Sticking to Plan A

It’s the time of year when I really should be getting ready for Christmas, but instead I decided to spend a bit of time sharing with you some of my experiences in Kuwait at the recent 12-hour race there. I have already written about how we achieved the success that we did; the aim of this article is to take you behind the scenes to give a flavour of what it was like to be there.

The Kuwait 12 hours, organised by Creventic, was ground-breaking in that it was the first international circuit motor race in Kuwait, although I understand that there had been a rallycross event there in 2021. It was a somewhat late addition to the calendar, taking place as a substitute for the 24h of Sebring, which was originally intended to bring the 2022 Championship of the Continents to a close. Creventic felt that the logistics of getting the cars to and back from Sebring were too challenging, however, and it was decided that Kuwait would be a simpler option.

It was somewhat ironic then, that the logistical challenge of getting the cars to Kuwait proved just as tough. I am not aware of all of the details, but I know that the cars were being transported via Saudi Arabia (from Jeddah) by road, and some arrived earlier than others.

I was there at the behest of the Red Camel-Jordans.nl team, and for the second time this season, their regular Team Manager, Thomas, could not be there. That meant, as at Mugello, that I was required to step up to the task. My flight landed at Kuwait International at one o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, November 30th, so having landed, I went straight to the hotel and to bed. By this time, I not only knew that our car was not at the circuit, but also that it wasn’t expected until the afternoon – at the earliest.

Hence breakfast on Wednesday morning was a fairly relaxed affair, followed by a half-hour drive to the circuit, and sitting around in our empty garage, awaiting developments. As it became clear that the expected arrival time of 2pm was actually far too optimistic, some of the team decided to return to the hotel to try out the pool. I used the time to prepare some runsheets in Excel instead, but still managed to get sufficiently distracted to almost miss the Team Manager’s Meeting at 5pm.

Our drivers for the race would be the usual ‘family’ team of Ivo Breukers (also the Team Principal), and his sons Rik and Luc. In addition to the drivers, there were just eight of us, including myself. However, we had two student helpers from the local technical college, whose names, I am ashamed to say, I never established! We also had Ivo’s wife, Ria, and a family friend, Mark, providing moral support.

At 6:15pm, the first session of private testing began, and still we had no car. We weren’t alone though: ARC Bratislava, Wolf Power, HRT, Leipert and Lionspeed were also still waiting for the delivery of their containers. Also missing were the containers carrying the TV equipment and refuelling gear. At 10pm, we decided to cut our losses and head back to the hotel, having been promised that the car would be delivered sometime after 11pm. After some discussion, we decided to leave the hotel at 5:30 the next morning and unpack the container then, aiming to be ready for the first private test of the morning, which was scheduled to start at 9am.

I drew up a ‘Plan B’, in case it took longer than we thought, which involved missing the first session at 9am and only going out at 10:30, the downside of which meant having much less time to work on the car. As it turned out, we opened the container doors shortly before 6am, built the garage from scratch, and were out on track at 9:10am, Luc at the wheel.

It was a busy day: the Private Test went on until 12:15pm, drivers’ briefing at 1:30pm, another Private Test from 2:15pm to 3:45pm, then we had about an hour and a half to make any changes to the car before the official Free Practice / Night Practice session from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, and the three 15-minute Qualifying sessions (in which each driver was required to set a lap time) to round things off. There was then an optional 45-minute Private Test at 9:15pm, which could be used for final set-ups if required. If all went according to plan (Plan A), then we would not use this session.

We had two significant problems: first that the car was not handling quite to the liking of Ivo or Luc, and second that Rik, our quickest driver and the one best-able to set the car up, was otherwise occupied dealing with the transporters bringing the containers to the circuit. The good news, though was that our tyre degradation seemed to be very low; which was also frustrating, as we expected to be able to go quicker on new tyres, but the better lap times just weren’t to be found.

We spoke to the engineers from Hankook and adjusted the camber settings at the back, and the rollbar settings at the front, and eventually got the car as good as we could, although somehow still with the feeling that there was a better configuration out there somewhere. With Night Practice requiring that Rik set two timed laps, as well as doing his laps during qualifying, I was more than a little concerned that he was still pre-occupied getting the still-missing containers to the circuit. At least we had ours. At the last minute, Rik arrived, did his laps, announced that the car set-up was good (enough) and went back to his phone.

In the end, our qualifying time was good enough for second in our class on the grid, behind the unfeasibly fast Willi Motorsport car, driven by Sergiu Nicolae, Sabino de Castro and Fabrizio Broggi. The class was full of quick cars – it would be a tough race.

Even tougher for Leipert and HRT, whose containers were still en route throughout Thursday, with the race scheduled to start on Friday at 12 noon. As we left the circuit on Thursday evening – around 11pm, Leipert’s container was just arriving: they would have 12 hours to get the car ready for the grid!

So raceday came along. We got to the circuit at shortly before 9am, and had a quick meeting with the crew to establish what everyone would be doing. Rob was chief mechanic – he knew the ins and outs of the car better than anyone. Gert-Jan, Patje, Daan and Justin (making his debut with the team) would be changing the wheels. Roy would look after the tyres, making sure that we had the right set in the oven at the right time, and that the pressures were right. And Darren, as usual, would be our refueller – assisted by one or other of our local students. The other student had to dive in the passenger side of the car at pit stops and change the drinks bottle. Roy would also operate the lollipop, simultaneously with Daan bringing the tyres to the front of the garage.

What about me? I was doing everything and nothing. Everything in the sense that I had to coordinate everyone together, track fuel consumption and decide when and how much to refuel, evaluate the risks versus benefits of pitting under a Code 60, monitor tyre usage and make sure the drivers knew when they were required for their next stint. My only other job was to stay out of the way.

