The Prologue - FIA WEC test days at Paul Ricard

Although I wasn’t at Le Castellet for the FIA WEC’s “Prologue”, I did try to track the lap times – and thanks to the ever-helpful David Escribano at Al Kamel Systems, I do have a lot of data about what went on.

I must admit my primary concern was to follow the progress in the LMP1 class – and progress is certainly the operative word: some of the lap times, particularly from the Porsche 919 Hybrids, were quite astonishing. Of course Porsche set the fastest time at the Prologue last year as well, but Brendon Hartley’s time from last year was 4.069s slower than this year’s best time, set by Neel Jani – coincidentally in the equivalent session on the Friday evening. That’s an improvement of more than 4% - which would mean knocking around eight seconds off the lap time around Le Mans.

Surprising perhaps, but nothing new: John Surtees qualified his Ferrari eight seconds quicker in 1964 than Pedro Rodriguez’s pole position time (also in a Ferrari) the year before. And Phil Hill then went a further eight seconds quicker in his Ford Mark II twelve months later. More recently, Peugeot managed to find an eight second improvement between 2007 and 2008: Stéphane Sarrazin setting the lap times in both cases.

So, even if some eyebrows were raised, the improvement is not so staggering as it may appear at first sight; development in motor racing never stands still.

Don’t forget that Porsche is also now running in the 8MJ hybrid class – a 33% increase on the 6MJ that it ran last year. Similarly, Audi has stepped up to the 4MJ class from running with 2MJ in 2014 (according to some, less than it had in 2013). And the Joest Racing team must have also been pleased with a 3% improvement in their lap times compared to last year’s Prologue.

By contrast, Toyota has remained in the same 6MJ category as it ran last year, yet still was able to show a 2.407s improvement on last year’s best time.

However, I worry about reading too much into any of these lap times, because to the best of my knowledge, there was no control over the amount of fuel being used throughout the test. I have been told on good authority that there was no control during last year’s Prologue either, so at least we are comparing ‘like-with-like’.

Readers are probably aware that the regulations limit the fuel consumed by LMP1 cars in two ways: firstly an instantaneous kg/h rate, and secondly based on the MJ content of the fuel used during a lap. The 2MJ, 4MJ, 6MJ and 8MJ categories refer to the amount of energy that may be released from the hybrid systems per lap of Le Mans. For other circuits, the limit is a percentage, based on the circuit length, but multiplied by a factor of 1.55. This means that you can deploy more energy per kilometre (provided you can harvest that much) at other circuits.

Similarly, the amount of fuel allowed per lap is also limited, but with a multiplication factor for circuits other than Le Mans of 1.11. For Paul Ricard, this means that Porsche must be able to manage a minimum of 31 laps on a tank of fuel and that Toyota and Audi each must be able to do 30 laps.

Let’s look at the long stints then:

No.	Car	Driver	Laps	When	Lap time
7	Audi	Tréluyer	30	Friday afternoon	1m 40.849s
17	Porsche	Bernhard	31	Friday afternoon	1m 41.621s
18	Porsche	Lieb	30	Saturday morning	1m 41.731s
1	Toyota	Nakajima	29	Saturday afternoon	1m 42.724s
7	Audi	Fässler	30	Saturday afternoon	1m 41.364s
8	Audi	Di Grassi	30	Saturday afternoon	1m 41.188s
17	Porsche	Hartley	31	Saturday afternoon	1m 41.548s

The average lap times shown are calculated as the ‘sanitised’ average: in other words, ignoring the out lap, the in lap and in the case of Nakajima and Fässler, laps under yellow flag conditions. Note also that both Lieb and Nakajima are one lap short of their minimum - but I include them as I believe these stints were intended to be race pace simulations.

If - and it is a big ‘if’ - the Porsches were over-using their fuel on their fast laps and if the times shown above are true reflections of race pace, then it is possible that the Audis might be quicker than the Porsches over a whole stint when we get into serious racing starting at Silverstone in two weeks’ time. But they would have one less lap per stint - at least at the shorter circuits like Paul Ricard and Silverstone. And according to my calculations, at Le Mans, the Audis will be stuck on 13 laps (as they were last year), whereas both Toyota and Porsche should be able to manage 14.

