Showing posts with label Le Mans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Le Mans. Show all posts
Saturday, 15 July 2023
Safety Cars and Track Limits
Last week I managed to get around to posting my first article of the year and here I am, already posting my second! I am making an effort to catch up – not that anyone really relies on my blog, but please indulge me anyway.
My last post was a bit of a ramble and I want to make this a bit more targeted. Firstly, Safety Cars. A new procedure was introduced this year at Le Mans to handle Safety Car interventions. Briefly, the procedure involved sending out three Safety Cars (as normal) onto the track initially, to neutralise the field as quickly as possible. They would continue to circulate, and the pit lane entry would remain open, for as long as it took to clear the incident. The pit lane exit would be closed, until the end of the line of cars following a Safety Car went past.
So far, no change from the way it has worked in previous years. However, once the incident that caused the Safety Car had been cleared, a new process was introduced, with the aim of getting the cars lined up behind the leader of each class, with each class in a separate group. This consisted of three stages: one, the ‘merge’ – removing two Safety Cars and leaving the field backed up behind the remaining one; two, the ‘wave-by’, where every car whose class leader is behind it is allowed to pass the Safety Car and catch up with the tail of the field; and three, the ‘drop back’, where first the LMP2 cars, and then the GTE-Am cars fell to the back of the line of cars.
If it takes a while to explain, it takes even longer to execute, and relies on everyone knowing what they’re doing. Personally, I thought it was a recipe for confusion and chaos; but in practice it worked pretty well. The objective was achieved and all the cars lined up in their right class positions. The main issue was the time it took to happen. Although we had three Safety Car interludes, the first one came directly after the start of the race, so the cars were just about in class order anyway. Even then, it took an additional 14m 25s between the incident being declared ‘cleared’ and the green flag being waved. The following two uses of the Safety Car took, respectively, 34m 10s and 23m 56s. That’s a total of 1h 12m 31s of potential racing time lost, while cars were ‘faffing around’ getting themselves sorted into the right order, quite aside from the actual job of getting the incident cleared. If we would have had four classes, as in previous years, it would have taken even longer.
Apart from the time taken though, is the philosophical question of whether closing the field up behind the leader is the ‘right’ thing to do. I must admit I tend to count myself among the many hoping, as Richard Williams put it in this month’s Motor Sport magazine, “never… to see the integrity of a historic race threatened by practices borrowed from Daytona and Sebring”. The trouble is that without these practices, the field may get artificially spread out, and in these days of artificial performance-balanced racing, it is tough to come back if you do find yourself half-a-lap down.
The Spa 24 hours uses a ‘Full Course Yellow’ procedure, followed by a Safety Car, achieving the same end in a different way. The difference in SRO racing is that although it is multi-class, the classes are based on the crew composition, not the car performance, so no account is taken of the classes when sorting out the order of the cars behind the leader. So then it is pot luck whether you have your ‘ace’ driver in the car at the time of the appearance of the Safety Car or not.
I have just returned from Estoril, where Creventic were running one of their 24H Series races – a 12-hour encounter which had a 6-hour Qualification Race beforehand. Creventic do not use a Safety Car at all, but neutralise the field using ‘Code-60’ when necessary. This is a slower version of SRO’s Full Course Yellow, (operating at 60km/h rather than 80km/h) but it is restarted directly with a green flag, leaving the cars where they are, theoretically at least, when the signal to restart is given. Interestingly, this also leads to accusations of unfairness, as an awful lot can depend on the timing of the Code-60; how much fuel you have aboard, how close you are to the pit entry and whether there is a fuel pump available. Inevitably, the organisers are looking at ways of improving the process.
I mentioned Howden Haynes in my last post, and I’ll mention him again now. His objective was always to set the car up to be at its optimum at the end of the race, not at the start. It’s an especially sensible policy if you’ve got a Safety Car rule which bunches up the field.
It's not really fair to compare the Spa and Le Mans 24 hour races, but just because I can, here are some statistics. I include the Creventic race at Estoril for interest:
- Le Mans had 24 changes of lead among 8 different cars, representing five different brands;
- Spa had 68 changes of lead among 19 different cars, representing seven different brands;
- Estoril had 4 changes of lead among 4 different cars, representing three different brands (in a 12-hour race).
In addition
- Le Mans had 3 Safety Car periods, and 5 Full Course Yellows accounting for 3h 37m
- Spa had 9 Safety Car periods and 8 Full Course Yellows accounting for 4h 47m
- Estoril had 6 Code-60 periods accounting for 31m (in a 12-hour race)
Track Limits are becoming a bit of a theme, not just in Formula 1, but also at Le Mans as well as at Spa. At Spa, more than 2500 race control messages related to track limit offences.
At Le Mans, 801 messages from race control warned of track limit offences.
At Estoril, drivers were told in their briefing that the blue and white kerbs formed part of the track, and that, provided they did not stray beyond that limit with all four wheels, then they would not be penalised. It was fully appreciated that this was a more lenient approach, but the Race Control staff realised that spending too much time assessing Track Limit offences would possibly lead them to overlooking other, more serious safety issues. Hence their approach and there were only 23 warnings given and six 10-second penalties issued for track limit violations – and one of those was later cancelled.
These kinds of comparisons are futile, of course, and irrelevant for a number of reasons, not least because of the amateur nature of the entrants in Creventic races compared with the professionalism of Le Mans. But they may give some cause for consideration somewhere.
Tuesday, 11 July 2023
Anniversaries
A month has now passed since Le Mans, and I realise with some concern that I have not posted anything on this blog all year. I have always said that this blog is a personal outlet for me to indulge in various ramblings, and that I won’t be held to deadlines on it – it is, after all, my choice when and what I write. But what should you, my loyal readers, do? Well, that’s up to you really. At various points in the past I have posted detailed analyses of races here, travelogues of some of my visits to races, and personal opinions on the state of different championships and racing categories. Now I find myself just writing something because it’s a long time since I did so.
First, a quick medical report – for those who follow my ups and downs closely – my multiple myeloma remains in remission. I have been told that this won’t last forever, but I can live a relatively normal life these days, with the biggest health issues relating as much to my advancing years as to the cancer.
This means that I have been able to have a busy year thus far. On the racing front, I have worked with Red Camel at the Creventic races at Dubai, Mugello, Spa and, just last weekend, Estoril. On top of that I have commentated on the PA at Silverstone and Donington Park, and – the highlight of the year – at Le Mans.
Although it was pretty special to be at Le Mans last year, after a two-year hiatus finally getting to my 40th Le Mans 24-hour race, this year’s 100th anniversary was in many ways even more special. The presence of Ferrari, Porsche, Peugeot and Cadillac meant that the paddock atmosphere was buzzing, and my one trip into the spectator enclosures during Wednesday evening qualifying confirmed that spectator attendance was indeed record-breaking.
It's been a big year for anniversaries, and these days there seems to be a greater need to celebrate them than ever before. The fact that the first Le Mans 24-hour race took place one hundred years ago this year was difficult to miss – as was Porsche’s 75th anniversary. The Spa 24 hours was also celebrating its 75th running (although anyone who was there in 1993 will be unable to forget the abandonment of the race early on Sunday morning, following the unexpected death of King Baudouin). Silverstone is celebrating 75 years since its first race this year – the Festival later this year will remind everyone – and talking of Silverstone, the British Racing Drivers’ Club is 95 years old this year.
For a chap called Bob Curl, Le Mans 2023 saw a particularly special anniversary. It was seventy years since his first visit to Le Mans. In 1953, at the age of sixteen, he set off from his home with his push bike and a train ticket and witnessed the fabled “hangover victory” of Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt in their C-Type Jaguar. Bob is a tremendous enthusiast and a splendid chap. His name is indelibly linked with the Nomad, a car that he designed and built back in the late sixties for Mark Konig. Look it up in the Dailysportscar archive, or simply type “Mark Konig Nomad” into a search engine of your choice.
(I’ll probably get into all sorts of copyright trouble if I post any pictures here, but without doubt the Nomad – all three of them – are very pretty cars).
Anyway, seventy years on, Bob was at Le Mans again: camping outside the Porsche Curves, and when I spoke to him a week or so ago, it was clear that he had a great time. So much so, that he’s already made his reservation to stay there again next year!
I have to share one other tale about Bob, and that is his autograph book. Obviously, he grew up in the years before mobile phones and selfies became the rage, when small boys would get the autographs of their heroes. I was honoured a few years ago, not just to see, but to hold in my hand, Bob’s autograph book; and it must surely be the most complete record of the leading lights of motor sport over the years. Nuvolari, Fangio, Moss, Clark, Stewart: they are all there. He even has SCH (Sammy) Davis, winner of Le Mans for Bentley in 1927. When Bob first showed me this autograph book, he showed me the gap which had fortuitously been left on the same page as Davis’s scrawl and asked me if I thought that it might be a good place for Fernando Alonso, winner of the race some 91 years later, to sign. Of course I said it was a splendid idea, and at Silverstone later that year, Fernando duly signed in the gap and, being Fernando, thought it was all brilliant.
Anyway, Le Mans 2023 was unquestionably a thrilling race and I was so glad to be there to witness it – even if I did spend most of the race in the broadcasting studio of Radio Le Mans. It certainly exceeded my expectations and I must admit that I didn’t expect either Ferrari to keep their pace up as well as they did. The end result was in doubt even into the last two hours, when Toyota found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Brendon Hartley had to hand the car over or go beyond his drive time limit, and Sébastien Buemi had already had nine track limit warnings to his name. Toyota did not want to risk him getting a penalty and that left Ryo Hirakawa, who could feasibly have caught Alessandro Pier Guidi’s Ferrari in that final shift, but for his unfamiliarity with the braking on the Toyota, which had become a lot more erratic in the closing stages of the race. The Ferrari was also not without its problems – restarting the car after the pitstop was a known issue, which could have changed the outcome completely. It was a proper ending to an endurance race, with the reliability of both of the two cars fighting for the lead in doubt.
In the glory days of Audi, I became good friends with Howden ‘H’ Haynes, who engineered Audi to success in the 24 hours in 2008. ‘H’ was co-founder of Progressive motorsport, whose competitive spirit and attention to detail not only introduced Kyle Wilson-Clarke (later race engineer at Porsche, after Audi’s withdrawal), but also Leena Gade, who went on to engineer the winning Audi in 2012.
Another graduate of Progressive was Justin Taylor, who continued the winning tradition by running the no. 51 AF Corse-entered Ferrari at Le Mans this year. I have heard that Justin was using the (manual) stop watch given to him by H to determine the car’s position on the track, and thus to know when to talk to the driver on the circuit. Anyone who has seen Audi’s “Truth in 24” movie will have gained a bit of an insight into H’s approach to a race: he is highly intelligent, meticulous and competitive. It is a way of working that he shares with everyone that he comes into contact with and he has undoubtedly had a big influence on Taylor. I should have known better than to doubt that philosophy continuing to influence the race!
