Safety Cars and Track Limits

Last week I managed to get around to posting my first article of the year and here I am, already posting my second! I am making an effort to catch up – not that anyone really relies on my blog, but please indulge me anyway.

My last post was a bit of a ramble and I want to make this a bit more targeted. Firstly, Safety Cars. A new procedure was introduced this year at Le Mans to handle Safety Car interventions. Briefly, the procedure involved sending out three Safety Cars (as normal) onto the track initially, to neutralise the field as quickly as possible. They would continue to circulate, and the pit lane entry would remain open, for as long as it took to clear the incident. The pit lane exit would be closed, until the end of the line of cars following a Safety Car went past.

So far, no change from the way it has worked in previous years. However, once the incident that caused the Safety Car had been cleared, a new process was introduced, with the aim of getting the cars lined up behind the leader of each class, with each class in a separate group. This consisted of three stages: one, the ‘merge’ – removing two Safety Cars and leaving the field backed up behind the remaining one; two, the ‘wave-by’, where every car whose class leader is behind it is allowed to pass the Safety Car and catch up with the tail of the field; and three, the ‘drop back’, where first the LMP2 cars, and then the GTE-Am cars fell to the back of the line of cars.

If it takes a while to explain, it takes even longer to execute, and relies on everyone knowing what they’re doing. Personally, I thought it was a recipe for confusion and chaos; but in practice it worked pretty well. The objective was achieved and all the cars lined up in their right class positions. The main issue was the time it took to happen. Although we had three Safety Car interludes, the first one came directly after the start of the race, so the cars were just about in class order anyway. Even then, it took an additional 14m 25s between the incident being declared ‘cleared’ and the green flag being waved. The following two uses of the Safety Car took, respectively, 34m 10s and 23m 56s. That’s a total of 1h 12m 31s of potential racing time lost, while cars were ‘faffing around’ getting themselves sorted into the right order, quite aside from the actual job of getting the incident cleared. If we would have had four classes, as in previous years, it would have taken even longer.

Apart from the time taken though, is the philosophical question of whether closing the field up behind the leader is the ‘right’ thing to do. I must admit I tend to count myself among the many hoping, as Richard Williams put it in this month’s Motor Sport magazine, “never… to see the integrity of a historic race threatened by practices borrowed from Daytona and Sebring”. The trouble is that without these practices, the field may get artificially spread out, and in these days of artificial performance-balanced racing, it is tough to come back if you do find yourself half-a-lap down.

The Spa 24 hours uses a ‘Full Course Yellow’ procedure, followed by a Safety Car, achieving the same end in a different way. The difference in SRO racing is that although it is multi-class, the classes are based on the crew composition, not the car performance, so no account is taken of the classes when sorting out the order of the cars behind the leader. So then it is pot luck whether you have your ‘ace’ driver in the car at the time of the appearance of the Safety Car or not.

I have just returned from Estoril, where Creventic were running one of their 24H Series races – a 12-hour encounter which had a 6-hour Qualification Race beforehand. Creventic do not use a Safety Car at all, but neutralise the field using ‘Code-60’ when necessary. This is a slower version of SRO’s Full Course Yellow, (operating at 60km/h rather than 80km/h) but it is restarted directly with a green flag, leaving the cars where they are, theoretically at least, when the signal to restart is given. Interestingly, this also leads to accusations of unfairness, as an awful lot can depend on the timing of the Code-60; how much fuel you have aboard, how close you are to the pit entry and whether there is a fuel pump available. Inevitably, the organisers are looking at ways of improving the process.

I mentioned Howden Haynes in my last post, and I’ll mention him again now. His objective was always to set the car up to be at its optimum at the end of the race, not at the start. It’s an especially sensible policy if you’ve got a Safety Car rule which bunches up the field.

It's not really fair to compare the Spa and Le Mans 24 hour races, but just because I can, here are some statistics. I include the Creventic race at Estoril for interest:
- Le Mans had 24 changes of lead among 8 different cars, representing five different brands;
- Spa had 68 changes of lead among 19 different cars, representing seven different brands;
- Estoril had 4 changes of lead among 4 different cars, representing three different brands (in a 12-hour race).

In addition
- Le Mans had 3 Safety Car periods, and 5 Full Course Yellows accounting for 3h 37m
- Spa had 9 Safety Car periods and 8 Full Course Yellows accounting for 4h 47m
- Estoril had 6 Code-60 periods accounting for 31m (in a 12-hour race)

Track Limits are becoming a bit of a theme, not just in Formula 1, but also at Le Mans as well as at Spa. At Spa, more than 2500 race control messages related to track limit offences.

At Le Mans, 801 messages from race control warned of track limit offences.

At Estoril, drivers were told in their briefing that the blue and white kerbs formed part of the track, and that, provided they did not stray beyond that limit with all four wheels, then they would not be penalised. It was fully appreciated that this was a more lenient approach, but the Race Control staff realised that spending too much time assessing Track Limit offences would possibly lead them to overlooking other, more serious safety issues. Hence their approach and there were only 23 warnings given and six 10-second penalties issued for track limit violations – and one of those was later cancelled.

These kinds of comparisons are futile, of course, and irrelevant for a number of reasons, not least because of the amateur nature of the entrants in Creventic races compared with the professionalism of Le Mans. But they may give some cause for consideration somewhere.

Some Reflections Since the Portimao 24 hours

Okay, I will be honest: the main reason for this post is to prevent the previous article from being on top of the list when you first come to my blog’s ‘home’ page. But publishing a couple of articles per month when there was normal racing activity taking place used to be normal activity, and since a proper race has now taken place, I don’t really need to make any excuses. Do I?

First, however, it would be inappropriate if I failed to mention the many messages of support that my previous post prompted. They are all very much appreciated and I am grateful to you – whether you actually sent a message or not – the fact that you take the trouble to read or listen to me means a lot and all goes to aid both my mood and my recovery. Thank you to you all, from the bottom of my heart.

So, the Portimao 24-hours – was it a success? Insofar as the event took place at all, most definitely it was. Protocols were put in place, were seriously enforced and from a logistical and administrative point of view, were effective. People showed up – maybe not as many as promised, but the Creventic organisation made every effort and made sure that everyone’s concerns were addressed.

As a spectacle, though, fifteen cars taking the start for a 24-hour enduro did not get the pulse racing in the same way that most Creventic races do. It was a shame that the only GT3 opposition to a Herberth whitewash (the HTP / Winward Mercedes) was out of the race before three hours were elapsed. Equally disappointing was the gearbox repair that the no. 91 Renauer/Renauer/Bohn/Allemann Porsche needed, which meant that the no. 92 Porsche was not under serious challenge thereafter for overall honours. It gave a well-deserved win to the “lesser” Herberth crew comprising Tim Müller, Jürgen Häring, Marco Seefried, Taki Konstantinou and Michael Joos. All the more interesting as Joos drove for longer than any other driver in the car, yet didn’t actually get in until the tenth hour of the race!

The race in the TCE division was better, but again, among the six starters it was clear from relatively early on that it would be a race between just three cars – the Red Camel Cupra, the ComToYou Audi and the Autorama Golf. Indeed, these three provided a good race, with each recovering from problems. A ten-minute delay for Red Camel compared to twenty-minute stops for ComToYou and Autorama left them well-placed with six hours remaining. Unfortunately for the Dutch squad, some debris dislodged the radiator, which led to an overheating engine and retirement, leaving the battle between the experienced Swiss Autorama squad and the Belgian ComToYou team. Antti Buri may not be a household name outside the Creventic and German TCR series, but his pace and the experience of his co-drivers were in no doubt, and WTCC and WEC stars Tom Coronel and Nathanael Berthon had to be content with second place in the division.

I may be guilty of looking at the race through somewhat rose-tinted spectacles though. Just as 15 starters doesn’t really excite the spectator, only 10 cars running at the finish was, with the best will in the world, dull. But this race wasn’t about the spectator. This race was about getting the ball rolling. In the run-up to it, I had a lot of time to poll various contacts – the majority agreed that it was all too soon, particularly for those (travelling from outside continental Europe) for whom travel restrictions were more onerous. As a ‘proof of concept’ and a test of protocols, how to make them work in practice and to allow a racing team to be a team, and all that entails, it worked well.

Having myself been isolated for three months, I know how refreshing it can be to have human contact; a laugh, a joke, to see the smile break across someone’s face. Social distancing and the wearing of face masks make this more difficult, but surely it is better than being alone in front of a computer competing against an unseen opponent?

I don’t really want to take sides in the “Real vs Virtual” debate. As I have already mentioned, I have had the opportunity to talk to various people over the months of my enforced incarceration, and I certainly understand both sides of the argument. For the professional racing driver, needing to keep their wits and reactions sharp, their ‘name in the frame’ as far as media awareness is concerned and their competitive instincts honed, getting a sim racing rig set up and learning the nuances of driving one is just another of their jobs as a professional.

For commentators, who to my mind are crucial to enable the consumer of the virtual race livestreams to get a full experience of the ‘event’, they have provided an opportunity to “keep the eye in”, as one of my colleagues said to me. To say nothing of a bit of much-needed income, I would think.

What surprised me most was the involvement of the ‘backroom boys’ – no gender favouritism implied, but those race engineers and team managers – that get involved in tuning and optimising the virtual cars so that the drivers can get the best out of them. Just like in real life! “Don’t forget it’s only a game,” I reminded one race engineer friend of mine, partly in jest, I admit.

“After all the work, it’s not a game anymore,” came the somewhat terse reply. “I’ve been working 16-hour days for the last week-and-a-half”. When it gets to that stage, you can see his point.

On the opposite side are the drivers who were in Portimao, drivers for whom the real thing is, well, exactly that – the real thing. And I don’t think that a single one of the folk that I did talk to would choose to race virtually if there was a chance to race for real. It is just, as so many people said, “too soon yet”. But it is much harder to say that, and it will become harder still to say that, now that one race has taken place and further races are scheduled to follow.