Then there’s the tyres. Never has so much energy been put through the tyres of LMP1 cars, so more frequent tyre changes must be likely. But part of Audi’s strategy in 2014, choosing the lower hybrid class, was to reduce tyre wear. Even though Audi has gone up a class, its cars are still likely to be less hard on their tyres than those from Toyota and Porsche. Not to mention Nissan. With less rubber in total on the road, tyre wear is surely going to be an issue for the front wheel drive car. As it will not make its debut until Le Mans, I think it can probably be discounted from this year’s 24 hour race. Next year, though - who knows?

So what conclusions to draw from The Prologue? How much do the lap times over 17 hours of testing tell us? Is there more speed to come before Silverstone? Or are some of the lap times flattering, only to deceive? And where does Toyota fit into all this - were they not pushing as hard at the test? If not, why not? Or has Toyota under-estimated the progress made by Audi and Porsche?

Many of these questions will be answered at Silverstone. Without doubt, speeds have increased. With the revised qualifying procedure, expect pole position to be a low 1m 39s. If the weather is good and there are no caution periods, 1200kms could be completed in six hours. We might also get an indication of whether the boardrooms of Stuttgart, Ingolstadt and Tokyo think that the World Endurance Championship is more important to win than Le Mans, or not!

As always, your thoughts, comments, criticisms are welcome below.

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:

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.

Godzilla, by a whisker!

I wasn’t at Bathurst for the 2015 edition of the LiquiMoly Bathurst 12 hours, nor did I follow the race closely live on TV; but I did catch up on what happened after the event, and was surprised and pleased in equal measure that the Nissan GT-R NISMO won.

Pleased - because I have enjoyed watching Nissan’s exploits over the years: their approach is never one that follows the crowd and often seems outside some sort of comfort zone. It was also good to see two more graduates from the GT Academy, Florian Strauss and Wolfgang Reip, triumphing in a major international event against some serious competition. For Katsumasa Chiyo, the race must have been particularly satisfying, not only because of that sensational, race-winning penultimate lap, but also coming after his spectacular exit from the race last year.

And surprised, because although the Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 has gradually moved up into contention over recent years, I have to admit that I expected the competition from Audi, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ferrari and of course Bentley, to overwhelm Bob Neville’s small, close-knit team.

In the end, the race became less about endurance and more about race-craft; and that’s exactly what Chiyo-san had in spades. As ever, though, my interest turned to average lap times. If the outcome of the race had been purely based on speed, what then? The table shows the figures for the top seven finishers (all cars from different manufacturers, and although these were the highest-placed cars, they weren’t necessarily the quickest representative from each brand).

No.	Car	Average lap time
35	Nissan GT-R NISMO	2m 05.470s
15	Audi R8 LMS ultra	2m 04.628s
97	Aston Martin Vantage	2m 05.868s
10	Bentley Continental	2m 05.959s
36	Mercedes SLS AMG	2m 05.952s
49	Ferrari 458 Italia	2m 07.090s
32	Lamborghini Gallardo	2m 06.448s

Note that the averages are for the fastest 39 laps, which is 20% of the laps completed under green conditions, my standard way of calculating these things.

From the figures (and even having taken only a passing interest in the practice and qualifying sessions leading up to the race), it is apparent that the Phoenix Audi was comfortably the fastest car in the field. But the Nissan is still nearly 0.4s faster than the next quickest car, so perhaps my surprise at the car’s pace was unfounded.

As ever, the real surprise is how closely-matched the times are: less than a tenth of a second separated the Bentley, Aston Martin and Mercedes. And if one looks at the average lap time (over 20 laps) for the no. 77 AF Corse Ferrari (which had led the race, and was on the lead lap when it retired in the eighth hour after contact with the wall), that is more than 0.6s faster than the no. 49 Vicious Rumour Ferrari shown in the table above. The black art of performance balancing may not have got things absolutely right, but it was certainly not bad. And in any event, in a race dominated by Safety Car Periods, any failings that there may have been are not so apparent.

By my calculations, with that kind of an advantage, the Phoenix Audi could have lapped the entire field if there would have been around three hours’ non-stop green running. And that would have made the race a lot less entertaining for the many fans that stayed up (or got up) and watched it in its entirety.

But I am being curmudgeonly again and that was not my intention. Full course cautions are inevitable at a track like Mount Panorama and I will save my thoughts on them for another time. Hats off to all at RJN Motorsport on a thoroughly well-deserved win. Katsumasa Chiyo will be racing for the Nismo Athletes in the Blancpain Endurance Series in 2015, providing him with an opportunity to race in the 24-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps; but first, he will drive in the Nürburgring 24 hours in May. Maybe next time (surely there must be a next time?) I shouldn’t be surprised to see Nissan winning a 24-hour race.

