Cranking it up - Busy January!

Following a quiet Christmas and New Year, motor-racing-wise, I started up the PC in January with a view to following the Gulf 12 hours. Usually held at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi just before Christmas, this year’s event was not only postponed until the new year, but also moved to the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, and was held on the second weekend of the year. Were it not for a personal interest I had in the race, I might not have followed it at all, but it marked the first of three international GT races on successive weekends in the Middle East, all aimed at the gentleman racer market.

It is promoted by Driving Force Events, an Irish outfit, although the commercial rights are held by Motorsports Projects FZE in the UAE. It was the ninth running of the event, but I am afraid to say that it was as close to a complete waste of time as one could get. There were just 12 starters for the two-part race, and only ten made it to the second six-hour portion (which started after a mere two-hour break).

Amazingly, all 12 hours of racing happened without any intervention – no safety cars, no full course yellows, no code-60 periods.

The winning McLaren, entered by the Anglo-Bahraini 2 Seas Motorsport team, led all but 14 of the 341 laps completed, and only five changes of lead occurred on the overall lap chart. From the outside, it wasn’t particularly nail-biting, but the team found the McLaren a fragile beast, needing a lot of care and attention, so the team deserves recognition for their result. The other two GT3 McLarens entered both retired. Optimistically, the organisers have announced that they are planning to return to Yas Marina on December 18th for the tenth edition of the event – I just hope it gets a bigger entry and a better race. If not, then I just hope that people realise that there is a limit to this kind of racing.

I was hoping for more excitement from the Dubai 24-hours the following weekend and there was a good entry list with 51 cars taking the start. It was a race with some poignancy for me on a personal level, since last year’s race at the Dubai Autodrome was the last race at which I had actually been present. The race had also an element of unfinished business about it, as heavy rain caused its abandonment after just seven hours.

In 2020, I had elected to take up an offer from the Red Camel team to work in their pit garage, assisting with strategy, rather than my usual role in the commentary box, so I experienced the rising water levels in the pit lane at first hand. In the end, I was not on the commentary team for this year’s race either, but followed the race in its various classes quite closely nevertheless. And as always, it was the races in the classes that held much of the interest.

Sadly, more than four hours were lost to a total of 16 Code-60 periods, and teams had to be on their toes to make the correct strategic calls. In the GT3 class, it was one such – after just under five hours of racing – when the GPX Porsche managed to make a break and establish a lap of a lead, which proved impossible for anyone else to get back. You can argue whether an IMSA-style Full Course Yellow, which allows cars to catch back up onto the lead lap, is better; personally, I find the Creventic way purer, even if can be disheartening for those involved. In any case, as an advertisement for close racing and for a well-matched Balance of Performance, the Dubai 24 hours was hard to fault – the top four at the finish comprising Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and Lamborghini.

The third of the ‘Middle East trio’ was, unfortunately, another second-rate affair – a one-off six-hour race organised by Creventic, with only 14 starters – only four of which were GT3 cars. The fastest was also the least reliable, Inception Racing by Optimum unable to overcome the delicate nature of their McLaren 720S GT3 leaving an unequal duel between Car Collection’s Audi and Leipert’s Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo from which the more powerful Audi came out on top.

It was disappointing that neither the Gulf 12 hours nor Creventic’s one-off 6-hour race at Abu Dhabi could muster a larger grid, and surely the coronavirus pandemic had a lot to do with that, but there is ‘writing on the wall’ here, that organisers ignore at their peril. I recognise that a well-promoted, skilfully-organised race meeting will always work better for the gentleman racer than a track day, but too many garden parties spoil the allure.

Anyway, to round off January came a staple of the calendar, in the shape of the Daytona 24 hours, which by all accounts was a right humdinger of a race. While Daytona may not have quite the history of Le Mans or Spa, it does have a heritage to which none of the Middle East circuits can aspire and last year’s event – probably one of the last international races to take place before we became engulfed by the cloud of the global coronavirus pandemic – ran to a record distance of 833 laps.

I wasn’t there, nor did I pay particular attention to the race as it happened – I find watching races remotely on TV difficult. I’m not sure why that is: if I am at an event, my attention rarely wanders from the racing action on the track, but when I am not there I just get distracted by the slightest of things. So even if I didn’t tune in to my colleagues who were describing the action for radiolemans.com, I did have all the data from the race available at my fingertips.

Some of that data makes interesting reading, and I thought I might share it here. Readers may be familiar with the concept of “rising averages”, but for those who are not, as I have not discussed them a length on this blog before, here is a brief explanation. There are different ways to comparing lap times from different cars. Most commonly, I look at the average of the best 20% of lap times from a car or a driver as it gives a good indication of outright pace.

