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.
Showing posts with label United SportsCar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United SportsCar. Show all posts
Monday, 9 November 2015
Friday, 27 March 2015
Sebring 12 hours - the anatomy of victory
The 63rd Annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by “Fresh from Florida” provided a perfect opportunity for the Action Express Racing Team Coyote Corvette DP to demonstrate its superiority over the rest of the 43 car field in the classic race around the runways and service roads of the historic airfield circuit last weekend. It must have been a particularly satisfying win for Bob Johnson and his team, following their failure to capitalise on a similar performance advantage at the opening round of the Tudor United SportsCar Championship at Daytona at the end of January, when Chip Ganassi used a well-timed full course caution period to snatch victory for his more economical turbo Ford-powered Riley from the GM-branded car.
The second of the traditional Floridian enduros ran with just 28 laps behind the Safety Car - out of a total of 340 completed - which left more than ten hours for some proper racing, including one green flag period of 3h 47m 59s. And it was this long green period that enabled the Action Express car, ably piloted by João Barbosa, Sébastien Bourdais and Christian Fittipaldi, to establish a lap’s advantage on the rest of the field and allowed the team to run the final two hours to the flag without any real concerns.
No race of this length is ever easy, but once the fragility of the LMP2 challengers proved their undoing, there never seemed much doubt that the Mustang Sampling sponsored car would come out on top of the Corvette DPs. If the relatively smooth surface of Daytona was too much for the Le Mans-rules cars, what hope did they have over the bumps of Sebring?
So how was it done?
Well, in the first place, it was a fault-free run. The car completed the race with just fourteen pit stops, the longest of which was 1m 14.684s - and the Safety Car was out then in any case, nullifying any time lost in the pit lane: Fittipaldi resumed and simply latched on to the tail of the queue of cars. Every other stop for the car was less than 1m 04s. The length of the stints was dictated, to some extent, by the timing of the Full Course Yellow (FCY)periods, but during green periods, the car could run for 23 laps between refuelling stops.
The full list of pit stops looks like this:
As usual, the time spent includes the time spent driving down the pit lane itself. Needless to say, the time spent in the pits by the Action Express car was less than any other prototype that finished the race. And of course, the actual time spent stationary is considerably less than the time spent in the pit lane.
Under IMSA rules, the time spent stationary consists mainly of getting fuel into the car, so the length of time in the pits depends largely on how much fuel is required, which is in turn dependent on the length of the previous stint. As the table above shows, Barbosa got the most time behind the wheel, as he managed to get three shifts to the two each for Bourdais and Fittipaldi. Here's the full breakdown of the driving periods:
The totals for each driver were:
Endurance is always a team effort, and it is important that the drivers work well together; but I am always interested in comparing the lap times of the drivers of a car, to see if there is any evidence of a weak (or sometimes a particularly strong) member of the team: after all, many of the driver's excuses can be ignored if one is able to drive the same car more quickly in the same conditions than the others...
Having said that, team managers may give specific instructions to their driver: setting a target lap time, for example, to which some drivers may be more obedient than others. The tables above give you practically all the information you need to work out average lap times for each stint, for each driver, for yourselves, but to save you the trouble of that, I’ve laid it out on a stint by stint basis in the table below.
The column showing the Green Average lap is the average lap time for the green laps in the stint: ignoring laps into and out of the pits.
Consider this: Fittipaldi drove 90 green flag laps. On average, as can be seen above, his laps were a second slower than those of his team-mates. In that case, the car could have been a further minute and a half ahead: nearly a lap!
Perhaps that is speculation a little too far. But how did engineer Iain Watt and Crew Chief Bill Kueller get their car to be so much quicker?
The answer, if one looks at the sector times (Sebring is split into 10 sectors by the IMSA timekeeping team), lies in the fact that in only two of Sebring’s sectors was the #5 car quickest. It was not fastest through either of the two speed traps. And yet, of the three Corvette DPs around at the end of the race, it had easily the fastest average lap time. It may not have been as fleet of foot as the Ligiers, but nevertheless it strikes me that the team was quickest by virtue of the optimum compromise. And if that meant that the car wasn’t quite to Fittipaldi’s taste, it was certainly better than anything else at Sebring.
