The Passage of Time... where do the years go?

Although I have had it for some time, I have recently started reading Quentin Spurring’s latest book in his series in which he charts ‘the official history of the world’s greatest motor race’ – the Le Mans 24 hours. This is the fourth to be released, covering the decade from 1980 to 1989, and is the decade in which I started to attend the race myself, starting as a “mere” spectator in 1981, and by 1989 being part of the Radio Le Mans team (indeed, the year in which John Hindhaugh made his debut).

During those ten years the race became a highlight of my year, and much of its importance to me now derives from the impact that it made on me during that time. It was during the 1980’s that I began to get involved in commentary, and began to make contacts within the sport, allowing racing personalities and heroes to become acquaintances and even friends.

It was during those years as well, that acquiring a knowledge of the history of motor sport became more important to me, and I became rather envious of those people that I came across who were old enough (and in my eyes) lucky enough, to have visited Le Mans during the glory years of the 1950’s and 1960’s. As a young man approaching his 30th birthday, those people that I met who had actually seen the Jaguars, Ferraris, Aston Martins and Masaratis that had contested those races thirty years earlier were ‘elder statesmen’, people whom I respected as witnesses of the sport I loved and the race that I regarded as the ultimate test, when it was even more venerable and whereof legends were made.

As Group C matured during the mid-eighties, those days seemed a very long time ago indeed.

And yet.

And yet now, as I think of those young people whose own love affair with Le Mans is just beginning (and there are many – the place still holds a magical and a magnetic appeal) – how lucky am I that I was there during the eighties, that I look at the ‘historic’ Group C races and think how artificial they look?

Camping des Tribunes, 1987

After all, the time difference, in absolute terms, is about the same – thirty years. But surely the gap from the fifties to the eighties is bigger than that from the eighties to the present day? Not only can I remember the sight, sound and the smell of a Rothmans 956, but I can remember the drive from Le Havre to Le Mans, remember the taste of the first merguez of the weekend, and remember the queue for the toilets in the Camping des Tribunes – and they were the posh toilets!

And I still remember talking to Mike and Sue (ok, I’ve forgotten their surname, but if they’re still alive they’ll know who they are, if they’re reading this), in the “Portes du Circuit” bar, in about 1984, about their memories of Ferraris and Astons in 1958, and how things had changed – although it seemed the Portes du Circuit had changed very little, except for the toilet now being indoors!

But the 1950’s (to which Quentin dedicates another volume) were so long ago, weren’t they? Tales of cars being driven to the circuit from Coventry, and further afield; of drivers ‘going it alone’, or working to dig the car out of a sandbank – surely this was a different era? Good old Mike, who had been there, seen that and drunk a bottle of red with Mike Hawthorn – how fantastic must that have been?

And yet.

And yet I can look back to a Le Mans that I visited in the eighties: the paddock area (anyone remember the ‘Restaurant des Pilotes’ in the middle of the paddock?), full of marquees and caravans; the signalling pits at Mulsanne Corner, a restaurant on the Ligne Droite des Hunaudieres in which you could have a meal while the cars screamed past the open window, and a race track on which damaged barriers were protected by straw bales.

A Le Mans surely very different to the one that we see today, and one that, in another thirty years will seem as lethal as that earth bank opposite the pits in 1955.

So I guess it’s not all bad, growing old. Although of course I yearn for the energy of youth, I must consider myself privileged to have lived through the Group C era, through the battles between Peugeot and Toyota that followed, the triumph of Paul Lanzante’s McLaren in 1995, and the simply stunning entries that characterised the races of the final years of the 1990’s, before the millennium and the years of Audi domination.

For the folk who cannot remember a race without an Audi in it, I feel sympathy in a certain way, for surely Le Mans has a depth beyond what Audi has done. And it is, to me, not unimaginable that Audi will cease to play a role at Le Mans in the future. The 24 hours of Le Mans has survived worse upheavals, let’s face it.

Derek Bell - Le Mans 1982

And that is the beauty of Quentin’s books. Not only do they chart the many upheavals over the years, but they are a minefield of fascinating facts, potted with marvellous photographs: familiar and unfamiliar, predictable and surprising.