First, a quick medical report – for those who follow my ups and downs closely – my multiple myeloma remains in remission. I have been told that this won’t last forever, but I can live a relatively normal life these days, with the biggest health issues relating as much to my advancing years as to the cancer.
This means that I have been able to have a busy year thus far. On the racing front, I have worked with Red Camel at the Creventic races at Dubai, Mugello, Spa and, just last weekend, Estoril. On top of that I have commentated on the PA at Silverstone and Donington Park, and – the highlight of the year – at Le Mans.
Although it was pretty special to be at Le Mans last year, after a two-year hiatus finally getting to my 40th Le Mans 24-hour race, this year’s 100th anniversary was in many ways even more special. The presence of Ferrari, Porsche, Peugeot and Cadillac meant that the paddock atmosphere was buzzing, and my one trip into the spectator enclosures during Wednesday evening qualifying confirmed that spectator attendance was indeed record-breaking.
It's been a big year for anniversaries, and these days there seems to be a greater need to celebrate them than ever before. The fact that the first Le Mans 24-hour race took place one hundred years ago this year was difficult to miss – as was Porsche’s 75th anniversary. The Spa 24 hours was also celebrating its 75th running (although anyone who was there in 1993 will be unable to forget the abandonment of the race early on Sunday morning, following the unexpected death of King Baudouin). Silverstone is celebrating 75 years since its first race this year – the Festival later this year will remind everyone – and talking of Silverstone, the British Racing Drivers’ Club is 95 years old this year.
For a chap called Bob Curl, Le Mans 2023 saw a particularly special anniversary. It was seventy years since his first visit to Le Mans. In 1953, at the age of sixteen, he set off from his home with his push bike and a train ticket and witnessed the fabled “hangover victory” of Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt in their C-Type Jaguar. Bob is a tremendous enthusiast and a splendid chap. His name is indelibly linked with the Nomad, a car that he designed and built back in the late sixties for Mark Konig. Look it up in the Dailysportscar archive, or simply type “Mark Konig Nomad” into a search engine of your choice.
(I’ll probably get into all sorts of copyright trouble if I post any pictures here, but without doubt the Nomad – all three of them – are very pretty cars).
Anyway, seventy years on, Bob was at Le Mans again: camping outside the Porsche Curves, and when I spoke to him a week or so ago, it was clear that he had a great time. So much so, that he’s already made his reservation to stay there again next year!
I have to share one other tale about Bob, and that is his autograph book. Obviously, he grew up in the years before mobile phones and selfies became the rage, when small boys would get the autographs of their heroes. I was honoured a few years ago, not just to see, but to hold in my hand, Bob’s autograph book; and it must surely be the most complete record of the leading lights of motor sport over the years. Nuvolari, Fangio, Moss, Clark, Stewart: they are all there. He even has SCH (Sammy) Davis, winner of Le Mans for Bentley in 1927. When Bob first showed me this autograph book, he showed me the gap which had fortuitously been left on the same page as Davis’s scrawl and asked me if I thought that it might be a good place for Fernando Alonso, winner of the race some 91 years later, to sign. Of course I said it was a splendid idea, and at Silverstone later that year, Fernando duly signed in the gap and, being Fernando, thought it was all brilliant.
Anyway, Le Mans 2023 was unquestionably a thrilling race and I was so glad to be there to witness it – even if I did spend most of the race in the broadcasting studio of Radio Le Mans. It certainly exceeded my expectations and I must admit that I didn’t expect either Ferrari to keep their pace up as well as they did. The end result was in doubt even into the last two hours, when Toyota found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Brendon Hartley had to hand the car over or go beyond his drive time limit, and Sébastien Buemi had already had nine track limit warnings to his name. Toyota did not want to risk him getting a penalty and that left Ryo Hirakawa, who could feasibly have caught Alessandro Pier Guidi’s Ferrari in that final shift, but for his unfamiliarity with the braking on the Toyota, which had become a lot more erratic in the closing stages of the race. The Ferrari was also not without its problems – restarting the car after the pitstop was a known issue, which could have changed the outcome completely. It was a proper ending to an endurance race, with the reliability of both of the two cars fighting for the lead in doubt.
In the glory days of Audi, I became good friends with Howden ‘H’ Haynes, who engineered Audi to success in the 24 hours in 2008. ‘H’ was co-founder of Progressive motorsport, whose competitive spirit and attention to detail not only introduced Kyle Wilson-Clarke (later race engineer at Porsche, after Audi’s withdrawal), but also Leena Gade, who went on to engineer the winning Audi in 2012.
Another graduate of Progressive was Justin Taylor, who continued the winning tradition by running the no. 51 AF Corse-entered Ferrari at Le Mans this year. I have heard that Justin was using the (manual) stop watch given to him by H to determine the car’s position on the track, and thus to know when to talk to the driver on the circuit. Anyone who has seen Audi’s “Truth in 24” movie will have gained a bit of an insight into H’s approach to a race: he is highly intelligent, meticulous and competitive. It is a way of working that he shares with everyone that he comes into contact with and he has undoubtedly had a big influence on Taylor. I should have known better than to doubt that philosophy continuing to influence the race!
Wednesday, 20 October 2021
A look back at Le Mans, a look forward to Bahrain and a personal update
I have to say, it was great fun working with my friends on Radio Le Mans during this years’ 24-hour race at Le Mans back in August. Of course it wasn’t the same; but we live in times where working from home is not so unusual, and I had a wonderful set-up in our dining room with as many screens as I could reasonably want to use. The ever-efficient and friendly folk at Al Kamel (official timekeepers for the WEC) also provided me with access to their V2 Protocol on Cloud data stream, which meant that I could see live timing data in real time. And if I needed access to my home library, I just had to nip upstairs to look up anything I wanted – especially where I trusted my own records rather than the lottery of information that is available on the internet.
Although I did contribute to the Radio Show Limited coverage of the 2020 editions of both the Nürburgring and Le Mans 24-hour races, this year was my first opportunity to be properly part of the commentary team since the diagnosis of my illness and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year. I wasn’t sure, initially, how it was all going to pan out, but once I had the headset on, I felt that I slid into the groove very easily – and after a few minutes, it was like I had never been away. I took regular breaks, and even managed to tear myself away from the action in the night to get some sleep. Perhaps it set a precedent for my future contributions, or perhaps it was just another step in my recovery… we’ll see.
A lot seems to have happened since my last blog post, not only in terms of my personal life. From the point of view of my health, all is going reasonably well. I am still taking various medications – probably henceforth always will – but as long as it keeps the myeloma at bay, then I’m not going to complain. In July, I was at Spa-Francorchamps again, for the VW Fun Cup. For various reasons, I never quite got around to blogging about it, but from the point of view of my strength and endurance, it was a great success.
Since Le Mans, I have had various outings, not motor-racing related, but proving that I can drive myself around and visit friends and family as much as the Covid restrictions allow.
We are in the process of moving home: having lived in Surrey for more than half my life, my wife and I decided a move to a quieter part of England was appropriate. We surely underestimated the stress involved in selling and buying a house, but hopefully we are beyond the worst of it and will settle in quickly to our new abode and new surroundings.
In terms of the World Endurance Championship though, Le Mans represents the most recent round of the 2021 season. With just the double-header at Bahrain to wrap things up in the championship, I thought it was worth taking a brief look back at what happened in France in August, to see how the championship standings might shake out.
Personally, I find that the WEC has got itself in a bit of a mess. Having had an eight-round ‘super-season’ in 2018-2019, including two editions of the Le Mans 24 hours, we then had a single ‘winter season’ in 2019-2020, which also consisted of eight rounds. For 2021, we have returned to a ‘proper season’ consisting purely of races held in 2021, and which will end with two races on the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir. The first of these will take place over six hours and the second will be eight hours, on consecutive weekends, the last Saturday in October and the first Saturday in November. For a six-hour race, 25 points are awarded to the race winner, and for an 8-hour encounter, there are 38 points for the winners, so there are plenty of opportunities for strategists to exercise themselves over.
Toyota’s lead in the Manufacturers’ Championship is currently 51 points, so there is a mathematical chance that they won’t win it. That chance is one hardly worth bothering about, despite the presence of Alpine and Glickenhaus, there was not much doubt about the destination of the championships from the outset of this year’s six-round season.
However, just nine points separates the drivers of the no. 7 Toyota (Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, winners at Le Mans) from the no. 8 (Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley and Sébastien Buemi), so everything is still to play for. Two wins for the no. 8 over the two Bahraini races would be needed for their squad to take the championship. A lot hangs on the Japanese cars being reliable: thus far this season they have achieved a one-two in three out of four races, can more of the same be expected in Bahrain? If so, then the nine-point margin makes the no. 7 squad a distinct favourite to repeat their triumph in the (eight-round) 2019-2020 season.
In the GTE-Pro class, the score stands at two wins each so far this year for Porsche and Ferrari. However, the Italian marque has won at the higher-scoring, longer races at Le Mans and Portimao, giving them a 16-point lead in the championship. Certainly not unassailable, but enough to count them favourites. In the drivers’ classification, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado for Ferrari hold a 12-point lead over Porsche drivers Neel Jani and Kevin Estre.
Because each driver on the crew for each car scores the points earned by the car, it always just so happens that the drivers’ crown is shared by the squad driving the most successful car. This is only right and fair, of course. One would hardly expect the football World Cup in 1966 just to be awarded to Geoff Hurst, would one? George Cohen earned his right as a member of the winning team just as much – as did Jimmy Greaves, in my opinion, but that’s a whole different can of worms.
But, especially at Le Mans, I often get to wondering about the relative contribution of each driver to the finishing result. A driver’s contribution is difficult to assess, though, and is especially difficult to compare across a three-driver team, when team orders might play a role, as can the weather, the state of the car, and so on and so on.
For this a “Rising Average” graph is very useful. I show a few of these below, but first, it is important to understand how they are derived and how they should be interpreted. Al Kamel provides a very useful website: http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com from which you can download a CSV file containing the lap time for every car on every lap. Load this onto your computer and you can have a great deal of fun comparing your own favourites. You could also double-check my numbers for me!
I am not going to provide a complete course in drawing graphs using Microsoft Excel, but I do strongly recommend that you don’t just take my word for it, but do your own research as well. To get a Rising Average, you should sort the file by car and then by lap time, so for each car the lap times are sorted, fastest to slowest. Then take the average of the fastest n laps, where n increases from 1 to the number of laps completed by the car. To assess each individual driver, sort the file first by driver, then by car, then by lap time, and perform the same exercise. Draw the results on a graph, and you will get something like this:
I said earlier that it is important to know how to read these graphs. At first glance, merely consider that the driver whose line is nearest the x-axis is the fastest. Indeed, the very left-hand end of the graph shows you the fastest lap of each driver (fastest is the average of one lap). However, equally important – some would say more so – is the gradient of the line. Simple arithmetic demands that the line will slope upwards from left to right, but the angle with which it slopes is an indication of the consistency of the driver. The nearer to flat, the nearer to 100% consistency is that driver.