Under normal circumstances, Rik would be our start driver. But having had very little sleep in the preceding five days, he didn’t want to start this time, so that job fell to Luc. After that, I planned to put Ivo in the car, then Rik.

Luc had a good start and led our class (fifth overall) at the end of the opening lap, but against faster drivers in our rivals’ cars, he fell to fourth by the end of lap 3. On lap 19, 37 minutes into the race, the purple code-60 flags waved for the first time. We had used around 45 litres of fuel, so it was worth using the period of slow-running to refuel, but I decided to leave the car on the same set of tyres, and not take valuable time changing them.

Anders Fjordbach (in the no. 930 HRT car) stayed out and thus kept the class lead, but we were now only 18s behind Sabino de Castro in the Willi Motorsport car. Inevitably, Fjordbach pitted for fuel on lap 41, but one lap later de Castro also came in after a stint of just 22 laps. We were now leading the class, and had fuel enough to take Luc to his two-hour drive time limit. In fact, with an hour and three-quarters gone, and the leading GT3 cars having to stop for fuel, we actually led the race overall for a few laps!

I decided to call Luc in a lap early, just in case we had radio communication difficulties. Remember, this team is used to working entirely in Dutch on the radio, so to have an Englishman coming in and telling them what to do was not without risk, particularly when it comes to the strict limit of two hours’ driving at a time. Luc pitted with his driving time at 1h 57m 25s: one lap to spare!

Ivo was next in: a very different character to Luc. Unlike his son, who likes to be left alone on the radio, Ivo likes a constant stream of information, what is his position, who is in front, who is behind, what are the gaps. He also tends to take a little while to get used to the car. Crucially, he is not as quick as either of his sons. Whereas Luc’s average lap time was around 1m 59.7s, Ivo was lapping around more than a second slower.

The pit stop was quick and as Ivo came out, we still led the class, with a one-minute cushion over our nearest class rival. After 25 minutes, we had another code-60 – just as with Luc’s stint, my decision was to refuel but not take tyres. Once again, this meant that we would be nudging the two-hour drive-time limit before we ran out of fuel. I brought Ivo in at the last possible minute, after 1h 58m 09s – one more lap and he would have been over the maximum permissible drive time.

Rik was ready to go now, but the pressure had been somewhat relieved as our competition had not been able to optimise things as well as we had. We had managed to go more than four hours before completing our fourth stop – Willi Motorsport was more than a lap behind before we came in for our stop, nearly half-an-hour later. And, Fabrizio Broggi, the slowest driver on Willi’s crew, still had to get into the car. Although Ivo was our slowest driver (I should say, least quick), we had no intention of reducing his time in the car to compensate.

Rik had been in the car for almost an hour, when we had the third code-60. It was well-timed for us, since Willi had had to pit less than ten minutes earlier, and could not take advantage. But it came as a result of our earlier optimisation of the driving time, which gave us maximum flexibility when we needed it. On our side, I really would have preferred to have left Rik in the car at this point, but he was too tired after his one-hour stint, so we did a full service, and put Luc back in the car. He re-joined on new tyres, still leading the class, in fourth place overall, with a lap advantage over the Willi Motorsport car, now with Broggi at the wheel, losing nearly two seconds a lap to Luc.

Luc had only been able to take on 55 litres of fuel, because the stop was under Code-60 conditions – enough for 34 laps, or around 70 minutes driving, so I decided to give him a double stint, enabling to still further extend our lead over the Willi Motorsport car, while it was in the hands of Broggi. That plan had to be adjusted though, as a little over half an hour later, we had another Code 60. This looked like being a longer one, so having got Ivo into the car, we then made a second stop for fuel, ensuring that Ivo had a full tank to play with.

Although Ivo’s times were very consistent, the 955 car now had Sergiu Nicolae aboard, and was flying, gaining three seconds per lap on us and halving the gap from over four minutes to a little over a lap in the space of an hour and a quarter. Rik was due in the car next, but had ordered a hamburger and didn’t want to go out on an empty stomach!

In hindsight, it was an unfortunate call, but after a 37-lap stint, we got the pit stop done, Rik into the car and refuelled (a hamburger for himself and petrol for the car!) and we were back out on track. But almost immediately, we had another Code 60 (the fifth of the race). Willi Motorsport had also committed to a stop before the Code 60, but got lucky, as their stop continued while the incident was dealt with.

There were three hours to go and Rik was lapping at full speed, but Sabino de Castro in the Willi Motorsport entry was lapping quicker, and managed to unlap himself. However, after a stint of just 17 laps, they were back in the pits to change the brakes, losing nearly three minutes in the process. Chief mechanic Rob had been monitoring our brake wear and was confident we could get through without a brake change.

So the pendulum swung back in our favour. With less than two hours of the race remaining, we were into the window in which Luc could get to the finish and our lead was just under seven minutes. The car had run faultlessly up to this point – but how many things could still possibly go wrong?

Well, for one thing, we would still need two stops to get to the finish and Willi Motorsport would only need one. Then Luc, getting up to speed after a code 60 period suddenly reported a “shaking brake pedal” – this was reminiscent of the brake problem we had experienced in Barcelona. After a few laps though, it got better. A few laps more and Luc reported on the radio that it was “OK”.

In the final hour, Nicolae was again closing at a rate of three seconds (and more) per lap, but Luc kept his cool and his lap times consistently in the 1m 59s / 2m 00s bracket, which was all that was needed to ensure our class win. The problems for the GP Elite GT3 Porsche were somewhat unexpected, but handed us an unexpected place on the overall podium.

So unexpected that Luc – having initially not seen the chequered flag – then didn’t realise that his finishing position meant that he would not have to go into Parc Fermé, but could stop beneath the podium and his delighted team were able to congratulate him properly. Obviously I am biased, but it was a great performance by Luc, who drove for more than five and a half hours out of the twelve, compared to Ivo’s 3h 19m and Rik’s 2h 36m.