The second of the traditional Floridian enduros ran with just 28 laps behind the Safety Car - out of a total of 340 completed - which left more than ten hours for some proper racing, including one green flag period of 3h 47m 59s. And it was this long green period that enabled the Action Express car, ably piloted by João Barbosa, Sébastien Bourdais and Christian Fittipaldi, to establish a lap’s advantage on the rest of the field and allowed the team to run the final two hours to the flag without any real concerns.
No race of this length is ever easy, but once the fragility of the LMP2 challengers proved their undoing, there never seemed much doubt that the Mustang Sampling sponsored car would come out on top of the Corvette DPs. If the relatively smooth surface of Daytona was too much for the Le Mans-rules cars, what hope did they have over the bumps of Sebring?
So how was it done?
Well, in the first place, it was a fault-free run. The car completed the race with just fourteen pit stops, the longest of which was 1m 14.684s - and the Safety Car was out then in any case, nullifying any time lost in the pit lane: Fittipaldi resumed and simply latched on to the tail of the queue of cars. Every other stop for the car was less than 1m 04s. The length of the stints was dictated, to some extent, by the timing of the Full Course Yellow (FCY)periods, but during green periods, the car could run for 23 laps between refuelling stops.
The full list of pit stops looks like this:
| Stop no. | Activity | Time in pit lane |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barbosa stays | 1m 01.557s |
| 2 | Barbosa to Bourdais (FCY) | 1m 01.295s |
| 3 | Bourdais stays (FCY) | 0m 58.029s |
| 4 | Bourdais to Fittipaldi (FCY) | 1m 14.684s |
| 5 | Fittipaldi stays | 1m 03.265s |
| 6 | Fittipaldi to Barbosa | 1m 01.899s |
| 7 | Barbosa stays (FCY) | 0m 49.623s |
| 8 | Barbosa stays | 1m 01.695s |
| 9 | Barbosa to Bourdais | 1m 02.148s |
| 10 | Bourdais stays | 1m 00.833s |
| 11 | Bourdais to Fittipaldi | 1m 01.039s |
| 12 | Fittipaldi stays | 1m 03.303s |
| 13 | Fittipaldi to Barbosa | 1m 03.969s |
| 14 | Barbosa stays | 1m 02.977s |
| Total | 14m 26.316s |
As usual, the time spent includes the time spent driving down the pit lane itself. Needless to say, the time spent in the pits by the Action Express car was less than any other prototype that finished the race. And of course, the actual time spent stationary is considerably less than the time spent in the pit lane.
Under IMSA rules, the time spent stationary consists mainly of getting fuel into the car, so the length of time in the pits depends largely on how much fuel is required, which is in turn dependent on the length of the previous stint. As the table above shows, Barbosa got the most time behind the wheel, as he managed to get three shifts to the two each for Bourdais and Fittipaldi. Here's the full breakdown of the driving periods:
| Stint no. | Driver | Laps | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barbosa | 22 | 42m 19.467s |
| 2 | Barbosa | 27 | 1h 04m 21.575s |
| 3 | Bourdais | 22 | 54m 00.786s |
| 4 | Bourdais | 28 | 1h 02m 44.283s |
| 5 | Fittipaldi | 25 | 52m 12.941s |
| 6 | Fittipaldi | 22 | 42m 27.064s |
| 7 | Barbosa | 12 | 25m 53.412s |
| 8 | Barbosa | 25 | 53m 04.216s |
| 9 | Barbosa | 22 | 42m 04.219s |
| 10 | Bourdais | 23 | 43m 56.789s |
| 11 | Bourdais | 22 | 42m 03.538s |
| 12 | Fittipaldi | 23 | 44m 42.196s |
| 13 | Fittipaldi | 26 | 58m 23.241s |
| 14 | Barbosa | 18 | 34m 43.108s |
| 15 | Barbosa | 23 | 44m 16.664s |
The totals for each driver were:
| Driver | Total Laps | Green Laps | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barbosa | 149 | 137 | 5h 06m42.651s |
| Bourdais | 117 | 84 | 3h 22m 45.396s |
| Fittipaldi | 118 | 90 | 3h 17m 45.442s |
Endurance is always a team effort, and it is important that the drivers work well together; but I am always interested in comparing the lap times of the drivers of a car, to see if there is any evidence of a weak (or sometimes a particularly strong) member of the team: after all, many of the driver's excuses can be ignored if one is able to drive the same car more quickly in the same conditions than the others...