So, comparing the Toyota drivers from the graph above, you can see that Kamui Kobayashi was consistently the quickest of all six of them and that Kazuki Nakajima was overall slowest. But you can also see that Jose Maria Lopez did fewer laps than any of the others. But look at the consistency demonstrated by Sébastien Buemi and Mike Conway. Regular readers know that I am big fan of Conway, and I was surprised to see that on a 10- to 20-lap average he was slowest of all the Toyota drivers, but his line is even flatter than that of Buemi, indicating that he was getting the best from his tyres over a long stint, and that his line carries on the furthest to the right, indicating that he was the busiest of all the drivers on the team.
Truly, this is a team game, and Conway’s part in the victory was just as important as that played by his team-mates.
Here is a similar graph showing the comparison of the other HYPERCAR entries, the Alpine and the two Glickenhauses.
The performance of Nicolas Lapierre sticks out here like a sore thumb. And fellow-countryman Olivier Pla had a good race as well.
Finally, a quick look at the GTE-Pro class.
The graph shows the first classified GTE Pro cars. Most surprising here is how poor Neel Jani compares with everyone else. Certainly not what one would expect from a Le Mans winner. Ferrari can thank James Calado for the win, but the performance of the Corvette was undoubtedly strong, in particular the contributions of Nicky Catsburg and Antonio Garciá.
As I said, these graphs can be very illuminating, and demonstrate how multi-dimensional an endurance race is. On occasion, they can lead one completely astray, but for a race as long as Le Mans, and for one in which the weather conditions remain stable throughout, they provide a very useful indicator to show who were the true heroes of the race.
A lot seems to have happened since my last blog post, not only in terms of my personal life. From the point of view of my health, all is going reasonably well. I am still taking various medications – probably henceforth always will – but as long as it keeps the myeloma at bay, then I’m not going to complain. In July, I was at Spa-Francorchamps again, for the VW Fun Cup. For various reasons, I never quite got around to blogging about it, but from the point of view of my strength and endurance, it was a great success.
Since Le Mans, I have had various outings, not motor-racing related, but proving that I can drive myself around and visit friends and family as much as the Covid restrictions allow.
We are in the process of moving home: having lived in Surrey for more than half my life, my wife and I decided a move to a quieter part of England was appropriate. We surely underestimated the stress involved in selling and buying a house, but hopefully we are beyond the worst of it and will settle in quickly to our new abode and new surroundings.
In terms of the World Endurance Championship though, Le Mans represents the most recent round of the 2021 season. With just the double-header at Bahrain to wrap things up in the championship, I thought it was worth taking a brief look back at what happened in France in August, to see how the championship standings might shake out.
Personally, I find that the WEC has got itself in a bit of a mess. Having had an eight-round ‘super-season’ in 2018-2019, including two editions of the Le Mans 24 hours, we then had a single ‘winter season’ in 2019-2020, which also consisted of eight rounds. For 2021, we have returned to a ‘proper season’ consisting purely of races held in 2021, and which will end with two races on the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir. The first of these will take place over six hours and the second will be eight hours, on consecutive weekends, the last Saturday in October and the first Saturday in November. For a six-hour race, 25 points are awarded to the race winner, and for an 8-hour encounter, there are 38 points for the winners, so there are plenty of opportunities for strategists to exercise themselves over.
Toyota’s lead in the Manufacturers’ Championship is currently 51 points, so there is a mathematical chance that they won’t win it. That chance is one hardly worth bothering about, despite the presence of Alpine and Glickenhaus, there was not much doubt about the destination of the championships from the outset of this year’s six-round season.
However, just nine points separates the drivers of the no. 7 Toyota (Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, winners at Le Mans) from the no. 8 (Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley and Sébastien Buemi), so everything is still to play for. Two wins for the no. 8 over the two Bahraini races would be needed for their squad to take the championship. A lot hangs on the Japanese cars being reliable: thus far this season they have achieved a one-two in three out of four races, can more of the same be expected in Bahrain? If so, then the nine-point margin makes the no. 7 squad a distinct favourite to repeat their triumph in the (eight-round) 2019-2020 season.
In the GTE-Pro class, the score stands at two wins each so far this year for Porsche and Ferrari. However, the Italian marque has won at the higher-scoring, longer races at Le Mans and Portimao, giving them a 16-point lead in the championship. Certainly not unassailable, but enough to count them favourites. In the drivers’ classification, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado for Ferrari hold a 12-point lead over Porsche drivers Neel Jani and Kevin Estre.
Because each driver on the crew for each car scores the points earned by the car, it always just so happens that the drivers’ crown is shared by the squad driving the most successful car. This is only right and fair, of course. One would hardly expect the football World Cup in 1966 just to be awarded to Geoff Hurst, would one? George Cohen earned his right as a member of the winning team just as much – as did Jimmy Greaves, in my opinion, but that’s a whole different can of worms.
But, especially at Le Mans, I often get to wondering about the relative contribution of each driver to the finishing result. A driver’s contribution is difficult to assess, though, and is especially difficult to compare across a three-driver team, when team orders might play a role, as can the weather, the state of the car, and so on and so on.
For this a “Rising Average” graph is very useful. I show a few of these below, but first, it is important to understand how they are derived and how they should be interpreted. Al Kamel provides a very useful website: http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com from which you can download a CSV file containing the lap time for every car on every lap. Load this onto your computer and you can have a great deal of fun comparing your own favourites. You could also double-check my numbers for me!
I am not going to provide a complete course in drawing graphs using Microsoft Excel, but I do strongly recommend that you don’t just take my word for it, but do your own research as well. To get a Rising Average, you should sort the file by car and then by lap time, so for each car the lap times are sorted, fastest to slowest. Then take the average of the fastest n laps, where n increases from 1 to the number of laps completed by the car. To assess each individual driver, sort the file first by driver, then by car, then by lap time, and perform the same exercise. Draw the results on a graph, and you will get something like this:
I said earlier that it is important to know how to read these graphs. At first glance, merely consider that the driver whose line is nearest the x-axis is the fastest. Indeed, the very left-hand end of the graph shows you the fastest lap of each driver (fastest is the average of one lap). However, equally important – some would say more so – is the gradient of the line. Simple arithmetic demands that the line will slope upwards from left to right, but the angle with which it slopes is an indication of the consistency of the driver. The nearer to flat, the nearer to 100% consistency is that driver.
So, comparing the Toyota drivers from the graph above, you can see that Kamui Kobayashi was consistently the quickest of all six of them and that Kazuki Nakajima was overall slowest. But you can also see that Jose Maria Lopez did fewer laps than any of the others. But look at the consistency demonstrated by Sébastien Buemi and Mike Conway. Regular readers know that I am big fan of Conway, and I was surprised to see that on a 10- to 20-lap average he was slowest of all the Toyota drivers, but his line is even flatter than that of Buemi, indicating that he was getting the best from his tyres over a long stint, and that his line carries on the furthest to the right, indicating that he was the busiest of all the drivers on the team.
Truly, this is a team game, and Conway’s part in the victory was just as important as that played by his team-mates.
Here is a similar graph showing the comparison of the other HYPERCAR entries, the Alpine and the two Glickenhauses.
Finally, a quick look at the GTE-Pro class.
As I said, these graphs can be very illuminating, and demonstrate how multi-dimensional an endurance race is. On occasion, they can lead one completely astray, but for a race as long as Le Mans, and for one in which the weather conditions remain stable throughout, they provide a very useful indicator to show who were the true heroes of the race.
Friday, 28 August 2020
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.
Monday, 9 December 2019
The truth is important
In the novel “Life of Pi”, a story is told of a boy who survives a shipwreck and then shares a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.
Towards the end of the book, the possibility is raised that the tale is not true, and Yann Martel, the author, offers an alternative version, which may or may not be more believable, but which doesn’t involve any animals, exotic or otherwise. In the end, the reader is left with the dilemma of deciding for himself which makes the better story. Since it is a novel, and makes no pretence to be a record of history, I see no problem in any of it – indeed I count it among the better novels I have read, raising some interesting philosophical ideas.
History is different though. It is said that the difference between Herodotus (born circa 484 BC) and Thucydides (born 20 years later) is that only with the latter did history (as a subject) emerge from storytelling to become a truth-telling activity.
In this modern age, we might expect it to be easier to get at, preserve and report the truth. Well, yes, but that is to ignore the fact that people do not always tell the truth. Stories sometimes get embellished, and facts, sometimes, are the casualties.
At Creventic’s COTA 24 hours recently, we had the occasion to celebrate Jim Briody’s 100th 24-hour race. There was a big piece in the race magazine, and as well Cor Euser (for whose team Briody was driving) made a big banner across the pit, and a big celebration and fuss was made. Jim’s wife Pat had been in touch with venerable record-keeper and historian János Wimpffen, in order to chronicle the races. However, before the race, I received an email from János to advise that the real number of 24-hour races that Jim had contested was actually around 82, rather than the 100 that Jim and Pat were claiming.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, goes the old proverb, often raised in journalistic quarters, and I must admit that it did not seem apposite, in Texas, to rain on Jim’s parade. And in any case, competing in your 82nd 24-hour race, at the age of 75, is a worthy achievement indeed. But just in case anyone does ask Google “Who has made 100 24-hour race starts?” the answer isn’t Jim Briody.
I felt the same thing while watching the Le Mans ’66 film recently. It was certainly a good film, and I was delighted to see that Ken Miles’ efforts in the development of the Mk II GT40 were justly recognised, even if those of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme were somewhat overlooked. However, what spoiled it for me was the film’s willingness to play fast and loose with the facts. I don’t think I need to pick holes here, or bring your attention to what actually happened: all I would suggest is that you get hold of A. J. Baime’s book “Go Like Hell”, and compare it to the screenplay of the film.
The original Le Mans film (the one with Steve McQueen) made no pretence to tell a true story – nor for that matter did the John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix. But unquestionably both provided a sublime portrayal of the reality of racing (as well as a bit of glamour). But the more recent glut of motor-racing films – I’m thinking particularly of Senna, Rush and Le Mans ‘66 – have had an air of documentary authenticity about them and with that comes a responsibility to tell the truth. Misrepresenting the facts merely puts the rest of the story into jeopardy: where do you stop believing it?