However, by its very nature, it ignores 80% of the laps, which means that important things can get missed. The concept of a rising average looks at the average of three consecutive laps, and then sorts that average into ascending order.

For the (relatively small) DPi entry at Daytona, I have done this for all the cars entered. You probably need to enlarge the graph, but when you do, it is plain to see how the vast majority of the quickest laps were done by the no. 01 Cadillac from Chip Ganassi’s stable. In fact, for much of the race, the winning Wayne Taylor Acura was only the third-fastest car out there, behind the no. 48 Cadillac as well. But then Wayne has a huge amount of experience (both as a driver and a team entrant) and knows what it takes to win Daytona (this was the third year in a row that one of his cars has won the race). And one of the main things to do is to keep the car out of the pits, which the CGR team clearly failed to do in the final stages of the race.

The other interesting use of the rising average graph is to tell you which of your drivers are really performing. To round this off, let’s try looking at the rising averages, split by driver, for the three podium cars.

I will leave the reader to draw their own conclusions. But if any evidence were needed of the standout performances of Kamui Kobayashi and Harry Tincknell, then this is it. And if I were Wayne Taylor, I would be making sure I kept Felipe Albuquerque in my driving line-up.

  Harry Tincknell, of course, was part of the three-man Mazda crew in the no. 55 car. That car came from being three laps behind at one point, but which was able to use the FCY procedures to get back onto the lead lap and even be challenging for the lead at one stage. Rather different from Dubai, but one plays to the rulebook that is in force and it is foolish not to take advantage of its provisions.

Brian Jones – an appreciation.

People look forward to a new year with positive thoughts and this has been especially true this year. I don’t think there are many of us who will look back fondly on 2020 – I certainly won’t. But the boundary between 31st December 2020 and 1st January 2021 is a purely arbitrary one and there is no reason for things necessarily to be any better having crossed that threshold. The news, on just the second day of the New Year, that Brian Jones had died of Covid19 was certainly proof of that, and brought any new year’s optimism to a shuddering halt.

Brian was already in his eighties and fully appreciated his own mortality. The last time we spoke was in the winter of 2019, and although he sparkled with excitement at his plan to fly to Australia in March 2020, he knew that it would be an adventurous journey, and in all likelihood the last chance he would have for such an enterprise. I am pleased to say he was able to make the trip, and get home again safely, but how ironic that the virus that caused the cancellation of the Grand Prix that he planned to watch while he was there should take him nearly a year later.

I first met Brian nearly 40 years ago, although I had heard his voice through the tannoy before that at Brands Hatch and elsewhere. It was through that initial encounter that I became involved in commentary (it’s all described here, if you’ve a mind to read it) and although it was not initially my ambition, my work as a commentator would never have developed without Brian’s help, advice and guidance. Brian had a natural skill for public speaking, an affinity with his listener that gave his narrative instant appeal and an ability to engage with his subject in a way that was informative and entertaining. Realising that these are skills valuable to racing drivers just as much as to budding commentators, he later provided formal training sessions, from which I am sure many others benefitted as well.

He had a remarkable ability to hold an audience’s attention, not only through what he said, but also through the way that he said it. He was a gifted raconteur: avuncular and urbane, with an acute understanding of humanity. His circle of friends was wider than I suspect even he realised. He really did seem to ‘know everybody’.

As I worked with him through the 1980’s, we became close friends and he provided me with plenty of opportunities to work with him as his ‘assistant’ at race meetings around the UK as well as trips to Cowes, Isle of Wight, for offshore power boats and Bristol for their inshore cousins. The people we met along the way – from Mark Thatcher to Gina Campbell – broadened my horizons, but seemed to be ‘just another day at the office’ for Brian.

He was always willing to share and he was generous to a fault. He provided me with my first income from motor-racing. Commentator’s assistants were not paid then (are they now? – please advise!) and I would not be surprised to learn that some of the money that I was being paid was coming directly from Brian’s fee. If anyone understood the perils of picking up a microphone, it was Brian, and I was glad that he saw fit to steer me away from many of those dangers. It is impossible to ignore your ego when speaking publicly, but it is possible to control it and keep it under control. I hope that is at least one of the things I learnt from him.

As my own career as a commentator blossomed and Brian did less PA commentary work, I saw less and less of him, but our paths inevitably still crossed as we were both involved in the sport for which we shared a passion and a common view – shaped by the likes of John Webb in our formative years. It was great fun, in 2018, to share the stage with him at the Formula Ford Festival Forum; where else, but in the Kentagon at Brands Hatch, when anecdotes were shared, beer was drunk and a good time was had by all.

Having received a sharp reminder of my own mortality in 2020 and even though I am twenty years younger than Brian, I can only hope that I might achieve a fraction of his reputation.

