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.

The busiest weekend of the year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Handicapping

I am not really very good at this blogging thing. A marketing person told me earlier this year that I need to be posting on social media every day, and that if I want to attract followers to my blog, then I need to write something new and interesting at least once a week. Apart from the fact that I find the expression “you need to” a rather objectionable one, I am also not so sure that social media is exactly where I want “my profile” to be.

I have also maintained that what I “need” to do is to provide for myself and my family, and as writing blog posts earns me no money, then it is consequently somewhat lower down my list of priorities. However, I do enjoy sharing some of my thoughts and insights on this platform, and equally I have enjoyed reading some of your comments on the subject of my exploits over the summer. Happily, it has been a busy time, my family is provided for (more or less) but this week I find myself with some time to kill.

The subject for an article did not immediately occur to me. Two things recently have got me thinking, however. First, was the decision of the FIA World Endurance Championship to adopt a “Success Handicap” system for its 2019-2020 season, and second, the concept used in both the International GT Open Championship and the British GT Championship of “Success Seconds” added to fixed pit stop times.

There has been some controversy and comment on this, and clearly they are artificial mechanisms introduced to make it harder for successful competitors to continue to have success. The concept is surely not alien – handicapping is routine in horse-racing and golf, and probably other sports besides. And while I agree that it interferes with the purity of the sport, the nature of motor-racing surely justifies some kind of re-balancing when the cars that are competing are patently not equal?

Let us also not forget that motor races have had handicaps since, well, since the earliest days. Some readers may be familiar with the name A. V. Ebblewhite, the famous handicapper and timekeeper at Brooklands between 1907 and 1939. Albert Victor Ebblewhite, known to everyone as ‘Ebby’, had the idea that racing at Brooklands, although fast, would be enlivened if the drivers of the fastest cars were made to start later than the drivers of the slower ones. So he devised staggered starting procedures, designed so that a close finish would result. It was certainly a successful exercise: he achieved three dead-heats between the two World Wars.

There was also the ‘Brooklands Chicane’, a temporary affair of wattle fencing and oil drums, through which there were four different routes, each of which required cars to slow down to a different extent. Depending on the performance of each car, its driver had to negotiate a specific lane. History does not record how offences were dealt with.

The problem with handicapping is the danger that it can lead to accusations of unfairness. The handicapper is in an invidious position. Competitors may be tempted to hide their true performance in order to avoid too severe a handicap in future. At Silverstone earlier this month, when the International GT Open series visited, what could have been a thrilling four-car battle for the lead of the race disintegrated when Martin Kodric, in his Teo Martin-run McLaren, decided he didn’t want to suffer a time penalty in the next round and deliberately slowed, causing a degree of chaos behind.

We have been told that the Toyota TS050 that won the first round at Silverstone will as a consequence suffer a 1.4s per lap penalty at the next round of the WEC at Fuji. After six hours, that should amount to more than five minutes. Based on the advantage that Toyota had over Rebellion at last year’s race, and that all other things are equal, that means that the Japanese manufacturer will only win by 40s this year, rather than four laps as it did in 2018. Artificial? Yes probably, but more exciting, surely?

Formula 1 races no longer excite me as much as they once did (although I have to admit that I haven’t been present at an F1 race for many years), but nevertheless I recognise that more people watch F1 than any other branch of the sport. But people talk of the racing in F1 not being exciting, despite the introduction of artificial aids such as DRS. Is the answer handicapping? I don’t know, but just imagine the appeal of a race where a McLaren, a Williams or a Haas might win. And how much easier would that make the task of finding sponsors for those teams? It wouldn’t need to be anything as complicated as restricting the output of the power units or adding weight, a simple additional pit stop – the length of which would depend on the number of championship points you had – would do the trick.

Just look at the Constructors’ Championship table. I am not suggesting that the pecking order should be changed; just that if some of the gaps would be reduced then more excitement would result. There is no reason to suppose that anyone other than the best driver over the full course of a season would become World Champion, but I am sure that an increase in spectator appeal would follow. Done in an overt way, so no-one would have any illusion that Mercedes (or Ferrari) were not actually doing the best job by overcoming (or not) the biggest handicap, would it work, do you think? And inevitably, if it were to happen – and work – in Formula 1, then the rest of the sport would follow.

Maybe Pierre Fillon, Gerard Neveu et al are on to something.

A look back at the 2017 World Endurance Championship

It has been called the end of an era: 2017 will signal the end of the traditional, calendar-driven World Endurance Championship. In future we will need to refer to the Champions as the “2018-2019 winners”, just as we do in football, I suppose. And if the stars align, then there is no reason to suppose that in a few years’ time we will not think anything special of it.

Theoretically, football has a clear ‘season’, in which Premiership matches start in August, and run through to May, but fans will not find it difficult to find matches in the remaining two months of the year. The idea of a year-round season is not unfamiliar to followers of football, as well as other sports.

