £35,155 and featuring a normally-aspirated four-cylinder petrol engine of 2.5 litres, albeit aided by an electric motor, it gives 215 bhp, so which one to buy, if you’re in that particular market?

Comparing the numbers, the Peugeot gets to 60 mph over a second earlier than the Lexus, but will do 10 miles less on each gallon of fuel. As the tank of the Lexus is 10 litres less than on the Peugeot, this doesn’t mean you’ll go further on a tankful, but it does mean you’ll be spending £12 more each time you stop.

As I am not about to spend that kind of money on a new car, it is not a choice that concerns me in real terms. However, there is no doubt that I enjoyed driving the Lexus far more. Once I got out and started looking around it though, I am not sure that it is as pretty as the Peugeot. It is probably just me, but there is an element of an old Mark 3 Cortina about the Peugeot, which is quite appealing. The Lexus looks like, well a Lexus. All 21st century angles and edges.

My final drive of the day – apart from another ten-lap spin in the Abarth – was a trip in the latest Suzuki Swift Sport. If the Peugeot 508 GT reminded me of a Ford Cortina, then the Suzuki was a Mini Cooper S. Like the Abarth, the Suzuki is powered by a 1.4 litre turbo-charged engine, giving 138 bhp in a car that weighs just 975kg.

My Abarth has 170 bhp, and weighs in at 1135kg, but costs almost double, so the two cars are not really in the same market place. I don’t think it was quite as much fun as the Fiat 500 I drove a little while ago, but still, Suzuki has a car here that brings a smile to the face.

Thanks to all those who made the day possible, and as always, Jeff Bloxham for additional photos.

Mugello 12 hours - good stuff!

My first encounter with the Creventic organisation was back in 2012, when I was part of the Radio Show Limited team that covered the Dubai 24 hour race in the January of that year. Since then, I have visited 22 races in the “24h Series” and the Creventic Crew has never failed to provide exceedingly well for all our needs.

Last month, I packed my bags and headed off to Mugello – a circuit I had not visited before – nestling in the Tuscan hills about an hour’s drive south of Bologna. The drive is somewhat longer than that if you take the “scenic route”, which, unwittingly, I did on the way there. It may not have been a deliberate choice, but nevertheless it was a good one, for the views are stunning as the autostrada crosses one viaduct after another between numerous plunges into spectacular tunnels.

Once at the circuit, the paddock was a very happy place to be. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. The circuit weaves its way in and out of a couple of neighbouring valleys, providing plenty of challenging, undulating corners and many blind brows. Creventic provided a circuit map with all the corner names on – rather than just an outline showing the locations of “Turns 1 to 15”.

There were 58 cars on the provisional entry list, and it looked like nearly all of them would take part. That’s not always the case with Creventic entry lists, but in the end 55 cars took the start, split into 20 cars in the “Touring Car Endurance” (TCE) division and 35 in the GT section.

Despite having seen so many Creventic races, this was the first ‘proper’ two-part 12 hour race that I’d been to. The only other contender for that honour was the rather unusual 2018 Silverstone GT race, which was also a two-part, 12-hour race, but with the second part running concurrently with the first 7 hours of the TCE 24-hour race.

When I was young, two part races were not unknown, but they would generally be ‘aggregate’ races. In other words, the result would be calculated by adding the results from each part together, with the winner being the one who had completed the most laps in the shortest time. That might mean that the car taking the chequered flag first after the second part might not be the winner, and it might mean a bit of a delay while the time-keepers did their sums, but to my mind there is a certain purity in this approach, lost in the modern genres of motor-racing, where the ‘order across the line’ is all-important.

It seems that aggregate races are not in fashion these days (although the Race of Remembrance makes it work), so teams are faced with some strategy decisions in the final stages of a Part One, to ensure that they can maximise the advantage provided by the action of forming up the grid for the second part and closing up all the gaps. It is a bit like knowing that a Safety Car period is going to happen at a specific time. With such knowledge, you can adjust your strategy and close up to the car in front.