What race organisers decide to do with spectators is a whole different question, and not one that I shall cover here. Nor can we forget that the big races, by which I mean the 24-hour events at Le Mans, Spa and Nürburgring, attract an audience from far further afield than the very Europe-centric Portimao 24-hours, and in massive numbers. Taking responsibility for scheduling (or cancelling) events of that magnitude requires very broad shoulders indeed. The sooner there is some clarity, the better.

The truth is important

In the novel “Life of Pi”, a story is told of a boy who survives a shipwreck and then shares a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.

Towards the end of the book, the possibility is raised that the tale is not true, and Yann Martel, the author, offers an alternative version, which may or may not be more believable, but which doesn’t involve any animals, exotic or otherwise. In the end, the reader is left with the dilemma of deciding for himself which makes the better story. Since it is a novel, and makes no pretence to be a record of history, I see no problem in any of it – indeed I count it among the better novels I have read, raising some interesting philosophical ideas.

History is different though. It is said that the difference between Herodotus (born circa 484 BC) and Thucydides (born 20 years later) is that only with the latter did history (as a subject) emerge from storytelling to become a truth-telling activity.

In this modern age, we might expect it to be easier to get at, preserve and report the truth. Well, yes, but that is to ignore the fact that people do not always tell the truth. Stories sometimes get embellished, and facts, sometimes, are the casualties.

At Creventic’s COTA 24 hours recently, we had the occasion to celebrate Jim Briody’s 100th 24-hour race. There was a big piece in the race magazine, and as well Cor Euser (for whose team Briody was driving) made a big banner across the pit, and a big celebration and fuss was made. Jim’s wife Pat had been in touch with venerable record-keeper and historian János Wimpffen, in order to chronicle the races. However, before the race, I received an email from János to advise that the real number of 24-hour races that Jim had contested was actually around 82, rather than the 100 that Jim and Pat were claiming.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, goes the old proverb, often raised in journalistic quarters, and I must admit that it did not seem apposite, in Texas, to rain on Jim’s parade. And in any case, competing in your 82nd 24-hour race, at the age of 75, is a worthy achievement indeed. But just in case anyone does ask Google “Who has made 100 24-hour race starts?” the answer isn’t Jim Briody.

I felt the same thing while watching the Le Mans ’66 film recently. It was certainly a good film, and I was delighted to see that Ken Miles’ efforts in the development of the Mk II GT40 were justly recognised, even if those of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme were somewhat overlooked. However, what spoiled it for me was the film’s willingness to play fast and loose with the facts. I don’t think I need to pick holes here, or bring your attention to what actually happened: all I would suggest is that you get hold of A. J. Baime’s book “Go Like Hell”, and compare it to the screenplay of the film.

The original Le Mans film (the one with Steve McQueen) made no pretence to tell a true story – nor for that matter did the John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix. But unquestionably both provided a sublime portrayal of the reality of racing (as well as a bit of glamour). But the more recent glut of motor-racing films – I’m thinking particularly of Senna, Rush and Le Mans ‘66 – have had an air of documentary authenticity about them and with that comes a responsibility to tell the truth. Misrepresenting the facts merely puts the rest of the story into jeopardy: where do you stop believing it?

There are some stories that have become the stuff of legend: the reason that Mercedes’ cars were silver rather than white in the 1930’s; the story of Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt’s win at Le Mans while hungover in 1953; Ed Hugus driving (or not) the winning Ferrari at Le Mans in 1965; right up to Hunt and Lauda’s rivalry in 1976. Often, the stories are better than the historical fact, so it is hardly surprising that they gain traction.

Motor racing is not alone in having its legends and myths, of course. Not just Hollywood, but many a respectable book-shelf is littered with examples of embellishment, exaggeration and downright fiction masquerading as fact. But history can be a very dry subject if not lubricated by a larger-than-life character or a tall story.

Yet still I am drawn by the need to seek out the truth of a situation; a desire to understand the motives, context and perspective rather than to hear glib sound-bites or watch a 20-second video clip. I am afraid that I believe that it is just as important to want to know – or find out – the historical facts as it is to be able to recount a good story. That is what distinguishes a good story-teller from a good historian. No doubt the former can win more friends; it is an unfortunate consequence that it is also the former that influences more people.

Old-fashioned musings

I had a conversation with someone recently. It went something like this:

ME: Well, if you feel so strongly about it, you should write to your MP.

HIM: I might write a strongly-worded letter to the BBC, but not to my MP. My MP is useless.

ME: Well, you voted for him.

HIM: No I didn’t.

I should stress that the exchange was far more light-hearted than the words above might convey. No argument ensued and we swiftly moved on to other matters. But it got me thinking, as these things often do, about the way of the world these days. Our democracy involves us electing a Member of Parliament, whose job it is to represent his constituents in the House of Commons. Inevitably, therefore, there will be a number of people in each constituency – indeed, sometimes a majority – who didn’t vote for the elected candidate, but whose views that candidate is obliged (morally at least) to represent. I’m not sure that this ever happens. Certainly not these days, but I am not learned enough to know whether it ever happened, or whether it was ever thus.

The same scene is replayed across the political spectrum, whether in terms of a candidate elected to serve their constituency, or a political leader elected to lead their party – or country, come to that.

In these politically turbulent times, you may be thinking: ah, here’s Trussers going all political, or that you are about to see my Brexit colours nailed to a mast. Well, sorry to disappoint, but if you think that’s about to happen, then perhaps you don’t know me as well as you thought.

Those who know me well will know that I use this blog sometimes to comment on the culture of the day, but with particular regard to motorsport, not politics. It may be that it is impossible to disentangle politics from anything these days, but in any case, it does seem to me that the rules of the game have changed.

Motorsport News may no longer have a letters page, but in general, journalism and broadcasting are no longer one-way streets. When I was growing up, whether I was watching motor sport on TV (very rare), going to Brands Hatch, Silverstone or Crystal Palace (more commonly) or reading about it in newspapers and magazines, I did not feel compelled to interact with anyone. Admittedly, a PA commentator once irritated me to the extent that I wrote to him, but it was an effort (bashed out on an old type-writer I inherited from my parents) and went through several iterations before I sent it off. But I tried to make it constructive, and in no way could it be described as ‘trolling’ (indeed the word didn’t exist in 1980).

Then I read recently that Autosport magazine is to cease publishing its magazine and rather will concentrate on its online offerings. Bizarrely, then, a clarification in the magazine itself revealed that the magazine would still be published in its traditional form, but at a price of £10.99, compared to the previous £3.99, an increase of 275%! Something rather incongruous there. I get the feeling all may not be what it seems.

Anyway, that is not my point. My point – I will get there eventually – is that the world is changing. Indeed, it has already changed and I don’t think it is going to change back. My way of thinking is now out-of-date. There, I’ve admitted it. I like books and magazines, but I am in the minority. I don’t like consuming my motorsport from a screen, I want to be at the event: whether that be behind the spectator fence or behind a microphone. I’ve been lucky this year to have spent time in the team garage, and the intensity of that feeling is even more palpable, visceral.

But when I see how many motorsports events are streamed online these days, and how often – with some notable exceptions – spectator enclosures are empty… again, I feel like I am in the minority. Look at period photos from club races in the fifties, and you will see rows and rows of spectators in the enclosures. These were unquestionably popular events – you could get close, and see, hear and feel the action. Compare that to the empty grandstand that overlooked the final round of the ELMS at Portimao last weekend.

Even if the streaming coverage is good (and frequently it isn’t), I find that I cannot experience the whole race if I am not there. And I hate being implored to “join the conversation”, to “let us know what you think”, whether I use a hashtag or not. But I think that the majority of people enjoy that aspect of it: and any resulting feeling of celebrity or notoriety.

The point is, that being in the minority is not that simple. I am not going to stand up and suggest that I am right and the rest are wrong – these are subjective matters, I recognise that. And I am prepared (grudgingly) to go along with the majority.

It just means that I might seem a bit grumpy to some. For that, I apologise. But leave me alone, I will get over it. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy motorsport, in whatever role I have. I am sure that others will enjoy their motorsport in their own way as well. That is what freedom is all about.

Since I have become dependent on it for my income, however, I understand better those who need motorsport for their livelihoods. I realise how easily passion for the sport can be compromised by commercial interests. And from there it is a short step to the self-centred, greedy motives that seem to drive the sport (and politics) into some rather strange directions.

Handicapping

I am not really very good at this blogging thing. A marketing person told me earlier this year that I need to be posting on social media every day, and that if I want to attract followers to my blog, then I need to write something new and interesting at least once a week. Apart from the fact that I find the expression “you need to” a rather objectionable one, I am also not so sure that social media is exactly where I want “my profile” to be.

I have also maintained that what I “need” to do is to provide for myself and my family, and as writing blog posts earns me no money, then it is consequently somewhat lower down my list of priorities. However, I do enjoy sharing some of my thoughts and insights on this platform, and equally I have enjoyed reading some of your comments on the subject of my exploits over the summer. Happily, it has been a busy time, my family is provided for (more or less) but this week I find myself with some time to kill.

The subject for an article did not immediately occur to me. Two things recently have got me thinking, however. First, was the decision of the FIA World Endurance Championship to adopt a “Success Handicap” system for its 2019-2020 season, and second, the concept used in both the International GT Open Championship and the British GT Championship of “Success Seconds” added to fixed pit stop times.

There has been some controversy and comment on this, and clearly they are artificial mechanisms introduced to make it harder for successful competitors to continue to have success. The concept is surely not alien – handicapping is routine in horse-racing and golf, and probably other sports besides. And while I agree that it interferes with the purity of the sport, the nature of motor-racing surely justifies some kind of re-balancing when the cars that are competing are patently not equal?

