My last post described the busy weeks I spent traversing Europe in June, and since then I have been equally busy in July and the early part of August, spending three weekends out of five driving to and from races in Belgium. Unusually, none of these trips was to commentate – instead I was asked by three different teams to ply my trade in the pit garage, helping (in various ways) with strategy matters.
It always amazes me how many times the same faces show up at each event – drivers, engineers, technicians – I wonder how many spectators actually visit them all?
Anyway, it started with an arrangement that had been made back in February to assist DRM Motorsport at the VW FunCup 25-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps. Readers may not be aware (indeed, I wasn’t) that DRM is a pretty major player in the European VW Fun Cup, and somehow, Team Principal Matthieu de Robiano put together an ambitious plan to run twelve cars in the 2019 edition of the “longest race in Europe”.
As can be imagined, the crew to run such an enterprise is extensive: mechanics, race engineers, tyre technicians, physiotherapists and catering staff. I don’t know exactly how many people were there for the team, but just consider that we had more than fifty drivers to cater for, and most of them had at least one (usually several more) family members along as well.
We were assigned four adjoining garages in the F1 pit lane: three garages for the cars (four in each); the fourth as a lounge/seating/spectating area for team VIPs and guests. Another factor to be considered was the “Bi-place” (i.e. two-seater) car, which, unlike the normal Fun Cup car, with its central seat position, was fitted with a full-sized passenger seat. Two championship points were awarded for each passenger that was carried during the course of the race (and you weren’t allowed to count the same passenger twice, you had to find a different victim each time).
The rules for the two-seater demanded that thirty timed pit-stops be made during the 25 hours, and so of course we changed the passenger at each pit stop. But that meant as well having thirty-one passengers (in addition to the fifty drivers) lined up, suited and booted, at the right time and in the right place. All things considered, we did quite well – I thought – to get thirty of them into the car, and a second-in-class result (as well as top points at the six and twelve-hour points in the race).
The one exception was a gentleman whose girth hadn’t been properly checked beforehand, and despite the team’s best efforts, he couldn’t be squeezed into the seat alongside its driver. Two championship points lost, but still we came out of the weekend leading the Bi-place standings.
The other eleven DRM Motorsport cars were single-seat “EVO 3” cars, which in some ways were more straightforward to run. There was no restriction on pit stops – the strategy was merely to go as far on each stint as the fuel would allow. No problem there, except that the Fun Cup car has no fuel gauge, nor telemetry to tell you how much fuel is being used. So it has to be done based purely on consumption calculations. Refuelling took place at the circuit’s Total fuel station in the paddock, and every visit to the fuel station had to be at least five minutes, regardless of how much fuel went in. Driver changes (in front of the pit box) had to be done as quickly as possible, and the whole race could be completed on two sets of tyres, so tyre changes were something of a rarity, thankfully.
Radio communication with the driver was allowed, but the coverage was rather patchy, which meant a couple of rather close calls on those occasions when the driver failed to hear the instruction to stop. There were also some challenging language issues on occasions. Each of the 12 cars had its own race engineer, who were from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, England and any other country I might have missed. We had one car crewed entirely by Mexicans, another was an all-Chilean team, and other cars had other mixtures of both language and culture. Adam Christodoulou was a late call-up to replace an indisposed Wolfgang Reip in one car, while Nico Verdonck and Maxime Martin shared the driving of another car.
In the end, some lucky safety car breaks meant that our best-placed car finished fourth overall (just 13s off a podium place). Even though we didn’t manage to bring home any silverware for the overall positions, the team managed to get all twelve cars across the line and classified at the end of the race.
Less than a fortnight later, I was back at Spa, for the Blancpain Endurance Series 24-hour race. This time, I was working with Barwell Motorsport, who were running a Silver Cup class Lamborghini Huracan EVO for James Pull, Jordan Witt and Sandy Mitchell, and an identical car in the AM class for Adrain Amstutz, Leo Machitski, Patrick Kujala and Richard Abra.