Brands Hatch Kentagon - 1986

The busiest weekend of the year?

I do not need to begin another post here by asserting that 2020 has been a crazy year (so far), but I will do anyway – because it sets the context for nearly everything – whether on the personal front or in terms of worldwide issues. The global coronavirus pandemic, and the mass cancellation and postponements of races earlier this year, inevitably led to one of the most congested periods I have ever seen, as the calendar has been squeezed this way and that to ensure that as many rounds as possible can be run in those championships lucky enough to have a title sponsor and that have money to organise and promote races and thus keep the wheels of the industry turning through these turbulent times.

There have been some busy weekends along the way over the past few months, but this weekend coming up is going to pretty much take the biscuit, as far as I can tell, with four international sportscar meetings being held, in Italy, Bahrain, the USA and France. Not only do these races take place across the same weekend, but for a half-hour period on Saturday afternoon (UK time), you could be following three races simultaneously (broadband data and internet permitting).

Personally, I’m quite looking forward to the prospect. From the health point of view, having escaped from the confinement of my hospital room at the end of last week, I am now under instructions to get lots of rest and relaxation, to try to distract myself and to take as much exercise as possible. What better way to provide that distraction than to turn on some computers and follow the racing for which I have so much enthusiasm through live TV streams where available, or failing that, live timing / scoring or live radio commentary – on radiolemans.com, where else? I’ll admit that the “take as much exercise as possible” box isn’t really ticked, by sitting in front a computer, but I have promised to take regular breaks from the screens and stretch my muscles whenever I can. Happily, I can report that those muscles are slowly regaining strength, and my recovery from the rigours of the stem cell transplant seems to be proceeding well.

So let’s get down to the detail, shall we? First off, there is the Mugello 12-hours, organised by the ever-friendly and efficient people at Creventic on the 24hseries.com website. Originally planned to take place at Zandvoort, itself a replacement for a race that should have been held at COTA, this will be the final round of both the 24h Series Continents’ Championship and for the 24h Series European Championship. There are trophies for both championships, awarded in the GT and TCE divisions as well as individual classes, and separate points tables for Teams and Drivers, so after the race #thisisendurance will be further tested by the awards presentations!

One thing that Creventic can never be accused of is to over-simplify things – and in addition to the complexity of the championship points, there is the structure of the race itself. As is often the case in 24H Series races, Mugello will be a two-part affair, this year’s 12 hours comprising of a 5-hour race on Friday afternoon and a further 6h 15m scheduled to take place on Saturday, with the chequered flag scheduled for 5pm local time. No-one has told me where the missing 45 minutes will go – most likely in the handing out of the trophies at the end!

It is certainly a disappointment to have only 17 cars on the entry list, especially considering that more than 50 took the start last year, but such has been the pattern this year. In the TCE division, a good race is always a certainty – there are six cars in the TCR class featuring VW Golf, Audi RS3 and Cupra TCR. In the GT4 class are three contenders: ProSport Racing’s fast but sometimes fragile Aston Martin Vantage led by the super-quick Nico Verdonck, against EBIMotors Porsche Cayman and the BMW M4 GT4 from the ever-reliable Sorg Rennsport squad. It is entirely possible that the overall GT division champion in both European and Continents championships could come from this class as well, with Sorg Rennsport leading the Continents and ProSport leading the European.

Meanwhile, in GT3, there are five entrants – two Mercedes AMG GT3s, two Herberth-run Porsche 911 GT3s and a Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo. You can take your pick, but mine would be the Herberth car (#91) which Robert Renauer will share with Daniel Alleman and Ralf Bohn.

While it is true that the entry list for Mugello is a little disappointing, and it also fair to say that the Creventic series is aimed more at the Gentleman driver than at professionals, the next two elements of the “four-way clash” this weekend are very much at the other end of the international scale of racing. The final round of the 2019-2020 World Endurance Championship (WEC) season (a super-season of its own in some ways) will take place at the Sakhir circuit of Bahrain, over a duration of 8 hours. If you’re watching from the UK, it is an 11am green flag on the Saturday, by which time you will have already had the opportunity to watch over an hour of Part 2 of the Mugello race. However, at 3:30pm on Saturday afternoon, if you’ve a mind to, there will be the call to tune in to the Sebring 12 hours.

To me, to have Sebring in anything other than March is as crazy as having Le Mans in September – but it has been that kind of year. And the DPi concept has certainly worked pretty well (taking an admittedly distant view from across the Atlantic), with cars from Acura, Cadillac and Mazda providing some great racing through the season (Daytona sure seems like a long time ago now). As a principal prototype category, it is not at all bad; and you only need to look across to Bahrain where there are going to be just two Toyotas – deliberately handicapped so that one is more than half-a-second a lap slower than the other – in a race for overall victory. I apologise if I suggested Creventic can over-complicate things, surely what they are doing makes more sense to the non-initiated than what WEC is up to?