Having said that, team managers may give specific instructions to their driver: setting a target lap time, for example, to which some drivers may be more obedient than others. The tables above give you practically all the information you need to work out average lap times for each stint, for each driver, for yourselves, but to save you the trouble of that, I’ve laid it out on a stint by stint basis in the table below.
| Stint no. | Driver | Stint Average Lap | Green Lap Average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barbosa | 1m 55.430s | 1m 55.246s |
| 2 | Barbosa | 2m 23.021s | 1m 54.803s |
| 3 | Bourdais | 2m 27.308s | 1m 54.852s |
| 4 | Bourdais | 2m 14.439s | 1m 54.951s |
| 5 | Fittipaldi | 2m 05.318s | 1m 55.699s |
| 6 | Fittipaldi | 1m 55.776s | 1m 55.810s |
| 7 | Barbosa | 2m 09.451s | 1m 55.128s |
| 8 | Barbosa | 2m 07.369s | 1m 55.505s |
| 9 | Barbosa | 1m 54.737s | 1m 54.634s |
| 10 | Bourdais | 1m 54.643s | 1m 54.560s |
| 11 | Bourdais | 1m 54.706s | 1m 54.751s |
| 12 | Fittipaldi | 1m 56.617s | 1m 56.528s |
| 13 | Fittipaldi | 2m 14.740s | 1m 55.848s |
| 14 | Barbosa | 1m 55.728s | 1m 55.471s |
| 15 | Barbosa | 1m 55.507s | 1m 55.396s |
The column showing the Green Average lap is the average lap time for the green laps in the stint: ignoring laps into and out of the pits.
Consider this: Fittipaldi drove 90 green flag laps. On average, as can be seen above, his laps were a second slower than those of his team-mates. In that case, the car could have been a further minute and a half ahead: nearly a lap!
Perhaps that is speculation a little too far. But how did engineer Iain Watt and Crew Chief Bill Kueller get their car to be so much quicker?
The answer, if one looks at the sector times (Sebring is split into 10 sectors by the IMSA timekeeping team), lies in the fact that in only two of Sebring’s sectors was the #5 car quickest. It was not fastest through either of the two speed traps. And yet, of the three Corvette DPs around at the end of the race, it had easily the fastest average lap time. It may not have been as fleet of foot as the Ligiers, but nevertheless it strikes me that the team was quickest by virtue of the optimum compromise. And if that meant that the car wasn’t quite to Fittipaldi’s taste, it was certainly better than anything else at Sebring.
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
How to win the Rolex 24 at Daytona
I assume that Chip Ganassi won’t be reading this, since with six wins out of his 12 attempts at “North America’s most prestigious sports car race”, he more than most does not need to. It hardly needs me to present the case, either, as I have only witnessed two of the Daytona Prototype-era versions of this 24-hour race, even though 2015 was my eighth attendance at the Daytona International Speedway.
However, the opening round of the 2015 Tudor United SportsCar Championship, the only 24-hour race run under IMSA rules and regulations, presents unique challenges to its competitors. One of the reasons that I enjoy tearing apart the innards of a long race is that there is no single formula that will correctly identify the difference between the winner’s strategy and those of the runners-up.
You can look at average lap times, time spent in pits, strategy under caution or what you will, but there’s never a single solution. Which makes writing software for defining the perfect strategy very difficult. Let’s look at Average Lap Times at Daytona then. As usual, I’m taking the average of the best 20% of laps run without the interference of the Safety Car. For the sake of simplicity, I will stick to the leading cars in the Prototype class.
What about Time Spent in Pits? Surely (as co-commentator Greg Creamer reminded me during the race) that’s a good indicator of who will come out on top? Stay out of the pits and lap consistently quickly - surely a great formula for winning a long-distance race?
KEY: *Includes time for tow-back to paddock
**Not Running at Finish
Maybe number of laps led will provide us with a little more information?
None of the tables above lead you any closer, I suggest, to identifying which was the best car at Daytona - if anything the no. 10 Wayne Taylor car, spending least time in the pits and being quickest on the track looks the most deserving winner. Nothing in the tables above indicates precisely why it was the no. 02 Ganassi car that was the one to beat. Indeed the fact that the car went a lap down when it went back to its garage (“behind the wall”) to have work done to the front end of the car, seemed to the inexperienced observer to put the car out of contention, unless other cars had problems.