There are some stories that have become the stuff of legend: the reason that Mercedes’ cars were silver rather than white in the 1930’s; the story of Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt’s win at Le Mans while hungover in 1953; Ed Hugus driving (or not) the winning Ferrari at Le Mans in 1965; right up to Hunt and Lauda’s rivalry in 1976. Often, the stories are better than the historical fact, so it is hardly surprising that they gain traction.
Motor racing is not alone in having its legends and myths, of course. Not just Hollywood, but many a respectable book-shelf is littered with examples of embellishment, exaggeration and downright fiction masquerading as fact. But history can be a very dry subject if not lubricated by a larger-than-life character or a tall story.
Yet still I am drawn by the need to seek out the truth of a situation; a desire to understand the motives, context and perspective rather than to hear glib sound-bites or watch a 20-second video clip. I am afraid that I believe that it is just as important to want to know – or find out – the historical facts as it is to be able to recount a good story. That is what distinguishes a good story-teller from a good historian. No doubt the former can win more friends; it is an unfortunate consequence that it is also the former that influences more people.
Towards the end of the book, the possibility is raised that the tale is not true, and Yann Martel, the author, offers an alternative version, which may or may not be more believable, but which doesn’t involve any animals, exotic or otherwise. In the end, the reader is left with the dilemma of deciding for himself which makes the better story. Since it is a novel, and makes no pretence to be a record of history, I see no problem in any of it – indeed I count it among the better novels I have read, raising some interesting philosophical ideas.
History is different though. It is said that the difference between Herodotus (born circa 484 BC) and Thucydides (born 20 years later) is that only with the latter did history (as a subject) emerge from storytelling to become a truth-telling activity.
In this modern age, we might expect it to be easier to get at, preserve and report the truth. Well, yes, but that is to ignore the fact that people do not always tell the truth. Stories sometimes get embellished, and facts, sometimes, are the casualties.
At Creventic’s COTA 24 hours recently, we had the occasion to celebrate Jim Briody’s 100th 24-hour race. There was a big piece in the race magazine, and as well Cor Euser (for whose team Briody was driving) made a big banner across the pit, and a big celebration and fuss was made. Jim’s wife Pat had been in touch with venerable record-keeper and historian János Wimpffen, in order to chronicle the races. However, before the race, I received an email from János to advise that the real number of 24-hour races that Jim had contested was actually around 82, rather than the 100 that Jim and Pat were claiming.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, goes the old proverb, often raised in journalistic quarters, and I must admit that it did not seem apposite, in Texas, to rain on Jim’s parade. And in any case, competing in your 82nd 24-hour race, at the age of 75, is a worthy achievement indeed. But just in case anyone does ask Google “Who has made 100 24-hour race starts?” the answer isn’t Jim Briody.
I felt the same thing while watching the Le Mans ’66 film recently. It was certainly a good film, and I was delighted to see that Ken Miles’ efforts in the development of the Mk II GT40 were justly recognised, even if those of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme were somewhat overlooked. However, what spoiled it for me was the film’s willingness to play fast and loose with the facts. I don’t think I need to pick holes here, or bring your attention to what actually happened: all I would suggest is that you get hold of A. J. Baime’s book “Go Like Hell”, and compare it to the screenplay of the film.
The original Le Mans film (the one with Steve McQueen) made no pretence to tell a true story – nor for that matter did the John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix. But unquestionably both provided a sublime portrayal of the reality of racing (as well as a bit of glamour). But the more recent glut of motor-racing films – I’m thinking particularly of Senna, Rush and Le Mans ‘66 – have had an air of documentary authenticity about them and with that comes a responsibility to tell the truth. Misrepresenting the facts merely puts the rest of the story into jeopardy: where do you stop believing it?
There are some stories that have become the stuff of legend: the reason that Mercedes’ cars were silver rather than white in the 1930’s; the story of Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt’s win at Le Mans while hungover in 1953; Ed Hugus driving (or not) the winning Ferrari at Le Mans in 1965; right up to Hunt and Lauda’s rivalry in 1976. Often, the stories are better than the historical fact, so it is hardly surprising that they gain traction.
Motor racing is not alone in having its legends and myths, of course. Not just Hollywood, but many a respectable book-shelf is littered with examples of embellishment, exaggeration and downright fiction masquerading as fact. But history can be a very dry subject if not lubricated by a larger-than-life character or a tall story.
Yet still I am drawn by the need to seek out the truth of a situation; a desire to understand the motives, context and perspective rather than to hear glib sound-bites or watch a 20-second video clip. I am afraid that I believe that it is just as important to want to know – or find out – the historical facts as it is to be able to recount a good story. That is what distinguishes a good story-teller from a good historian. No doubt the former can win more friends; it is an unfortunate consequence that it is also the former that influences more people.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
LMP2 at Le Mans - Some Answers?
Less than three weeks have passed since the dramatic events of the 2016 Le Mans 24-hour race, but somehow it seems longer than that. I seem to have spent a lot of time discussing the emotions of the week with a lot of people. Having been to Le Mans every year since 1981, it remains a very special week, but somehow perhaps not as much of a highlight as it once was. That said, the impressions of 2016 will remain with me for a long time. I have read a lot of what has been written, and listened to a lot of what has been said in the last three weeks – but there has been so much that I have probably missed most of it. Undoubtedly the rights and wrongs of the stories from the LMP1 and GTE classes warranted the extensive coverage, and yet, somehow I feel that there are elements of the stories that might never be known – at least not in public.
But before moving on, I want to spend some time reflecting on the LMP2 class, which may have been put into the shade a little by the shenanigans in the other classes, but nevertheless holds stories of its own. It was interesting that the winning Signatech Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre, Stéphane Richelmi and Gustavo Menezes not only had a slower average lap time, but also spent longer in the pits than the second-placed G-Drive Oreca 05 of René Rast, Will Stevens and Roman Rusinov. As regular readers will know, I use the average of the best 20% of green laps to establish the ultimate performance of the car, and the results of the class were as follows.
And the time spent in the pit lane was:
There were also noteworthy performances from the Oreca 05s of both Manor and Thiriet by TDS Racing. Roberto Merhi, Matt Rao and Tor Graves held the class lead for 44 laps in the British-entered car and also set the fastest lap in LMP2, thanks to a lap of 3m 36.259s by Merhi. In the Thiriet car, Pierre Thiriet, sharing with Mathias Beche and Ryo Hirakawa, exchanged the lead for much of the race before Pierre came to grief early on Sunday morning in the gravel at Mulsanne corner. Their average lap times were: 44 (Manor) – 3m 39.448s and 46 (Thiriet by RDS Racing) – 3m 39.697s, so which compare well with the leading two cars.
However, it seems to me that not only the battle between Signatech and G-Drive is worth a more detailed look, but also the fight for the final step on the podium between the SMP Racing BR01 of Kirill Ladygin, Victor Shaitar and Vitaly Petrov and the Strakka Racing Gibson of Danny Watts, Jonny Kane and Nick Leventis.
It seems counter-intuitive that a car spending less time in the pits and with a faster average lap time (the G-Drive Oreca) should lose out to one (Signatech) that spends more time in the pits and has a slower average lap time. Inevitably, and obviously, something else is going on.
Examine the “Rising Lap Time” graph, shown below. This sorts the lap times for each car into ascending order and the plots them, best to worst, from left to right. Whichever line is closer to the x-axis is faster.
Hopefully this shows clearly enough – click on the graph to make it bigger – that the Signatech (blue line) is above (i.e. slower than) the G-Drive (brown line) at the left hand (fast) end of the range, but below for the larger, right hand end of the range. The conclusion is that although G-Drive was quicker for the fastest 80 or so laps, Signatech was quicker for the rest of the time.
The graph does not show – but I am not convinced it is relevant – that the no. 36 Signatech pitted during each of the three SC periods (ignoring the first SC period at the start of the race), shortening the planned stint as it did so… the 26 G-Drive didn’t come in at all during SC periods, hence its shorter time in the pit lane. The average pit stop time for a ‘normal’ stop was 1m 11s for #36 and 1m 12s for #26. Note that G-Drive also had a drive through penalty which would have cost it about 28 secs.
It is interesting that Slow Zones / Safety Cars, nor which driver was at the wheel, seem to have much impact on this pattern. What can be established is that the majority of G-Drive’s quicker times came in the final eight hours of the race, whereas the Signatech Alpine set its quicker times earlier in the race – when the track temperatures were cooler. All this merely goes to show that looking at the average of the best 20% may show the true potential of the car, but doesn’t always reflect its performance over a 24-hour period.
It is a very relevant feature of the LMP2 class that the crew composition must include at least one silver or bronze driver, of course, and in addition, each driver must be at the wheel for a minimum of six hours. To a large extent, this explains the fact that the all-Russian crew in the SMP Racing BR01 was able to bring their car home onto the third step of the podium ahead of the all-British Gibson 015S.
The following table shows the driver comparison for the first four cars in the class.
The Average Lap time above is calculated as the average of the best 25 laps achieved, and it is clear that the star drivers are Rast, Lapierre (no surprises there) and Menezes, performing particularly well on his début. But G-Drive car is quicker (when it is quick), no matter who is driving, than Signatech. The French squad won as a result of being quicker when the competition was slower - and that was when the track was cooler. Twenty-four hour racing is all about consistency.
Just go back and look at that “Rising Lap Time” chart!