Additional apologies as well, as I am falling into the trap of my own making and entangling the WEC, IMSA and Creventic. But those who are familiar with all the branches, it is fun to draw out their different characteristics.

A crucial element to both WEC and IMSA is the LMP2 category: but such is the way of LMP1, that LMP2 is much more crucial to WEC. More fundamental is the long-overdue restructure of prototype racing – whatever FIA/ACO comes up with, it does matter, and will have an influence on endurance racing on both sides of the Atlantic. This weekend marks the end of another season of IMSA and of WEC – I feel looking forward, not backward is the best approach and I hope that next year, we will be able to do so with optimism and enthusiasm.

I will try and give both the WEC and IMSA races their fair share of my attention – but I just have a feeling in my bones that Sebring will have more to offer than the race in Bahrain will be able to serve up, even if you take into account the unusual (in WEC terms) 8-hour race format. And however off-kilter the date, the Sebring 12 hours simply has a tradition and reputation that will draw in public interest.

There will be those who spend their time comparing the numbers – 24 WEC entries vs. 31 IMSA; 8 WEC prototypes vs. 12 IMSA; 16 WEC GT cars vs. 19 IMSA. Others with access to different data will be comparing spectator interest, twitter engagements, Facebook likes instead, but at the end of the day, the fact that the sport is in a state where it can survive such a date clash is surely quite a good sign?

Where the action will probably come from in the WEC race will as likely come from the GTE class, and that will probably be just as intense in Bahrain as in Sebring. What might have been though? Corvette, with Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia, have already wrapped up the IMSA championship, just as Aston Martin has in the WEC courtesy of Maxime Martin, Alex Lynn and Harry Tincknell’s Le Mans victory. A shame that Alex won’t be able to participate due to a late positive Covid-19 test, but Richard Westbrook is a worthy replacement. Will the fact that the championships have already been sorted reduce the intensity? Yes, probably, but it will still be good to see.

And if you’ve not had your fill – either of endurance racing in general, or GT racing in particular, the weekend is rounded off by the final round of the 2020 GT World Challenge Europe (SRO) – this a six-hour blast up and down the straights of Paul Ricard a mere three weeks after the chequered flag fell on the gruelling Spa 24-hour race.

With nearly all the championship trophies still up for grabs, tensions will likely be running high, and with a good live stream service available on www.gt-world-challenge-europe.com/live, entertainment is guaranteed!

It is interesting how racing manages to tread the balance between entertainment and pure sport. The various series taking place this weekend cover the different elements well: Creventic, catering for the enthusiastic amateur; WEC, in theory at least, the top of the FIA tree for sportscar and endurance racing, IMSA, a national series attracting worldwide interest and manufacturer commitment and SRO, for the more wealthy amateur wanting to push at the limit of what GT3 racing can deliver. I have written before how there often seems to be too much racing, how the market seems to be flooded and yet, there is space for weekends like this. Let’s not over-think this all too much; instead, let’s enjoy what’s good about it all!

Making Progress

Finally, both the Le Mans and Nürburgring 24-hour races are done and dusted, and I have now finished the analysis for Racecar Engineering magazine and sport auto in Germany. To say that it has been an unusual year this year is superfluous, but it is worth spelling out how much has been different this year, and why I hope we don’t have to go through anything similar again.

Both races were postponed, of course. The Nürburgring 24-hours should have taken place over the weekend of 23rd / 24th May, a good three weeks before Le Mans, which was originally scheduled for 13th / 14th June. Having the two races on successive weekends is nothing new, but having both races in September, and ‘behind closed doors’ certainly was. Strictly speaking, spectators were admitted to the Nürburgring, but by ticket only into the main grandstand on the start-finish straight. The magic of the Nürburgring is the camping places around the Nordschleife, and to see the public enclosures and car parks empty while the cars were circulating was sobering indeed. So too were the pictures from Le Mans. I have said before, but it bears repeating: an event of this magnitude loses an awful lot of its lustre when it is played out in front of empty grandstands. Neither Le Mans nor the Nürburgring could possibly deliver drama when there was no public to bear witness to it.

Then there is the fact that I wasn’t at either event. I am not sure if I wish I had been. Even if I had had the opportunity to attend, I would not have been able to – my physical health was not good enough to allow me to travel so I was spared any decision-making anyway. In fact, no-one from Radio Show Limited’s broadcast teams was present at either of the races. In my view, this had an impact on the commentary as well.