I just feel that the WEC is losing something, somehow. At the very least, the gains are completely cosmetic and rather artificial. It all smacks a little of moving deck-chairs. What is unclear (to me) is whether we are aboard a sinking ship.

There are two elements to the matter. First, as I have mentioned before, is the move to a championship that ends with the Le Mans 24-hour race. We’ve had 85 Grands Prix d’Endurance, none of which have been the final round of any championship – why the need to make it so now? Second, why do we have to get there via the so-called ‘super-season’ that will incorporate two 24-hour races at Le Mans? I am all for innovation, but I wonder if a couple of non-championship races might have served the purpose better? Or what about a revival of the ‘Coupe Biennale’ concept to score points at Le Mans?

In 1962, the South African GP (for formula one cars) was held in December (29th), and was the final round of the championship for 1962; whereas in 1965 and 1968, it was held in January (on New Year’s Day, to be precise, with practice and qualifying in the previous year) and counted towards the World Drivers’ Championships for 1965 and 1968, respectively. The next championship race of the 1968 season was in Spain on 12th May, meaning that there was more than five months separating the first and second rounds of the season. Considering the final round was on 3rd November in Mexico, 1968 was indeed a long season.

In this context, it all seems rather arbitrary, especially considering that the “super-season” will consist of eight rounds, compared to this season’s nine… inevitably, one is tempted to suspect some other motivation is at work. I fail to see how, in this case, less is more.

But enough of the politics. I have always tended to focus more on individual performances in specific races, rather than on championships. So I am sure that once we get underway with racing in the WEC again next year at Spa-Francorchamps, my enthusiasm will be boiling. In any case, change will surely be a good thing – one of my carps of recent seasons has been the homogeneity of it all.

And I digress. The intention of this post was to look back on the 2017 season, with some numbers which may not have been published elsewhere. In the spirit of change, I thought that a look at the number of racing kilometres covered by the leading cars during the season might be interesting.

Car No.	Car	Distance
1	Porsche 919 Hybrid	12,429.6kms
2	Porsche 919 Hybrid	13,092.9kms
7	Toyota TS050 - Hybrid	9,981.4kms
8	Toyota TS050 - Hybrid	13,020.5kms

In terms of race distance completed by each driver in LMP1, the results (at least the top ten) were:

Car No.	Car	Driver	Distance	%age
8	Toyota	Sébastien Buemi	5,197.2kms	39.9%
2	Porsche	Brendon Hartley	4,762.8kms	36.4%
2	Porsche	Timo Bernhard	4,616.8kms	35.3%
1	Porsche	Nick Tandy	4,480.6kms	36.0%
8	Toyota	Kazuki Nakajima	4,351.9kms	33.4%
1	Porsche	Neel Jani	4,188.4kms	33.7%
7	Toyota	Mike Conway	4,026.1kms	40.3%
1	Porsche	André Lotterer	3,760.6kms	30.3%
2	Porsche	Earl Bamber	3,713.3kms	28.4%
8	Toyota	Anthony Davidson	3,311.6kms	25.4%

The final column (%age), is simply the distance that the named driver raced, as a percentage of the total distance completed by that driver’s car. This is interesting, as it shows how each manufacturer may have favoured certain drivers over others, or it shows who had the luck of the draw, or maybe it is an indication of how pushy some drivers are!

Since most of the GTE-Pro teams consisted of two-driver teams, there are some slightly more impressive figures if you look at that class, although this does put into perspective the distance driven by Buemi - and the performance differential between LMP1 and GTE, if you consider the time spent at the wheel.

Here, then, are the top ten drivers, in terms of race distance completed during the season:

Driver	Car	Distance	Time
Frédéric Makowiecki	Porsche 911 RSR	5,759.7kms	33h 36m
Alessandro Pier Guidi	Ferrari 488 GTE	5,431.7kms	31h 49m
Davide Rigon	Ferrari 488 GTE	5,242.9kms	31h 19m
Sébastien Buemi	Toyota TS050-Hybrid	5,197.2kms	26h 40m
James Calado	Ferrari 488 GTE	5,189.6kms	30h 59m
Sam Bird	Ferrari 488 GTE	5,076.3kms	29h 07m
Nikki Thiim	Aston Martin Vantage	4,999.7kms	29h 39m
Andy Priaulx	Ford GT	4,996.9kms	30h 02m
Olivier Pla	Ford GT	4,880.4kms	28h 55m
Marco Sørensen	Aston Martin Vantage	4,862.2kms	29h 08m

Some readers might be tempted (as I was) to divide the distance driven by the time spent at the wheel, in order to calculate average speed, and to get some kind of performance ranking. I shirked away from this calculation, on the grounds that, although the time spent driving excludes time spent in the pits (as well as time spent during the red flag periods in Japan), it does not take into account safety car periods, full course yellows or Slow Zones.

Don’t forget that none of these numbers take account of time spent driving the car in practice or qualifying - this is purely the distance actually raced. It is sobering (at this time of year) to consider that Sébastien Buemi spent just over three working days racing at nearly 200km/h for the distance (by road) from Paris to Dakar!