I suppose it was inevitable, given the much higher profile of the Spa 24 hours, that this would be an altogether more intense experience that the Fun Cup. My role with Barwell was described as ‘strategy support’, which meant that the race engineers for both the no. 77 (AM) and the no. 78 (Silver) cars would decide what to do with pit stop calls, etc., but that I would be on hand to help out if things were not clear-cut. The trick with such things though, is to work out before the race what the best course of action will be in each scenario. It is better to be prepared for every eventuality, rather than having to decide ‘on the fly’ what to do under a certain set of circumstances.
As a result, a lot of time was spent, leading up to the race, looking at “what to do when”-type of questions. It was time well-spent though, because, come the race, most of the decisions had already been made, so it was just a matter of execution. Except that the rain became so bad just after half-distance that the race had to be stopped.
For a long time, it wasn’t at all clear how long the stoppage was going to be. The rain certainly eased off from time to time, but most forecasts suggested that more rain was on the way, although most agreed that the Sunday afternoon would be dry – at least drier. So, for the AM car, we spent a lot of time drawing up potential driving schedules to get us to the end of the race. But as each hour went past, it was an hour that we didn’t have to put a driver in the car for, and thus provided some more driving time for the faster drivers, whose time at the wheel was limited to six hours.
Things were simpler for the Silver Cup car, whose three drivers were able, more or less, to return the same lap times, so it was not so much of an issue – they would just cycle through in the normal order.
Finally, the race got underway again at 11:30am, leaving five hours’ racing to go. Sandy Mitchell, in the no. 78 Silver car revelled in the conditions, and asserted the cars’ position at the top of the class standings. Things were not as good for the AM car, in which neither of the AM drivers really enjoyed driving the car in the damp conditions. It was a typical Spa case of the track not really being dry enough for slick tyres, and although both Richard Abra and Patrick Kujala were able to get the best out of the Lamborghini, they ran out of drive-time, and our two AM drivers were not able to match the pace of the Rinaldi Racing Ferrari.
Second in class, and enough championship points (following a top score at the six and twelve hour intervals) to ensure that the AM drivers’ championship was won, along with a class win in the Silver Cup Class meant that there was a good deal of SRO silverware to be collected up from the podium. The celebratory curry for the whole team after the race was well-deserved.
It was a rather strange set of circumstances that led to me be asked again to Belgium for yet another 24-hour race two weeks later – this time for the Zolder 24-hours. I had been asked to the race to demonstrate the HH Timing software to Belgium Racing, a multiple winner of the race, but who would have to struggle this year with their GT class Porsche against a host of CN-class Norma prototypes. A second team, Redant Racing, were sharing the technology with Belgium Racing, so I ended up demonstrating the software to both teams.
Now, although HH Timing is strategy software, it will not make the strategy decisions for you. It merely gives you the tools to make those decisions yourself. So, come the race, it ended up coming back to me to decide whether or not to pit, particularly when Full Course Yellow or Safety Car periods came into play.
Inevitably, such decisions often involve an element of risk, and on top of that, all the clever strategy in the world cannot help you deal with things like brake wear – in the end we needed two changes of disks and pads. The pit crew were amazing, completing the second change in under two minutes. The driving crew of Louis Machiels, Dylan Derdaele, Nicolas Saelens, Marc Goossens and Lars Kern kept up a great pace, (particularly the latter two), and we managed to bring the car home in second place overall (and class winners) behind a Norma that was three seconds a lap quicker, took 40 litres less fuel at each stop and could double-stint its tyres.
At the end of the race, as I made my way back through the paddock to my car, I met Lars Kern as he returned from the podium celebration. “I’m not sure whether to be pleased with the class win, or disappointed that we only finished second,” I said. “I thought we could have won.”
“You have to be disappointed,” was his reply. “Always you have to try to win… and I have never won a 24-hour race!” Having experienced – and, I would like to think, contributed to – a fourth and a second place overall, had two class wins and two class podiums in the three races, I know what he means. Winning is important. And although I am not likely to give up commentary any time soon, nor am I going to give up getting involved with teams and trying to share in that winning feeling.