I suppose I should confess at this point that I do know Quentin personally. At the time that I was learning how to do a lap chart for a 1000km race, Q was editor of Autosport, and would occasionally use my lap chart to check the accuracy of his race report. But that is an indication of the thoroughness of the man. Despite our acquaintance, I have paid for all four of the books with my own money, and begrudge not a single penny. I know there are a lot of books out there these days, but these I thoroughly recommend!

(All photos from my private collection)

Lap Charts

Following my post about getting started in commentary, inevitably, someone asked about lap charts. In the old days, the raceday programme that you bought when you were at the track always contained a blank lap chart template, and it was this that got me started in the first place. The image below is from a Thruxton programme in 1977 - unfortunately the BARC lap charts only allowed you to record the cars in the top six positions though.

There is a book called "How to Watch Motor Racing" by Stirling Moss, (it's available second hand from Amazon) and although it is terribly out of date now, it is a jolly good read. In it are (amongst other things) instructions about how to keep a lap chart. In essence, all you do is to write down the numbers of the cars each time they pass you. Write them down in a column, starting a new column each time the leader comes past. Here is a photograph from the relevant page in Stirling's book - you can see how number 7, having led the race until just after half-distance, drops out, and number 17, starting from the back, comes through to finish on the podium.

This is what I call a "block chart" - it is a term I learnt from Mike Eyre, a chief RAC timekeeper in the 1980's. It is also sometimes these days called a "position chart", in that it gives you the position of each car on each lap. If you look on the TSL Timing website, they provide an electronic version of this after most major events in the UK where they are officiating.

This chart is very useful, and relatively easy to produce for short races. It helps if you can write quickly, legibly, and in a straight column, without having to look down at what you're writing.

Note though, that when the leader starts to lap the backmarkers, you have to record the backmarker in a previous column - he has not, after all, completed the same number of laps as the race leader. This is where it gets difficult with a long-distance race: the leaders will lap slower cars many times and even the mid-field runners will lap those at the back. Here is my block lapchart for the 1000km race at Brands Hatch in 1986.

This is just the first 50 or so laps of a 236 lap race - so there is a lot of paper to the right of the photograph!

Things to note (you might have to expand the photo):

horizontal (green) lines dividing the positions after every five cars... this is useful to quickly be able to see who is running in, say, 12th place.

vertical (green) lines - these show the start and end of safety car periods. As the race goes on you can observe how these lines spread across several laps, showing how the field gets spread out as the backmarkers lose more and more laps to the race leaders.

circle around cars when they make a pit stop - apart from anything else, this also makes it easier to find when it rejoins, probably losing places as a result.

The trouble with trying to keep a block chart going is that you will often get three cars crossing the line close together, all on different laps, and by the time you have found where they all belong on the chart, another two cars will come past and you easily get lost.

The answer is to have an assistant, doing a "running chart". This merely records the number of each car as it comes past, in the order that the cars are running on the track. Don't worry about which cars are a lap behind, just make sure that you record each car. Start a new column every time the leader comes past, just because it is a good check on how many laps are completed. In the early stages, of course, before the lappery starts, it will closely resemble the block chart, but as the race develops, it provides the raw data input required to facilitate the block chart. Indeed, the first time I enlisted a helper to do this, I ended up spending more time looking at the running chart than I did looking at the cars on the track.

If you looked up TSL's website before (to look at a position chart) - look now for what they call a "Lap Chart", and look at the column containing the car number. This gives the order that the cars cut the timing beam, and effectively shows what the running chart looks like. Of course some columns are longer than others, depending who rejoins from pit stops, or whether the leader has stopped.

So to summarise (for the benefit of Chris, who asked the question) a block chart shows you at a glance the position of each car, and how many laps they have all completed; whereas the running chart just shows the order that cars are running on the track.

If you're quick, and have a stop watch, you can make notes on the running chart of the gaps between significant cars - this way you'll pick up who might be closing on whom, and whether a pass for position might be on the cards. Even with electronic timing, I still find a lap chart massively helpful, not only in following a race as it unfolds, but also to keep as a record of what happened.

The Man Who Caught Crippen - Joe Saward

"The Amazing Life of Henry Kendall"

I have previously expressed my admiration for Joe Saward here; indeed to an extent his blog was the inspiration for me to start my own. I read his previous book ‘The Grand Prix Saboteurs’, and was surprised to find that I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.