Starting Again: the New World Endurance Championship

I knew a lot of time had passed since I last managed to write anything here, but I was somewhat shocked to find that more than six months has slipped by since my last post. It was never my intention to make this a regular affair, but still, it feels rather awkward, sitting here writing after so long away from the blog.

It is not as if there has been a shortage of topics. I keep a little notebook of ideas that might make suitable subjects, and looking back, I find various entries. Some are typically Truswellian analyses of races; some are reflections on things I’ve been up to (and there have been many), still others are more whimsical thoughts on cultural and historical aspects of the sport – but in all cases, I try to keep to my Golden Rule of not writing anything that you can find elsewhere. Although I try to keep to facts and reportage, rather than fiction or scurrilous rumour and speculation, I do find that a lot of the things I want to comment on are covered perfectly well elsewhere on the Internet leaving little space to address my particular niche. There may be no shortage of burning issues, but I wonder why you might want to read my take on such things rather than anyone else’s?

Having said all that, the World Endurance Championship seems to have gone through such an upheaval in the last six months that maybe readers might want to comment on a few of my own thoughts.

The announcement by Porsche that the factory LMP1 team will be withdrawing at the end of the 2017 season forced the hand of the WEC. Action was needed – although there is a good argument that action was necessary regardless of the decisions in the boardrooms of Stuttgart. On the other hand, in the early 1990’s, when the FIA brought World Championship-level sportscar racing to its knees by forcing the use of 3.5 litre normally-aspirated engines and shortening race distances to be more TV-friendly, we were left with no World Championship for 1993 and a rather ad hoc look to the Le Mans 24-hour centrepiece.

It may have seemed like the end of the world at the time, but by the end of the decade not only had we FIA-sanctioned Championships for both Sportscars and GTs, but we had a Le Mans 24-hour race with entries from seven different manufacturers, contributing 20 out of the 48 starters in 1999.

It was certainly a difficult transition, but the point is that nature took its course, (or perhaps more accurately some visionary entrepreneurs had the space to innovate) and without FIA intervention or direction, the sport found its feet and headed into the new millennium.

We are not talking ancient history here – the fact is that the foundations for today’s endurance racing formulae (prototypes and GT cars) were laid only twenty years ago – but the culture of the sport (indeed everything generally) has changed since then. Laissez-faire as a doctrine may have had its origins in the late 18th century, but doing nothing is simply not an option in today’s world. Gérard Neveu (CEO of the FIA WEC*) felt that he had to take some decisions and act. Having made the announcements in Mexico about the direction of the Championship, there may be some ‘clarifications’, but there is no going back.

Unfortunately for him, and for Pierre Fillon (President of the ACO*), the future of the World Endurance Championship will be directed as much by the actions of the major motor manufacturers and the teams that enter the cars as it will by their decision-making. Whether the 2018-2019 ‘super-season’ will be regarded as a success or not will depend largely on who takes part, and how good the races are.

Readers of this blog will surely be sufficiently knowledgeable to understand Toyota’s dilemma. Effectively, the Japanese manufacturer needs to decide now whether to participate, at enormous cost, with a strong chance of being handicapped out of contention, or to walk away, from both the Le Mans 24 hours and the World Endurance Championship. I suspect a decision has already been taken in Japan, if not yet made public.

Personally, I don’t really mind. In my opinion, the success of the 2018-2019 season will depend on the quality and parity of privateers participating in the premier class. The possibility of a win at Le Mans, never mind a unique World Championship, must be tempting.

As far as the GT classes are concerned, there has been less decisiveness from the organising bodies. Or at least, with six manufacturers likely to be represented next year, the obvious tactic is to ensure stability. For the immediate future, I wouldn’t argue with that. Yet in the longer term, I would like to see the fastest of the GT cars being able to compete for overall victories. Consider that the current pace of GTE-Pro cars could have enabled them to win Le Mans in the mid-1990’s. I was there, and I wasn’t thinking how slowly the prototypes were going.

There are ways and means of controlling pace: larger tanks, faster refuelling, different tyre allowances; it need not always depend on changing technical regulations, although it is clear that the technical ability exists in the FIA and ACO to manage that.

My biggest misgiving however, is the proposal that Le Mans should be the final round of future World Endurance Championships. I also see this as being the most difficult decision to change, at least from the political point of view.

The problem with Le Mans being the decisive round in the championship is that decisions could be made, either at a corporate level or even within a multi-car team, which could – no, will – impact the outright result of the world’s biggest endurance race. It happened in 1966, but every other year in the history of the race (except, I suppose in the first few years in the 1920’s when drivers had an eye on the biennial and triennial cups), the race has been as pure a race, as free from commercial or political intervention, as any sporting event there is.

Porsche has demonstrated this year its willingness to manipulate races in the WEC to ensure it secures drivers’ as well as manufacturers’ championships. What if such ‘team orders’ were put into effect at Le Mans? Not a thought that appeals to my particular taste, I must admit.