Daytona is not like that though. Being a lap down is not a problem, provided that the Safety Car comes out. The astute team manager (and even the not so astute one) can manage the pit stops to enable the car to avoid the initial rush to the pits when the lane opens, get back on the lead lap, and then pit at the next opportunity, leaving the car fully fuelled and on the lead lap, albeit at the back of the Safety Car queue.
Even looking at the fuel consumption does not show any difference between the Ford EcoBoost of the Ganassi Riley and the Chevy-engined Corvette of Wayne Taylor Racing. When the track was fully green, both cars covered 26 laps with metronomic reliability. The only divergence from this rule was at 7:15 on Sunday morning, when Tony Kanaan brought the Riley in after 25 laps, but this was in anticipation of a Full Course Yellow precipitated by the no. 33 Viper stopping at T6.
As far as I can work out, there was one factor, and one factor only, that enabled the Ganassi #02 car to win the 2015 Rolex 24 at Daytona. Although speed clearly played its part, as did the sublime driving of Scott Dixon in the final three-and-a-half hour stint, the key moments came as first Tony Kanaan stayed out for a 29-lap stint through the Full Course Caution period at 9am and then Dixon achieving the same feat through the shorter yellow at 10:50am.
These two stints gave Ganassi a three-lap cushion on its fuel window, and allowed Dixon to leapfrog Jordan Taylor at the penultimate round of stops, into a lead he was able to maintain at the final re-fuelling stop, which meant that 2.5 seconds could be saved.
Even without the shambles of Jordan Taylor’s drive-time violation, Ganassi had the bases covered. One thing I wonder though: did Chip know that the no. 10 crew was about to shoot itself in the foot? Was he really only concerned with staying ahead of the no. 5 Action Express Corvette? And if last year’s combo of Bourdais, Fittipaldi and Barbosa would have won, how much of a sour taste would that have left in the mouth, following the car’s tow back to the paddock late on Saturday night?
But Daytona often is a strange 24-hour race. Never short on entertainment; but you have to know how to win.
However, the opening round of the 2015 Tudor United SportsCar Championship, the only 24-hour race run under IMSA rules and regulations, presents unique challenges to its competitors. One of the reasons that I enjoy tearing apart the innards of a long race is that there is no single formula that will correctly identify the difference between the winner’s strategy and those of the runners-up.
You can look at average lap times, time spent in pits, strategy under caution or what you will, but there’s never a single solution. Which makes writing software for defining the perfect strategy very difficult. Let’s look at Average Lap Times at Daytona then. As usual, I’m taking the average of the best 20% of laps run without the interference of the Safety Car. For the sake of simplicity, I will stick to the leading cars in the Prototype class.
| No. | Car | Average Lap Time |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 1m 40.583s |
| 02 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 1m 40.369s |
| 5 | Auto Express Coyote-Corvette | 1m 40.549s |
| 10 | Wayne Taylor Dallara-Corvette | 1m 40.323s |
| 60 | Michael Shank Ligier-HPD | 1m 40.735s |
| 90 | VisitFlorida Coyote-Corvette | 1m 41.031s |
What about Time Spent in Pits? Surely (as co-commentator Greg Creamer reminded me during the race) that’s a good indicator of who will come out on top? Stay out of the pits and lap consistently quickly - surely a great formula for winning a long-distance race?
| No. | Car | No of Stops | Time in Pit Lane |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 34 | 51m 00.561s |
| 5 | Auto Express Coyote-Corvette | 30 | *49m 12.666s |
| 10 | Wayne Taylor Dallara-Corvette | 33 | 40m 46.375s |
| 60** | Michael Shank Ligier-HPD | 33 | 1h 19m 40.438s |
| 90 | VisitFlorida Coyote-Corvette | 35 | 1h 02m 03.104s |
**Not Running at Finish
Maybe number of laps led will provide us with a little more information?