At the end of three hours’ racing into the darkness at Mugello, only Barwell Motorsport’s Lamborghini had managed to stay on the same lap as the Scuderia Praha Ferrari. But that did not necessarily mean that part 2 would be purely a story of the race between the red Ferrari and the black-and-yellow Lamborghini.

Interestingly, looking purely at part 2 of the race in isolation, the number of laps completed were as follows:

No.	Car	Laps
11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	245
91	Herberth Porsche	243
77	Barwell Lamborghini	242

However, the Herberth car had lost two laps in the first three hours of the race, so despite starting part 2 with much more fuel, the German car would face an uphill battle in part 2.

Expertise in Creventic racing in crucial, of course, and this perhaps is where Barwell lost out. In part 1, the Scuderia Praha Ferrari pitted four times, the Herberth Porsche three times, and Barwell only twice. This meant that early in part 2 (in fact at the end of the first racing lap), the Lamborghini was in for fuel, whereas the Ferrari was able to go for more than twenty minutes before heading for the pits.

The Ferrari team was also much quicker in the pits than the Lamborghini. Allowing for the fact that the Ferrari was putting in five litres less fuel at each stop, one would expect their stops to be around 5-10 seconds quicker. However, the Lamborghini was routinely spending a good 20-25 seconds longer in the pit lane than the Ferrari. The most likely explanation is that Barwell was spending more time getting their driver changes done. (Of course, in the Blancpain series, pit stops are subject to a minimum stop time, leaving a little more leeway in this area. In Creventic racing, once the wheels are changed, it is the driver change that dictates how long you spend in the pits.)

No.	Car	No of stops	Average stop time
11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	14	2m 51s
77	Barwell Lamborghini	11	3m 17s
91	Herberth Porsche	14	2m 57s

This table shows that Barwell spent less time in the pit lane (even though their stops were longer, they made four fewer visits to the pit lane), but their tactical disadvantage was that they spent more time on the track when it was under code 60 than the rival Ferrari and Porsche.

Finally, of course, we shouldn’t forget that it is the pace on the track that counts. Both Scuderia Praha and Barwell had three-driver crews (with a single Am driver). Herberth used four drivers (with two Ams).

No.	Car	Driver	Best	Average
11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	Král	1m 50.435s	1m 51.153s
11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	Malucelli	1m 48.948s	1m 49.603s
11	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	Písařík	1m 51.543s	1m 52.547s
77	Barwell Lamborghini	Amstutz	1m 52.214s	1m 53.665s
77	Barwell Lamborghini	Keen	1m 49.018s	1m 49.881s
77	Barwell Lamborghini	Kujala	1m 49.099s	1m 49.845s
91	Herberth Porsche	Alleman	1m 51.784s	1m 53.318s
91	Herberth Porsche	Bohn	1m 51.265s	1m 52.260s
91	Herberth Porsche	Renauer A	1m 49.696s	1m 51.076s
91	Herberth Porsche	Renauer R	1m 50.391s	1m 51.724s

I don’t really think any further comment is necessary – Malucelli is clearly very quick, but it is interesting that both Kujala and Keen matched each others’ times. It should be noted that although Amstutz did not do much more than his minimum driving time, Jiří Písařík did more than three hours in total, and in the Herberth car, Am drivers Bohn and Alleman drove over 8½ hours together.

All in all, it has to be said that Scuderia Praha were worthy winners – although the car may not have had the single-lap speed to start from pole position, the car led 302 out of the 330 laps (including all of the first three-hour part and the first ninety minutes of the second part).

But the other winner, as always, was the organisation. Not just Creventic, but the whole package; the venue, the atmosphere, the weather: all combined together to make for a terrific weekend of proper endurance racing.

Too busy...?

Well, here we are, already into the second quarter of the year, and it has probably been one of my busiest – in terms of motor-racing activity – for twenty years. Of course, I had hoped that I would be too busy to write on the blog, and so it has become, to an extent.