That said, I can make no further mention of the commentary without saying how delighted I was to be able to participate in the races at both Le Mans and Nürburgring. I suspect there is a pretty strong overlap between the readers of this blog and the listeners to Radio Le Mans (or RadioLeMans.com) and I have to thank all of you who contributed to social media or sent me private messages containing encouragement and wishing me well. I may not be operating on all cylinders, but the positive messages that reached me from all corners of the globe were extremely welcome and even though I did not reply to each of you individually, then please be assured that each message meant a lot, and taken as a whole, they were massively uplifting. I am grateful to John and Eve for having me on as well, of course – ultimately it is their decision who they decide to include in the coverage, and they have been unfailing in their support throughout.

I will continue over the next month with more intensive treatment. I have already had stem cells harvested from my bloodstream and these are due to be transplanted back into me in the middle of October. The recovery from this procedure will likely take some time, and I am preparing myself for a slow recuperation. Indeed, I am due to still be in hospital when the next big 24-hour race comes around.

First though, a question: while Le Mans undoubtedly stands at the top of the tree of all 24-hour races, is Nürburgring second? What about Daytona? Dubai? Spa? Now Daytona is free of its dalliance with the somewhat arcane and insular Grand-Am series, I have to say that the Florida 24-hour race is back, right up there, just as it was in theh 1980’s. But from the historical perspective, the first time that Daytona ran to a 24-hour length was in 1966. The Spa 24 hours (first held: 1924, just one year after the first Le Mans) takes the laurels using that measure. When I first became aware of racing – and lest there be any doubt about it, that was closer to 1966 than 1924 – the Spa 24-hour race was targeted at touring cars, rather than the GT category that it currently attracts. But let’s face it, the preponderance of 24-hour races these days are all targeted at Grand Tourers: specifically the GT3 class – either under the pure balance of performance specified by the Stephane Ratel Organisation (SRO) or a modified version thereof, as prescribed by the ADAC or Creventic.

Whatever makes Spa so special in the current era - and I will leave that up for debate - it is remarkable that it can still attract more than 50 cars of virtually identical performance, even in these pandemic-constrained times. Last year, 72 cars took the start. Although it is a multi-class race, the classes are dictated by the experience of the drivers that comprise the crews. The cars all run to the same regulation. It may not mean as much overtaking as you get at Le Mans, but it does enable the good drivers to demonstrate their skills – as well as exposing the weaker ones.

This year’s Spa 24 hours has not been immune to the disruption that affected Le Mans and Nürburgring either. Originally scheduled for July 25th / 26th, it will now take place on the weekend of October 24th / 25th. And spectators, we now have it confirmed, will not be admitted. Although the argument could be made that the Nürburgring is such an iconic circuit that to race on it for 24 hours is a challenge enough for drivers that the absence of a crowd in the forests doesn’t matter so much, to apply the same argument to the current version of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit would be specious: it is after all a Formula 1 venue. That’s not to imply the Spa at night is not challenging – it most certainly is, and magical and spectacular to boot. However, it is clear to me that the prime motivation in holding the race during the pandemic is, just as at Le Mans, the commercial one of satisfying the business partners and ‘putting on the show’.

I find it rather amusing how there was a suggestion that the race should be a 25-hour affair. I’ll admit that some of what follows is speculation, but my readers should know that I regard the truth as important: although a lot of the evidence is circumstantial, I believe it is a fair reflection of the truth. It was obvious in mid-April that it would be impossible to hold the Spa 24 hours on its originally scheduled date, and the end of October date was duly announced at the end of April. No mention was made (by SRO) for at least six weeks thereafter that the new date coincided with the end of European Daylight-Saving Time.

Now some may know that there is a precedent for the clocks changing during a major 24-hour race, and I will come on to that. However, the reaction from SRO, when they realised the ‘problem’, was to do as all progressively-thinking business entrepreneurs do and treat it as an ‘opportunity’. “Let’s make it a 25-hour race,” said Stéphane Ratel. It has to be said that not much consultation took place; rather it was a decision made in the “Make it so” spirit. Meanwhile, team engineers and their race simulation experts went skulking off to their spreadsheets shaking their heads. In the end, sanity prevailed, and the “Total 24 hours of Spa” will do what it says on the tin and last for 24 hours, finishing at 14:30 on Sunday October 25th, having started at 15:30 the day before.

Part of the nonsense of adding an hour’s competition to the race is that Spa already has a perfectly good 25-hour race – at least it does when there aren’t global health pandemics to deal with. The VW FunCup holds its blue riband event over 25 hours every year and has done for more than 20 years. It is a perfectly good thing and I am saddened that it will not be taking place over its full distance this year. In its place are the “Belgian Autumn Races”, to be held on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday after Ratel and his Organisation has left. If you were thinking of attending the Spa 24 hours and find yourself with a ferry ticket that you cannot redeem, you might consider going to this as an alternative. A bit of resourcefulness, planning and research will be required, but you’ll be rewarded with 12½ hours of VW FunCup racing, 14 hours of Citroen C1 / 2CV racing action and a five-hour race for the Belgian Gentlemen Drivers Club. It’s worth a thought.