Let us also not forget that motor races have had handicaps since, well, since the earliest days. Some readers may be familiar with the name A. V. Ebblewhite, the famous handicapper and timekeeper at Brooklands between 1907 and 1939. Albert Victor Ebblewhite, known to everyone as ‘Ebby’, had the idea that racing at Brooklands, although fast, would be enlivened if the drivers of the fastest cars were made to start later than the drivers of the slower ones. So he devised staggered starting procedures, designed so that a close finish would result. It was certainly a successful exercise: he achieved three dead-heats between the two World Wars.

There was also the ‘Brooklands Chicane’, a temporary affair of wattle fencing and oil drums, through which there were four different routes, each of which required cars to slow down to a different extent. Depending on the performance of each car, its driver had to negotiate a specific lane. History does not record how offences were dealt with.

The problem with handicapping is the danger that it can lead to accusations of unfairness. The handicapper is in an invidious position. Competitors may be tempted to hide their true performance in order to avoid too severe a handicap in future. At Silverstone earlier this month, when the International GT Open series visited, what could have been a thrilling four-car battle for the lead of the race disintegrated when Martin Kodric, in his Teo Martin-run McLaren, decided he didn’t want to suffer a time penalty in the next round and deliberately slowed, causing a degree of chaos behind.

We have been told that the Toyota TS050 that won the first round at Silverstone will as a consequence suffer a 1.4s per lap penalty at the next round of the WEC at Fuji. After six hours, that should amount to more than five minutes. Based on the advantage that Toyota had over Rebellion at last year’s race, and that all other things are equal, that means that the Japanese manufacturer will only win by 40s this year, rather than four laps as it did in 2018. Artificial? Yes probably, but more exciting, surely?

Formula 1 races no longer excite me as much as they once did (although I have to admit that I haven’t been present at an F1 race for many years), but nevertheless I recognise that more people watch F1 than any other branch of the sport. But people talk of the racing in F1 not being exciting, despite the introduction of artificial aids such as DRS. Is the answer handicapping? I don’t know, but just imagine the appeal of a race where a McLaren, a Williams or a Haas might win. And how much easier would that make the task of finding sponsors for those teams? It wouldn’t need to be anything as complicated as restricting the output of the power units or adding weight, a simple additional pit stop – the length of which would depend on the number of championship points you had – would do the trick.

Just look at the Constructors’ Championship table. I am not suggesting that the pecking order should be changed; just that if some of the gaps would be reduced then more excitement would result. There is no reason to suppose that anyone other than the best driver over the full course of a season would become World Champion, but I am sure that an increase in spectator appeal would follow. Done in an overt way, so no-one would have any illusion that Mercedes (or Ferrari) were not actually doing the best job by overcoming (or not) the biggest handicap, would it work, do you think? And inevitably, if it were to happen – and work – in Formula 1, then the rest of the sport would follow.

Maybe Pierre Fillon, Gerard Neveu et al are on to something.

Winning from behind - a Timeout and "the Squeeze"

The last two weekends have both provided me with interesting opportunities to reflect on the vagaries of endurance racing. I spent the Easter weekend at Spa-Francorchamps for Creventic’s “12-hour” race: the sum of two parts of 3h 48m and 8h 48m meant it was only 11h 37m 32.882s in total, but in some ways that is not important.

Then, this last weekend I was at Silverstone for the Citroen C1 24-hour challenge, a remarkable race with 99 starters and which 11 different cars led overall at one point or another. What the two races had in common was that on both occasions the likely-looking winner was beaten in the closing stages by a faster car closing from behind. At Spa, the Herberth Porsche of Robert Renauer, Ralf Bohn and Daniel Alleman had been leading for most of the second part of the race, as the Scuderia Praha Ferrari of Matteo Malucelli, Josef Král and Jiří Písařík got the rough end of the “code-60 lottery” and fell back to be more than a minute and half behind with just under two hours to go.

With twenty minutes remaining, the gap was down to fifteen seconds, but Herberth had also managed to get themselves onto a slightly better fuel strategy, such that their final stop should have been around four seconds quicker. Even Matteo Malucelli wouldn’t have been able to close the gap in the remaining three laps. Or so we thought. The “tag” that is registered on the fuel pump had timed out while Ralf Bohn was trundling down the kilometre-long pit lane, and when the Herberth refuelling crew went to put the pump nozzle into the fuel filler on the Porsche’s bonnet, the pump did not provide any fuel. Resetting the pump was done quickly, but not quickly enough, and the stop was more than eight seconds longer than the stop for the Ferrari – the gap was gone and the lead changed.

At Silverstone, we had a classic example of what I call “The Squeeze” – where the leader is caught between a faster car closing the gap from behind and the end of the race that is just a little bit too far away.

The Circuit Pro team in car number 385, Simon Harrison, Patrick Watts and Tim Hartland had been in the lead of the race since around 7am, and had slowly drawn away from the rest of the field. By the time Tim Hartland took over at the wheel for his final stint, at 10:45am, there was a one-lap gap back to the number 321 Old Hat-entered car of Dan Bruce, Tony Hutchings, Callum Hutchings and James Keepin and two laps back to the very rapid number 347 McAttack entry of Joe Wiggin, Declan McDonnell and Simon Walker-Hansell.

The race had started at 5:30pm on Saturday, after a full day of BARC-organised racing – crucially, the green light had been shown at 17:31:29, so Hartland’s job was to be quick, stay out of trouble, and drive for 2h 10m. Tight, for a full tank of 35 litres fuel for a Citroen C1, but certainly feasible, bearing in mind that the car was under no pressure. That would give Patrick Watts and Simon Harrison similar length stints and allow the team to get to the end of the race with just two more stops.

All the competition would certainly need three more stops, meaning that the Circuit Pro team’s lead was all the more secure. Hartland duly brought the car back in at 1pm after a 43-lap stint, and Patrick Watts went back out with (one assumes) a full tank of fuel, a lap’s lead over the rest of the field, and a pit stop in hand. A safety car period just before 2pm gave Joe Wiggin in the McAttack car the chance to refuel cheaply, but of course that also gave Watts the chance to save fuel.

The turning point came when Patrick Watts brought the Circuit Pro car in for its final stop at 3:14pm after a stint of 39 laps – four laps less than Tim Hartland had done, and leaving Simon Harrison needing to stay out for 2h 15m to get to the end of the 24 hours. By the time Harrison had got away, the McAttack car had gone through into the lead, but had a pit stop still to make. Ten laps later, Joe Wiggin was in, to hand over to Simon Walker-Hansell.

For the McAttack team, the chase was now on: the gap at the end of Walker-Hansell’s first flying lap was 1m 54s, but he was lapping between one and two seconds per lap quicker. I would love to know the amount of information that the Circuit Pro team had at their disposal at this point – later this year, I am hoping to catch up with Simon Harrison, and he will probably be willing to discuss things, but for now this is mere speculation (or informed guesswork). Poor old Simon probably didn’t have much to go on from the driving seat either – team radio was banned, mobile phones not allowed: the only means of communication was via the pit board. I heard after the event that some teams had their car radio tuned into the commentary on Silverstone Radio, and apparently, it was helpful.

Anyway, from the comfort of the commentary box, I was able to simulate the progress of Simon Walker-Hansell in the McAttack car, and assuming an average lap time of 3m 03s, it seemed that he would get to the end of lap 405 at a race elapsed time of 24h 00m 29s

To win the race, therefore, Simon Harrison would have to complete 405 laps before 24h 00m 29s, but after 24h 00m, or have to go onto an extra lap. The extra lap would mean a stint of 44 laps. The car’s longest stint in dry conditions had been 43 laps. Circuit Pro’s dilemma: Pit to get more fuel? Or stay out and try to conserve fuel? Wait for a Safety Car? That could be disastrous, as it would likely as not cause the gap to close significantly.

Calculators out again: The time lost in pit lane at the speed limit of 40km/h: 40s. Driver out and in: 15s. They would probably only need two more litres of fuel; still that would take 15s. Total time lost: 1m 10s. So if Circuit Pro would have called Harrison in for the “splash and dash”, it would have reduced the gap from 1m 54s to around 45s at best. At that point in the race, assuming there were no Safety Cars (there weren’t), there were 30 laps remaining. With Harrison flat out, could Walker-Hansell close the gap at a rate of 1.5s per lap?

Looking at Harrison’s lap times, it is not easy to work out at whether he was trying to save fuel early in his stint. His first flying lap was lap 364, then laps 383, 390 and 395 were the car’s three fastest laps of the race – so it is clear from those that his main concern was speed. From lap 397 onwards, though, he hardly got within two seconds of his best lap. By this time, the gap back to Walker-Hansell was less than a minute, so Harrison’s options were limited. Actually, he had no option, he had to stay out. He was between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t have time to stop for fuel anymore, but he needed to stretch the fuel to do 44 laps in the stint. Or hope that Simon Walker-Hansell would just slow down a bit. He was feeling the Squeeze.

Rather than averaging 3m 03s, the McAttack car was doing 3m 02.2s – meaning that Walker-Hansell was on schedule to cross the line after 405 laps at 24h 00m 03s. If Circuit Pro was aware of that, the pit board would surely have been telling Harrison to push on. He appeared out of Luffield at the end of his 405th lap with 15s still on the clock. He slowed, expecting the chequered flag to be put out. The man holding the flag stood resolutely watching his stop-watch in one hand, the flag still furled in the other. Ten-nine-eight, the seconds were ticking down and Harrison accepted the inevitable and went onto another lap, despite it already being 17:31, according to his on-board clock. Did they know the race had started nearly 90s after the appointed time? Behind, Walker-Hansell had closed to within seven seconds of the leader, and crossed the line with 24h 00m 00.084s elapsed.

Lap 406, Simon Harrison’s C1 coughed as it exited Stowe, and Simon Walker-Hansell pounced. The car that had started at the very back of the grid, had then lost five minutes in the pits at the end of lap one, had managed to take the lead on the very last lap, and win by just 7.219s.