My thoughts (written in May last year), are here.

‘Grand Prix Saboteurs’ is not a book about motor racing; it is about people and what they got up to during the Second World War. And as Joe explained somewhere, ‘The Man Who Caught Crippen’ has absolutely nothing to do with motor-racing at all. And although this blog is supposed to be about racing, I decided to make an exception, merely because this book is a jolly good read.

In many ways it is a lot simpler than ‘Grand Prix Saboteurs’, as it focuses purely on the exploits of one man. But that man’s life spanned 91 years, through war and peace, and was a good deal more adventurous than most.

Typically, Joe’s research is meticulous, detailed and thorough. The political and economic times through which Kendall lived are explained, as is relevant background history, with an engaging and readable style. Joe has that knack of writing prose that flows, and keeps the interest of the reader with a stream of riveting, sequential ideas.
I am not a big fan of biography, nor do I have any particular interest in ships or things maritime (although my father, ex-Royal Navy, would have loved it if I would have) - nevertheless I found this a gripping story, told with vibrant colour and detail. There are typos (not as many as there were in ‘Grand Prix Saboteurs’) and the photographs are of a pretty poor quality - but I would rather have them there than not have them at all.

I am not going to spoil the story for you by saying any more - read the book and let me know your thoughts!

Christmas stocking

I must be the luckiest boy in the world! In addition to putting the 2010 Le Mans Annual and the DVD review in my stocking, Santa Claus also brought me a copy of the limited ‘Prestige’ edition of the new Le Mans encyclopaedia. This has been much advertised in Le Mans Racing Magazine, and should actually have been published in July, but various delays meant that it only appeared in mid-December. So Santa decided to intercept my copy and put it under the Christmas tree, to await my eager hands on Christmas morning. Through a number of complex circumstances though, it didn’t actually get opened until the afternoon of the 26th.

What an amazing book it is. Three volumes, in both French and (predictably stilted) English, covering every participant in the 24 hour race from the very first race in 1923 until the last race in 2010. However, more than just a photo of each car, as the previous Moity / Tesseidre book did, there is a cameo portrait on many of the significant entrants, and also coverage of those who came to the race without making the start (step forward Tim Lee-Davey!) And move to one side, Time and Two Seats, as you are no longer the biggest book on the bookshelf. Although I am not sure that the brushed aluminium case will go on the bookshelf – it might have to stay on the floor, such is its weight.

I admit that I pushed the boat out somewhat when I ordered it, as it is far from cheap. But there seemed to be only once chance to get it, and hence I decided that the Prestige edition was worth it. My copy is number 4 out of 500, and from the web-site, I would suggest that around 100 of them have already been sold. I am sure that the regular copy is just as good, just not as exclusive, but what I really want to know is who has numbers 1, 2 and 3. Anyone reading this, please let me know!

And when I have given it a more thorough going over, then probably a review for dailysportscar.com will be called for!

The Grand Prix Saboteurs – Joe Saward

I have had this book for some time, but haven’t managed to pluck up the courage to pick it up and start it. Our Easter vacation in Portugal provided the impetus, and I found myself gripped before the aeroplane even took off.

Why should I have needed courage? Well, partly because I hold Joe in high regard – his writing is good, his intellect is strong and his memory phenomenal. In all areas, he is my superior. I guess I was afraid of having my inadequacies exposed. I needn’t have worried. This is an excellent book that will appeal to readers of many different backgrounds.

The narrative flows beautifully, and even though the detail is intense, this does not interrupt the enjoyment. I would hate to be submitted to a full examination to test my assimilation of the facts it contains, for there are too many. In terms of facts, the reader is fairly assaulted. I was reminded of the early Nick Park Wallace and Gromit films, in which it took three days to film two seconds of the film. I had an image of Joe, surrounded by books in a dusty archive somewhere in France, seeking to find just one name to insert into a paragraph, which already had twenty names in it.

I exaggerate. Not much though. But through this intensity of facts, two emotions come flooding out, filling me with admiration. First for the bravery of the folk around whom story revolves – principally the pre-war drivers William Grover, who won the first ever Monaco Grand Prix under the pseudonym W Williams, and Robert Benoist, who won the twenty-four hours of Le Mans in 1937, with the third chief character in the book, Jean-Pierre Wimille, who would triumph at Le Mans again in 1939, and then go on to an illustrious racing career after the war.