Or suppose that Toyota, having won the 24 hours in 2018, gets to the 2019 race needing only to finish fifth (say) to secure the World Endurance Championship’s inaugural ‘Superseason’. I can imagine Pascal Vasselon (not Hugues de Chaunac, admittedly) telling his drivers to slow down, preserve the machinery, and not even attempt to win, that finishing the race at all costs was more important than winning. Would anyone else find that distasteful?


*Footnote: I mention Neveu’s and Fillon’s specific roles since I think (some might disagree) that the distinction between the ACO and the WEC (which belongs to the FIA) is important. The ACO was founded in 1906 and has organised the Le Mans 24 hours since its inception, whereas the WEC (as an organisation) was established by the FIA in 2012.

Looking back on the 2016 WEC season - LMP1

The 2016 World Endurance Championship was closely contested between three manufacturer teams: Porsche, Audi and Toyota. In 2015, Toyota had a pretty rotten season, it being clear early on that the car simply wasn’t quick enough, and attention turned to the development of a car that would be better able to contend against the two siblings from Germany. Whether or not Toyota succeeded is not necessarily as easy a question to answer as it might seem, as a look at the championship positions is really too simplistic.

Similarly, one might argue that Audi came into 2016 with a significantly upgraded version of its R18 e-tron quattro; a car that was fast, but fragile, and one that failed to do itself justice over the course of the season.

I have had many such discussions with people since the season ended in Bahrain last year, and – as is my wont – I have spent some time trying to work out how best to answer these questions objectively, using the data that I have managed to collect over the season.

I would like to think that, if you are reading this, you might also have read my piece about Aston Martin’s season in the GTE-Pro class, and how it was affected by the Endurance Committee’s decisions in their attempts to Balance Performance. It is here if you haven’t.

In any case, the method that I use there, and that I am going to use in this analysis, is to base an assumption that a car’s outright performance can be judged by looking not at its single fastest lap in the race, but in the average of the best 20% of green laps in the race. Taking the best car in each race by this measure, and then comparing the competition as a percentage against this, reveals how much slower each car was, relative to the best.

Over the whole season, this data looks like this:

(I know, this is far too small to read... click on the image, to make it bigger!)

Also, in preparing these numbers, I have taken only the better-performing car from each manufacturer. At Silverstone, the figures for the no. 1 Porsche, the no. 5 Toyota and the no. 8 Audi are based only on the first green period before the FCY.

A common assertion these days is that endurance racing is a sprint, from start to finish. There is no room for taking things easy, for looking after the machinery. In the pits, there is not a lot to separate the teams. It is all down to the quickest driver and the quickest car. Well, yes it is; but that doesn’t tell the whole story either. If it did, then the results of each race would reflect the graph shown above.

To make this easy to compare, I show below the finishing positions of the best car from each of Porsche, Toyota and Audi in each race.

The obvious conclusion from this is that only Le Mans and Bahrain provided race results that were true representations of the performance of the cars in each race. And anyone who was at Le Mans will know that the result of that race was hardly what had been expected either.

This view is too simplistic though, since the finishing position does not show the relative distance between cars at the end of the race. Instead, we should look at this, which shows the average speed over the whole race, as a percentage of the winner.

This shows much better how close the races were, particularly in the latter part of the season. In the first two races of the season, Audi was able to convert its performance advantage into victories. At Le Mans though, the “car with the four rings” was simply not fast enough. Their podium at the Circuit de la Sarthe only came at Toyota’s misery. It is interesting though, that Toyota had a car that was not as quick as the Porsche. Although Toyota had a clear performance disadvantage at Mexico, the margin by which they lost the race was very small.

After Le Mans, the performance of Audi (in particular, the number 8 car) was outstanding: in terms of speed, the car was only beatable at Mexico and Shanghai. The fact that this was not translated into victories is evidence that there is still – thank heavens – more to winning a race that just being fast. The points table could have looked rather different if Audi had capitalised on these performance advantages.

The fact that the performance graphs are so different from the finishing position and race speed graphs underlines the fact that there is more to the WEC than speed alone. Drivers are correct when they give credit to the team for success. And having fast drivers and a fast car is not enough to win titles, as Audi has proved in 2016.

Creating a winning squad is an art – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It will be interesting to see who has put the pieces together most effectively in 2017.

Looking back on the 2016 WEC season - GTE-Pro

Over the course of the 2016 WEC season, I became increasingly dissatisfied as ever more adjustments were made to the GTE-Pro class Balance of Performance parameters. I have a great deal of respect for the technical wizards that work out how these parameters should be set in order to ensure good, competitive racing, but the fact that nearly every race was presaged by a missive from the Endurance Committee announcing further adjustments, smacked to me less of balancing and more of a handicap system based on previous performances.