Who says endurance racing isn’t exciting?

Endurance Racing away from the WEC - part 4: Nürburgring 24 hours

Of the nine 24-hour races that my work for radiolemans.com enabled me to attend this year, the highlight is obviously the one that gives its name to the show, Le Mans itself. With its massive global audience and standing in the sporting calendar, it is the one race of which most people have heard, and it is the race that I look forward to the most each year.

Since re-vitalising this blog last month, I have looked in turn at the races organised by Creventic, SRO (in particular the Spa 24 hours) and VLN. However, I have made only fleeting reference to the ADAC 24 hours of the Nürburgring.

This year was my tenth at the Nürburgring 24 hours, and it is an important date in my diary. Partly, this has to do with the fact that it is the only truly stand-alone 24-hour race that I go to. All the others ‘belong’ to a championship, or a series in some shape or another, and I find this changes its complexion somewhat.

It has not always been thus, of course. Le Mans has often been a stand-alone race, but the current alliance between the ACO and FIA seems strong, so chances are that the Nürburgring will remain unique in its standing as a one-off race, at least for the foreseeable future.

Having written about the VLN series lately, there is much in common between that series and the N24 race, and the opportunity to drive on (or spectate at) the mighty Nordschleife is certainly a common thread. But the 24 hours raises the whole profile – you only need to be in the area during the time of the 24 hour race and you know something is up. It’s almost as if you can smell the 24-hour race in the air. (Actually that is probably more true than I realised as I wrote it).

What the Nürburgring 24 hour race has in common with the VLN series is its attainability. With such a large grid and four drivers in most cars, there are opportunities aplenty for drivers who have acquired their ‘Nordschleife permit’ to race in one of the world’s greatest races, alongside some of the world’s greatest drivers in some of the world’s greatest GT cars.

The Nürburgring 24 hours is a bit of a moveable feast. It nearly always happens across a bank holiday weekend, sometimes the Corpus Christi holiday and sometimes Ascension Day. Both of these fall on a Thursday, providing spectators an added incentive to spend anything up to a week in their tents, camper-vans and motorhomes, nestled among the woods of the Eifel mountains.

Back at my first N24 in 2008, the ADAC accepted entries from 230 cars, but safety concerns about speed differentials arose, leading to the elimination of the less-powerful touring cars for the 2009 race. Since then, entry numbers have gone down, although never lower than in 2015, when a mere 151 cars lined up on the grid, and an unpopular speed limit at various points of the track was imposed. The two-stage ‘Nordschleife permit’ may also be unpopular in some quarters, but was probably a necessary compromise.

Through all this, the race continues to deliver. In 2016, there was a right old dust-up on the final lap as Maro Engel (against Mercedes’ team orders, apparently) forced his Black Falcon-entered AMG GT3 ahead of the similar car from HTP, driven by Christian Hohenadel, as the two headed out onto the Nordschleife for the final time.

This year, the Eifel weather intervened with less than an hour of the race remaining, after the long-time leader, the Land Motorsport Audi, had fallen back with an electronic problem. Whoever it was in the team that made the final call to fit wet-weather tyres at the final stop was responsible, in the end, for the car’s victory, as others slithered off the track – again, all on the final lap of the race.

Although the racing these last two years has been worthy of a Hollywood drama, it is actually the atmosphere of event that makes it a highlight for me. Media parking is in a wooded copse just opposite the famous Dorint Hotel that overlooks the start-finish line. Once you’ve crossed the road and walked past the famous bronze statue of Fangio and his Maserati 250F celebrating his 1957 win, you then pass through the old paddock. For the duration of the weekend, this becomes a rather noisy and smelly ‘drift arena’, but nevertheless, echoes of the past can still be heard. The historic Fahrerlager was erected with the circuit in 1927, but restored in 2011 and is now a valuable part of the circuit’s heritage. It puts you in the mood as you pass under the track, past slogans commemorating various highlights from the circuit’s history, a wall containing the names of winners and a statue of Wolfgang von Trips in a small garden of remembrance, planted with trees in memorial to other personalities from the past.

Once in the modern-day paddock you enter a seething mass of people, awnings and transporters; hooting tyre trollies, beer-swilling locals and leggy ladies in a constant battle to get to somewhere else. It is easy to get swept along by the tide and impossible not to feel like you’re at some kind of sixties’ funfair.

The sense of chaos continues on the grid – up to three hours before the start, cars are pushed out onto the start-finish straight, and to mill about, as everyone else is doing, is a great way to prepare for the 24-hour marathon ahead, although quite why this might be the case, I can’t explain. Everyone is full of high hopes, agitated with nervous anxiety.

The build-up to Le Mans has become a well-choreographed TV bonanza these days, to my mind at the expense of the enthusiast. If you want to feel part of the event, I suggest you give the Nürburgring a try.

True, some of its sharper teeth have been pulled and I can only imagine that this trend will continue. So the sooner you experience it, the better. There is something very special about endurance racing, especially races over a 24 hour period. The fascination of observing machinery, drivers, engineers and spectators overcoming the fatigue that through-the-night racing offers is a lot of fun, and difficult to describe to those who haven’t experienced it.

Look in the eyes of those who have, though, and you see a connection, an understanding of a common interest. The good thing, is that whatever happens to the World Endurance Championship, there are still races offering all the elements – some would say more – albeit on a slightly less influential stage.

Reflecting on the state we’re in

It had to happen, I suppose. It was inevitable that a major manufacturer would withdraw from the World Endurance Championship at some point. But in my view, the bombshell that Audi dropped when it announced its intention to withdraw from the championship at the end of the current season, is not as severe as the one that Peugeot dropped when it pulled out at the beginning of 2012. At that time, remember, the FIA had only recently launched their World Endurance Championship, and the title that Peugeot and Audi had been fighting over was the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, the final round of which the French manufacturer had won, with a dominant 1-2 victory by a lap over the nearest opposition.

In January 2012, the latest 908 HDI was already at Sebring, ready for testing, when the plug was pulled on the racing programme, leaving a large number of racing folk with uncertain futures, to say nothing of a gaping hole in the championship. By June 2012, two Toyotas had been hastily prepared to lend some respectability to the grid for Le Mans and in 2014, Porsche arrived with the immediately-competitive 919 Hybrid. And ever since, we’ve been treated to some of the best racing ever seen at such a high level of the sport.

But to put this into context, let us not forget that in 2003, 2004 and 2005 Joest Racing was not present at Le Mans (although obviously various team personnel were involved in the race). On the other hand, readers may remember 1996 and 1997, when the team cobbled together an entry for Le Mans – and ended up winning – with the WSC95 Porsche.

Joest Racing certainly has access to several R18s in their workshop, including a non-hybrid ultra that ran in 2012. Although it would be five years old next year, it would probably still be able to carry off the Privateers’ trophy. If Joest is going to continue to be involved in the World Endurance Championship, it is going to have to find some funding from somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time. Think back to various Porsches 956s and 962s entered by Joest in the eighties – they had some substantial sponsorship packages. Don’t forget that Reinhold was a successful driver in the past. He didn’t get there by paying all his own bills. There may also be those in the Audi AG boardroom who would welcome the opportunity to see some “four rings” branding at Le Mans in 2017.

Racing goes in cycles. It always has. Periods of strength are followed by periods of weakness. And the period of weakness for which we are now headed is only relative. So I am not about to turn away from sportscar racing - I think there will be some great races next year. Nevertheless, I thought I would add my few thoughts here to those of everyone else who has written or spoken on the subject.

The first thing to say is that no-one in my circle of contacts has really expressed surprise at Audi’s decision to withdraw. Rumours that it was to happen at the end of 2017 were increasing and no-one denies that what Audi has been this year is nothing like the force that it was even as recently as two or three years ago.

Secondly, I do not believe that it is necessarily a good thing if endurance races are without fail close, exciting races with side-by-side racing and close finishes. Such is not the nature of the beast, and if those in control have such an aim, then we are headed in the wrong direction.

Thirdly, getting more manufacturers involved in LMP1 is not worth doing if it is not done properly. Whether it is BMW, Peugeot or Ford (all of which I could easily show up with a prototype in the next five years) we must avoid another fiasco like that of Nissan’s LMP1 foray in 2015. Although the episode demonstrated admirably that it is quite hard to do what Porsche and Toyota have done, the Nismo effort failed to deliver much else. The sport needs to get on with what it does and allow nature – or whatever it is that governs these things – to take its course.

Enough of the philosophy though: on a pragmatic level, what’s going to happen in 2017? Well, there are still things to be decided, for sure. The most crucial of those decisions is for Toyota. Take two cars to Le Mans, or three? The arguments given in previous years for only entering two cars are surely still valid? If not, and if the view taken in the Japanese boardroom is that extreme steps must be taken to avert the disappointments of Le Mans 2016, then the incremental cost of a third car is not as much as the potential benefit of having a 50% better chance of getting the car to the finish. Then, although Porsche has been tight-lipped on the subject, surely Weissach will respond with a third Porsche 919 as well? In turn, this would be good news for the ACO – needing to fill 60 garages at Le Mans – as well as for Messrs Jarvis, Tréluyer, Lotterer, Fässler et al.

Otherwise, it is difficult to see where the former Audi drivers might end up. One assumes that Lucas di Grassi and Loïc Duval will occupy themselves with Formula E, but what of the others? Well, I would suggest that they go and have a chat with Nicolas Lapierre. I grant you that LMP2 will look different next year, but I reckon that the Frenchman, who was unceremoniously dumped by Toyota at the end of 2014, might have some interesting thoughts on the competitiveness of the class and how much fun there is to be derived from the racing – if not the financial reward.

It was interesting that the Audi announcement specifically mentioned Formula E as being one of its focus points for the immediate future. While I agree with Gary Watkins in Autosport that the remarks might have been disingenuous, I wonder also whether it means that Daniel Abt’s team might be getting even more resource from Audi next year. Is a Formula E arms race about to start?