| No. | Car | No of Laps in lead |
|---|---|---|
| 02 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 264 |
| 7 | Starworks Riley-BMW | 3 |
| 90 | VisitFlorida Coyote-Corvette | 3 |
| 07 | Speedsource Mazda Prototype | 1 |
| 60 | Michael Shank Ligier-HPD | 4 |
| 10 | Wayne Taylor Dallara-Corvette | 264 |
| 01 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 141 |
| 5 | Auto Express Coyote-Corvette | 59 |
| 1 | ESM HPD-Honda ARX | 1 |
None of the tables above lead you any closer, I suggest, to identifying which was the best car at Daytona - if anything the no. 10 Wayne Taylor car, spending least time in the pits and being quickest on the track looks the most deserving winner. Nothing in the tables above indicates precisely why it was the no. 02 Ganassi car that was the one to beat. Indeed the fact that the car went a lap down when it went back to its garage (“behind the wall”) to have work done to the front end of the car, seemed to the inexperienced observer to put the car out of contention, unless other cars had problems.
Daytona is not like that though. Being a lap down is not a problem, provided that the Safety Car comes out. The astute team manager (and even the not so astute one) can manage the pit stops to enable the car to avoid the initial rush to the pits when the lane opens, get back on the lead lap, and then pit at the next opportunity, leaving the car fully fuelled and on the lead lap, albeit at the back of the Safety Car queue.
Even looking at the fuel consumption does not show any difference between the Ford EcoBoost of the Ganassi Riley and the Chevy-engined Corvette of Wayne Taylor Racing. When the track was fully green, both cars covered 26 laps with metronomic reliability. The only divergence from this rule was at 7:15 on Sunday morning, when Tony Kanaan brought the Riley in after 25 laps, but this was in anticipation of a Full Course Yellow precipitated by the no. 33 Viper stopping at T6.
As far as I can work out, there was one factor, and one factor only, that enabled the Ganassi #02 car to win the 2015 Rolex 24 at Daytona. Although speed clearly played its part, as did the sublime driving of Scott Dixon in the final three-and-a-half hour stint, the key moments came as first Tony Kanaan stayed out for a 29-lap stint through the Full Course Caution period at 9am and then Dixon achieving the same feat through the shorter yellow at 10:50am.
These two stints gave Ganassi a three-lap cushion on its fuel window, and allowed Dixon to leapfrog Jordan Taylor at the penultimate round of stops, into a lead he was able to maintain at the final re-fuelling stop, which meant that 2.5 seconds could be saved.
Even without the shambles of Jordan Taylor’s drive-time violation, Ganassi had the bases covered. One thing I wonder though: did Chip know that the no. 10 crew was about to shoot itself in the foot? Was he really only concerned with staying ahead of the no. 5 Action Express Corvette? And if last year’s combo of Bourdais, Fittipaldi and Barbosa would have won, how much of a sour taste would that have left in the mouth, following the car’s tow back to the paddock late on Saturday night?
But Daytona often is a strange 24-hour race. Never short on entertainment; but you have to know how to win.
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Sebring 12 Hours - What might have been?
The Sebring 12 hours was dominated – not entirely
unexpectedly – by the Safety Car. In all, 5h 04m were spent under full course
caution, in a total of eleven separate periods. At one point, the red flag was
waved, and cars came to a complete halt on the Ullman Straight while the debris
from the accident between David Ostella (Oreca no. 38) and Frankie Montecalvo (Oreca no.
52) was cleared up.
In the end, the winning Chip Ganassi entry, in the hands of
Marino Franchitti, Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett came home the winner, but that
was largely down to luck: although the efforts of Franchitti to keep the
Riley-Ford in the lead for the last twenty minutes were indeed impressive, the car was only in that position due to its slightly higher fuel consumption
requiring it to stop earlier than its competition, and the final Safety Car
period coming at just the right time for the team and entirely changing the
complexion of a race that was in some ways a fine strategic battle.
The Safety Car disruption meant that only three periods in
the race were long enough for cars to use more than a tank of fuel, as shown in
the table below:
From lap
|
To lap
|
From Time
|
To time
|
Period
|
22
|
52
|
11:34
|
12:30
|
56m
|
133
|
199
|
16:34
|
18:40
|
2h 06m
|
228
|
271
|
20:03
|
21:25
|
1h 21m
|
I thought it might be interesting to look at what happened
in the race, based solely on the lap times recorded during these periods, and
the results – unsurprisingly – bear little resemblance to the actual race
results.
