Success in Kuwait

Most people reading this will know that I was in Kuwait for Creventic’s inaugural 12-hour race there. And most will, I hope, know that it was a very satisfying race for the Red Camel-Jordans.nl squad, for whom I was Team Manager. We came third overall, due mainly to a high rate of attrition in the top, GT3 and GTX classes, but equally importantly, we won the 992 class for Porsche 992 Cup cars, doing so, it has to be said, rather against the odds.

The competition was very strong: in qualifying, the Willi Motorsport Porsche (no. 955), beat us to class pole with its two very quick ‘Semi-Pro’ drivers, Sergiu Nicolae and Sabino de Castro and the less quick Fabrizio Broggi. Not far behind us on the grid was the Rabdan/Speed Lover-entered car (no. 979), which had the very quick Enrico Fernando Fulgenzi on its crew, and three cars from HRT Performance (nos. 928, 929 and 930).

In the race, our pace was good, but we could not live with the performance and agility of the Willi Motorsport car. It was able to brake much later than us, and carry more speed through the corners – according to Ivo, “it seemed as though it was on rails”.

It had a slightly different front end compared to our car: as the pictures below show. Article 9 in Chapter 3 of the Technical Regulations describes “allowed modifications for the purpose of brake cooling”, and specifies the dimensions of holes in the front bumper, but does not describe holes above the bumper. The car passed scrutineering though, so whatever Willi Motorsport had done, was obviously extremely effective!

On the grid, Rob, our chief mechanic, noticed that the Willi Motorsport car also had much thinner brake pads than we did. It was a clue that they might need to stop for a change, which of course they did, with a little over two-and-a-half hours of the race to go. The stop cost them less than four minutes, but they were unlucky, in that although they started the stop under code-60, it went green before they were back under way.

With ten minutes remaining in the race, the gap between our car and Sergiu Nicolae in the 955 was 3m 52s. At this point, Nicolae slowed his pace, realising that the chase was fruitless, allowing the gap to increase again.

It’s interesting to look at the average lap times per driver:

No.	Car	Driver	Laps	Average lap	Theoretical best
955	Willi Motorsport	Nicolae	142	1m 57.441s	1m 54.980s
955	Willi Motorsport	de Castro	129	1m 58.191s	1m 55.981s
930	HRT Performance	Fjordbach	40	1m 58.222s	1m 56.191s
979	Rabdan Motorsport	Fulgenzi	101	1m 58.449s	1m 55.966s
929	HRT Qatar	Hauschild	55	1m 58.645s	1m 56.682s
909	Red Camel	Breukers, R	71	1m 58.646s	1m 56.045s
909	Red Camel	Breukers, L	154	1m 59.936s	1m 57.583s
929	HRT Qatar	Al Khelaifi	117	2m 00.136s	1m 57.405s
979	Rabdan Motorsport	Alameri	113	2m 00.749s	1m 57.698s
909	Red Camel	Breukers, I	93	2m 00.901s	1m 58.200s
930	HRT Qatar	Al Abdulghani	108	2m 01.136s	1m 57.292s
930	HRT Performance	Al Ali	69	2m 01.643s	1m 57.452s
928	HRT Performance	Bessem	140	2m 01.655s	1m 58.885s
928	HRT Performance	Hilders	173	2m 01.983s	1m 58.921s
955	Willi Motorsport	Broggi	44	2m 02.265s	1m 59.389s

As you can see, de Castro and Nicolae were lapping at least a second per lap quicker than either Rik or Luc (who did 46 laps fewer than the combined total of Nicolae and de Castro). Notice as well that Luc’s average lap time is over a second slower than Rik’s. And although Ivo’s average was 1.3s per lap quicker than Broggi, it’s interesting that Ivo did 49 laps more.

The average lap time for all drivers combined of the Willi Motorsport car was 1m 58.4s, compared to 1m 59.9s for Red Camel. That difference of 1.5s over 318 laps, means that if everything else remained equal, Willi would have nearly eight minutes of an advantage!

So how did we win? As in many an endurance race, it comes down to the time spent in the pits. The Willi Motorsport car spent 39m 26s in the pits, compared to Red Camel, who despite making 12 stops, compared to Willi’s 10, spent only 35m 06s in the pit lane. But that still doesn’t account for the eight-minute difference. To explain that, it is necessary to look at when the pit stops were made, and the use that we made of the Code-60 periods. To analyse this, I drew up a table showing ‘time in pits during green’ vs ‘time in pits during Code-60’, and came up with the following. Firstly, the numbers for Red Camel:

Stop	Pit In at	Pit Out at	Time green	Time C60
1	00:38:59.351	00:41:15.632		02:16.281
2	01:59:41.644	02:03:53.962	04:12.318
3	02:30:53.253	02:32:38.046		01:44.793
4	04:03:48.208	04:08:07.060	04:18.852
5	05:09:34.077	05:12:35.125		03:01.048
6	06:23:03.318	06:26:33.080	03:29.762
7	07:07:01.636	07:10:02.877		03:01.241
8	07:15:20.693	07:16:58.888		01:38.195
9	08:32:53.945	08:37:04.079	04:10.134
10	09:35:14.133	09:37:50.836		02:36.703
11	10:14:44.099	10:17:55.912	03:11.813
12	11:20:01.150	11:21:26.826		01:25.676

This gives a total pit stop time under green of 19m 23s and a total time during Code-60 of 15m 44s. Now, when taking a penalty during a Code 60, Creventic demands that you take double the original penalty time. So it seems reasonable to halve the time spent in the pit under Code 60 meaning that, our ‘effective’ time in the pits was actually only 19m 23s plus 7m 52s making 27m 15s. For Willi Motorsport, car 955, the same procedure gives:

Stop	Pit In at	Pit Out at	Time green	Time C60
1	00:43:14.642	00:46:15.044		03:00.402
2	01:31:49.341	01:35:09.777	03:20.436
3	02:09:19.228	02:11:44.028	02:24.800
4	03:35:10.420	03:39:36.122	04:25.702
5	04:56:22.853	05:01:10.668	04:47.815
6	06:37:35.168	06:42:02.417	04:27.249
7	07:05:17.912	07:07:00.637		01:42.725
8	08:36:56.538	08:41:36.751	03:49.462	00:50.751
9	09:21:11.467	09:28:03.892	05:51.892	01:00.533
10	10:47:04.200	10:50:48.966	03:44.766

The total pit stop time under green is 32m 52s, and under code-60 6m 34s, hence an ‘effective’ total time of 36m 09s. So the actual gain for our car in the pits was 8m 54s, which is consistent with Red Camel’s class-winning margin at the chequered flag.

Sadly, Luc was so caught up in the moment at the end of the race, that he didn’t see the chequered flag and I had to assure him over the radio that he actually had finished the race and was third overall. And of course, he then didn’t know where to go, and so there I was, while the team was congratulating one another, having to guide our driver into his well-earned spot under the podium. It was a great effort by everyone concerned, and a result only made possible by the wonderful reliability of our car – a great comeback after the disappointments in Portimão and Barcelona earlier in the season.