Willi Motorsport’s car had been, in Ivo’s words: “unbelievably quick: braking later and carrying far more speed through the corners”. Without their brake issue, I still believe we would have won, but it would have been a far closer contest, and who knows, perhaps the additional pressure that brought might have contributed to something else going wrong for us?

In less than a month, we will be back in the Middle East – to Dubai for the 24 hours and the second (of three) round of the Middle East Trophy. Red Camel will have their regular Team Manager back and I will be concentrating on getting our strategy right. Hopefully, we will be blessed with similar car reliability as well.

Success in Kuwait

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working the strategy...

In a few days’ time I shall be heading out to Kuwait for the final race of my 2022 season. And what a great season it has been. Since being diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2020 and reaching some pretty low points; this year has surpassed anything that I could have hoped for. Just over two years ago, I was discharged from hospital after a stem cell transplant feeling pretty rough – I had no appetite, little strength and was exhausted after even the smallest of activities. Although my back remains more than five inches shorter than it was, and I rely on medication to keep me going through the days, I am a lot stronger than I was, and have recovered far more of my strength than I once thought possible. Altogether, I’ve been to 19 race events during the course of this year – Kuwait will be the twentieth – and many of those have been on local PA commentary, about which I have written recently on this blog. When I haven’t been occupied doing commentary though, I have been working with the Red Camel-Jordans.nl team at various events in Creventic’s 24H Series.

Creventic’s 2022 calendar has been a busy one: it started in January, in Dubai, where Red Camel ran their relatively recently-acquired Porsche 992 with high hopes following the washout that was the 2021 race. We had enlisted the driving talents of Jeroen Bleekemolen, Julius Adomavičius and Morris Schuring, alongside Team Owner Ivo Breukers.

Clockwise from top left, Ivo Breukers, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Julius Adomavičius and Morris Schuring.

Bleekemolen should need no introduction to endurance racing fans: twice an outright winner of the Dubai 24 hours (in a Mercedes), as well as a class winner at Le Mans. Julius, from Lithuania, was just 20 years of age, but had experience of driving LMP3 as well as Touring cars. The youngster of the team was Morris Schuring at just 16, who spent 2021 driving in the German Porsche Supercup, with a couple of outings to his name in the GP-support races as well. I’ll say no more about Ivo at this stage, since he is a feature of the Red Camel team throughout the season; suffice to say that he is very much a hands-on Team Owner, in whom a fierce competitive spirit burns.

The race itself ran well – we came home third in class, without quite the pace of the two Team GP-Elite Porsches that beat us. It’s always interesting to compare driver performance within the team. For us, we had:

Name	Driving Time	Laps	Best lap	Ave of best 20%	Theoretical best
Bleekemolen	6h 10m 30s	164	2m 03.362s	2m 04.702s	2m 03.260s
Schuring	6h 06m 35s	154	2m 04.070s	2m 05.287a	2m 03.750s
Adomavičius	5h 46m 01s	147	2m 04.954s	2m 06.074s	2m 04.904s
Breukers	3h 59m 08s	101	2m 06.457s	2m 07.808s	2m 05.854s

After Dubai, there was a break before the two-part, 12-hour race at Mugello in March. It’s a lovely part of the world, beautiful scenery, delightful cuisine and relatively accessible. When I arrived, I learnt that Thomas, our usual Team Manager, couldn’t be there and I was somewhat taken aback when the team decided that I should take on the role for the race weekend. I was quite comfortable running the strategy for the team: deciding when to stop for fuel, whether making an extra stop under code-60 conditions could prove beneficial, making sure that the team kept within driving time limits, etc., but to have to take the responsibility of making all the calls: on tyres, brakes, set-up changes, etc., put me well outside my comfort zone.

I was comfortable enough with our driver line-up though, as Ivo was joined by his two sons, Rik (24) and Luc (22). The boys are just as competitive as their father; Rik usually the quicker of the two, although on his day, Luc can push him quite hard – as is often the case with siblings.

L-R Rik, Ivo, Luc

Happily for me, GP-Elite was not entered for this race: our main competition was from HRT Performance and Red Ant Racing. From the very beginning of the weekend, though, it was clear that we had a quick car – the set-up worked very well around Mugello and a class win was on the cards. At the end of Part 1 (five-and-a-half hours) we were a few seconds clear of the HRT car and a lap ahead of the Red Ant Porsche.

A little over half-way through the second part, we had managed to establish almost (but not quite) a lap lead. In Creventic racing, in which there are no Safety Cars, being a lap ahead provides a psychological advantage but no real extra advantage, since the gaps in neutralisation periods stay (fairly) consistent. However, there came a pit stop, where we pitted immediately behind the other HRT team car. Ivo Breukers was in the car, and needed to fuel, so headed to the fuelling station, as did the HRT entry. But their car hesitated, seemed unsure where he wanted to go. Ivo could see our refueller at the first pump, and dived for the space. A few minutes later, news of a penalty for our car (a pit stop infringement) came through. We dutifully took the penalty (a 10-second stop and go) at our next routine stop, but about half-an-hour later another message appeared on the timing screens: “Team Manager car 909 to race control immediately”. I regretted taking the decision to accept the role, but made my way up the stairs and along the darkened corridors. I was introduced to the steward, who showed me video footage of our “indiscretion”.

“Look,” he said and showed me the regulation where it said there could be no overtaking in the refuelling area, and that it was not allowed to reserve a place at a pump. I agreed that it looked wrong, but explained that the driver of the HRT car had come to a complete standstill and our refueller was ready to start servicing our car straightaway. “There should be a penalty”, said the steward.