The extent to which these were the result of lobbying by various manufacturers cannot fully be known. However, the fuss before the Le Mans 24-hour race this year, which resulted in the very awkward precedent being set of a new list of parameters being issued after qualifying, left little doubt that there was much to-ing and fro-ing going on between the representatives of the teams and the ACO.

Now that the curtain has come down on the season, the trophies have been awarded, and the dust has settled, it might be an appropriate moment to reflect on the season. The World Endurance Cup for GT Manufacturers was won by Ferrari ahead of Aston Martin, with just 7 points separating them. The Cup for GT Drivers wasn’t quite so close, but put the balance back to the British firm, with Aston Martin drivers Marco Sørensen and Nicki Thiim taking the champions’ trophy ahead of Ferrari drivers Davide Rigon / Sam Bird and Gianmaria Bruni / James Calado.

In a sense, then, honours were roughly even. But how much was that down to the teams and the drivers, and how much due to the Endurance Committee bulletins?

Throughout the WEC season, I measure the performance of each of the GTE-Pro cars by comparing the average of the best 20% of green flag laps in each race. Taking the best in each race as 100%, I then see where the other cars lie as a percentage of the best. To minimise the impact of different drivers, I merely take the better car in each race from each manufacturer. For Aston Martin, the picture looks like this:

At first sight, the fact that the Astons were victorious on three occasions, (at Mexico, COTA and Bahrain) matches fairly well with those races when their cars were the fastest. At the Nürburgring, the best that Thiim and Sørensen could salvage was third place behind the two Ferraris, despite having the fastest car.

But this ignores those Balance of Performance adjustments. To take everything into account here would be far too complicated – and probably beyond my capability – so I am going to simplify matters. For Aston Martin, there are two principal parameters that are used to affect their performance: the weight and the diameter of the orifice allowing air into the engine. Obviously, the greater the weight, the slower the car will be, and the larger the orifice, the faster the car will go. So I have combined these two figures for each race throughout the season into a single “performance factor”, taking the inverse of the weight and multiplying by the air restrictor size.

Looking only at the performance factors for Aston Martin, here’s what it looks like for each race:

Remarkably similar to the results graph, isn’t it? To my mind, this merely demonstrates that for most of the season, Aston Martin’s results were due as much to BoP adjustments as they were to any efforts of the team or drivers and I don’t mean any offence to any of them by that. The only anomalies are in the final two races of the season, where in Shanghai, the team seems to have under-performed, and in Bahrain, where they did surprisingly well.

As I already mentioned, partly the problem is that I have over-simplified matters. In Shanghai, the Ford GTs had the upper hand, as the Ferraris were handicapped with boost pressure restrictions. Similar limits were then applied to Ford for the final round at Bahrain, along with 20kg more weight. As a result, in the season finale, the no. 97 Aston Martin (in the hands of Darren Turner and Jonny Adam) was measurably quicker than the champions elect in the no. 95, and it is this car that shows the big boost in the final round. I suspect that Thiim/Sørensen were by this stage unconsciously driving with restraint, knowing that the drivers’ championship was in the bag.

Apart from the fact that there is an implication here that the FIA/ACO was merely chasing to catch up with the progress being made at Ferrari, Ford and Aston Martin, what seems wrong is that the organisation seemed to control the destiny of the trophies. I mentioned already that the adjustments between qualifying and race at Le Mans might be taken to set a precedent. What was particularly galling was that the ACO admitted that Ford had been hiding the true potential of their car from the scrutineers; an offence that went unpunished in all the re-adjustments to the performance parameters.

At the Spa 24 hours, Mercedes was accused of similar offences, and paid the penalty of a five-minute stop/go penalty to be served in the first hour of the race. Some red faces in board rooms no doubt ensued.

The problem with graphs like the ones on this page is that they do not really help racing teams in their pursuit of perfection. It may help encourage other manufacturers to take the plunge and enter the championship, but I am not sure whether it is then for the right reasons. I rather hope that 2016 has not set a precedent, and that “Decisions of the Endurance Committee” are somewhat fewer and further between in 2017.

For those who want them, here are the numbers behind the graphs above.

Venue	Result	Speed (%age)	Weight (kg)	Restrictor (mm)
Silverstone	3rd	98.77	1233	29.8
Spa	3rd	99.14	1213	29.8
Le Mans	5th	99.35	1183	29.4
Nürburgring	3rd	100	1183	29.8
Mexico	1st	100	1183	29.8
Austin	1st	99.88	1183	29.4
Fuji	5th	99.56	1183	29.0
Shanghai	4th	99.39	1183	29.2
Bahrain	1st	99.96	1183	29.2

Oh, and before I forget, Merry Christmas one and all!

Reflecting on the state we’re in

It had to happen, I suppose. It was inevitable that a major manufacturer would withdraw from the World Endurance Championship at some point. But in my view, the bombshell that Audi dropped when it announced its intention to withdraw from the championship at the end of the current season, is not as severe as the one that Peugeot dropped when it pulled out at the beginning of 2012. At that time, remember, the FIA had only recently launched their World Endurance Championship, and the title that Peugeot and Audi had been fighting over was the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, the final round of which the French manufacturer had won, with a dominant 1-2 victory by a lap over the nearest opposition.