France in June, though? That’s a different kettle of fish - and the subject of a post that I’ve not yet written!

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.

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

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?

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.

Belatedly, a review of the Dubai 24 hours

The tenth edition of the Dubai 24 hours, heralding the arrival of a new sponsor in the shape of Hankook tyres, may not have been the edge-of-your-seat thriller of a race that we have become used to in GT3 races these days, but nevertheless, it provided a worthwhile curtain-raiser to the 2015 season. In a nutshell, the Black Falcon Mercedes team did everything right – at least the crew of the no. 2 car did – and their win became, from the half-distance point onwards as inevitable as it was well-deserved. Hubert Haupt, Yelmer Buurman, Oliver Webb and Abdulaziz Al Faisal kept the car out of the way of trouble in a race that, with 89 starters, was always going to be a question of survival in the early stages.

The car was quick and the drivers stuck to their task well and it was a race in which the battle for second was the one that held the attention, once the Black Falcon car had established a two lap lead.

Unusually, the drivers shared the duties pretty evenly, cycling through in the same order: Buurman, Haupt, Al Faisal, Webb throughout the race; only the Dutchman getting an extra stint in order to bring the car home in its final stint.

In terms of laps completed, the breakdown was as follows:

Driver	Stint	Percentage (laps)
Hubert Haupt	167 laps	27.6%
Yelmer Buurman	153 laps	25.3%
Oliver Webb	142 laps	23.5%
Abdulaziz Al Faisal	142 laps	23.5%

The drivers were pretty well-matched in terms of their lap times, too. The table shows the average lap time for each, based on the average of the best 20% of the ‘green’ (i.e. non-code 60) laps driven.

Driver	Time
Haupt	2m 02.022s
Buurman	2m 01.465s
Webb	2m 02.895s
Al Faisal	2m 02.902s

Apart from speed, the other key to winning a race like this was to keep the car out of the pits. The table shows the time spent in the pits for the leading cars:

No.	Car	Time in Pits (inc fuelling)	No. of stops
2	Black Falcon Mercedes	1h 20m 37s	20
30	Ram Racing Mercedes	1h 36m 56s	23
88	Dragon Racing Ferrari	1h 19m 41s	21
28	KPM Aston Martin	1h 36m 57s	22
23	Team RJN Nissan GT	1h 32m 58s	23
4	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	1h 44m 33s	22
99	Attempto Racing Porsche	1h 21m 34s	22

As I already mentioned, the race for second place was particularly enthralling, made more so by the fact that the Dragon Racing Ferrari was running in the “Am” category of the A6 class, unlike either the RAM Racing Mercedes SLS or the KPM Aston Martin Vantage. Creventic’s cleverly-constructed regulations allow cars in the Am category to run 30kg lighter and to take on 5 litres more fuel at each stop, but limit the cars in the class to a so-called “minimum reference lap time” of 2m 05s, under which they are not allowed to go.

With this in mind, it is interesting to compare the number of laps completed by each of the above-mentioned cars in each time bracket:

No.	Car	sub 2m 02s	2m 02s to 2m 04s	2m 04s to 2m 06s	2m 06s to 2m 08s
2	Black Falcon Mercedes	42	212	195	66
30	Ram Racing Mercedes	45	250	152	50
88	Dragon Racing Ferrari	5	3	350	125
28	KPM Aston Martin	74	192	143	81
23	Team RJN Nissan GT	1	4	244	165

The rules permit cars running in the Am category to use ten “jokers”, enabling them to go under the 2m 04s lap time: Dragon Racing (or perhaps more precisely, Matt Griffin) used eight of these. What is particularly impressive is the 350 laps run between 2m 04s and 2m 06s. Griffin did 11 laps (out of 135) over 2m 07s (not Code 60 or pit stop laps), Rob Barff just 7 out of 119. An astonishingly consistent performance.

Could anyone else than Black Falcon have won the race? Barring an unexpected incident affecting the progress of the no. 2  car, not really. Looking at the average of the best 20% of lap times is a good indicator of outright performance.