Second for the evident love the author has of his subject. More than eighteen years of research illustrates the passion that his topic holds for the author. Despite having only a passing interest in the activities of the French Resistance, Saward has whetted my appetite for his next book on this subject, which I can only assume will have even less reference to motor racing than this volume.

I felt that occasionally, we disappeared off on tangents that served only to illustrate the depth of the author’s research rather than further the plot, but we invariably came back to the matter in hand, and always did so with Joe’s engaging style intact. My other gripe concerned the number of typos (even one on the first page!), which were minor, but too frequent to be ignored.

Whatever kind of motor racing fan you are, even if you are not (so what are you doing reading this?) this is a story that I suggest you will find hard to put down. Thankyou Joe – well done!

Encyclopedia of Le Mans 24 hours

Well, I have gone and done it. Not sure if my wife reads this, but if she does, I just hope she'll understand. I have ordered the new "L'Encyclopédie des 24 Heures du Mans" from Le Mans Racing. It comes out on July 12th and shows a picture of every car ever to have competed in the classic race. It seems to be an update of Tesseidre and Moity's previous publication, which went from 1923 to 1993, brought up to the present with the addition of a third volume.

It can be collected (according to the website) from the circuit during the 2010 Le Mans Classic meeting, saving the postage costs

Apparently some of the gaps in the original will be filled, as well as some of the non-qualifiers from races.

I am not sure it will be worth the price, but I'll maybe update the blog when it arrives. But it is the sort of thing that I should have, and with such things it is often better to get in the queue early. As I said, we'll see. I'm really rather excited about it though.

It has been a quiet month this month - we had our family holiday in Portugal disrupted by the air travel ban caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Audi (predictably) ran away and hid at the eight hour race at Paul Ricard (Le Castellet). What with all the palaver of getting home from Portugal (and recovering my car from Guildford Audi, where it had spent the duration having its water pump replaced) I never got around to getting into any of the analysis, save to note that the R15-plus was capable of 31 laps on a tankful of fuel, whereas the Oreca Peugeot could manage 33. Although I've said before that speed will always beat economy, that might be an interested pointer for Le Mans in June.

And May will be mad. As my DSC column for April will describe. Sportscar races all over the place.

Including the 24 hours of the Nürburgring, which will be my first race of the year. Can't wait. Hope the R8 water pumps are more reliable than those on the S4.

Go Like Hell

I've just finished reading A J Baime's new book - "Go Like Hell", the story of Ford and Ferrari's quest for speed and glory at the Le Mans 24 hour race. And a jolly good read it is too.

A couple of very minor niggles, but the sort of thing that really annoys me - I'll get them off my chest first, then proceed. Why, oh why do Americans increasingly omit the word "of" after the word "couple"? It is plain wrong English. And as I say, it annoys me. So we get "On a couple occasions..." and "A couple laps later..." Oh well, categorise it along with mis-spelling of "minuscule", which has been misspelt so often that the word "miniscule" even now appears in the OED. The other thing that annoyed me was Baime's failure to get the name of John Wyer's book correct - it is "The Certain Sound", of course, not "That Certain Sound".

But having got that out of the way, it is a really good book. As has been written several times, the author presents his story very much as a novelist would, which makes it extremely readable. Sadly this means that much detail is omitted - but I fear that if all the detail were there, the book would not only be impossibly long, but also too complex. Where it succeeds, is in making the reader want to do some more research. I found myself looking up Wyer's opinions in my own copy of "The Certain Sound", checking results and reports in Time and Two Seats, and even watching again "This Time Tomorrow".

The story tells more of the Ford side than of the Ferrari, I suppose; but having said that, John Surtees gets more than his fair share of the glory for his efforts for the Italian team, and we get a good insight into his side of the story. Baime basically reduces the number of characters in the story, which enables us to get to know a little better the ones that he does mention.

And Baime has clearly researched his story meticulously - although he has clearly visited Le Mans, I found myself wondering occasionally what qualified him particularly to write the book. Or even what motivated him to do so.

But all in all, an excellent book, and one which might yet inspire me to buy his next, which I understand is in preparation already.