“There was!” I replied, “and we served it”. At this point the steward’s face dropped a little.

“Wait there,” he said and disappeared off to another room. He came back a few minutes later, telling me I was free to go. So off I went, without it being really clear whether that was the end of the matter. It seemed that HRT had protested the original penalty as being insufficient for the offence. That wasn’t our problem, of course, we served our penalty and got on with the race, coming home some two minutes clear of the other HRT car. I’ll admit, it was a good feeling, watching the drivers on the top step of the podium, knowing that the combination of my strategy, quick drivers, and fast work from our mechanics in the pits had led to the class victory. But the protest left an unnecessary cloud.

The season then moved on, to Spa-Francochamps, and due to clashing commitments, I couldn’t make the trip to be there in person, but the team was very clear that I was still needed to run the strategy for them. So I sat in my study at home, one computer connected to the timing feed from Timeservice.nl, a second computer connected to the car’s telemetry and a third with local spreadsheets running on it. All-in-all, it was a good set-up and I was happy with the way it was working. I communicated with the garage via a WhatsApp chat group, which was not the same as being there, but seemed to work okay.

Except that it didn’t. Towards the end of part one of the race (again, five-and-a-half hours), we had a commanding class lead, a comfortable lap ahead of our nearest rival (the 903 Red Ant car). Towards the end of the first part, the plan was to come in to the pit to refuel – thus enabling us to start part 2 on very nearly a full tank.

However, it didn’t quite go to plan. I wasn’t in the garage, of course, but I established later that Ivo and Rik, who were in the garage, had seen the opportunity to get a two-lap advantage on the Red Ant car, by not getting a full tank of fuel at the final stop. There seemed to be some confusion between the refueller and the garage, and Luc was sent on his way having only taken on 21 litres of fuel. This meant that we would be starting part 2 with almost no fuel on board at all. Bearing in mind the need to drive the car a lap to the grid and a further green flag lap behind the Safety Car at the restart, before the car would be allowed to come into the pit for a proper, legal refuelling stop, it was decided to pull the car off the grid and send it directly to the refuelling station.

All of this meant that, from being a lap ahead at the end of part one, within the first 15 minutes of part 2, we were two laps behind and the Red Ant car was simply too fast for us to catch it in the second part of the race. Third in class was all we could manage. “We got too greedy,” Ivo agreed with me afterwards.

With the aim of preventing a repeat, I was all set to go to Hockenheim for round 4 of the series, but rather late in the day I received a call-up from Radio Show Limited, explaining that they were short of commentators for the race, and that they needed me to commentate more than Red Camel needed me in the pit garage. After the Spa-Francorchamps debacle, I had some doubts, but Ivo had the good grace to release me, and hence I spent my first ever trip to Hockenheim working from the commentary box on the outside of the circuit, rather than from inside Red Camel’s garage.

It made a welcome change though, and on top of that, my colleagues at Red Camel had a successful weekend, bringing the Porsche home to another class win in the (six plus six) twelve-hour race.

Next up were two 24-hour races, the first of which was at Portimao in the lovely Algarve region of Southern Portugal. For this and for the 24-hours at Barcelona, the family team of Ivo, Rik and Luc Breukers would be joined by Fabian Danz, a Swiss driver regularly competing in Creventic races, but only in front-wheel drive, TCR-class cars. Apart from some outings in a BMW, it would be Fabian’s first experience of anything like the Porsche 992.

It was a long trip for the transporter, and drama for the Red Camel car, which, it was discovered on getting to the circuit, hadn’t been properly secured and suffered some damage in transit. It seemed to be largely superficial, but in the light of what happened later in the weekend, maybe that wasn’t the case after all.

There was further drama before the start, as our rival entry from ID Racing was running an illegal exhaust, and to prove that others in the class were running to the regulation, we had to remove the exhaust system to prove that our catalytic converter was in place. It was all extra work for the small but dedicated team of mechanics, and maybe, just maybe, it led to some mistakes being made.

That done, it was on with the business of qualifying, and a good job all round (qualifying takes the best lap from each of three drivers) saw us qualify second in class, eighth overall.

Apart from an early puncture, the first half of the race went well – we were leading the class and up to third place overall when disaster struck in the shape of a right driveshaft failure that took just over an hour to replace. With one rival already retired, the and only three cars remaining in the race, the hard decision was taken to retire the car. We continued long enough to complete enough laps to be classified for championship points, but there really was nothing to be gained by continuing.

The bonus was, having packed away the garage, the team was free to go to the beach and enjoy some sunshine.

The Circuit de Catalunya was next, and the team was definitely ready to avenge the disappointment of Portimao. Fabian Danz had fitted in really well with the team in Portugal, and whilst not as quick as Rik, was certainly playing his part. Qualifying went even better than in Portimao, Rik, Luc and Fabian combining to put our Porsche on class pole.

Disaster struck early on this time: Rik having completed just over an hour from the start, was in the barrier at turn 1, following a brake failure. It took nearly forty minutes to get the car back to the garage, and then over five hours to repair it. Clearly, a recovery drive was going to be out of the question, but having repaired the car, everyone was keen to get on with the race. There was still a long way to go. Through the night, we kept at it, changed the discs and pads in the early hours of the morning and were not actually losing any ground to the class leaders, remaining the same distance behind them (about five-and-a-half hours) for the remainder of the race.

Until about an hour to go, the brakes started to worry us again, so to minimise risk, with nothing to gain, we parked the car and good old Luc went out to complete the final few laps to the flag.

Not a great way to end the European season. Red Camel took second place honours in the European Championship, and worthily so. But for those bad results in Portimao and Barcelona, it could have been better. But I had learnt a lot. Having been in this business as long as I have, it is so refreshing to be able to still be learning things after forty years and more.