In January 2012, the latest 908 HDI was already at Sebring, ready for testing, when the plug was pulled on the racing programme, leaving a large number of racing folk with uncertain futures, to say nothing of a gaping hole in the championship. By June 2012, two Toyotas had been hastily prepared to lend some respectability to the grid for Le Mans and in 2014, Porsche arrived with the immediately-competitive 919 Hybrid. And ever since, we’ve been treated to some of the best racing ever seen at such a high level of the sport.

But to put this into context, let us not forget that in 2003, 2004 and 2005 Joest Racing was not present at Le Mans (although obviously various team personnel were involved in the race). On the other hand, readers may remember 1996 and 1997, when the team cobbled together an entry for Le Mans – and ended up winning – with the WSC95 Porsche.

Joest Racing certainly has access to several R18s in their workshop, including a non-hybrid ultra that ran in 2012. Although it would be five years old next year, it would probably still be able to carry off the Privateers’ trophy. If Joest is going to continue to be involved in the World Endurance Championship, it is going to have to find some funding from somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time. Think back to various Porsches 956s and 962s entered by Joest in the eighties – they had some substantial sponsorship packages. Don’t forget that Reinhold was a successful driver in the past. He didn’t get there by paying all his own bills. There may also be those in the Audi AG boardroom who would welcome the opportunity to see some “four rings” branding at Le Mans in 2017.

Racing goes in cycles. It always has. Periods of strength are followed by periods of weakness. And the period of weakness for which we are now headed is only relative. So I am not about to turn away from sportscar racing - I think there will be some great races next year. Nevertheless, I thought I would add my few thoughts here to those of everyone else who has written or spoken on the subject.

The first thing to say is that no-one in my circle of contacts has really expressed surprise at Audi’s decision to withdraw. Rumours that it was to happen at the end of 2017 were increasing and no-one denies that what Audi has been this year is nothing like the force that it was even as recently as two or three years ago.

Secondly, I do not believe that it is necessarily a good thing if endurance races are without fail close, exciting races with side-by-side racing and close finishes. Such is not the nature of the beast, and if those in control have such an aim, then we are headed in the wrong direction.

Thirdly, getting more manufacturers involved in LMP1 is not worth doing if it is not done properly. Whether it is BMW, Peugeot or Ford (all of which I could easily show up with a prototype in the next five years) we must avoid another fiasco like that of Nissan’s LMP1 foray in 2015. Although the episode demonstrated admirably that it is quite hard to do what Porsche and Toyota have done, the Nismo effort failed to deliver much else. The sport needs to get on with what it does and allow nature – or whatever it is that governs these things – to take its course.

Enough of the philosophy though: on a pragmatic level, what’s going to happen in 2017? Well, there are still things to be decided, for sure. The most crucial of those decisions is for Toyota. Take two cars to Le Mans, or three? The arguments given in previous years for only entering two cars are surely still valid? If not, and if the view taken in the Japanese boardroom is that extreme steps must be taken to avert the disappointments of Le Mans 2016, then the incremental cost of a third car is not as much as the potential benefit of having a 50% better chance of getting the car to the finish. Then, although Porsche has been tight-lipped on the subject, surely Weissach will respond with a third Porsche 919 as well? In turn, this would be good news for the ACO – needing to fill 60 garages at Le Mans – as well as for Messrs Jarvis, Tréluyer, Lotterer, Fässler et al.

Otherwise, it is difficult to see where the former Audi drivers might end up. One assumes that Lucas di Grassi and Loïc Duval will occupy themselves with Formula E, but what of the others? Well, I would suggest that they go and have a chat with Nicolas Lapierre. I grant you that LMP2 will look different next year, but I reckon that the Frenchman, who was unceremoniously dumped by Toyota at the end of 2014, might have some interesting thoughts on the competitiveness of the class and how much fun there is to be derived from the racing – if not the financial reward.

It was interesting that the Audi announcement specifically mentioned Formula E as being one of its focus points for the immediate future. While I agree with Gary Watkins in Autosport that the remarks might have been disingenuous, I wonder also whether it means that Daniel Abt’s team might be getting even more resource from Audi next year. Is a Formula E arms race about to start?

Back to endurance racing though. Even if the World Endurance Championship may have suffered a blow with Audi’s withdrawal, there is no sign of any reduction in interest in LMP2, LMP3 or GT racing. Talk of convergence of GTE and GT3 racing has been replaced by arguments about who can provide the best LMP3 racing. GT4 is flourishing on the national level. All in all, things could be a lot worse.

Stéphane Ratel’s Blancpain GT Series has announced a ten round series for 2017 – five for the endurance series, two of which depart from the normal three hours duration - the 1000km race into the night at Paul Ricard, and the showpiece Spa 24 hours, surely one of the highlights of the season.