February was relatively quiet, with time to write up race analyses from the Daytona 24 and Bathurst 12 hours, a visit to the Classic Car Show and a family holiday to the Wye Valley, but as March came in, so did plenty of jobs for me to do. All of which meant that writing anything here got fairly quickly pushed down the priority list.

It started off with the British GT Media Day at Donington Park, which saw the announcement of a 38-car grid for the 2019 British GT series – a very healthy state of affairs indeed. Of these, 14 are in the GT3 class, with cars from Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, McLaren and Porsche joining BMW and Mercedes in the top class. Nine of these were present at the media day (with Barwell’s brand new Lamborghini Evo ending the day fastest, just 0.024s faster than the RAM Racing Mercedes).

The series kicks off at Oulton Park on Easter Monday – surely worth a visit, if the weather is kind?

The middle of March was dominated by the Sebring WEC and IMSA double-header, which I did not attend, but I did pay close attention, and despite misgivings ahead of the event, I certainly had the impression from afar that it was a successful event. It will be interesting to see what elements are kept for next year, and what lessons are learned and changes made.

If nothing else, it would be nice if the weather is better next year.

Following the Sebring weekend, and the various write-ups that I had to do as a result, was a visit to a new circuit for me – Mettet in Belgium, for the opening round of the European VW Fun Cup, about which the less said the better. Then it was a quick dash back across the channel – with thanks to DFDS for making it so straightforward – before getting myself to Gatwick for the flight to Italy for the opening round of Creventic’s European Championship at Mugello, another circuit I had not previously visited.

The twelve hour race at Mugello was split into a three-hour part on Friday afternoon (following a delayed qualifying), which ended at 7pm, with the remaining nine hours on Saturday between 9am and 6pm. The Ferrari 488 GT3 of Bohemia Energy racing with Scuderia Praha was the class of the field throughout, running a faultless race and efficient pit stops to win, three laps clear of Barwell’s Lamborghini Huracan (which was due back at Silverstone on the Monday after the race!).

As always, it was great fun working with the Creventic crew and the TV folks from the 0221 Media Group. It was good to be back ‘in the fold’ of the Radio Show Limited team. Having known and worked with John Hindhaugh, Jonny Palmer, Joe Bradley and Nick Daman for so many years, I regard them very much as family and hopefully that is an impression we can convey to the listeners and viewers of the live streaming (along with some useful information).

I am always impressed at how many of the teams and drivers that we speak to say what fun they have at Creventic races, and Mugello was certainly no exception. It’s as much of a culture thing as anything else, but somehow no-one ever seems to lose sight of the fact that the people that are putting their hands into their pockets to allow the thing to happen, are doing so out of choice. It is a lesson that other areas of the sport could do well to learn from.

As an aside, how many people keep track of the number of motor racing venues they have visited? And do you, like me, have difficulty defining the rules? Do you have to witness competitive track activity for it to count? Does it have to be an active track? Do kart tracks count? Short ovals? What about temporary circuits? Anyway, under most counts, I reckon I am now over fifty, in 17 different countries.

I make no boast of this – I am sure there are many people reading this who can make bigger claims, but it is an indication of the extent of opportunities I have been able to take, and of course I am grateful to all those who have played a role in making it possible!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity for some ‘tourist laps’ around the Nordschleife, something I have not done for around twenty years – and what I found most noticeable (on top of the rather steep hike in the price) was the professionalism of most of those doing so. In 1995, when I last went round, they were proper ‘tourist laps’, with mostly normal road-going vehicles taking part, being driven by ordinary tourists. Yesterday, it was not much short of a full track-day, with more race-prepared cars circulating than anything else, and I would not be surprised to learn that many of them were being driven by people practicing for next week’s VLN race.

It certainly got the juices flowing – although I will be at RSL’s London studio to commentate on VLN-2 with Bruce Jones – I feel much better prepared now!