The race in Kuwait will be the final round of the Championship of the Continents, and also the first round of the Middle East Championship, which consists of points scored in Kuwait (12 hours), Dubai (24 hours), and Abu Dhabi (6 hours). Bring it on, I say!

No statistics, graphs or tables...

I am aware that the blog has been very quiet this year. Well, I warned you that if it were so, then it would be an indication that I have been busy and somehow this year has been a very busy one indeed. Not just full of motor-racing things, but also with domestic matters. The first thing to mention, for those who care (and I am always amazed how many of you there are) is my health. Thus far, my remission continues. The medication seems to be working and apart from the physical damage that happened to my back in the early stages of my illness, and the consequent restriction of my chest cavity and breathing, I am as strong as I can reasonably expect to be. There have been one or two setbacks during the year, but my immune system has coped and the medical professionals are happy with my condition.

(If you don’t know the background here, I suggest you go back to June and October 2020 and read my posts from then.)

On the domestic front, it has been a year of upheaval as well, since we spent the latter part of 2021 moving house; finally arriving at our new home in December. Practically all my spare time this year has been spent - led for the most part by my hard-working wife - on sorting things out: getting decorating done, buying all manner of new ‘stuff’ and all the sundry activities that go along with settling in to a new house after nigh on thirty years of living in Woking.

But as I have said, it has been busy work-wise as well, and broadly, my work has fallen into three categories: first, writing for sport auto magazine in Germany (as well as a contribution for RaceCar Engineering here); second, doing commentary work for Radio Show Limited and various circuit PA’s around the UK; and third, working in the pit garage for Red Camel Racing in their season-long campaign in Creventic’s 24H Series races. There have been a few other bits and pieces along the way, but I never dreamed, in the depths of my illness in 2020, that I would be well enough to get to so many races as I have this year.

Indeed, there has been far too much going on to cover in a single blog post, and some things I have no wish to talk about here. But I have unexpectedly been occupied doing far more circuit commentary this year, and have enormously enjoyed myself doing so.

Although I have been a motor-racing enthusiast since a very early age, it was through Public Address commentary that I became involved on the ‘inside’ of the sport. I have written about my starting off in commentary before, and I will not to repeat that here, but having been doing Public Address work for forty years it still gives me a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction to spend a day talking into a microphone – even if the audience is often very small. In a sense, doing PA commentary can be regarded as a public duty. As the PA commentator, the ‘tannoy’ is the main link between the race meeting and the spectators that have paid to get in. It is a different experience to talking to a TV or radio audience, where the viewer (or listener) can turn you off and go and do something else. To my mind, you have a responsibility as the commentator to inform people about what is going on, and to help then to enjoy their day. Hopefully, to such an extent, that they might decide to come back again.

Cast your mind back to any the motor-racing that you have ever seen portrayed in a movie or drama on TV. There is always a disjointed voice coming over the tannoy. To me, the tannoy is simply a part of the drama of motor-racing. When the commentator starts shouting, the spectators know that there is drama unfolding before their eyes – they had better pay attention!

The well-equipped box at Woodcote

When I used to go to races and stand in the spectator enclosure, I would always ensure that I was near enough to a loudspeaker to be able to hear the commentary. I used to keep a lap chart and generally stay as close to the racing action as I could. When the commentators missed something, I would want to nudge my neighbour and say, for example: “look out for no. 7, he’s closing in on the no. 3 by a second a lap!” That’s the role of the commentator – to help the casual spectator to understand what they are seeing.

This year, I have commentated from the commentary boxes at Woodcote, Abbey, Stowe and Becketts at Silverstone, as well as at Donington Park, Brands Hatch and Snetterton. I have covered everything from British GT to the Citroen C1 24-hour race, with many club formulae in between. Nearly all of them have been contested by enthusiasts who love their racing, who own and pay for their cars. And mostly the grids have been extremely healthy. Considering where we’ve been in the last two years, it shows that national racing at the club level is very strong indeed.

Having said all of that, the highlight of my year was undoubtedly getting to Le Mans again – as I explained in July in my only other post of this year. In many ways, my approach to “the World’s Greatest Endurance race” is no different to that of a Silverstone club meeting. I want to help people to understand what they are seeing, to get them as excited about it as I am, and hopefully, to get them to return another time. Over the years, the audience for Radio Le Mans has shifted from being purely a radio station broadcasting to those at the circuit, to being an international affair, where the worldwide audience listening online vastly outnumbers those who are actually at the circuit listening in on FM radio receivers.

I was also commentating at Hockenheim this year, for Creventic’s two-part, 12-hour race. It was the first time that I had been to Germany’s ‘other’ circuit, and I am grateful to those who made that trip possible. It has been tricky, on occasions, to squeeze everything in this year, but somehow I have managed it - although the year is not over yet.

I hope that next year can continue in a similar vein – although having said that, the work that I’ve been doing for Red Camel this year has in many ways been more exhilarating. But that will have to be the subject for another blog.

It's been a long time... this is very overdue!

It’s been a few weeks since I got home from Le Mans, but I have had a lot to do since then, and writing on the blog, as regular (and patient) readers will know, tends to get shoved down my priority list fairly easily. I posted on Twitter that it was incredibly important for me to be at Le Mans this year – for the 90th running of this epic 24-hour endurance race. Having said that, it would be stretching the point somewhat to describe this year’s race as an epic. But I’ll come back to that later.

Looking back, I was surprised to find that my last post here was more than six months ago – I knew that it had been a while, but hadn’t realised that quite so much time had passed. Hence, a bit of a catch-up is due.

On the personal front, our house move was achieved as planned before Christmas, and since then we have spent time sorting things out and settling in. Health-wise, I am doing pretty well. My strength is not what it was, and I tire easily, but my body is tolerating the regime of medication and my day-to-day life is more or less normal. The good news is that since moving in, for not a single moment have I regretted the move, despite the associated stresses involved.