Back to endurance racing though. Even if the World Endurance Championship may have suffered a blow with Audi’s withdrawal, there is no sign of any reduction in interest in LMP2, LMP3 or GT racing. Talk of convergence of GTE and GT3 racing has been replaced by arguments about who can provide the best LMP3 racing. GT4 is flourishing on the national level. All in all, things could be a lot worse.

Stéphane Ratel’s Blancpain GT Series has announced a ten round series for 2017 – five for the endurance series, two of which depart from the normal three hours duration - the 1000km race into the night at Paul Ricard, and the showpiece Spa 24 hours, surely one of the highlights of the season.

The Creventic organisation – addressing a somewhat different marketplace from Ratel – is expanding in 2017, with a six-round GT series, featuring three 24-hour races, rounded off by a non-championship 24-hour race at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

Now Creventic doesn’t really target the sort of teams that contend the World Endurance Championship, but nevertheless, if you include the ADAC’s Nürburgring 24 hours, you have six 24-hour races to participate in, if you are so minded, without counting Le Mans or Daytona. With several high-profile 12-hour races as well, is it all too much?

It depends. At the Brno Epilog 24-hour race last month, I had the sense that the culture of a 24-hour race has changed, certainly in the Creventic series. There was a time when nothing would be spared to get the car to the finish, when taking the flag was everything. At Le Mans, that culture still exists. But in some of the ‘lesser’ 24-hour races that we have these days, there is an element of “let’s just pack up and get some sleep”, which was new to me this year. At least in part, I think, that is because we simply have too much of a good thing. It is still special to race through the night, to pit yourself against fatigue and push through to the end, but like many things these days, “it isn’t like it used to be”!

I am put in mind of the athletes that one reads about these days that complete multiple marathons – often on consecutive days. I have nothing but respect for such people, but it is inevitable that by their actions, they devalue the single event. In effect, more is less. Those who have read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘David and Goliath’ will know the effect of the inverted ‘U’ curve. Oftentimes, more is less.

As always, your comments are welcome!

Celebratory Reflections...

Today I become a year older. It is not a significant birthday, in the sense that I reach a nice round number of years, unless you are one of those people who attach especial importance to prime numbers; and in any case, I am not one of those to celebrate birthdays overmuch. Devoted readers may remember my acknowledgement of the passing of 20,000 days a few years ago – it’s here if you want to go and look, so the fact of my birthday is not a ‘huge big deal’ in my life.

However, I am surprised how many people choose to use the moment to say ‘many happy returns’ on facebook – and I have to say I am also flattered. Perhaps here and now is a good opportunity to thank you for your good wishes – and I hope that I go on to have many more happy birthdays! A wonderful feature of our humanity is that we can choose to pour out goodwill towards our fellow man – simple acts of kindness, if you will.

Yet although we are broadly good-natured animals, there seem to be many occasions when we think only of ourselves and what the outcome will be for us as individuals. With the upcoming referendum in the UK and presidential elections in the US, we have the opportunity to make a choice that will benefit our respective nations – at least one would hope so. More often than not, it simply boils down to a question of whether one can expect to be better off in one situation or another.

None of this has anything to do with motor-racing, of course. But I do not live such a one-dimensional life as you might think. Well, not quite. The point here – as I reflect that another year gone by means another year closer to the grave – is to set a context, and for that you need also to read my previous post speculating on where we might be in six to eight years’ time.

There are currently - without even considering series at a national level - at least four organisations running races for GT3 cars: SRO, the ACO, Creventic and IMSA. There are others, but let’s not get bogged down in detail. Then there is the GTE class of the World Endurance Championship and GT-LM in the IMSA-organised series in the USA.

Now it may be that my mind’s eye has been put a little out-of-focus by a couple of glasses of claret to celebrate my advancing years, but I can envisage a time when there will be a single, worldwide definition for a racing grand tourer. The trouble is that those two (“honestly, officer!”) glasses of wine have obscured the two big obstacles: co-ordination and goodwill.

It strikes me that both of these have to do with the personalities involved: for once I don’t mean the drivers, but the organising bodies. One thing that is remarkable about the current state of GT racing is the cross-over of drivers and teams between the various series and championships. The enthusiasm for participation in endurance events is refreshing, although politics is never far away, it is seldom visible on the surface.

As I have mentioned before, some manufacturers are spending a great deal of money, as are sponsors and some wealthy individuals who are participating. The ones who are not spending any money are the organisers. Their attitude seems to echo that of the unsavoury side of human nature: what’s in it for me?

There is nothing really wrong with this, of course: Darwinism is based on much the same approach, but am I alone in detecting antagonism where there could so easily be co-operation? Competition may improve the breed, but it also divides the market. In a perfect world, such division would not have to exist, and my vision of unity might be possible. Sadly, that’s not the way it is and I don’t see how things will change while there are people out there whose jobs and income depend on the sport. But I fear that is the problem with all professional sport.

Enough of this – it’s time to get on with some racing. And possibly a glass of port.

Christmas Rumblings from Ebenezer Truswell...

There are 21 Formula 1 Grands Prix scheduled for 2016. There are nine rounds in the WEC. If you are so minded, you could easily find eight 24 hour races (Le Mans, Spa, Nürburgring, Daytona, Dubai, Silverstone, Paul Ricard, Barcelona,) to go to and a three proper 12 hour races (Bathurst, Sebring, Sepang), not to mention the ‘split’ races at Mugello, Zandvoort, Brno, and Abu Dhabi. And those are all top line, international events, not merely national races for production cars. It’s enough. In fact it is too much. The ELMS is expanding to six races, the US sportscar season has twelve rounds and we are in the middle (you may have missed it) of a four-round Asian Le Mans [Winter] Series.

Then there are the ten rounds of the Blancpain GT Series, half of which are billed as “Endurance” races, held over three hours or more. That is more than fifty races and I have not even mentioned British GT, the GT-tour, VLN, ADAC GT, Dutch Supercar or Japanese Super GT. Or the Thunderhill 25-hour race, which seems also to be growing in stature.

I get the feeling these days of a helter-skelter: a headlong rush from one race to another, with no time to reflect between races. If that’s my view as an outsider, then for those involved, whether it be to prepare the cars, to organise the travel and hotels, or to manage, run and direct the races themselves, it is surely only a stone’s throw away from utter chaos.

Does it have to be this way? Can everyone truly hope to have a bigger slice of every cake? I suppose it depends on your point of view. For teams running cars, for organising bodies selling airtime to TV stations, then yes, having more races means more revenue, more turnover, more profit.

For professional drivers, of course, it means more earning opportunities and for gentleman drivers, more chances to indulge in their hobby, even if that means spending more money to do so.

The difficulty that I have with it all is that the abundance of racing diminishes the significance of individual events. Forgive me if I digress for a moment. Our local Rotary Club organises an annual firework display in a park close to our house. We went along this year, paid our £14 to get in, and were treated to a veritable extravaganza. It was good entertainment, thoroughly enjoyed by all the family, and it was made all the more special by the fact that, although the Rotary Club organises it annually, we had missed the last two events.

The point is that the intervening 36 months served to make the event, when we saw it, all the more special. There would be nothing (except some local bye-laws and an uncooperative council, probably) to stop them organising fireworks every Saturday night. But where would be the fun in that? What would be special about going along to something that you can see every week?

It is possible, though, that this is just me, failing to move with the times. I must admit I find the current trend towards social media deeply unsettling, a constant distraction as the appetite for the latest news grows - consumers seem to want less and less content, more and more often. Maybe I am in the minority, shuddering at the words of that Wizzard song: “I wish it could be Christmas every day!”

But all this proliferation may be no bad thing. If it is a case of suppliers providing what the market demands, then is it not exceedingly curmudgeonly of me to groan a little? In many ways I’m all in favour of giving the market what it wants, but then again, there are times when a little restraint can be a good thing. Like at Christmas, when, as my father used to say: “moderation in all things”; although I think it was Oscar Wilde who added “… including moderation”!

Today it seems to me there is a tendency to react (especially through social media outlets) rather than reflect – to think fast rather than to think deeply. The world today is seen through the judgemental lens of a smart phone rather than the eye of wisdom and empathy.

Anyway, to all my readers, merry Christmas: may it be a joyful time of year for you all, and may 2016 live up to our hopes and not down to our fears!

Keeping Safe?

For the second time in successive races, the field started the Six Hours of Shanghai behind the Safety Car. Given the fact that the Free Practice and Qualifying sessions had all been held in dry – and in some cases, sunny – conditions, this was probably a sensible decision. The same thing happened three weeks before that in Fuji - although the rain was somewhat heavier, practice had been held on a dry track. Indeed, it was the second time in three years that the Six Hours of Fuji was started behind the Safety Car – maybe there is a lesson somewhere there for the calendar-maker?

I have written previously about starting a race behind a Safety Car and while I have to admit reservations about the purity of such a start, I suppose it is best summed up as the ‘least-worst option’. The pity of it is that 22 minutes (in the case of Shanghai) and 38 minutes (in the case of Fuji) of the 360 minutes scheduled racing were lost.

In 1977, I was at Brands Hatch for the World Championship of Makes Six Hours, which in dire conditions, had to be stopped after 37 laps. It was restarted as a 2h 45m race, once conditions had improved somewhat, but annoyingly, those first laps were deemed not to ‘count’ and the efforts of drivers in part one went unrewarded. I was standing in a puddle of ever-increasing dimensions as I waited for the decisions to be reached, and although track conditions improved towards the end of the afternoon, it was all rather dismal.

In 1982, again at Brands Hatch, again it was raining and the 1,000kms race again had to be stopped – after just nine laps. This time though, it was calculated as a two-part race, with times from the first twenty-minute part being added to the time for the rest of the race (a little over five hours) to create an aggregate result, albeit 27 laps short of the scheduled distance. This allowed Jacky Ickx (sharing with Derek Bell) to take victory, even though he didn’t manage to get past Teo Fabi’s Martini-sponsored Lancia, which won ‘on the road’, by just 1.7s, but which had finished the first race 6.4s behind the Rothman’s Porsche.