The Creventic organisation – addressing a somewhat different marketplace from Ratel – is expanding in 2017, with a six-round GT series, featuring three 24-hour races, rounded off by a non-championship 24-hour race at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

Now Creventic doesn’t really target the sort of teams that contend the World Endurance Championship, but nevertheless, if you include the ADAC’s Nürburgring 24 hours, you have six 24-hour races to participate in, if you are so minded, without counting Le Mans or Daytona. With several high-profile 12-hour races as well, is it all too much?

It depends. At the Brno Epilog 24-hour race last month, I had the sense that the culture of a 24-hour race has changed, certainly in the Creventic series. There was a time when nothing would be spared to get the car to the finish, when taking the flag was everything. At Le Mans, that culture still exists. But in some of the ‘lesser’ 24-hour races that we have these days, there is an element of “let’s just pack up and get some sleep”, which was new to me this year. At least in part, I think, that is because we simply have too much of a good thing. It is still special to race through the night, to pit yourself against fatigue and push through to the end, but like many things these days, “it isn’t like it used to be”!

I am put in mind of the athletes that one reads about these days that complete multiple marathons – often on consecutive days. I have nothing but respect for such people, but it is inevitable that by their actions, they devalue the single event. In effect, more is less. Those who have read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘David and Goliath’ will know the effect of the inverted ‘U’ curve. Oftentimes, more is less.

As always, your comments are welcome!

Some Observations from the Silverstone 6 Hours

With apologies that this analysis is not as deep as usual, but nevertheless some thoughts that you may not have read elsewhere.

1) LMP1 just gets better and better
Even if the on-track racing may not have provided the same phenomenal spectacle that was seen at last year’s Silverstone Six Hours, this year’s crop of LMP1 Hybrid racers proved that the march of progress is relentless indeed. Despite a 7.5% reduction in fuel use, Toyota, Audi and Porsche all lapped quicker than last year’s best lap.

Best Lap Times:
2016: Porsche: 1m 40.303s / Audi: 1m 40.461s / Toyota: 1m 40.657s
2015: Audi: 1m 40.836s / Porsche: 1m 42.012s / Toyota: 1m 42.209s
Percentage improvement: Porsche: 1.7% / Audi: 0.4% / Toyota: 1.5%

Top Speeds:
2016: Porsche: 293.5 kph / Audi: 294.3kph / Toyota: 296.7 kph
2015: Porsche: 300.0 kph / Audi: 274.1kph / Toyota: 282.7 kph
Percentage improvement: Porsche: -2.2% / Audi: 7.4% / Toyota: 5.0%

Setup for Silverstone is of course a compromise, with its mixture of straights, fast sweeps and slow corners coming, annoyingly, in every sector. But the data would seem to show that Audi’s balance was about right, whereas Porsche could have perhaps sacrificed a little downforce for a higher top speed – possibly with the benefit of a better average lap time. Perhaps that was the difference between the number one and the number two cars: it was very noticeable in the first phase of the race that the Webber / Hartley car was substantially quicker than that of Dumas / Lieb / Jani, although no explanation for the difference was forthcoming from any official Porsche sources.

It should also be said that, despite the expectations – and despite the result which allowed a Rebellion to be classified in a podium position – reliability among the manufacturer hybrids was good. Porsche lost one car due to driver error and Toyota one due to a puncture. In the end, neither Audi was classified but it is not unreasonable to expect the team to be able easily to address the issue which caused the excessive wear to the skid block that led to the exclusion of the car.

As far as the problem that struck the other Audi R18 e-tron quattro - leaving it stranded in the middle of the track at the Loop as the Full Course Yellow was implemented, I am told that this was caused by ‘human error’, rather than mechanical frailty, so in some ways, the designers, engineers and test teams can be satisfied that their winter travails have been worth the effort.

2) The pecking order
My analysis of the times from the Prologue at Paul Ricard suggested that the times would be close at Silverstone and the best laps shown above reflect that to an extent. In the race itself, the difference in the average of the best 20% of green race laps between the Lotterer/Fässler/Tréluyer Audi and the Dumas/Lieb/Jani Porsche was less than a tenth of a second (the Audi being marginally quicker). The Toyota of Conway/Kobayashi/Sarrazin was around seven-tenths of a second slower in third place on the road. However, as I have already mentioned, the average lap times of the two Porsches in the first portion of the race were 0.66s different, whereas the two Audis were less than a tenth apart and the two Toyotas were separated by just three-tenths of a second.

There certainly seemed to be a difference in the suitability of the tyre compounds being used. Although Porsche, Audi and Toyota all use Michelin rubber, they all have different compounds available to them, and it would seem that Audi lost time in the opening stint on the wrong compound. Toyota made better use of their tyre allocation than Audi or Porsche and saved time in the pits by not changing tyres at every stop. Audi’s pit stops were not as slick as they should have been - in the first two stops, Lotterer and Fässler lost more than twenty seconds to Dumas and Jani.