But before moving on, I want to spend some time reflecting on the LMP2 class, which may have been put into the shade a little by the shenanigans in the other classes, but nevertheless holds stories of its own. It was interesting that the winning Signatech Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre, Stéphane Richelmi and Gustavo Menezes not only had a slower average lap time, but also spent longer in the pits than the second-placed G-Drive Oreca 05 of René Rast, Will Stevens and Roman Rusinov. As regular readers will know, I use the average of the best 20% of green laps to establish the ultimate performance of the car, and the results of the class were as follows.
| Pos. | No. | Team | Race Best Lap Time | Race Average Lap Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 36 | Signatech Alpine | 3m 37.195s | 3m 39.038s |
| 2 | 26 | G-Drive Oreca | 3m 36.558s | 3m 38.739s |
| 3 | 37 | SMP Racing BR01 | 3m 40.065s | 3m 42.476s |
| 4 | 42 | Strakka Gibson | 3m 38.795s | 3m 41.968s |
| 5 | 33 | Eurasia Oreca | 3m 38.605s | 3m 41.700s |
| 6 | 41 | Greaves Ligier | 3m 41.806s | 3m 44.820s |
| 7 | 27 | SMP BR01 | 3m 39.445s | 3m 42.371s |
| 8 | 23 | Panis Barthez Ligier | 3m 39.629s | 3m 42.721s |
| 9 | 49 | Michael Shank Ligier | 3m 37.339s | 3m 41.315s |
| 10 | 43 | RGR Morand Ligier | 3m 38.734s | 3m 41.406s |
| 11 | 30 | ESM Ligier | 3m 42.146s | 3m 44.037s |
| 12 | 25 | Algarve Pro Ligier | 3m 40.450s | 3m 43.218s |
| 13 | 40 | Krohn Ligier | 3m 39.998s | 3m 43.442s |
| 14 | 22 | SO24! Ligier | 3m 43.769s | 3m 47.349s |
| 15 | 48 | Murphy Oreca 03 | 3m 41.582s | 3m 44.470s |
| 16 | 31 | ESM Ligier | 3m 39.156s | 3m 42.189s |
| 17 | 34 | Race Performance Oreca | 3m 43.647s | 3m 46.774s |
And the time spent in the pit lane was:
| Pos. | No. | Team | No. of Pit Stops | Total Time in Pits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 36 | Signatech Alpine | 33 | 46m 53s |
| 2 | 26 | G-Drive Oreca | 35 | 41m 12s |
| 3 | 37 | SMP Racing BR01 | 32 | 41m 05s |
| 4 | 42 | Strakka Gibson | 33 | 39m 52s |
| 5 | 33 | Eurasia Oreca | 33 | 52m 49s |
| 6 | 41 | Greaves Ligier | 33 | 45m 07s |
| 7 | 27 | SMP BR01 | 36 | 1h 05m 13s |
| 8 | 23 | Panis Barthez Ligier | 33 | 51m 33s |
| 9 | 49 | Michael Shank Ligier | 32 | 49m 49s |
| 10 | 43 | RGR Morand Ligier | 32 | 1h 16m 23s |
| 11 | 30 | ESM Ligier | 30 | 45m 38s |
| 12 | 25 | Algarve Pro Ligier | 34 | 1h 08m 37s |
| 13 | 40 | Krohn Ligier | 32 | 59m 12s |
| 14 | 22 | SO24! Ligier | 32 | 1h 39m 50s |
| 15 | 48 | Murphy Oreca 03 | 32 | 2h 10m 07s |
| 16 | 31 | ESM Ligier | 31 | 3h 57m 50s |
| 17 | 34 | Race Performance Oreca | 33 | 3h 33m 57s |
There were also noteworthy performances from the Oreca 05s of both Manor and Thiriet by TDS Racing. Roberto Merhi, Matt Rao and Tor Graves held the class lead for 44 laps in the British-entered car and also set the fastest lap in LMP2, thanks to a lap of 3m 36.259s by Merhi. In the Thiriet car, Pierre Thiriet, sharing with Mathias Beche and Ryo Hirakawa, exchanged the lead for much of the race before Pierre came to grief early on Sunday morning in the gravel at Mulsanne corner. Their average lap times were: 44 (Manor) – 3m 39.448s and 46 (Thiriet by RDS Racing) – 3m 39.697s, so which compare well with the leading two cars.
However, it seems to me that not only the battle between Signatech and G-Drive is worth a more detailed look, but also the fight for the final step on the podium between the SMP Racing BR01 of Kirill Ladygin, Victor Shaitar and Vitaly Petrov and the Strakka Racing Gibson of Danny Watts, Jonny Kane and Nick Leventis.
It seems counter-intuitive that a car spending less time in the pits and with a faster average lap time (the G-Drive Oreca) should lose out to one (Signatech) that spends more time in the pits and has a slower average lap time. Inevitably, and obviously, something else is going on.
Examine the “Rising Lap Time” graph, shown below. This sorts the lap times for each car into ascending order and the plots them, best to worst, from left to right. Whichever line is closer to the x-axis is faster.
Hopefully this shows clearly enough – click on the graph to make it bigger – that the Signatech (blue line) is above (i.e. slower than) the G-Drive (brown line) at the left hand (fast) end of the range, but below for the larger, right hand end of the range. The conclusion is that although G-Drive was quicker for the fastest 80 or so laps, Signatech was quicker for the rest of the time.
The graph does not show – but I am not convinced it is relevant – that the no. 36 Signatech pitted during each of the three SC periods (ignoring the first SC period at the start of the race), shortening the planned stint as it did so… the 26 G-Drive didn’t come in at all during SC periods, hence its shorter time in the pit lane. The average pit stop time for a ‘normal’ stop was 1m 11s for #36 and 1m 12s for #26. Note that G-Drive also had a drive through penalty which would have cost it about 28 secs.
It is interesting that Slow Zones / Safety Cars, nor which driver was at the wheel, seem to have much impact on this pattern. What can be established is that the majority of G-Drive’s quicker times came in the final eight hours of the race, whereas the Signatech Alpine set its quicker times earlier in the race – when the track temperatures were cooler. All this merely goes to show that looking at the average of the best 20% may show the true potential of the car, but doesn’t always reflect its performance over a 24-hour period.
It is a very relevant feature of the LMP2 class that the crew composition must include at least one silver or bronze driver, of course, and in addition, each driver must be at the wheel for a minimum of six hours. To a large extent, this explains the fact that the all-Russian crew in the SMP Racing BR01 was able to bring their car home onto the third step of the podium ahead of the all-British Gibson 015S.
The following table shows the driver comparison for the first four cars in the class.
| Name | Grade | Driving Time | Best Lap | Average Lap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gustavo Menezes | Silver | 7h 08m 53s | 3m 37.452s | 3m 38.8s |
| Nicolas Lapierre | Platinum | 9h 07m 13s | 3m 37.195s | 3m 38.8s |
| Stéphane Richelmi | Gold | 6h 57m 39s | 3m 38.112s | 3m 40.2s |
| Name | Grade | Driving Time | Best Lap | Average Lap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roman Rusinov | Silver | 6h 54m 13s | 3m 36.558s | 3m 39.0s |
| Will Stevens | Platinum | 6h 54m 11s | 3m 36.891s | 3m 39.7s |
| René Rast | Platinum | 9h 33m 43s | 3m 36.563s | 3m 38.2s |
| Name | Grade | Driving Time | Best Lap | Average Lap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vitaly Petrov | Platinum | 9h 30m 32s | 3m 40.065s | 3m 41.8s |
| Victor Shaitar | Silver | 7h 37m 02s | 3m 41.268s | 3m 42.5s |
| Kirill Ladygin | Gold | 6h 14m 36s | 3m 43.489s | 3m 45.1s |
| Name | Grade | Driving Time | Best Lap | Average Lap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonny Kane | Platinum | 9h 25m 28s | 3m 38.795s | 3m 40.7s |
| Danny Watts | Platinum | 7h 53m 38s | 3m 41.860s | 3m 42.9s |
| Nick Leventis | Silver | 6h 02m 55s | 3m 45.090s | 3m 47.8s |
The Average Lap time above is calculated as the average of the best 25 laps achieved, and it is clear that the star drivers are Rast, Lapierre (no surprises there) and Menezes, performing particularly well on his début. But G-Drive car is quicker (when it is quick), no matter who is driving, than Signatech. The French squad won as a result of being quicker when the competition was slower - and that was when the track was cooler. Twenty-four hour racing is all about consistency.
Just go back and look at that “Rising Lap Time” chart!
Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Some Questions for Toyota
I have spent much of the last two weeks going over the data from this year’s astonishing Le Mans 24-hour race, and in the analysis of the numbers, some of the emotion has been lost. Probably, this is good thing, because for several hours after the race a sense of numbness overcame me – as I am sure it did for a lot of people.
Make no mistake, there has never been a finish like this one. Not just in terms of the proximity to the finish when the leading car coughed, spluttered and died – at least temporarily – but also in the fact that the chasing car – a Porsche – was only just over a minute behind when it happened. And that minute would have been a lot less but for a puncture in the last 15 minutes.
I must admit, in the immediate aftermath, the biggest injustice seemed to me that the no. 5 Toyota, so ably driven throughout the race by Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima, was not even classified. No wonder that the Audi crew of Oliver Jarvis, Lucas di Grassi and Loïc Duval was so reluctant to take up the third step of the podium.
But “rules are rules”, came the cry – and it clearly states in article 10.15(e) of the Le Mans Supplementary Regulations, that the final lap must be completed in less than six minutes, except in cases of force majeure, at the Stewards’ discretion. Exactly what constitutes force majeure was the subject of some debate, albeit somewhat briefly – and there didn’t seem to be much stomach for it in the Module Sportif. There would be two German flags and one Japanese flown over the podium, and that, it would seem, was that.
The first time that a limit was imposed for a time to complete the final lap was in 1949, when the rule was introduced that the final lap had to be completed in under 30 minutes. The rule was introduced, as much as anything else, because the organisers wanted to ensure that the marshals could be safely stood down at the end of the race, and that the track be re-opened to the public, without some racing car still trying to complete its twenty-four (and a half) hour race.
It was not until after the millennium that the maximum time for the final lap was reduced to six minutes, and the reason it was done was not merely to allow the marshals to stand down sooner.
After the 24-hour race of 2007, there had been some criticism of the ACO that various rules had not been strictly applied, and early in 2008, the organising body issued a statement to clarify matters. Interestingly, two of the specific complaints had been that bodywork had been used to block the view into the garages and the race numbers were not visible at night – maybe progress has not been as great in the last ten years as we think.
However, and more significantly to my mind, was that the Peugeot 908 driven by Sébastien Bourdais, Pedro Lamy and Stéphane Sarrazin had not completed the final lap in the required six minutes – indeed it had come out and waited by the start finish line for the chequered flag to be waved at the winning Audi before crossing the line in ‘second’ place, strictly against the provision of the same article in the regulations that led to the exclusion of the Toyota this year.
In fact, none of the final four laps of that Peugeot had been under six minutes – although there was the mitigating factor of rain, but we will return to the subject of the weather later.
Ah, said the ACO, but the spirit of the rule had not been broken. The rule had been introduced, they said, to prevent an “endless victory lap before the end of the race and thus endangering safety of other cars that were racing for position”. This was merely the case of the car trying to get to the finish of the world’s greatest endurance race. No-one mentioned the fact that it was a French car, of course.
I reminded a seasoned hack of this immediately after the race. “Yes, but that was nearly ten years ago,” I was told, “now we have an FIA/ACO alliance and a World Championship. Things are different.”
Maybe so, but only two years ago (when there was indeed a World Endurance Championship to be fought over and points to be won and lost), there was a little bit of trouble and fuss when the Porsche driven by Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb (remember them?) completed the final lap of the race in 1h 26m 09.430s and yet somehow that counted as force majeure and their fourth place in the LMP1-H class enabled them to score 24 points in the championship.
In case you missed it, the Porsche had made a long pit stop, and came out just in time to complete its final lap, but as the start finish line is before pit, the time that the car spent in its pit counted towards the final lap time. Although the final lap time should have led to the car’s exclusion, the ACO reasoned that the final lap time should not be defined as the time between crossings of the timing line, but should be calculated as the time from the pit out to the finish line.