Had the rules for 1977 applied in 1982, then not only would Fabi and Patrese have won the race at Brands, but also Ickx would not have been world champion!

Although a Safety Car (then called a Pace-car) was first used at Le Mans in 1981, it took until the end of the decade before its use – to ‘neutralise’ the race – became widespread in racing across Europe. Particularly at Le Mans – for obvious reasons – but in all forms of racing: endurance racing, single-seaters, touring cars, the circumstances in which a race would be stopped became fewer and fewer. As a result, ‘aggregate’ races became consigned to history. Having the race decided ‘on the road’ became of critical importance, even if it meant that big leads were wiped out at a stroke as the Safety Car pulled onto the track. ‘Picking up the leader’ became crucial as well, of course, which meant that cars continued to circulate at racing speed, while the Safety Car driver chose his moment to accelerate. It seems to me that the aim of ‘Safety First’ was already being compromised as officialdom tried to implement safety procedures.

It wasn’t long before teams began to build the inevitable Safety Car period into their race plan, and race organisers were left playing catch-up trying to deal with the perceived unfairness that arose.

As a result, procedures became ever-more complicated, in the interests of preserving safety without compromising the race, and teams became ever-more adept in developing tactics to make the best of things. In US sportscar racing, it is rare for a Safety Car period to be less than 20 minutes – surely in this time, the race could have been stopped and restarted?

Worse though, is that different organising bodies have adopted different procedures. With a simple waved yellow flag it is easy. Drivers learn from their first race its meaning: “Great danger ahead, no overtaking, slow down, be prepared to stop.” But with a Safety Car Procedure it is not so simple. Mistakes were made: not only by drivers, but by officialdom as well.

In this year’s World Endurance Championship, there are three different and distinct ways of providing a safer environment to allow incidents that occur on the track to be handled, in addition to the ‘traditional’ yellow flag (see above), without having to resort to the dreaded ‘race stoppage’.

First, of course, there’s the Safety Car. But the procedure for using the Safety Car is different, depending whether we’re at Le Mans or not. And either case that’s different from procedures in the US, where many of the WEC drivers are occupied on non-clashing races.

Second, there’s the Full Course Yellow – similar to the so-called ‘Virtual Safety Car’ procedure in F1, but entirely different from a Safety Car procedure, in that drivers are required to keep to a blanket speed limit, imposed at the same time on the whole circuit. Theoretically at least, this should lead to ‘no bunching’, but Lewis Hamilton jeopardised even that theory by his antics at the US GP.

And third, there is the Slow Zone – again, requiring drivers to keep to a speed limit (80km/h), but only for a specific, and hopefully short, section of the track.

I hope you, dear reader, are keeping up here. Because if you’re not, then what chance the 100-odd racing drivers that take part in every round of the WEC?

At Shanghai, there were four periods of Full Course Caution, and at Fuji there were three. In three of those seven periods, pit stops were made by one or more of the Porsches and Audis that were at the sharp end of those races. Quite obviously, there is a lot to be gained from pitting during a FCY period, and if teams did not realise this initially, it is now common knowledge. Only two of these periods lasted for more than ten minutes, the rest were five minutes or less. In terms of laps, only one period was for more than three laps.

If the Safety Car is used, then the pit lane is closed for the first three laps. This rule is in place, not for safety reasons, but to avoid that some cars gain an advantage. There doesn’t seem any logical reason to me why the SC should close the pit lane, but that a FCY period should not – the advantage to be gained is identical. In fact, at Shanghai and Fuji, the SC laps were quicker than those spent under FCY conditions, so the chances of a car running out of fuel was actually greater – except for the fact, of course, that the SC was only used at the start of both races.

In the tennis match of rule-making, the ball is now in the FIA WEC Endurance Committee’s court to close this loophole and close the pit lane during a FCY period.

Although the option of a Slow Zone has been available to race director Eduardo Freitas, it has not been used since Le Mans. Bearing in mind the carnage that ensued as SZ procedures were not properly implemented - on more than one occasion - at Le Mans, one can see the wisdom of this. But, it is only by implementing these things, and learning from the experiences, that we will get to a satisfactory position.

It is interesting, that in drivers’ briefings, they are told that, in the implementation of a FCY, there is a “reaction time” element: enabling drivers (in effect) to choose the moment when they reduce speed to 80km/h. This is entirely sensible, since you don’t want to be hitting the brakes halfway through a long, high-speed corner. The main problem with the existing SZ procedure is the transition into and out of it. Preceding any Slow Zone is a yellow flag zone, through which drivers have to slow from racing speed to 80km/h. After the Slow Zone, the green flag indicates an immediate return to racing speed is possible. It is in the transition zones where the problems arise, particularly due to less-experienced drivers in some of the less powerful cars.

It seems to me that race officials need to recognise this and make suitable allowance in the procedure, to make the Slow Zone a more effective tool. At the moment it is under-utilised and wasted, in my opinion.

Familiarity with the procedure, whatever it is, undoubtedly helps, as does a clear message in driver briefings. These days, telemetry and GPS data are available to Race Control, so identifying transgressions and dangerous driving should not be as subjective an issue as in former times. If penalties for dangerous driving were draconian but fair, and safety rules and procedures were consistent, not just during a season, but across different series and championships, regardless of territory, organising body or racing discipline, then drivers would respond, and perhaps could then trusted to behave appropriately when following safety regulations.

It will never be possible to completely remove the element of chance and luck from racing. But to ensure that safety procedures commensurate with the times in which we currently live are feasible, drivers, race officials – in the control tower and on the circuit – as well as the spectators, need to know and understand what is going on. Then, and only then, will it be possible to create maximum safety with minimum disruption.

Looking back on 2014 and forward to 2015

2014 has been rather a hectic year, and I have written rather less on this blog that I have wanted to, particularly in the middle of the year. Pressures of work, family, other commitments: they've all taken their toll, and meant that I’ve not written about all manner of things that I have wanted to.

So I’m going to attempt to address that with this - a rather all-encompassing mish-mash of thoughts, experiences and tales from my year. At least part of it. Since writing here is purely a hobby for me, it has been one of my lower priorities. No, that’s not quite true: it’s a leisure activity, and hence it’s important to me. It is also a platform that I use to indulge myself. I may not make any money out of it, but I take great pleasure in watching how many readers I get; where they are based; and what reaction I get to my various musings.

I’ve been touched by offers from various people of help, in very open-ended forms: not knowing what might improve things for me, people wanting to make things better. As a Christian, I believe that prayer can make a difference, and whether folk have been praying, or whether it is just a general sense of positiveness, or whether pure chance and circumstance; you may all have different views.

But from my side, I am expecting a very different year next year from the one that is about to pass. Before going on to tell you about that though, a reflection on some of the things that I have wanted to write about this year, but failed, being overtaken (and possibly lapped) by events before I had chance put fingers to keyboard.

Back in July, the opportunity arose for me to visit Silverstone on the first day of free practice for the British Grand Prix, and it seemed like a good idea to go. I was surprised to discover, when I checked, that it had been as many as 12 years since I had last been at a Formula 1 race - having seen my first British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in 1968, and been to every single GP in this country between 1976 and 2002 - I may nowadays associate myself more with endurance and sportscars, but it was not ever thus.

These days there are many F1 fans - they call themselves “motorsport fans” - who rarely visit a race. I don’t want to say this is necessarily a bad thing, for F1 on TV these days is very popular, due entirely to these fans; but personally, I do think that you can’t beat actually being there. To experience things from the spectator’s viewpoint is crucial for me and I had a jolly good day out at Silverstone. Admittedly I didn’t actually get there until mid-way through Free Practice 1, but by doing so I had no dramas with parking, no queues, and got to the trackside very easily indeed. The sun shone and it was great to be able to wander around the enclosures, spending the whole day watching from various points. I was rather disappointed to be told that I couldn’t go in the ‘Silverstone Six’ grandstand: the one that overlooks the inside of the Becketts esses as well as the exit to the Loop; but I did get into the stand on the outside of Becketts, and also at Stowe, Club, and opposite the pits.

It was great too, to see Silverstone looking its best. There is no doubt that when everything is painted, the grass is mown and there are vendors’ stands everywhere, the place has a splendid atmosphere, worthy of any major public event, sporting or otherwise.

I'm not sure whether Formula 1 lived up to my expectations though. For me, the lack of noise was an issue, even for one who has grown to love the whispering diesel prototypes that do so well in endurance racing. The only point of jaw-dropping, knocking-my-socks-off, in-your-face Formula 1 was when I stood on the outside of the track, at Maggotts, the first element of the Becketts esses. There you can get yourself pretty close to the track, and the barely bridled violence of a Grand Prix car at speed can be felt in every fibre of one's body. But without that immediacy, it was - at times - a bit tame, especially at slow corners. Granted of course, I was just there for a free practice session, and that never quite grabs the attention in the same way as a full-blown race, but still, I felt there was something out-of-reach about Formula 1 when I look back to the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s whereas I had the impression that today’s cars were being driven by mere mortals.

Apart from the Grand Prix, I didn’t go to any races ‘for fun’ this year. Indeed, following the Spa 24 hours in July, I didn’t manage to get to any other races this year at all - apart from those kart races in which my son was competing! After trips in the first half of the year to Dubai, Bathurst, Silverstone, Le Mans and Nürburgring, this was not such a sacrifice, and family holidays in Spain and Warwickshire (yes, Warwickshire) at least enabled me to increase my store of brownie points in August.

Covering the five remaining rounds of the World Endurance Championship for radiolemans.com from my spare bedroom might not have been exotic, but it worked pretty well, in my opinion - and your views would of course be welcome. Although it would have been fun to travel to Texas, Japan, China, Bahrain and Brazil, I am pretty sure that my home and work life would not have survived such trips.