In the prototype class, the results were:
| Pos | No. | Car | Laps completed | Time | Pit stops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 42 | Oak Morgan-Nissan | 131 | 4h 19m 27.179s | 5 |
| 2 | 5 | Corvette DP | 131 | 4h 19m 40.927s | 5 |
| 3 | 1 | ESM HPD-Honda | 131 | 4h 19m 52.695s | 5 |
| 4 | 02 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 131 | 4h 20m 55.253s | 6 |
| 5 | 2 | ESM HPD-Honda | 131 | 4h 20m 58.920s | 5 |
| 6 | 01 | Ganassi Riley-Ford | 131 | 4h 21m 19.503s | 6 |
I am not sure what, if anything, this all proves. Possibly that
the race leaders in the United SportsCar Championship races do not push on as
hard as they possibly can, knowing that any lead that they do establish will be
eroded as soon as the next Safety Car appears. In any case, it is
certainly interesting that the Oak P2-spec car was consistently quicker than
any other, and also that the Extreme Speed HPD also came within a whisker of
winning the race overall.
The balance of P2 and DP is probably about right, therefore, at least at Sebring. I suspect Daytona was probably somewhat extreme.
In the GT-LM class, the “All-Green” (using the same periods
as above) race result looks like this:
From which the most evident thing is that this form of racing provides opportunities for recovery drives like no other - but then again, it was ever thus: racing for a team to exploit regulations, despite various setbacks. Hats off to the RLL BMW crew for getting back onto the class podium, despite losing two laps under green racing conditions!
| Pos | No. | Car | Laps completed | Time | Pit stops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | Corvette C7.R | 126 | 4h 20m 31.371s | 4 |
| 2 | 3 | Corvette C7.R | 126 | 4h 20m 44.205s | 4 |
| 3 | 912 | Works Porsche 911 RSR | 126 | 4h 21m 10.127s | 5 |
| 4 | 93 | SRT Viper | 126 | 4h 21m 59.109s | 5 |
| 5 | 17 | Falken Porsche 911 RSR | 124 | 4h 19m 31.789s | 4 |
| 6 | 55 | BMW Z4 GTE | 124 | 4h 22m 03.797s | 10 |
From which the most evident thing is that this form of racing provides opportunities for recovery drives like no other - but then again, it was ever thus: racing for a team to exploit regulations, despite various setbacks. Hats off to the RLL BMW crew for getting back onto the class podium, despite losing two laps under green racing conditions!
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Impressions of Daytona - Sweet Sixteen?
For the second year running, there were sixteen caution periods during the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Despite an interruption that accounted for 1h 25m, during which time the race was actually stopped with the red flag, the time spent under full course caution this year was actually less than during the 2013 edition of the race.
Last year, you will remember, we had heavy fog in the early morning, which led to a full course caution of 1h 45m, so at the end of the race, the total time spent actually racing was seven-and-a-half minutes longer this year than last. With the cars stationery for around an hour while the rescue workers did their jobs following the Gidley/Malucelli incident, it was never going to be a record distance: in the end, the Corvette DP of Bourdais/Fittipaldi/Barbosa completed 695 laps, fourteen fewer than in 2013.
By the way, for the purposes of timing the race, I am assuming that the time spent stopped was actually part of the full course caution: but the “lap time” for the stoppage lap was just over an hour.
Had the cars been running behind the safety car for that period, they would certainly have been able to complete more laps than in 2013; but they weren’t, so they didn’t. In the end, the race distance (695 laps) was the same as in 2008, when there were 22 caution periods for 122 non-racing laps. I always struggle to count the number of laps under caution, what with wave-bys and what-not, but by my reckoning, the race winner passed the start/finish line 95 times while the yellows were waving.
I’ll confess here to not having followed the race itself very closely, as I had no professional involvement this year and too many other things to do at home on the domestic front. But from what I did see, it didn’t feel to have much of the American Le Mans Series about it and it did feel to have a lot of Grand-Am about it. I’m not really surprised by that, of course, as the United SportsCar Championship has clearly been a takeover rather than a merger, despite all assurances to the contrary.
From the data that has been forthcoming from the timekeepers, though, I have managed to extract the total time spent in the pits for the first three finishers, and it looks like this:
Note that, as regular readers will be aware, the time spent in the pit lane includes the time taken driving down the pit lane, and the pit exit point at Daytona is just round turn 1. By my calculation, the time taken for this without stopping is around 49s, at the mandatory speed limit of 60kph, so the actual time spent working on all three of these cars indicates the high reliability factor of the Corvette DP.