Fair enough I suppose, but in that case why didn’t Nakajima bring the Toyota into the pits when the car suffered its problem at 14:57 on Sunday afternoon? The pit lane would have (should have) remained open until Neel Jani got round his final lap, so getting out of the pit again would not have been a problem. The fact is, Kazuki panicked. Rafal Pokora, the race engineer on the car, panicked. I suspect everyone in the Toyota garage who had any influence panicked.
The other option would have been for Nakajima to stop his car just before the pit lane entrance. Assuming that whatever was done could have been done just as well there as three hundred yards further on, again, it would have ensured that the long ‘problem’ lap was the penultimate lap and the final one would have been covered in less than the six minutes required by the regulation.
It wouldn’t have given them the win that they wanted, but at least Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi and Nakajima would have had a second-place podium consolation prize. And the humiliation of being stationery under the famous Rolex clock, in front of the packed grandstands, would have been avoided as well. Somehow, that image smacked to me of a stereotypical Japanese melodrama. I’m not sure that I would have reacted any differently in that situation, but I suspect that some of Hugues de Chaunac’s tears were due to the missed opportunities. The people who are paid to know what to do failed to come up with the correct answers in a crisis.
Let’s take a look at the matter from a different angle. I can see an argument for dispensing with the six-minute rule altogether (although I grant you that some means has to allow the poor soul waving the chequered flag to be able to furl his flag and go home). In recent years, crowd control at Le Mans has improved vastly – we no longer have spectators invading the track as the cars are on their last lap, blissfully unaware of any class battles that may be going on. The introduction of a proper slowing-down lap and the positioning of the parc fermé on the track at the Ford Chicane means that the marshals can leave their flag-waving appreciation of everyone’s efforts until after the race is over.
When the cars were waved off the track at the end of the pit lane, the only opportunity for drivers to appreciate the crowd was on the last racing lap. Of course they milked it (if their lead was big enough).
Now, consider the possibility that the no. 5 Toyota, instead of being just a minute or so ahead of its nearest competitor, had been a lap or more ahead. Then, when the Porsche had gone past the stricken Toyota, it would only have been unlapping itself, not going into the lead. If, as it did, the Toyota got going again to complete its lap, it would have won the race, surely? Not if its final lap was discounted for being over six minutes long! Thankfully, it didn’t happen – but it would have presented the stewards with an interesting dilemma.
Alternatively, consider what would have happened if the weather conditions on Sunday would have been as bad as on Saturday. Would we have had a finish behind the Safety Car? The ACO considers such an eventuality extremely unlikely, but would the need to follow the Safety Car be regarded as force majeure? Maybe the whole field would have been excluded!
Feel free to leave your comment below.
Make no mistake, there has never been a finish like this one. Not just in terms of the proximity to the finish when the leading car coughed, spluttered and died – at least temporarily – but also in the fact that the chasing car – a Porsche – was only just over a minute behind when it happened. And that minute would have been a lot less but for a puncture in the last 15 minutes.
I must admit, in the immediate aftermath, the biggest injustice seemed to me that the no. 5 Toyota, so ably driven throughout the race by Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima, was not even classified. No wonder that the Audi crew of Oliver Jarvis, Lucas di Grassi and Loïc Duval was so reluctant to take up the third step of the podium.
But “rules are rules”, came the cry – and it clearly states in article 10.15(e) of the Le Mans Supplementary Regulations, that the final lap must be completed in less than six minutes, except in cases of force majeure, at the Stewards’ discretion. Exactly what constitutes force majeure was the subject of some debate, albeit somewhat briefly – and there didn’t seem to be much stomach for it in the Module Sportif. There would be two German flags and one Japanese flown over the podium, and that, it would seem, was that.
The first time that a limit was imposed for a time to complete the final lap was in 1949, when the rule was introduced that the final lap had to be completed in under 30 minutes. The rule was introduced, as much as anything else, because the organisers wanted to ensure that the marshals could be safely stood down at the end of the race, and that the track be re-opened to the public, without some racing car still trying to complete its twenty-four (and a half) hour race.
It was not until after the millennium that the maximum time for the final lap was reduced to six minutes, and the reason it was done was not merely to allow the marshals to stand down sooner.
After the 24-hour race of 2007, there had been some criticism of the ACO that various rules had not been strictly applied, and early in 2008, the organising body issued a statement to clarify matters. Interestingly, two of the specific complaints had been that bodywork had been used to block the view into the garages and the race numbers were not visible at night – maybe progress has not been as great in the last ten years as we think.
However, and more significantly to my mind, was that the Peugeot 908 driven by Sébastien Bourdais, Pedro Lamy and Stéphane Sarrazin had not completed the final lap in the required six minutes – indeed it had come out and waited by the start finish line for the chequered flag to be waved at the winning Audi before crossing the line in ‘second’ place, strictly against the provision of the same article in the regulations that led to the exclusion of the Toyota this year.
In fact, none of the final four laps of that Peugeot had been under six minutes – although there was the mitigating factor of rain, but we will return to the subject of the weather later.
Ah, said the ACO, but the spirit of the rule had not been broken. The rule had been introduced, they said, to prevent an “endless victory lap before the end of the race and thus endangering safety of other cars that were racing for position”. This was merely the case of the car trying to get to the finish of the world’s greatest endurance race. No-one mentioned the fact that it was a French car, of course.
I reminded a seasoned hack of this immediately after the race. “Yes, but that was nearly ten years ago,” I was told, “now we have an FIA/ACO alliance and a World Championship. Things are different.”
Maybe so, but only two years ago (when there was indeed a World Endurance Championship to be fought over and points to be won and lost), there was a little bit of trouble and fuss when the Porsche driven by Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb (remember them?) completed the final lap of the race in 1h 26m 09.430s and yet somehow that counted as force majeure and their fourth place in the LMP1-H class enabled them to score 24 points in the championship.
In case you missed it, the Porsche had made a long pit stop, and came out just in time to complete its final lap, but as the start finish line is before pit, the time that the car spent in its pit counted towards the final lap time. Although the final lap time should have led to the car’s exclusion, the ACO reasoned that the final lap time should not be defined as the time between crossings of the timing line, but should be calculated as the time from the pit out to the finish line.
Fair enough I suppose, but in that case why didn’t Nakajima bring the Toyota into the pits when the car suffered its problem at 14:57 on Sunday afternoon? The pit lane would have (should have) remained open until Neel Jani got round his final lap, so getting out of the pit again would not have been a problem. The fact is, Kazuki panicked. Rafal Pokora, the race engineer on the car, panicked. I suspect everyone in the Toyota garage who had any influence panicked.
The other option would have been for Nakajima to stop his car just before the pit lane entrance. Assuming that whatever was done could have been done just as well there as three hundred yards further on, again, it would have ensured that the long ‘problem’ lap was the penultimate lap and the final one would have been covered in less than the six minutes required by the regulation.
It wouldn’t have given them the win that they wanted, but at least Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi and Nakajima would have had a second-place podium consolation prize. And the humiliation of being stationery under the famous Rolex clock, in front of the packed grandstands, would have been avoided as well. Somehow, that image smacked to me of a stereotypical Japanese melodrama. I’m not sure that I would have reacted any differently in that situation, but I suspect that some of Hugues de Chaunac’s tears were due to the missed opportunities. The people who are paid to know what to do failed to come up with the correct answers in a crisis.
Let’s take a look at the matter from a different angle. I can see an argument for dispensing with the six-minute rule altogether (although I grant you that some means has to allow the poor soul waving the chequered flag to be able to furl his flag and go home). In recent years, crowd control at Le Mans has improved vastly – we no longer have spectators invading the track as the cars are on their last lap, blissfully unaware of any class battles that may be going on. The introduction of a proper slowing-down lap and the positioning of the parc fermé on the track at the Ford Chicane means that the marshals can leave their flag-waving appreciation of everyone’s efforts until after the race is over.
When the cars were waved off the track at the end of the pit lane, the only opportunity for drivers to appreciate the crowd was on the last racing lap. Of course they milked it (if their lead was big enough).
Now, consider the possibility that the no. 5 Toyota, instead of being just a minute or so ahead of its nearest competitor, had been a lap or more ahead. Then, when the Porsche had gone past the stricken Toyota, it would only have been unlapping itself, not going into the lead. If, as it did, the Toyota got going again to complete its lap, it would have won the race, surely? Not if its final lap was discounted for being over six minutes long! Thankfully, it didn’t happen – but it would have presented the stewards with an interesting dilemma.
Alternatively, consider what would have happened if the weather conditions on Sunday would have been as bad as on Saturday. Would we have had a finish behind the Safety Car? The ACO considers such an eventuality extremely unlikely, but would the need to follow the Safety Car be regarded as force majeure? Maybe the whole field would have been excluded!
Feel free to leave your comment below.
Friday, 10 June 2016
Team-mates - Thoughts from Allan McNish
Looking through the entry list for this year’s Le Mans 24 race, it occurs to me that this year will be the seventh consecutive time that Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer will have driven together in the same car. Apart from this being remarkable in its own right, it is also significant because it equals the record set by Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Dindo Capello, who also shared the same car on seven occasions, between 2006 and 2012.
“I wasn’t aware of that!” said Allan McNish when I drew his attention to the fact earlier this week. “But it is an interesting reflection on the fact that there are not many manufacturers around that are in a position to provide that sort of an opportunity, where drivers can work together for that many years.”
Although Allan, Tom and Dindo only won the big race once as a team of drivers (in 2008), McNish believes it gives a big advantage to have that kind of longevity for a driving crew. “Knowing your co-drivers is very important,” he says. “It is harder for three drivers to make it work than if you would only have two, but it is very important to be able to understand and work well together. Tom, Dindo and I are all very strong characters – you have to be a strong character if you are a racing driver – but it was Dindo who really brought us together as a team. He was the key ingredient: he would put his arm round your shoulder when you needed it.”
The combination of the Briton, the Dane and the Italian came together in the first year of the Audi turbodiesel engine. Although they had never all driven together before, all had been part of the Audi family for many years, and all had already won the 24 hours before – Kristensen and Capello having shared the winning Goh Audi in 2004 as well as the Bentley that triumphed in 2003. “It was a good time to get together,” opines McNish, “as the new technology meant a new start in some ways. On the other hand, we all knew each other well already, so it didn’t take long to be effective, as a team.”
It is more than just a team of three drivers, though, as McNish readily admits. “People like Dr. Ullrich, Ralf Jüttner, Ulrich Baretzky and Jo Hausner have all been involved since the very start,” he says. “Even if there has been change [Howden Haynes, Chris Reinke have both now moved on], the nucleus of the team has remained. That’s especially true on the design side and in the engine development, which is vitally important.”