Without the assistance of the kind folk at Al Kamel Systems (the WEC timekeepers) and of SBG Sports Software, who loaned me a version of their RaceWatch software, it would have been a far more difficult exercise though. These systems together enabled me to follow what was going on halfway across the globe and indeed furnished me with more information than John Hindhaugh and Graham Goodwin were getting in their commentary booth at the various circuits.

Inspired by my experiences of ‘remote commentary’, and also by the discovery that one LMP1 team had more than 250 working technicians at Le Mans this year, I began to work on an article entitled ‘Remote Engineering’; the purpose of which was to make the case that a lot of the strategy work, telemetry monitoring, tactical decision-making and more, can be done ‘back at base’ and doesn’t need to have people travelling to all the races at all. Maybe that’s an article that will get written in 2015.

I’ve also wanted to tell you about some good books that I’ve read this year. Tony Brooks’ autobiography, ‘Poetry in Motion’ was probably the best of the motor racing ones. In his foreword, Brooks boasts (or maybe admits is a better word), that it is all his own work. Despite offers of help from professional writers, he decided to write it himself. It shows too, but it is a good read for all that. Brooks manages to confront his critics, puff out his chest and boast of his achievements, but all in a modest way. As one who spent his career up against the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, he hardly disguises his opinions of his contemporaries, and provides some splendid insights into a somewhat different world that was motor racing fifty or sixty years ago.

I tend to shy away from expensive ‘photo books’, and hence bought the latest book ‘Uncrowned King’ about Jochen Rindt with some trepidation. I had experienced Rindt's career as it happened, and remember to this day coming home from Crystal Palace and seeing an Evening Standard news placard from the top deck of the 164 bus at Rose Hill blurting out the news: “Racing star killed at Monza”.

I had read Heinz Prüller’s biography, and wasn’t sure that I needed to revisit the subject. However, partly prompted by the fact that David Tremayne is a writer that I enjoy reading and also by the fact that Rindt belongs to that special band of drivers to have won Le Mans; I took the plunge, and am very glad that I did. It may be expensive, and it may have a lot of pictures, but if you're looking for a last minute Christmas present for a friend, then you could do a lot worse. It’s a book that I suspect a lot of people don’t have.

At the moment, I am part way through ‘Doctor on the Grid’ by Tony Goodwin. Although I haven’t seen him for years, I got to know Tony quite well in my days at Brands Hatch; and a nicer man you couldn’t wish to meet. He may not be a household name, but like the tales of Perry McCarthy and Tommy Byrne, his story is worth telling and definitely worth a read. Like Brooks, Goodwin combined a passion (and a considerable, if largely unrecognised talent) for racing with a proper job in the medical profession, and both talk of the difficulty of balancing that passion with more mundane but important things like job and family. Which of course is a theme that I know well.

A theme that brings me on to my plans for 2015. After thirty-five years of working full-time in the IT industry, the plan is to spend no more than three days per week doing that next year. The idea is that this will free up time for pursuits such as writing and talking about cars and racing. I’m not sure yet how I shall make ends meet, but I am optimistic that I have enough money-earning potential that I shall be able to spend more time doing the things that I enjoy, whether that be crafting prose, analysing spreadsheets, talking into a microphone or simply spending more time with my family. If I make money enough money for a holiday, then that will be a bonus!

New Approach Needed?

Readers here may have read the rather odd piece that I published on dailysportscar earlier this month – I was in two minds about publishing it there, but having asked for contributions to a general debate over the winter months on the direction of sportscar racing in general, I felt I had to tie up some loose ends: even if it meant some rather tenuous links.

And then Motor Sport arrived this month, with talk of a revolution in F1, and certainly elements of Mark Hughes’ (and Nigel Roebuck’s) articles struck a chord. If you haven’t bought a copy, I recommend that you do. Especially as, for some months now, it seems to be the only mainstream medium calling time on Bernie’s career. The time has indeed come. An era of post-Bernie may be just around the corner – and if that is the case, it will not just affect Formula 1, but all branches of the sport.

However, one theme that I particularly want to explore in this article, which I alluded to in the DSC article and which also features in Motor Sport, is the matter of procedure. There seems to be an idea these days that procedure is a good thing. A few years ago, when I went into hospital for a fairly major operation to remove a lump that was growing inside my skull, the surgeon came in before the operation to describe how he was going to hook the lump out, through a hole behind my ear, that was to have been drilled previously by a colleague of his. Then the anaesthetist came in to tell me how he was going to ensure that I remained unconscious for the whole time. All very sobering stuff. As he was leaving, I felt it appropriate to wish the anaesthetist “Good Luck”.

“No need for that,” he cheerily replied. “There’s no need for luck, it’s all procedure.” To an extent, this put my mind at rest, but nevertheless, the thought that there was no room for the virtuosity of the various professionals at work on me to demonstrate their skill – their artistry – made me feel more like a car being repaired than a piano being played.

And it is this disapproval of any expression of virtuosity in motor sport, in order for it to gain the approval of the FIA, that I find perturbing. Mark Hughes, in Motor Sport, refers to the ‘punkish’ spirit of the sport in the past, which has been lost today, and I know exactly what he means. Any place for spontaneity is being removed. Unpredictability makes people in authority nervous. But the fans love it.

I have said before that 24 hour races at Le Mans, Daytona, Nürburgring and Spa have nothing really in common as far as their organisation is concerned; and even if they are part of wider championships, they still stand alone in terms of specific sporting regulations, organising bodies, starting times, practice and qualification procedures and so on and so forth. With the exception of Daytona, they all draw substantial crowds, and yet have minimal impact on the sporting radar of mainstream media. Other races also spring to mind: the Sebring 12 hours, yes; but also the Indianapolis 500, the Monte Carlo rally – all events that have a culture of their own, above and beyond being ‘just another round of a championship’.

Twenty years ago, the great god was television. Great lengths were gone to, in order to ensure that ‘our’ product was suitable for televising. The world has moved on though. The public no longer watches television in the same way as it did twenty years ago. People want a race summary broadcast of an endurance race (in much the same way as they wanted DSJ’s GP reports back in the seventies), but more important today is the niche broadcast to those who have a specific interest. Those who watched BBC Ceefax to get news of Le Mans through the night in the eighties were perhaps ahead of their time.

The reason that what I call the “FIA Formula” evolved was that it made it easier for media organisations. Fixed times for press conferences, practice sessions and races, prescribed podium formats and an entry list fixed for the season meant that life became quite routine, if you were involved in the season-long championship; but it was meaningless for ad hoc reporting. And of course, the market, if you are selling a championship, is those with a season-long interest. The ad-hockers have to look after themselves.

What makes Bathurst, Le Mans, even the Indy 500 appealing is their uniqueness in the motor sporting calendar. By their very nature, they are ad-hoc events. In some ways, they provide a template for others to fit to, if they choose so to do.

What is not quite clear to me is whether the market wants something predictable, or whether part of the fun is in piecing together the various strands of information to extract what is going on. I get the impression, that to an extent, the internet-savvy motor sport fan of the twenty-first century derives a certain pleasure from finding video streaming channels, timing and scoring outlets, news and comment; even commentary (possibly).

But there’s another strand to this argument. Motor racing is something to be experienced first-hand. Formula 1 has undoubtedly sacrificed this principle to the dollars offered by television, but most people I speak to talk of their experiences being at races, seeing cars in the paddock, of talking to drivers and catching them in perhaps an off-guard moment, being – well – human. It’s my belief that it is this aspect that generates the appeal in the first place. Having kindled the fire of interest, then certainly, interest in a race may be clearly maintained by all manner of media outlets. But surely the most critical thing is making something that will get people through the gates in the first place – that is what will guarantee the future fans of the sport.

To my mind, the storyline of the race, whether it is won by clever strategy, sublime driving technique or sheer grunt under the bonnet, doesn’t have the same impact as standing beside the track, watching, feeling, smelling and of course hearing the action take place in front of you. However erudite and entertaining the commentators are, they will never be able to convey the full atmosphere of actually being there. However sophisticated online timing screens are, they are no substitute for seeing a car on and occasionally beyond its limit, controlled by someone whom you might have seen walking in the paddock earlier in the day, or standing in the bar later in the evening.

As always, your thoughts on the matter are welcome!

The Importance of Drivers

Historically, endurance racing in general and the Le Mans 24 hour race in particular, have been less about drivers and more about the manufacturers of their cars. Traditionally, it has been the car that matters, not who drives it. Acquaintances of mine who have been to only one or two endurance races will remember that a Jaguar or a Porsche – or more latterly, an Audi – won the race but are rarely able to recall (if indeed they paid sufficient attention to have even noticed in the first place) who the drivers were.

Although Formula 1 has its Manufacturer’s Championship, and although car manufacturers spend vast amounts of money, not only on engine development but also on the promotion of their brand through Formula 1, it has always struck me that it is the arena of Sports Car Racing that provides the better shop window for car brands to market their wares.

As one reflects on the first decade of this century, it is easy, with a little thought, to recall which ‘R’ of Audi won at Le Mans: three wins for the R8, then the Bentley win, followed by two more R8 wins, then three for the R10 diesel, before the Peugeot finally got a look-in, in 2009. But, if you’re anything like me, you’ll struggle to remember which races were won by Pirro and which Biela. (Actually, that’s a trick one, because they always won together!)

The point is, though, that it is the winning car that leaves the impression, and if it has its act together, then it is the manufacturer of that car that puts the full page advertisements in the national papers on the Monday after the race. But, as one who often is one of the last to step onto a new bandwagon, I do believe that we are now in an era when drivers count more in endurance racing than ever they did in the past.