No.	Car	Average Lap Time
1	Stadler Porsche	2m 01.894s
2	Black Falcon Mercedes	2m 01.458s
3	Black Falcon Mercedes	2m 01.794s
4	Scuderia Praha Ferrari	2m 02.528s
12	Fach Auto Tech Porsche	2m 01.500s
19	V8 Racing Corvette	2m 02.473s
28	KPM Aston Martin	2m 01.485s
30	Ram Racing Mercedes	2m 02.029s

Whilst it is certainly true that all the cars that finished in the top six were worthy of their finishing positions, this table of average lap times shows how well the Creventic rules balance performance. Six different manufacturers’ cars comprise the top ten positions. And in terms of the average lap times, the fact that three-hundredths of a second per lap separates the top cars from Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Aston Martin is remarkable indeed.

Surely the first win for an Aston Martin in a 24-hour race for GT3 cars cannot be far away?

Looking back on 2014 and forward to 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leena Gade - Clever!

Dedicated readers (with good memories) might recognise that the heading of this post has echoes of an article that I wrote two years ago. If not, it’s here.

Leena (whisper it) may be a little older than H, but she has learnt her trade at Progressive Motorsport, and been mentored by H for many years now. And during the Six Hours of Shanghai she proved that she’s just as good at making swift strategy calls, if circumstances call for it.

The circumstances in question came as the two Audi R18 e-tron quattros battled over third place with the no. 14 Porsche and the six hour race headed into its final two hours. It was clear that the Porsche held the upper hand – not merely in terms of average lap times, but more significantly by virtue of superior fuel consumption. Both Porsches had planned to complete the race on just five stops, and the early Safety Car period had enabled the Stuttgart marque to carry out its plan without even the need for fuel-saving in the second part of the race, at least for the Dumas/Lieb/Jani car.

Marc Lieb brought the 919 into the pits from third place to hand over to Neel Jani a good ten minutes later than the Audis had pitted, and by then the Swiss driver knew that he would be able to get to the end of the race with just one stop for fuel and tyres, practically securing a podium finish.

Following a fine opening stint by André Lotterer in Audi no. 2, Ben Tréluyer had struggled slightly on the tyres during his stint, losing time to Loïc Duval in the no. 1 car. It’s important to appreciate that Audi does not implement team orders (as a rule), so the fact that the no. 2 car held a significant advantage in the WEC points standings didn’t mean that Wolfgang Ullrich was about to interfere. It was down to the race engineers on the each car to make the strategy calls: Kyle Wilson-Clarke and Dave Brown looking after the no. 1 and Leena Gade and Justin Taylor the no. 2.

Marcel Fässler took over from Tréluyer with a little over two hours remaining. The trouble was that the Audi would only do 30 laps on a full tank of diesel, and that would take less than 56 minutes, so Marcel would have to make two stops to get the R18 e-tron quattro to the end of the race. Tom Kristensen, in the no. 1, was 17.3s ahead and having stopped two laps before the no. 2 car, also had to make two more stops. The only difference was that Kyle was planning a driver change, to get Lucas di Grassi back into the car for the final stint.

There may be only two points difference between finishing fourth and finishing fifth, but Leena wanted those two points badly. How was she to recover those 17.3s? The answer, she decided, was to do the short-fuelling stop early, which would gain track position over the no. 1 car and secure fourth place should the Safety Car be deployed.

So after a 29-lap stint (taking nearly 54 minutes), Fässler came into the pits, took on board enough fuel for eight laps and a new set of tyres, and was on his way after a stop of just 56.927s (from pit in to pit out). He also found himself on a clear track, and in the eight laps before his next stop, his average lap time was 1m 50.418s. During the same period, di Grassi’s average in the no. 1 was 1m 51.520s.

But of course Fässler’s stop would be for a full tank of fuel; di Grassi only needed to take on enough for ten laps. To ensure fourth place, Fässler would need to keep delivering the lap times. Excluding pit laps, Marcel’s average lap time over the final hour of the race was 1m 51.365s, compared to Lucas di Grassi, whose average was 1m 51.613s.

As ever at Audi, the credit must go to the whole team of the no. 2 car: Fässler, whose driving this year has been sublime; Gade, for having the courage to make the call; and also the team of mechanics, who gained a further 4.8s in those crucial final two stops. That in itself was probably down to the extra two laps of fuel that the no. 1 car required. And that was due to Duval and Kristensen not being quite efficient enough in fuel-saving.

It might have been clever, but it deprived the spectators of a wheel-to-wheel battle which would almost certainly have ensued between the two Audis otherwise.