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.