It is worth making the point that time lost in the pits during the Daytona 24 hours is not as significant as at other endurance races, though, since so much time can be recovered under the caution periods. Speed on the track (particularly in the last eight minutes), is all-important.
No analysis from me would be complete without looking at average lap times; even though a hard-earned few seconds gained on the track can be wiped out by someone else's front bumper lying on the track and causing another full course caution. Let's look at the fastest 100 laps of each of the top three finishers:
For comparison, the average lap time over the same distance by last year’s winners, the Chip Ganassi Riley-BMW, was 1m 41.996s - an indication of the changed regulations as much as of technical progress, I fear.
Interestingly, the average of the no. 6 Muscle Milk Oreca-Nissan for its best 100 laps was 1m 41.653s, so maybe the organisers' performance balancing of DP and P2 could have been fairer. We'll see at Sebring - where again I will have no professional interest, unless someone reading this has any bright ideas!
Last year, you will remember, we had heavy fog in the early morning, which led to a full course caution of 1h 45m, so at the end of the race, the total time spent actually racing was seven-and-a-half minutes longer this year than last. With the cars stationery for around an hour while the rescue workers did their jobs following the Gidley/Malucelli incident, it was never going to be a record distance: in the end, the Corvette DP of Bourdais/Fittipaldi/Barbosa completed 695 laps, fourteen fewer than in 2013.
By the way, for the purposes of timing the race, I am assuming that the time spent stopped was actually part of the full course caution: but the “lap time” for the stoppage lap was just over an hour.
Had the cars been running behind the safety car for that period, they would certainly have been able to complete more laps than in 2013; but they weren’t, so they didn’t. In the end, the race distance (695 laps) was the same as in 2008, when there were 22 caution periods for 122 non-racing laps. I always struggle to count the number of laps under caution, what with wave-bys and what-not, but by my reckoning, the race winner passed the start/finish line 95 times while the yellows were waving.
I’ll confess here to not having followed the race itself very closely, as I had no professional involvement this year and too many other things to do at home on the domestic front. But from what I did see, it didn’t feel to have much of the American Le Mans Series about it and it did feel to have a lot of Grand-Am about it. I’m not really surprised by that, of course, as the United SportsCar Championship has clearly been a takeover rather than a merger, despite all assurances to the contrary.
From the data that has been forthcoming from the timekeepers, though, I have managed to extract the total time spent in the pits for the first three finishers, and it looks like this:
| No. | Car | No. of stops | Total Time in Pit Lane |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Action Express Millenium | 29 | 36m 59.915s |
| 10 | Velocity Wayne Taylor | 30 | 40m 29.334s |
| 9 | Action Express | 29 | 38m 23.274s |
Note that, as regular readers will be aware, the time spent in the pit lane includes the time taken driving down the pit lane, and the pit exit point at Daytona is just round turn 1. By my calculation, the time taken for this without stopping is around 49s, at the mandatory speed limit of 60kph, so the actual time spent working on all three of these cars indicates the high reliability factor of the Corvette DP.
It is worth making the point that time lost in the pits during the Daytona 24 hours is not as significant as at other endurance races, though, since so much time can be recovered under the caution periods. Speed on the track (particularly in the last eight minutes), is all-important.
No analysis from me would be complete without looking at average lap times; even though a hard-earned few seconds gained on the track can be wiped out by someone else's front bumper lying on the track and causing another full course caution. Let's look at the fastest 100 laps of each of the top three finishers:
| No. | Car | Average Lap Time |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Action Express Millenium | 1m 40.485s |
| 10 | Velocity Wayne Taylor | 1m 40.196s |
| 9 | Action Express | 1m 40.981s |
For comparison, the average lap time over the same distance by last year’s winners, the Chip Ganassi Riley-BMW, was 1m 41.996s - an indication of the changed regulations as much as of technical progress, I fear.
Interestingly, the average of the no. 6 Muscle Milk Oreca-Nissan for its best 100 laps was 1m 41.653s, so maybe the organisers' performance balancing of DP and P2 could have been fairer. We'll see at Sebring - where again I will have no professional interest, unless someone reading this has any bright ideas!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