I am afraid I know little of the Thunderhill 25-hour race, but it is building itself a reputation as a serious endurance race and it does have a certain history, having been run annually since 2003. Sadly though, it too has become a victim of Covid-19 and has been cancelled for this year.

Some UK readers may recall (hands up if you do!) the 1989 edition of the Willhire at Snetterton. The ‘Willhire 24-hours’ was held initially in 1980 for a mixed bag of production sports and saloon cars, with many entrants running the race as a relay – you were allowed to change cars as well as drivers during the race. From 1985 it was for saloon cars only, and for a while it became the centrepiece event in the British Production Saloon Car Championship. In 1989 the sponsor Willhire celebrated its 25th anniversary, and Peter Williams – charismatic owner of the car and van rental company which had sponsored the event from the outset – had the notion to celebrate by adding an hour to the duration of the race. It wasn’t a universally popular idea (I was there, I heard the grumblings), but the celebrity of holding what was then the longest race in the World was certainly worth the trouble and expense of an extra tank of fuel (for some).

I mentioned a precedent in the clocks changing during a 24-hour race. Yes, it has happened, but I can only find one such occurrence. Surprisingly, it was probably one of the most significant 24-hour races that ever took place – namely the first running of the Le Mans 24 hours in 1923. The race started at 4pm on Saturday, 26th May, the clocks went forward by an hour at 11pm that night and so the race didn’t finish until 5pm on Sunday. I wonder whether anyone thought “Oh, hang it, let’s not worry about the full 24 hours, let’s just finish it at 4pm and go for a lie down!”?

Ah, but that wouldn’t have been proper, would it? And it is important to do things properly.

Le Mans 2020

Looking forward to Le Mans has been a pleasure that I have indulged in for many years. Those who have made the trip, in whatever role, will know what I mean. In the 1980’s I used to plan a trip with some friends – sometimes involving two or three cars, working out how much time I could get off work: and always aware that I needed to book my trip early enough so that it was authorised by my boss. Making sure that the ferry was booked, that the campsite reservation was made, and anticipating the trip by treating the car to a service – these were the days before the current trend for “stickering up”. Later, in the early days of Radio Le Mans, before it passed into the hands of Radio Show Limited, someone else would organise the trip, but still there would come the sense of anticipation as June rolled closer and closer and the plans crystallised, calling for the preparation of an entry list and requiring homework to be done.

All the time, it was the preparation and the planning that was so much fun, in anticipation of the best race of the year.

This year has been rather different though. Back in April, when the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic was becoming apparent, pushing the date for the Le Mans 24 hours back to September seemed like an extreme, but probably necessary precaution. I remember a number of conversations with people within the sport which agreed that postponing (rather than cancelling) the event was the best way to make sure that it could go ahead and that as it made no sense at all to have the race without spectators, it was the best course of action.

It meant that there could be no sense of anticipation though – and my feelings go out to those readers, who enjoy a similar sense of anticipation in the months and weeks leading up to the race, being denied those feelings. My mind has been entirely elsewhere this year, as I have been sorting out my health issues, but still, I know how you felt.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year watching old films of motor-racing from the fifties, sixties and seventies. And I have to say I enjoy hugely those bits when the camera pans away from the action on the track and shows the shots of the spectators – whether it is a packed grandstand full of Gauloises-smoking Frenchmen, kids with ice-creams or a pretty girl in a short skirt with a stop watch. The film-maker doesn’t have to put those bits in, but he chooses to, because it captures more of the atmosphere of the event, it provides a better context for what the viewer is watching. Far better than a slow-motion replay of a car bouncing over a kerb, it shows why people pay money from their hard-earned incomes in order to go and watch their heroes in the flesh, in combat on the battlefield.

It is true that at the grass-roots level, sport is all about taking part and competing, trying to win and prove that you are better at something than the next person. However, when you get to the top level of any professional sport there is something bigger going on. The desire to win is still there, of course it is, but anyone who has ever attended a sporting event talks about the atmosphere, about how ‘you have to be there to really understand’. The competitors understand that just as much. Having the crowd on your side, being able to show people what you are capable of, and then seeing and hearing their appreciation of a job well done, whether it be on the football pitch, the cricket field, the tennis court or even the race circuit is part of what any sportsman desires, just as much as a bulging trophy cabinet or a garage full of Ferraris.