The funny thing is that it is a phenomenon that has come to pass in all classes of endurance racing. Not just in LMP1, but also P2 – and especially in the GT classes. And it has come to pass in the marathon sprint that Le Mans represents these days just as much as the six-hour sprints that constitute the greater part of the World Endurance Championship.

I have reflected before on these pages about the way things change; particularly in the culture and conduct of the sport, and I find myself once again putting on the nostalgia hat. I am not – indeed I would like to think that I am not generally – suggesting that the past was so much better and that “fings ain’t wot they used to be”. No, instead I wish to draw attention to the change as it is happening, and be aware that living in the past is for dinosaurs.

As I have already suggested, though, this is a change that has already happened. We live now in an era of endurance racing where the driver has a very real role to play, and make-weights cannot be tolerated. To keep your car in with a chance of a podium place in whatever class it is competing, it can no longer be driven by a good, consistent journeyman. It has to be driven with verve, spirit, daring and skill. You have to, in a well-worn phrase much beloved by race engineers everywhere, “push without risk”. This requires high levels of concentration and ability, not found in every aspiring racing driver.

These days, therefore, there is a much greater dependency on the drivers that you choose when you are selecting your crew for a top prototype or GT car. And the World Endurance Drivers’ Championship is surely a title worthy of high acclaim. One small error in today’s endurance races rarely goes unpunished, and ‘fault-free’ is generally insufficient to win unless it is also ‘flat-out’. Gone are the days when anyone other than a truly top driver will get onto the top step of the podium.

The trouble is, of course, that the World Endurance Championship and particularly the Le Mans 24 hours, is dependent on wealthy enthusiasts, on drivers for whom the word ‘amateur’ is perhaps inappropriate, but who nevertheless do not make a living from racing and therefore cannot really be counted as professionals. And if they are not going to get their reward, then there is a danger that they will go elsewhere and do something else where good teamwork, clever organisation and raw competitiveness can beat young, talented professionals.

Except that they don’t. The World Endurance Committee of the FIA (or is it the ACO?) have thought of that and have implemented a system of driver classifications: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Having classified everyone, they have then stipulated that to run in the LMP2 class, you have to have a driver who is classified Bronze or Silver in the driving crew. Similarly, in GTE-Am, the driving crew must (now) consist of at least two Bronze or Silver drivers.

On top of this, the rules then demand that to score world championship points, each driver must drive at least 1h 45m in a six hour race for the GTE-Am class, and 1h 15m in LMP2. In effect, this means that the least-able driver must drive for more than the distance that the car will go on one tank of fuel.

So what does this all mean? For the moment, all is well in the world. You have two strong professional-only classes in the World Endurance Championship, populated with a string of ex-formula 1 drivers and experienced and well-established ‘names’ in the sportscar racing world. Then, to fill up the grids, there are two classes for fully-privateer entrants with rules specifically tailored to ensure that the classes are attractive to wealthy amateurs and other non-professional drivers. A broad mix of manufacturers involved on a number of different levels is testament to its success (although an additional P2 engine manufacturer would not go amiss).

But most importantly of all, you have a meritocracy. A category where stars can shine and chumps have no place to hide. The trouble is that all good things have a tendency to come to an end. The challenge for those in charge is to preserve the good in the WEC as we move on into a possibly different-looking future.

As always, your comments are very welcome: let me know what you think below!

Where there’s a will - or is there?

‘Motor Racing is Dangerous’ is a well-worn cliché – there are signs of warning at every circuit in the world. But it is also true that racing is safer now for all concerned than ever it has been in the past, and the future promises only for greater improvements in safety to be made.

When an incident occurs during a race of which drivers need to be made aware, flag signals are used. A waved yellow flag means “Danger, slow down, be prepared to stop. No overtaking” Of course, slowing down is not always the safest thing to do; and drivers’ preparedness to stop varies somewhat. At least the prohibition of overtaking is an absolute, describing something that can if necessary be penalised.

In the days when I first starting watching motor-racing, the only alternative to waved yellow flags was a red flag, which signified a race stoppage. And for a race to be stopped in the sixties or seventies, it had to be a pretty severe incident: a blocked track or a driver trapped in his car; that kind of thing.

When races were stopped, they would usually be re-started fairly quickly, and the result would be calculated ‘on aggregate’, by adding together the two parts of the race. This could be confusing and sometimes complicated, but at least it was fair to all concerned.

Some races were even planned as two-part events, with the aggregate result being used for deciding overall positions. Although there was no computer technology to help in those days, at least everyone was used to the procedure and it was not unusual for a driver scoring a couple of solid fourth places to end up on the overall podium, and no-one really complained.

This was the era, thirty years and more ago, when the motor-racing world was emerging from its deadliest phase; when cultural acceptance of risk was undergoing change and when litigation was starting to become the first resort of the victim. People with responsibility had to have contingency plans and were being held accountable. Causes had to be found for accidents and blame had to be apportioned.

At the same time, motor-racing was being televised: brought into living rooms the world over, and the schedule became the king. The TV magnates did not want to have to spend valuable satellite time if the race had been delayed by an hour or two. Weekend timeslots tended to be sacrosanct:  the football results at 5pm on a Saturday; Songs of Praise on a Sunday. Folk would complain in their thousands if their favourite was displaced by some late-running car race from somewhere.

The ‘casual’ spectator had to be attracted and retained; and making things ‘interesting’ often meant making them complex, and that limited the overall appeal. If the first car across the line wasn’t the winner, then who was? And why?

This was the context, then, in which Safety Cars (originally termed Pace Cars), were introduced to European racing in the early 1980’s. When there was a serious incident on the track, the race would not be stopped, it would merely be suspended, neutralised, and everyone would continue to circulate, but in a line behind the Pace Car until everything was ready, whereupon the green flag would be waved and racing would continue.

Nowadays, Safety Car Periods are common in virtually every branch of circuit racing, and many and various are the procedures to be followed in the name of fairness. This is particularly true with endurance races, where pit stops are an intrinsic part of the race, and very often cars are racing in different classes within the race. And while stopping a Grand Prix and restarting it over the remaining distance is a reasonable course of action, stopping and restarting a six, twelve or twenty-four hour race is dubious at best, as we experienced at the Nürburgring this year.

The nonsense of the Daytona 24 hours (in particular), in which no real racing happens until the final dash to the flag, makes a mockery (to my mind) of its claim to be an endurance race. A race of strategy, yes, and with great media appeal, no doubt. But a proper ‘endurance’ race? I’m not so sure.

There have been calls from various quarters in recent times for a rethink. Code-60, GPS speed monitoring, wave-by and drive-past procedures, use of several safety cars, separating the cars from different classes: these are all mechanisms to deal with the basic ‘unfairness’ that arises from bunching the cars up behind a Safety Car and then releasing them again.

My original intention with this article was to explore ways in which use of the Safety Car could be made unnecessary, but in preparing my case I have begun to wonder whether there is one. If we could rid ourselves of the Full Course Caution, would we actually do so?

Lack of driver discipline in reacting to yellow flag zones on the track has contributed to the propensity to use Safety Cars to ensure that racers slow down sufficiently to allow track officials to rescue drivers and move stricken cars from dangerous positions without compromising their own safety. Even if drivers showed yellow flags more respect, there is still the problem of barrier repair. I found it unacceptable that there ended up being not far short of five hours behind the Safety Car at Le Mans this year, mostly caused by the need to fix barriers. I’m not in a position to endorse the products of TecPro, SAFER or ProLink, but I wonder if Armco barriers are as misguided a solution as catch fencing was in the seventies?

But that is tangential to my topic. It merely explains why races without lengthy Safety Car periods are ever more rare. For me, part of the special attraction of endurance racing is because it runs - at least it should run - uninterrupted. It is meant to be a hard slog: a marathon without respite. I could easily run 26 miles and 385 yards if I stopped and rested every half-hour. (Actually, I probably couldn’t, but there’s no point letting facts get in the way of a good story.)

To my way of thinking, a full course caution is an artificial interruption and should be avoided at all costs. If a Safety Car is the only way, then for goodness' sake, its time on the track should be kept to an absolute minimum.

Predictability in any sport is not a good thing, though, especially in these days of short attention spans and TV remote control units. The possibility that a Safety Car intervention might be just around the corner provides a level of uncertainty for fans and race engineers alike. And taking the right decisions when a Safety Car does appear can cause the complexion of a race to change completely.

When the Audi ‘v’ Peugeot battle was at its height, Audi Race engineer Howden ‘H’ Haynes said to me: “The Safety Cars make it interesting. Without any Safety Car Periods, there’s nothing to do.” The trouble is that today’s endurance racers are so reliable that he’s probably right, especially working for Audi.

It’s just that this year’s playing field in the World Endurance Championship has been so level that, more often than not, the Safety Car periods have disrupted the races rather than enhanced them.

On the other hand, looking back at the six hours of São Paulo, Toyota’s strategy, when it realised that the Audi was faster, was to stay on the lead lap in the hope that a Safety Car period would occur, nullifying the Audi’s speed advantage, while still enabling it to take advantage of its better fuel consumption. In the end, of course, we were denied a really exciting race for the lead, but it means that even if Audi has the faster car, a win for Toyota in any of the remaining WEC races is certainly not out of the question.

It hurts the purist in me to admit it, but I don’t think that there is any point in trying to avoid Safety Car periods altogether. They are here to stay, no matter what. No matter what rules are imposed to close the pit lane entrance, to wave GT cars past or to always arrange for the leader to be immediately behind the Safety Car, it will always end up that the smart guys on the pit wall will exploit those rules, and someone, probably with justification, will feel aggrieved. Although everyone will tell you it’s on safety grounds, the fact is that it’s the best way to ensure that races remain unpredictable, that the slower car can still win, that the races are more likely to be entertaining and that the strategists still have something to work out! 

The Americans may have had it right all along - but for the sake of proper racing, it is vital that Safety Cars are used only as a last resort, and circuits must be organised so that ‘neutralised periods’ are as short as possible.

What do you think?