It always amazes me how many times the same faces show up at each event – drivers, engineers, technicians – I wonder how many spectators actually visit them all?
Anyway, it started with an arrangement that had been made back in February to assist DRM Motorsport at the VW FunCup 25-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps. Readers may not be aware (indeed, I wasn’t) that DRM is a pretty major player in the European VW Fun Cup, and somehow, Team Principal Matthieu de Robiano put together an ambitious plan to run twelve cars in the 2019 edition of the “longest race in Europe”.
As can be imagined, the crew to run such an enterprise is extensive: mechanics, race engineers, tyre technicians, physiotherapists and catering staff. I don’t know exactly how many people were there for the team, but just consider that we had more than fifty drivers to cater for, and most of them had at least one (usually several more) family members along as well.
We were assigned four adjoining garages in the F1 pit lane: three garages for the cars (four in each); the fourth as a lounge/seating/spectating area for team VIPs and guests. Another factor to be considered was the “Bi-place” (i.e. two-seater) car, which, unlike the normal Fun Cup car, with its central seat position, was fitted with a full-sized passenger seat. Two championship points were awarded for each passenger that was carried during the course of the race (and you weren’t allowed to count the same passenger twice, you had to find a different victim each time).
The rules for the two-seater demanded that thirty timed pit-stops be made during the 25 hours, and so of course we changed the passenger at each pit stop. But that meant as well having thirty-one passengers (in addition to the fifty drivers) lined up, suited and booted, at the right time and in the right place. All things considered, we did quite well – I thought – to get thirty of them into the car, and a second-in-class result (as well as top points at the six and twelve-hour points in the race).
The one exception was a gentleman whose girth hadn’t been properly checked beforehand, and despite the team’s best efforts, he couldn’t be squeezed into the seat alongside its driver. Two championship points lost, but still we came out of the weekend leading the Bi-place standings.
The other eleven DRM Motorsport cars were single-seat “EVO 3” cars, which in some ways were more straightforward to run. There was no restriction on pit stops – the strategy was merely to go as far on each stint as the fuel would allow. No problem there, except that the Fun Cup car has no fuel gauge, nor telemetry to tell you how much fuel is being used. So it has to be done based purely on consumption calculations. Refuelling took place at the circuit’s Total fuel station in the paddock, and every visit to the fuel station had to be at least five minutes, regardless of how much fuel went in. Driver changes (in front of the pit box) had to be done as quickly as possible, and the whole race could be completed on two sets of tyres, so tyre changes were something of a rarity, thankfully.
Radio communication with the driver was allowed, but the coverage was rather patchy, which meant a couple of rather close calls on those occasions when the driver failed to hear the instruction to stop. There were also some challenging language issues on occasions. Each of the 12 cars had its own race engineer, who were from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, England and any other country I might have missed. We had one car crewed entirely by Mexicans, another was an all-Chilean team, and other cars had other mixtures of both language and culture. Adam Christodoulou was a late call-up to replace an indisposed Wolfgang Reip in one car, while Nico Verdonck and Maxime Martin shared the driving of another car.
In the end, some lucky safety car breaks meant that our best-placed car finished fourth overall (just 13s off a podium place). Even though we didn’t manage to bring home any silverware for the overall positions, the team managed to get all twelve cars across the line and classified at the end of the race.
Less than a fortnight later, I was back at Spa, for the Blancpain Endurance Series 24-hour race. This time, I was working with Barwell Motorsport, who were running a Silver Cup class Lamborghini Huracan EVO for James Pull, Jordan Witt and Sandy Mitchell, and an identical car in the AM class for Adrain Amstutz, Leo Machitski, Patrick Kujala and Richard Abra.