The world has changed this year though. It is now commonplace for sport to take place ‘behind closed doors’ or ‘huis clos’ as the French have it. A journalist colleague of mine (who perhaps had best remain unnamed) will have none of this. It is, as he puts it, “just a step away from this virtual racing nonsense”, and to an extent, I don’t disagree with him.

My friend and I seem to be out of step with the rest of the world. As I mentioned, it is now commonplace for sporting events (‘Elite’ sporting events at least) to take place without spectators. Not only motor sport, but football and cricket have pressed on with a programme of events without spectators. The armchair follower probably doesn’t really notice much difference, in terms of what is seen on the TV. But I wonder how some of the sporting heroes truly feel, picking up their medals and trophies, or scoring their goals or taking their milestone wickets in front of empty grandstands in empty stadiums to the sound of, well, polite applause from their team-mates? If ever there were a use for the word ‘naff’, this must be it.

I have been at Wembley Stadium (the old one) in a crowd of 100,000 people. I have been at the Indianapolis 500 as a member of a crowd of 300,000. I have spoken to Le Mans winners who speak of their abiding memory being of standing on a podium being cheered by a crowd that extends beyond visibility. And I have been to concerts where without doubt the audience has had an impact in a very positive way on the performance of the artists on stage. Of course the audience matters.

The Le Mans 24 hours will go ahead on 19th and 20th September, just as the Nürburgring 24 hours will go ahead on the 26th and 27th. According to the rules, there will be no success handicaps applied, even though I am told that the ACO is being lobbied to apply some. A distance record is certainly a possibility, provided any handicaps that are applied are not too severe, and given some decent weather. A close race in LMP2 is certainly likely. The GTE-Pro class will be good, as it always is, but with only three manufacturers represented, it will not be a true reflection of the state of GT racing on the world stage.

I will not be at Le Mans this year, although my reasons have more to do with my illness and less to do with the global pandemic. If I had to pick one to miss, then it makes sense for this one to be it. But beyond my illness, there is another point that I’m trying to make here. The fact is, that there is a danger that this year’s 24 hours is being devalued in some sense, in the same sense in which the Indy 500 trophy didn’t mean as much after the CART / IndyCar split in the mid-1990’s. Even this year’s F1 championship is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? Hopefully, by the time we are looking forward to Le Mans 2021, this year’s pandemic-driven circumstances will be long-forgotten, but I do not have a great deal of confidence of that, somehow.

If Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose-Maria Lopez win the race outright this year (they deserve to, don’t they?) then their experience will not match that of Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi when they won in the previous two years. Maybe if I cheer a little bit louder, then that might spur them on. But that’s my point – people want to cheer them on from the spectator enclosure, not from their living rooms.

Remember when the ACO used to play silly buggers and threaten to cancel the race, and we used to joke and say that 50,000 Brits would turn up anyway? Little did we think that it would get turned on its head and we’d be facing the race with none of those Brits, let alone the Danes, the Germans, the Dutch or the French.
 

NLS Round 1 - New Names, Great Racing!

It was announced at the end of last year that the VLN would have a new name in 2020. The rather clumsy title “Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring” would be changed to the simpler “Nürburgring Langstrecken Serie”, and the first round of the series was originally scheduled for 21st March.

The Coronavirus pandemic meant that we had a lot longer to get used to calling it NLS rather than VLN, but importantly, it is only a change in name – as the preface to the regulations explains, this is “the biggest and most popular grassroots racing series worldwide and has been organised at the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife since 1977”.

It was Creventic that got the “real racing” ball rolling in Portimão two weeks earlier with an admittedly sparse entry for their 24-hour race, and without detracting from the Dutch organiser’s efforts, it has to be said that events in Germany at the weekend were on an entirely different scale and provided an altogether more exciting spectacle.

One hundred and thirty-two cars eventually took the start for the 51st Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy as the NLS sprang into action, unfortunately without a soul to be seen in the grandstand opposite the pits, or in fact anywhere around the circuit. Remember, this is only another step towards “real racing” – we have a way to go yet. It is important – to me at least – that motor-racing remains a spectator sport. Having on-board cameras and slow-motion replays of spectacular incidents may bring it into the living room of the casual observer, but allowing the dyed-in-the-wool fan to get up close, to get autographs, and to feel the noise is vital.

What mattered most though, was that this was an excellent race. The entry in GT3 was strong, with Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Porsche and Ferrari all being represented with genuine podium-scoring chances. The spectator enclosures may have been empty, but the track, as ever, was busy, and to make good lap times meant being sharp in the traffic – a skill on the Nordschleife as much now as always.