I have suggested before that infrequent posting on my blog is probably a good sign – certainly this year has been a busy one so far, and looks like it will continue in that vein for a few months (at least) yet. Getting things sorted on the house seems like a never-ending task, but squeezing in some trip abroad has helped raise the spirits no end. Following a trip to the 24 hours of Dubai in January, I have made two visits to family in Germany and spent a week on holiday in Lanzarote. Then I have managed three visits to Silverstone (including the 24-hour Citroen C1 race), been twice to Brands Hatch, and further afield, to Mugello and Hockenheim for Creventic 24H Series races. Each of which have probably been worthy of blog entries in their own right, but time for writing stuff here has simply not been available.

Le Mans for me, though is “the Big One”. And I am sure there are many of you for whom that resonates. It’s difficult to describe why the event is held in such high esteem by so many people, but when Covid struck the world and multiple myeloma struck me, it was the race that left the biggest void.

In June 2020, I was really rather poorly, and wasn’t in a fit state to travel – visits to the local hospital to receive my weekly treatments were on the limit of what I could manage. When the race was re-scheduled for September, there seemed no good reason why we wouldn’t be allowed to go: Autumnal colours in La Sarthe – that would be worth seeing. At the time, September seemed a long way away, the medication was working and my strength was returning. By the time the race weekend came around on 19th/20th September, I was reaching what would turn out to be a bit of a peak of fitness, before being struck back down by the stem cell transplant, which happened to me in October. And far from going away, Covid hung around and prevented any spectators (and a good deal of media people) from making the annual pilgrimage.

For me personally, it was extra disappointing, as my first visit to Le Mans had been in 1981 (you can read about that adventure here {https://trussers.blogspot.com/2011/05/le-mans-1981-personal-recollections.html}) and 2020 would therefore have been by 40th visit without missing a year. It took me a while to recover from my stem cell transplant, but surely 2021 would not see a repeat? It did. Again the race was postponed from its traditional June date, to August 21st/22nd, and although there were some media present, Radio Le Mans was not; there was no FM transmitter and only limited numbers of spectators allowed through the turnstiles. My 40th Le Mans would have to wait.

Although I missed being there, I did participate, in a limited way, in Radio Le Mans output in both 2020 and 2021. I was listening in, and had a link to the Skype chat that the broadcast team uses to control the streamed output. But for me it was a shallow way in which to follow the race.

The beauty of Radio Le Mans, as listeners will know, is the chemistry that exists between the various people on air – the banter, the mix of vivid descriptions of race action with technical detail and strategic analysis along with entertaining tangents and the way the whole thing somehow knits together as a cohesive unit. This year, that was back. We even visited one of the camp sites!

Working at Le Mans is never easy, and this year was certainly no exception. I won’t go into the details, but you should be aware that away from the microphones, there’s a lot of hard work put in by everyone involved. As for the race – well let’s be frank – it was somewhat disappointing in terms of the overall lead. But there was still drama: surely everyone will take away the image of Alexander Sims’ vicious exit from the race on Sunday morning, bringing Corvette’s Le Mans story to a most disappointing close. And there was still tension: the Toyotas one hiccup for the Conway/Lopez/Kobayashi car – was it a just a one-off glitch or a portent for more trouble ahead? And records broken: the most cars ever to take the start of the race (62), the most finishers ever (53), and the best reliability record across the entry (85%). And there was Josh Pierson, who became the youngest driver ever to start – and finish – the race. And there was Toyota, winning for the fifth time in a row.

For me, you can forget the racing, it was the event that was so very special. I was most touched by all the messages of support – many from people I had never met. And being able to walk around the paddock and see people I hadn’t met for years. It is a privilege to be able to talk to so many people on Radio Le Mans: those at the track as well as those listening all around the world: hopefully my ramblings fitted in with the rest of the team, that we made some sense and encouraged those who weren’t there to make the trip in future. And that those who were there at the circuit felt well-informed and entertained about what was going on (most of the time).

I originally intended to put some analysis in here before signing off, but I am afraid time has once again got the better of me. It's off to Portimão next, where I shall be helping Red Camel with their Porsche 992 Cup car in another 24 hour race. Maybe there’ll be time after that! Maybe.

Season summary - Creventic

As we head into the final few weeks of the year, I am finding it much easier to look back on 2021 than I found looking back on 2020. By the time the bells of Big Ben chime to herald in 2022 we will (we will, I know we will) have moved into our new house, and that will bring with it a sense of a new start that I haven’t experienced since becoming fully self-employed at the beginning of 2019. Inevitably, I spend time at the end of the year looking back and summarising. At the end of 2020, I was glad just to have survived!

I may only have been to four race meetings this year – but that is three more than I went to in 2020, so by no means am I complaining. More importantly, I was fit enough to attend a lot more than that and I was able to be properly involved with a number of other races during the year: not only commentating for Radio Show Limited’s network of channels, but also getting involved in a consultancy role for various teams working remotely. It is a testament to modern technology – as well as the co-operation of timekeepers and facility suppliers – that such remote working is possible. One hears many stories these days of working from home, but I can confirm that the future is here… and it works!

There is no doubt whatsoever though, that however good the technology, you can’t beat actually being at a race. I’ll admit that I was interested in cars and motor sport from an early age (not encouraged in any way by my family, I must stress), but it was not until my first visit to Brands Hatch at the age of ten that my passion was truly ignited. Since becoming involved in the sport, I have been fortunate to attend races in many categories and across the globe, mostly (although not exclusively) at someone else’s expense.