I suppose it was inevitable, given the much higher profile of the Spa 24 hours, that this would be an altogether more intense experience that the Fun Cup. My role with Barwell was described as ‘strategy support’, which meant that the race engineers for both the no. 77 (AM) and the no. 78 (Silver) cars would decide what to do with pit stop calls, etc., but that I would be on hand to help out if things were not clear-cut. The trick with such things though, is to work out before the race what the best course of action will be in each scenario. It is better to be prepared for every eventuality, rather than having to decide ‘on the fly’ what to do under a certain set of circumstances.
As a result, a lot of time was spent, leading up to the race, looking at “what to do when”-type of questions. It was time well-spent though, because, come the race, most of the decisions had already been made, so it was just a matter of execution. Except that the rain became so bad just after half-distance that the race had to be stopped.
For a long time, it wasn’t at all clear how long the stoppage was going to be. The rain certainly eased off from time to time, but most forecasts suggested that more rain was on the way, although most agreed that the Sunday afternoon would be dry – at least drier. So, for the AM car, we spent a lot of time drawing up potential driving schedules to get us to the end of the race. But as each hour went past, it was an hour that we didn’t have to put a driver in the car for, and thus provided some more driving time for the faster drivers, whose time at the wheel was limited to six hours.
Things were simpler for the Silver Cup car, whose three drivers were able, more or less, to return the same lap times, so it was not so much of an issue – they would just cycle through in the normal order.
Finally, the race got underway again at 11:30am, leaving five hours’ racing to go. Sandy Mitchell, in the no. 78 Silver car revelled in the conditions, and asserted the cars’ position at the top of the class standings. Things were not as good for the AM car, in which neither of the AM drivers really enjoyed driving the car in the damp conditions. It was a typical Spa case of the track not really being dry enough for slick tyres, and although both Richard Abra and Patrick Kujala were able to get the best out of the Lamborghini, they ran out of drive-time, and our two AM drivers were not able to match the pace of the Rinaldi Racing Ferrari.
Second in class, and enough championship points (following a top score at the six and twelve hour intervals) to ensure that the AM drivers’ championship was won, along with a class win in the Silver Cup Class meant that there was a good deal of SRO silverware to be collected up from the podium. The celebratory curry for the whole team after the race was well-deserved.
It was a rather strange set of circumstances that led to me be asked again to Belgium for yet another 24-hour race two weeks later – this time for the Zolder 24-hours. I had been asked to the race to demonstrate the HH Timing software to Belgium Racing, a multiple winner of the race, but who would have to struggle this year with their GT class Porsche against a host of CN-class Norma prototypes. A second team, Redant Racing, were sharing the technology with Belgium Racing, so I ended up demonstrating the software to both teams.
Now, although HH Timing is strategy software, it will not make the strategy decisions for you. It merely gives you the tools to make those decisions yourself. So, come the race, it ended up coming back to me to decide whether or not to pit, particularly when Full Course Yellow or Safety Car periods came into play.
Inevitably, such decisions often involve an element of risk, and on top of that, all the clever strategy in the world cannot help you deal with things like brake wear – in the end we needed two changes of disks and pads. The pit crew were amazing, completing the second change in under two minutes. The driving crew of Louis Machiels, Dylan Derdaele, Nicolas Saelens, Marc Goossens and Lars Kern kept up a great pace, (particularly the latter two), and we managed to bring the car home in second place overall (and class winners) behind a Norma that was three seconds a lap quicker, took 40 litres less fuel at each stop and could double-stint its tyres.
At the end of the race, as I made my way back through the paddock to my car, I met Lars Kern as he returned from the podium celebration. “I’m not sure whether to be pleased with the class win, or disappointed that we only finished second,” I said. “I thought we could have won.”
“You have to be disappointed,” was his reply. “Always you have to try to win… and I have never won a 24-hour race!” Having experienced – and, I would like to think, contributed to – a fourth and a second place overall, had two class wins and two class podiums in the three races, I know what he means. Winning is important. And although I am not likely to give up commentary any time soon, nor am I going to give up getting involved with teams and trying to share in that winning feeling.
When I worked for Strakka a couple of years ago at the Blancpain Spa 24hrs running 4 cars it was a logistical nightmare, but running 12 cars is mightily impressive!
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