The German/French/Swiss combination of Lotterer, Tréluyer and Fässler has been immensely successful of course: on the six occasions they have shared a car at Le Mans, they have won the race three times. Does McNish see any parallels in the driving crews? “Not really, Marcel, Ben and André are quite different from Tom, Dindo and me. With them, you have someone for every occasion. André may seem quite laid-back, but he is pretty intense. What you have to remember is that they all had quite varied careers before joining Audi – they haven’t been successful all of the time. Ben has quite a lot of other elements to his career. He and Marcel are both a little older – they have families, in fact Marcel has four girls!”
Although André Lotterer is regarded by many people as the outstanding member of the crew when fast laps are required – indeed some would regard him as the outstanding endurance racer of the current era – both Marcel and Benoît have turned in race-winning performances of their own. “Absolutely!” agrees McNish, “there have been races in the past where Marcel and Ben have both stepped up and, quite frankly, won the race. All three drivers have the ability to raise their game when they have to. They are all extremely strong under pressure. With Marcel, well, he’s Swiss! There are no secrets with him – what you see is what you get. If he’s feeling an emotion, you will know exactly what it is!”
In 2009, the year before Fässler, Lotterer and Tréluyer came together at Audi for the first time, they had all been at Le Mans, but in rather different machinery. André Lotterer had been at the wheel of the older, Kolles-entered Audi R10; Tréluyer had been employed by Henri Pescarolo to drive his privately-entered Peugeot 908 and Fässler had been at the wheel of a factory GT1 Chevrolet Corvette.
“It wasn’t a crew of drivers that seemed a natural fit at first,” accepts Allan McNish. “Marcel was part of the Audi team already (having driven Audis in GT racing) and the relationship between him, Ben and André was a bit like a marriage: it had to be worked at. It took a bit of time to get it right.”
What is not in doubt, as the teams assemble for the 84th running of the 24 hour race, is that the relationship is now absolutely right. With Leena Gade on the pit wall, masterminding the crew for the last time before moving on to pastures new at Bentley, the no.7 Audi e-tron quattro must be counted among the favourites for what would be a fourth win for the four of them together!
Monday, 6 June 2016
A Gnawing Concern
I am looking forward to the Le Mans 24 hours, of course I am. This will be my 36th time at the race and the week is always a highlight of my year, even if it means I miss my wife, family and home life while I am away. However, there is a concern that has been growing steadily over the past few years, that I fear – a bit like global warming – that we ignore at our peril. And a bit like David Cameron’s referendum, if it goes wrong, it will be entirely self-inflicted. It is one of those things that has been gnawing away, like a rat through a telephone cable and I just want to flag it up so that someone, somewhere, might be able to take some preventative measures.
Here’s the subject:
Although the entry list has been extended to allow 60 cars to start this year, only 9 of them are in the LMP1 category – that’s just 15% of the entry, nearly the lowest ever. Last year’s renaissance in the percentages came largely (but not exclusively) as a result of the arrival in the entry list of the three Nissans, and I would regard 25% as an absolute minimum for the top class at Le Mans.
But it is not just the percentage, it is the fact that there are six – only six – LMP1 Hybrids in the entry. The performance differential among these six seems (from the evidence of the Test Day) to be pretty small, certainly compared to last year. But the difference to the rest of the field is significant, and the fact that the entry has been expanded by nearly 10% means that there is likely to be a lot more overtaking to be done over the course of the 24 hours.
The original plan, as it was announced last year, was to invite 58 cars to enter the race this year, and extend to 60 only in 2017. The decision by the ACO to accelerate this progression was made after the decision of the Volkswagen Group to reduce the factory efforts from both Porsche and Audi to just two cars each. So was someone at the ACO thinking that 27 GT cars and 23 LMP2 cars was a reasonable number (compared to 23 and 19, respectively, last year) and that they would just be absorbed into the path of the LMP1 Hybrids? Or was it merely an opportunistic move because work on the additional garages had gone smoothly? I wonder.
It’s a somewhat tricky calculation, but a few years ago, I worked out that the winning car at Le Mans made over 1,000 overtaking manoeuvres on the race track. In total, there were something like 25,000 moves where one car passed another during the 24 hours of the race.
By my reckoning, the additional cars (and the speed of the P1 Hybrids) will add around 1,000 to that number. Whoever wins this year – be it a Porsche, an Audi or a Toyota – will have to make an additional 200 or so overtaking moves.
If a snap decision was made by the ACO to build the additional garages, then I hope that a driver’s snap decision does not have long-lasting consequences.
I have written before about narrowing the gap between the GT and Prototype cars (here), but that vision was a longer term one. If ever-larger grids is to become a sustainable objective, then maybe this would provide a way forward.
Here’s the subject:
| Year | Starters | LMP1 cars | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 55 | 14 | 25% |
| 2014 | 54 | 9 | 17% |
| 2013 | 56 | 8 | 14% |
| 2012 | 56 | 13 | 23% |
| 2011 | 56 | 17 | 30% |
| 2010 | 55 | 18 | 33% |
| 2009 | 55 | 20 | 36% |
| 2008 | 55 | 22 | 40% |
| 2007 | 54 | 16 | 30% |
| 2006 | 50 | 12 | 24% |
| 2005 | 49 | 13 | 27% |
| 2004 | 48 | 19 | 40% |
Although the entry list has been extended to allow 60 cars to start this year, only 9 of them are in the LMP1 category – that’s just 15% of the entry, nearly the lowest ever. Last year’s renaissance in the percentages came largely (but not exclusively) as a result of the arrival in the entry list of the three Nissans, and I would regard 25% as an absolute minimum for the top class at Le Mans.
But it is not just the percentage, it is the fact that there are six – only six – LMP1 Hybrids in the entry. The performance differential among these six seems (from the evidence of the Test Day) to be pretty small, certainly compared to last year. But the difference to the rest of the field is significant, and the fact that the entry has been expanded by nearly 10% means that there is likely to be a lot more overtaking to be done over the course of the 24 hours.
The original plan, as it was announced last year, was to invite 58 cars to enter the race this year, and extend to 60 only in 2017. The decision by the ACO to accelerate this progression was made after the decision of the Volkswagen Group to reduce the factory efforts from both Porsche and Audi to just two cars each. So was someone at the ACO thinking that 27 GT cars and 23 LMP2 cars was a reasonable number (compared to 23 and 19, respectively, last year) and that they would just be absorbed into the path of the LMP1 Hybrids? Or was it merely an opportunistic move because work on the additional garages had gone smoothly? I wonder.
It’s a somewhat tricky calculation, but a few years ago, I worked out that the winning car at Le Mans made over 1,000 overtaking manoeuvres on the race track. In total, there were something like 25,000 moves where one car passed another during the 24 hours of the race.
By my reckoning, the additional cars (and the speed of the P1 Hybrids) will add around 1,000 to that number. Whoever wins this year – be it a Porsche, an Audi or a Toyota – will have to make an additional 200 or so overtaking moves.
If a snap decision was made by the ACO to build the additional garages, then I hope that a driver’s snap decision does not have long-lasting consequences.
I have written before about narrowing the gap between the GT and Prototype cars (here), but that vision was a longer term one. If ever-larger grids is to become a sustainable objective, then maybe this would provide a way forward.
Monday, 9 November 2015
Keeping Safe?
For the second time in successive races, the field started the Six Hours of Shanghai behind the Safety Car. Given the fact that the Free Practice and Qualifying sessions had all been held in dry – and in some cases, sunny – conditions, this was probably a sensible decision. The same thing happened three weeks before that in Fuji - although the rain was somewhat heavier, practice had been held on a dry track. Indeed, it was the second time in three years that the Six Hours of Fuji was started behind the Safety Car – maybe there is a lesson somewhere there for the calendar-maker?
I have written previously about starting a race behind a Safety Car and while I have to admit reservations about the purity of such a start, I suppose it is best summed up as the ‘least-worst option’. The pity of it is that 22 minutes (in the case of Shanghai) and 38 minutes (in the case of Fuji) of the 360 minutes scheduled racing were lost.
In 1977, I was at Brands Hatch for the World Championship of Makes Six Hours, which in dire conditions, had to be stopped after 37 laps. It was restarted as a 2h 45m race, once conditions had improved somewhat, but annoyingly, those first laps were deemed not to ‘count’ and the efforts of drivers in part one went unrewarded. I was standing in a puddle of ever-increasing dimensions as I waited for the decisions to be reached, and although track conditions improved towards the end of the afternoon, it was all rather dismal.
In 1982, again at Brands Hatch, again it was raining and the 1,000kms race again had to be stopped – after just nine laps. This time though, it was calculated as a two-part race, with times from the first twenty-minute part being added to the time for the rest of the race (a little over five hours) to create an aggregate result, albeit 27 laps short of the scheduled distance. This allowed Jacky Ickx (sharing with Derek Bell) to take victory, even though he didn’t manage to get past Teo Fabi’s Martini-sponsored Lancia, which won ‘on the road’, by just 1.7s, but which had finished the first race 6.4s behind the Rothman’s Porsche.
Had the rules for 1977 applied in 1982, then not only would Fabi and Patrese have won the race at Brands, but also Ickx would not have been world champion!
Although a Safety Car (then called a Pace-car) was first used at Le Mans in 1981, it took until the end of the decade before its use – to ‘neutralise’ the race – became widespread in racing across Europe. Particularly at Le Mans – for obvious reasons – but in all forms of racing: endurance racing, single-seaters, touring cars, the circumstances in which a race would be stopped became fewer and fewer. As a result, ‘aggregate’ races became consigned to history. Having the race decided ‘on the road’ became of critical importance, even if it meant that big leads were wiped out at a stroke as the Safety Car pulled onto the track. ‘Picking up the leader’ became crucial as well, of course, which meant that cars continued to circulate at racing speed, while the Safety Car driver chose his moment to accelerate. It seems to me that the aim of ‘Safety First’ was already being compromised as officialdom tried to implement safety procedures.
It wasn’t long before teams began to build the inevitable Safety Car period into their race plan, and race organisers were left playing catch-up trying to deal with the perceived unfairness that arose.
As a result, procedures became ever-more complicated, in the interests of preserving safety without compromising the race, and teams became ever-more adept in developing tactics to make the best of things. In US sportscar racing, it is rare for a Safety Car period to be less than 20 minutes – surely in this time, the race could have been stopped and restarted?
Worse though, is that different organising bodies have adopted different procedures. With a simple waved yellow flag it is easy. Drivers learn from their first race its meaning: “Great danger ahead, no overtaking, slow down, be prepared to stop.” But with a Safety Car Procedure it is not so simple. Mistakes were made: not only by drivers, but by officialdom as well.