And I’ll admit that I find it more of a chore and less of a joy to talk about races without being there. Le Mans this year was an excellent example. The situation was certainly not simple as various issues were at play, but an opportunity arose for me to make the trip to see the race at first hand. However, when the music stopped, I was at home and the 62 cars that I longed to see spend the week tearing around the French countryside did so without me. It meant that I was able to talk about the race for Radio Le Mans, and the technology I referred to above allowed me access to more data and as good TV pictures as I would have had if I had made the trip there in person. But I wasn’t there: I wasn’t able to talk to anyone in person, I wasn’t able to smell, feel or touch the atmosphere. There was a wall between Le Mans and me.

I was also disappointed not to make the trip to Sebring for the inaugural 24-hour race at the Florida airfield track, run by Creventic as the conclusion of their 24H Series Championship. I’ve never been to Sebring, and it remains one of those places I would like to go someday. I generally enjoy Creventic’s races – a highlight of my 2019 season was getting to all the rounds of their championship. Everyone who knows their races speaks highly of them, and although not without their wrinkles, they do a great job organising races that people actually enjoy participating in.

The Covid-19 pandemic, along with some other economic problems, has hit them hard. Remember who organised the first post-pandemic (or in the light of later events, mid-pandemic) race back in 2020? Yes, at Portimão – a 24-hour race on the weekend of June 13th/14th. It was a brave move, the previous race in the series having been the rain-curtailed Dubai 24 hours of 2020, which had to be abandoned after just seven hours because of heavy (artificially-induced) rain.

This year has been far more successful for the Dutch organisation. Seven races comprised the season: 24-hour races at Dubai, Barcelona and Sebring, complemented by 12-hour affairs at Mugello, Paul Ricard, Hockenheim and Budapest. Entries were generally pretty good although sometimes disappointing – no-one was happy to see just 16 cars start at the Hungaroring, a late replacement for the Coppa Florio at Enna-Pergusa. Considering the uncertainty caused by travel restrictions and the ongoing global pandemic, the average number of starters over the year, at over 31, is not too bad at all.

The fact that Creventic doesn’t use Safety Cars, but uses the Code-60 procedure to neutralise races, is a good thing in my view. However, it does reduce the tactical options for teams playing catch-up. Once you drop back, it is a tough job to recover lost time. In virtually all other brands of endurance racing, the Safety Car provides the chance for slower cars to catch up. Over the course of 12 or 24 hours, it is entirely possible for a car to recover several laps, by judicious use of pit stops during Safety Car periods, and some Creventic races this year have failed to provide as much entertainment merely because one car got a lucky break with a code-60, from which others were unable to recover. You may say that Safety Cars can provide similar lucky breaks, and you would be right, but more often than not, it is the cars behind the leader that benefit. It is a reflection on the careful Balance of Performance (BoP) regulations in the series that so many Creventic races are as close-fought as they are.

There is a good mix of manufacturers represented as well. Although Porsche won every race bar one this year, there were four occasions on which there were cars from three different manufacturers on the podium, and although Herberth Motorsport won four times, four different teams took overall honours during the year and on four occasions the winning margin was a lap or less.

While Creventic now looks forward – with good reason – to the opening round of their 2022 season in Dubai in the second week of January, for which the entry list has already topped 85 cars, the season is not quite over yet for SRO.

There is still the final race of the 2021 Intercontinental GT Challenge to come in the shape of the iconic Kyalami 9 hours and I’m aware that by focussing on the Creventic series in this article I have overlooked the bigger brother, properly professional SRO-organised series that go to make not only the IGTC but also the GT World Challenge: in Europe, America and Asia.

Further still up the motor-racing pecking order, there is also the matter of a Formula 1 world championship to be settled. A friend of mine recently said that his attention had been drawn far more to F1 this year than to Endurance racing, and I can see why. The entertainment factor in F1 has certainly been very high.

Fortunately, Formula 1, the World Endurance Championship, the Intercontinental GT Challenge and the 24H Series all cater for different markets, different budgets, different customers. Long may they co-exist. But, reflecting the spirit of the time of year, may they also share where resources are scarce.

A look back at Le Mans, a look forward to Bahrain and a personal update

I have to say, it was great fun working with my friends on Radio Le Mans during this years’ 24-hour race at Le Mans back in August. Of course it wasn’t the same; but we live in times where working from home is not so unusual, and I had a wonderful set-up in our dining room with as many screens as I could reasonably want to use. The ever-efficient and friendly folk at Al Kamel (official timekeepers for the WEC) also provided me with access to their V2 Protocol on Cloud data stream, which meant that I could see live timing data in real time. And if I needed access to my home library, I just had to nip upstairs to look up anything I wanted – especially where I trusted my own records rather than the lottery of information that is available on the internet.

Although I did contribute to the Radio Show Limited coverage of the 2020 editions of both the Nürburgring and Le Mans 24-hour races, this year was my first opportunity to be properly part of the commentary team since the diagnosis of my illness and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year. I wasn’t sure, initially, how it was all going to pan out, but once I had the headset on, I felt that I slid into the groove very easily – and after a few minutes, it was like I had never been away. I took regular breaks, and even managed to tear myself away from the action in the night to get some sleep. Perhaps it set a precedent for my future contributions, or perhaps it was just another step in my recovery… we’ll see.

A lot seems to have happened since my last blog post, not only in terms of my personal life. From the point of view of my health, all is going reasonably well. I am still taking various medications – probably henceforth always will – but as long as it keeps the myeloma at bay, then I’m not going to complain. In July, I was at Spa-Francorchamps again, for the VW Fun Cup. For various reasons, I never quite got around to blogging about it, but from the point of view of my strength and endurance, it was a great success.

Since Le Mans, I have had various outings, not motor-racing related, but proving that I can drive myself around and visit friends and family as much as the Covid restrictions allow.