In the end, it came down to a race between just two cars – the #34 Walkenhorst BMW M6 and the #6 Team HRT AutoArena Mercedes AMG. More could easily have been involved – GetSpeed’s Mercedes, the Phoenix Audi R8, the Ferrari from Octane; they could all claim to have had the pace, but all dropped back. It is a sign of the strength of the series, that even in its opening round, there was enough interest in the leading two cars to keep the attention, helped by the different strategies being played out.

Team HRT (Haupt Racing Team) may be a new name, but it is hardly more than a renaming of the former Black Falcon team. Black Falcon may have withdrawn from the GT3 class, but the people remain, now under Hubert Haupt’s title and there should be no doubt that these people know what they are doing in the VLN, er, I mean the NLS. It was a long time since VLN-9 of 2019, but most people knew that Assenheimer and Engel were winners last time out.

In the Walkenhorst BMW, David Pittard made an energetic start and drove a spirited first stint in the initially damp conditions, before handing the car over to Dane Mikkel Jensen at the first stop. Patrick Assenheimer started the HRT Mercedes and went for a double stint, completing eight laps in the second shift compared to Jensen’s seven in the BMW. This meant that the Mercedes’ second pit stop would have to be longer than that of the BMW, but the idea (and it made sense to me) was that the time lost would be made up by having a shorter final pit stop, as there is more to be gained in the minimum pit stop time in the last 70 minutes of the race.

If you are not familiar with the normal pit stop arrangements at long-distance races on the Nordschleife, then it is best if you stop here and go and look up some descriptions of the changes that were implemented to deal with the requirements for social distancing. Instead of the normal pit lane, competitors had to wind their way through a series of cones and concrete blocks that had been set up in the paddock to allow each car to have its own working area. Refuelling would be done separately, in the normal pit lane. It all meant that pit stops would take far longer than normal, and the famous “Appendix 6”, which specifies the minimum pit stop times depending on the number of laps completed in the preceding stint was adjusted accordingly.

The pit stop time is measured from pit in to pit out, and it is the team’s responsibility to get it right. Driver and tyre changes were to happen in the team’s working area, before the car could be released to the refuelling area, where it might have to be held for a while longer, to ensure the minimum stop time was adhered to.

In Creventic’s 24h Series, the refuelling is always done in a separate area as well, but they do not use minimum pit stop times, so it is not a problem for competitors in that series. And with the long and winding road through the Nürburgring paddock, no-one had any previous data to rely on, new team or not. So there was quite a bit of learning going on during the race, trying to fine-tune the pit stop time to perfection.

Maro Engel, in the Haupt Mercedes, seemed to have a slight pace advantage over Jensen in the Playstation-sponsored BMW, but with Pittard getting back in for the final stint, it would still be a close-run thing. The other factor was the strategy: since Assenheimer had gone longer in the first half of the race, it meant that Engel’s final stop would be later – and therefore shorter – than the Walkenhorst stop to switch from Jensen to Pittard.

Sure enough, Mikkel Jensen brought the BMW in from the lead, at the end of 22 laps, David Pittard got in, and the car was underway again after a pit stop of 4m 50.068s (four seconds over the minimum time allowed). Engel pitted at the end of the next lap, by which time the minimum pit stop time had gone down to 4m 22s, but the Mercedes pit stop was 4m 19.879s, just over two seconds under the minimum. The previous two pit stops for HRT had both been almost five seconds slower than the minimum, whereas Walkenhorst were five and three seconds over the minimum on their first two stops. Small margins, yes, but important enough to chase.

Regulation 7.3.18 states that in the last 70 minutes of the race, stop and go penalties are converted into a time penalty of 35 seconds plus the amount of shortfall on the minimum pit stop time. Hence, as the race reached its nail-biting conclusion, news filtered through that a 37-second time penalty would be applied to the HRT car. Maro Engel overtook David Pittard for the lead on the road on lap 25 and then set the fastest lap of the race on lap 26. But time was running out, and when the chequered flag was shown at the end of lap 27 the gap between the Mercedes and the BMW was just ten seconds, which meant that the BMW was awarded the win after the application of the 37-second penalty to the Mercedes. Disappointment for the Haupt Racing Team, joy for Walkenhorst Motorsport, and a thrilling encounter for the impartial observer.

Behind these two were more great battles: unfortunately, contact for the Phoenix Audi being driven by Michele Beretta dropped it down the order but a stirring drive from Fabian Schiller in the GetSpeed Mercedes enabled him to take third place on the last lap from René Rast in the Car Collection Audi.

But even all that only really scratches the surface of the race. As always, there were classes to be won and intense racing all the way down the field. It’s what proper racing (“real racing”) is all about! In two weeks’ time we have a double-header, with NLS-2 taking place on the Saturday, and NLS-3 on the Sunday. Now that will be intense!

Some Reflections Since the Portimao 24 hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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