In this year’s World Endurance Championship, there are three different and distinct ways of providing a safer environment to allow incidents that occur on the track to be handled, in addition to the ‘traditional’ yellow flag (see above), without having to resort to the dreaded ‘race stoppage’.
First, of course, there’s the Safety Car. But the procedure for using the Safety Car is different, depending whether we’re at Le Mans or not. And either case that’s different from procedures in the US, where many of the WEC drivers are occupied on non-clashing races.
Second, there’s the Full Course Yellow – similar to the so-called ‘Virtual Safety Car’ procedure in F1, but entirely different from a Safety Car procedure, in that drivers are required to keep to a blanket speed limit, imposed at the same time on the whole circuit. Theoretically at least, this should lead to ‘no bunching’, but Lewis Hamilton jeopardised even that theory by his antics at the US GP.
And third, there is the Slow Zone – again, requiring drivers to keep to a speed limit (80km/h), but only for a specific, and hopefully short, section of the track.
I hope you, dear reader, are keeping up here. Because if you’re not, then what chance the 100-odd racing drivers that take part in every round of the WEC?
At Shanghai, there were four periods of Full Course Caution, and at Fuji there were three. In three of those seven periods, pit stops were made by one or more of the Porsches and Audis that were at the sharp end of those races. Quite obviously, there is a lot to be gained from pitting during a FCY period, and if teams did not realise this initially, it is now common knowledge. Only two of these periods lasted for more than ten minutes, the rest were five minutes or less. In terms of laps, only one period was for more than three laps.
If the Safety Car is used, then the pit lane is closed for the first three laps. This rule is in place, not for safety reasons, but to avoid that some cars gain an advantage. There doesn’t seem any logical reason to me why the SC should close the pit lane, but that a FCY period should not – the advantage to be gained is identical. In fact, at Shanghai and Fuji, the SC laps were quicker than those spent under FCY conditions, so the chances of a car running out of fuel was actually greater – except for the fact, of course, that the SC was only used at the start of both races.
In the tennis match of rule-making, the ball is now in the FIA WEC Endurance Committee’s court to close this loophole and close the pit lane during a FCY period.
Although the option of a Slow Zone has been available to race director Eduardo Freitas, it has not been used since Le Mans. Bearing in mind the carnage that ensued as SZ procedures were not properly implemented - on more than one occasion - at Le Mans, one can see the wisdom of this. But, it is only by implementing these things, and learning from the experiences, that we will get to a satisfactory position.
It is interesting, that in drivers’ briefings, they are told that, in the implementation of a FCY, there is a “reaction time” element: enabling drivers (in effect) to choose the moment when they reduce speed to 80km/h. This is entirely sensible, since you don’t want to be hitting the brakes halfway through a long, high-speed corner. The main problem with the existing SZ procedure is the transition into and out of it. Preceding any Slow Zone is a yellow flag zone, through which drivers have to slow from racing speed to 80km/h. After the Slow Zone, the green flag indicates an immediate return to racing speed is possible. It is in the transition zones where the problems arise, particularly due to less-experienced drivers in some of the less powerful cars.
It seems to me that race officials need to recognise this and make suitable allowance in the procedure, to make the Slow Zone a more effective tool. At the moment it is under-utilised and wasted, in my opinion.
Familiarity with the procedure, whatever it is, undoubtedly helps, as does a clear message in driver briefings. These days, telemetry and GPS data are available to Race Control, so identifying transgressions and dangerous driving should not be as subjective an issue as in former times. If penalties for dangerous driving were draconian but fair, and safety rules and procedures were consistent, not just during a season, but across different series and championships, regardless of territory, organising body or racing discipline, then drivers would respond, and perhaps could then trusted to behave appropriately when following safety regulations.
It will never be possible to completely remove the element of chance and luck from racing. But to ensure that safety procedures commensurate with the times in which we currently live are feasible, drivers, race officials – in the control tower and on the circuit – as well as the spectators, need to know and understand what is going on. Then, and only then, will it be possible to create maximum safety with minimum disruption.
I have written previously about starting a race behind a Safety Car and while I have to admit reservations about the purity of such a start, I suppose it is best summed up as the ‘least-worst option’. The pity of it is that 22 minutes (in the case of Shanghai) and 38 minutes (in the case of Fuji) of the 360 minutes scheduled racing were lost.
In 1977, I was at Brands Hatch for the World Championship of Makes Six Hours, which in dire conditions, had to be stopped after 37 laps. It was restarted as a 2h 45m race, once conditions had improved somewhat, but annoyingly, those first laps were deemed not to ‘count’ and the efforts of drivers in part one went unrewarded. I was standing in a puddle of ever-increasing dimensions as I waited for the decisions to be reached, and although track conditions improved towards the end of the afternoon, it was all rather dismal.
In 1982, again at Brands Hatch, again it was raining and the 1,000kms race again had to be stopped – after just nine laps. This time though, it was calculated as a two-part race, with times from the first twenty-minute part being added to the time for the rest of the race (a little over five hours) to create an aggregate result, albeit 27 laps short of the scheduled distance. This allowed Jacky Ickx (sharing with Derek Bell) to take victory, even though he didn’t manage to get past Teo Fabi’s Martini-sponsored Lancia, which won ‘on the road’, by just 1.7s, but which had finished the first race 6.4s behind the Rothman’s Porsche.
Had the rules for 1977 applied in 1982, then not only would Fabi and Patrese have won the race at Brands, but also Ickx would not have been world champion!
Although a Safety Car (then called a Pace-car) was first used at Le Mans in 1981, it took until the end of the decade before its use – to ‘neutralise’ the race – became widespread in racing across Europe. Particularly at Le Mans – for obvious reasons – but in all forms of racing: endurance racing, single-seaters, touring cars, the circumstances in which a race would be stopped became fewer and fewer. As a result, ‘aggregate’ races became consigned to history. Having the race decided ‘on the road’ became of critical importance, even if it meant that big leads were wiped out at a stroke as the Safety Car pulled onto the track. ‘Picking up the leader’ became crucial as well, of course, which meant that cars continued to circulate at racing speed, while the Safety Car driver chose his moment to accelerate. It seems to me that the aim of ‘Safety First’ was already being compromised as officialdom tried to implement safety procedures.
It wasn’t long before teams began to build the inevitable Safety Car period into their race plan, and race organisers were left playing catch-up trying to deal with the perceived unfairness that arose.
As a result, procedures became ever-more complicated, in the interests of preserving safety without compromising the race, and teams became ever-more adept in developing tactics to make the best of things. In US sportscar racing, it is rare for a Safety Car period to be less than 20 minutes – surely in this time, the race could have been stopped and restarted?
Worse though, is that different organising bodies have adopted different procedures. With a simple waved yellow flag it is easy. Drivers learn from their first race its meaning: “Great danger ahead, no overtaking, slow down, be prepared to stop.” But with a Safety Car Procedure it is not so simple. Mistakes were made: not only by drivers, but by officialdom as well.
In this year’s World Endurance Championship, there are three different and distinct ways of providing a safer environment to allow incidents that occur on the track to be handled, in addition to the ‘traditional’ yellow flag (see above), without having to resort to the dreaded ‘race stoppage’.
First, of course, there’s the Safety Car. But the procedure for using the Safety Car is different, depending whether we’re at Le Mans or not. And either case that’s different from procedures in the US, where many of the WEC drivers are occupied on non-clashing races.
Second, there’s the Full Course Yellow – similar to the so-called ‘Virtual Safety Car’ procedure in F1, but entirely different from a Safety Car procedure, in that drivers are required to keep to a blanket speed limit, imposed at the same time on the whole circuit. Theoretically at least, this should lead to ‘no bunching’, but Lewis Hamilton jeopardised even that theory by his antics at the US GP.
And third, there is the Slow Zone – again, requiring drivers to keep to a speed limit (80km/h), but only for a specific, and hopefully short, section of the track.
I hope you, dear reader, are keeping up here. Because if you’re not, then what chance the 100-odd racing drivers that take part in every round of the WEC?
At Shanghai, there were four periods of Full Course Caution, and at Fuji there were three. In three of those seven periods, pit stops were made by one or more of the Porsches and Audis that were at the sharp end of those races. Quite obviously, there is a lot to be gained from pitting during a FCY period, and if teams did not realise this initially, it is now common knowledge. Only two of these periods lasted for more than ten minutes, the rest were five minutes or less. In terms of laps, only one period was for more than three laps.
If the Safety Car is used, then the pit lane is closed for the first three laps. This rule is in place, not for safety reasons, but to avoid that some cars gain an advantage. There doesn’t seem any logical reason to me why the SC should close the pit lane, but that a FCY period should not – the advantage to be gained is identical. In fact, at Shanghai and Fuji, the SC laps were quicker than those spent under FCY conditions, so the chances of a car running out of fuel was actually greater – except for the fact, of course, that the SC was only used at the start of both races.
In the tennis match of rule-making, the ball is now in the FIA WEC Endurance Committee’s court to close this loophole and close the pit lane during a FCY period.
Although the option of a Slow Zone has been available to race director Eduardo Freitas, it has not been used since Le Mans. Bearing in mind the carnage that ensued as SZ procedures were not properly implemented - on more than one occasion - at Le Mans, one can see the wisdom of this. But, it is only by implementing these things, and learning from the experiences, that we will get to a satisfactory position.
It is interesting, that in drivers’ briefings, they are told that, in the implementation of a FCY, there is a “reaction time” element: enabling drivers (in effect) to choose the moment when they reduce speed to 80km/h. This is entirely sensible, since you don’t want to be hitting the brakes halfway through a long, high-speed corner. The main problem with the existing SZ procedure is the transition into and out of it. Preceding any Slow Zone is a yellow flag zone, through which drivers have to slow from racing speed to 80km/h. After the Slow Zone, the green flag indicates an immediate return to racing speed is possible. It is in the transition zones where the problems arise, particularly due to less-experienced drivers in some of the less powerful cars.
It seems to me that race officials need to recognise this and make suitable allowance in the procedure, to make the Slow Zone a more effective tool. At the moment it is under-utilised and wasted, in my opinion.
Familiarity with the procedure, whatever it is, undoubtedly helps, as does a clear message in driver briefings. These days, telemetry and GPS data are available to Race Control, so identifying transgressions and dangerous driving should not be as subjective an issue as in former times. If penalties for dangerous driving were draconian but fair, and safety rules and procedures were consistent, not just during a season, but across different series and championships, regardless of territory, organising body or racing discipline, then drivers would respond, and perhaps could then trusted to behave appropriately when following safety regulations.
It will never be possible to completely remove the element of chance and luck from racing. But to ensure that safety procedures commensurate with the times in which we currently live are feasible, drivers, race officials – in the control tower and on the circuit – as well as the spectators, need to know and understand what is going on. Then, and only then, will it be possible to create maximum safety with minimum disruption.
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