We are in the process of moving home: having lived in Surrey for more than half my life, my wife and I decided a move to a quieter part of England was appropriate. We surely underestimated the stress involved in selling and buying a house, but hopefully we are beyond the worst of it and will settle in quickly to our new abode and new surroundings.

In terms of the World Endurance Championship though, Le Mans represents the most recent round of the 2021 season. With just the double-header at Bahrain to wrap things up in the championship, I thought it was worth taking a brief look back at what happened in France in August, to see how the championship standings might shake out.

Personally, I find that the WEC has got itself in a bit of a mess. Having had an eight-round ‘super-season’ in 2018-2019, including two editions of the Le Mans 24 hours, we then had a single ‘winter season’ in 2019-2020, which also consisted of eight rounds. For 2021, we have returned to a ‘proper season’ consisting purely of races held in 2021, and which will end with two races on the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir. The first of these will take place over six hours and the second will be eight hours, on consecutive weekends, the last Saturday in October and the first Saturday in November. For a six-hour race, 25 points are awarded to the race winner, and for an 8-hour encounter, there are 38 points for the winners, so there are plenty of opportunities for strategists to exercise themselves over.

Toyota’s lead in the Manufacturers’ Championship is currently 51 points, so there is a mathematical chance that they won’t win it. That chance is one hardly worth bothering about, despite the presence of Alpine and Glickenhaus, there was not much doubt about the destination of the championships from the outset of this year’s six-round season.

However, just nine points separates the drivers of the no. 7 Toyota (Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, winners at Le Mans) from the no. 8 (Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley and Sébastien Buemi), so everything is still to play for. Two wins for the no. 8 over the two Bahraini races would be needed for their squad to take the championship. A lot hangs on the Japanese cars being reliable: thus far this season they have achieved a one-two in three out of four races, can more of the same be expected in Bahrain? If so, then the nine-point margin makes the no. 7 squad a distinct favourite to repeat their triumph in the (eight-round) 2019-2020 season.

In the GTE-Pro class, the score stands at two wins each so far this year for Porsche and Ferrari. However, the Italian marque has won at the higher-scoring, longer races at Le Mans and Portimao, giving them a 16-point lead in the championship. Certainly not unassailable, but enough to count them favourites. In the drivers’ classification, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado for Ferrari hold a 12-point lead over Porsche drivers Neel Jani and Kevin Estre.

Because each driver on the crew for each car scores the points earned by the car, it always just so happens that the drivers’ crown is shared by the squad driving the most successful car. This is only right and fair, of course. One would hardly expect the football World Cup in 1966 just to be awarded to Geoff Hurst, would one? George Cohen earned his right as a member of the winning team just as much – as did Jimmy Greaves, in my opinion, but that’s a whole different can of worms.

But, especially at Le Mans, I often get to wondering about the relative contribution of each driver to the finishing result. A driver’s contribution is difficult to assess, though, and is especially difficult to compare across a three-driver team, when team orders might play a role, as can the weather, the state of the car, and so on and so on.

For this a “Rising Average” graph is very useful. I show a few of these below, but first, it is important to understand how they are derived and how they should be interpreted. Al Kamel provides a very useful website: http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com from which you can download a CSV file containing the lap time for every car on every lap. Load this onto your computer and you can have a great deal of fun comparing your own favourites. You could also double-check my numbers for me!

I am not going to provide a complete course in drawing graphs using Microsoft Excel, but I do strongly recommend that you don’t just take my word for it, but do your own research as well. To get a Rising Average, you should sort the file by car and then by lap time, so for each car the lap times are sorted, fastest to slowest. Then take the average of the fastest n laps, where n increases from 1 to the number of laps completed by the car. To assess each individual driver, sort the file first by driver, then by car, then by lap time, and perform the same exercise. Draw the results on a graph, and you will get something like this:

I said earlier that it is important to know how to read these graphs. At first glance, merely consider that the driver whose line is nearest the x-axis is the fastest. Indeed, the very left-hand end of the graph shows you the fastest lap of each driver (fastest is the average of one lap). However, equally important – some would say more so – is the gradient of the line. Simple arithmetic demands that the line will slope upwards from left to right, but the angle with which it slopes is an indication of the consistency of the driver. The nearer to flat, the nearer to 100% consistency is that driver.

So, comparing the Toyota drivers from the graph above, you can see that Kamui Kobayashi was consistently the quickest of all six of them and that Kazuki Nakajima was overall slowest. But you can also see that Jose Maria Lopez did fewer laps than any of the others. But look at the consistency demonstrated by Sébastien Buemi and Mike Conway. Regular readers know that I am big fan of Conway, and I was surprised to see that on a 10- to 20-lap average he was slowest of all the Toyota drivers, but his line is even flatter than that of Buemi, indicating that he was getting the best from his tyres over a long stint, and that his line carries on the furthest to the right, indicating that he was the busiest of all the drivers on the team.

Truly, this is a team game, and Conway’s part in the victory was just as important as that played by his team-mates.

Here is a similar graph showing the comparison of the other HYPERCAR entries, the Alpine and the two Glickenhauses.

The performance of Nicolas Lapierre sticks out here like a sore thumb. And fellow-countryman Olivier Pla had a good race as well.

Finally, a quick look at the GTE-Pro class.

The graph shows the first classified GTE Pro cars. Most surprising here is how poor Neel Jani compares with everyone else. Certainly not what one would expect from a Le Mans winner. Ferrari can thank James Calado for the win, but the performance of the Corvette was undoubtedly strong, in particular the contributions of Nicky Catsburg and Antonio Garciá.

As I said, these graphs can be very illuminating, and demonstrate how multi-dimensional an endurance race is. On occasion, they can lead one completely astray, but for a race as long as Le Mans, and for one in which the weather conditions remain stable throughout, they provide a very useful indicator to show who were the true heroes of the race.