A fact often forgotten is the turnover of staff that takes place within the teams: many of the tyre-changers at Audi were doing so for the first time in anger during the Silverstone weekend, and Audi’s hard-won reputation for efficiency in the pits needs to be addressed, in my opinion. Arguably, there were various points through the race when strategic mistakes were made by all of the leading teams - surely with a race under their belts, Spa will be better for everyone.

So is Audi really ahead of Porsche? I think not. The evidence from Silverstone isn’t conclusive. Is Toyota really behind? Possibly, but a look at the top speeds shows that the Japanese marque was 10km/h quicker down Silverstone’s big straights: surely that will negate any disadvantage in France in June? Sector times from Spa-Francorchamps –which provide a good indication of performance in slow, medium and high-speed configuration – will be telling.

3) The LMP2 class is good
Silverstone had greater strength in depth in the baby prototype class than we have ever seen. While we have become used to GT cars providing entertainment when attention wanders from the overall lead, LMP2 has taken over that role.

The difference in average lap times across the top four finishers was less than half a second – the RGR Morand Liger, the ESM Ligier, the G-Drive Oreca and the Signatech Alpine. That’s more than the difference between the two LMP1 Porsche 919s.

Ten of the eleven starters made it to the finish – and five of them spent less time in the pits than the ‘winning’ Audi, so there’s not much wrong with either the teams or the robustness of the cars. This year will be the swan-song for the current breed of LMP2, before the new regulations in 2017 – enjoy it while you can!

4) The balance of GTE-Pro needs fixing
If there was a disappointment at Silverstone, it was the GTE-Pro class. The AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE of Davide Rigon and Sam Bird led every single lap of the race – almost unheard of in GTE races in 2015. The best Ferrari lap (by Bruni in the no. 51) was more than a second quicker than the best lap of any non-Ferrari (Darren Turner in the no. 95 Aston Martin).

The average lap times tell the same story: the Ferraris were 1.3% quicker than the best that Aston or Porsche could manage, and 1.8% faster than the Fords. Moreover, the AF Corse cars spent less time re-fuelling and went further between stops.

The fact that the Bruni/Calado Ferrari was able to recover to finish second, despite a three-minute penalty pit stop was further evidence of the Maranello superiority. The World Endurance Committee will consider adjustments ahead of the 6 hours of Spa-Francorchamps: I cannot imagine that they will not act.

5) ELMS is good
The four-hour ELMS race on Saturday afternoon featured a 44-car grid, 19 of which were in the LMP3 class. Compare this with 30 cars that started the 2015 edition of this race, with just five LMP3 cars. Three different P2 manufacturers in the top three places overall. Harry Tincknell, in the winning G-Drive Gibson, having somewhat blotted his copybook on the opening lap, drove superbly to hand the car over to Simon Dolan in a winning position. Giedo van der Garde, in his final stint was also mighty, setting the car’s fastest lap of the race on the final lap - whether that is a good thing or not is left to the reader to decide!

A one-two result for United Autosports in LMP3 demonstrates that serious engagement garners results – it will be interesting to see how long it is until the team arrives in LMP2. At which point the class can justify its claim as a feeder category.

What about you? Were you at Silverstone? What did you think? If you watched it from home, did you enjoy the coverage? Do you agree with any of these musings? Let me know in the box below!

Looking forward to the World Endurance Championship

When I was younger and had fewer responsibilities, I used to dabble in buying and selling stocks and shares. I read many articles describing how the future behaviour of prices could be predicted from an analysis of past performance. Some of what I read made a lot of sense, and I started to do my own analysis, and sometimes – just occasionally – I got this spectacularly right and I began to believe that I might one day become a wealthy man. Needless to say, other times I was not so successful; and I have in any case discovered that there are other things more important that financial success.

I tell you this, not to suggest that you should follow my investment advice, but rather to set your expectations on the outcome of this year’s World Endurance Championship, based on the times set at last month’s Prologue at the Paul Ricard circuit at Le Castellet in the south of France.

The first thing (other than to note that prices can go down as well as up, and that you may lose your shirt if you do not keep to your repayment schedule) is to note that the WEC season has become a saga in three parts. In 2015 that was perhaps more noticeable than ever before. Secondly, Toyota had a spectacularly bad year last year. Although its 2015 car was undoubtedly an improvement on the 2014 version, it became apparent very early in the season – some would say even after the Prologue – that it would be a season to forget for the 2014 world champions.

So even if it is a risky business, it is worth looking at the Prologue in a bit of detail, in an attempt to see what it might mean; initially for the opening round of the championship at Silverstone, and also for the 24 hours of Le Mans in June.

And I’m sorry for those fans of LMP2 or the GTE classes, but I am going to restrict myself here to just looking at the LMP1-hybrid class and the contest for outright wins.

Let’s start off with the headline figure: that of best lap recorded and compare them with 2015:

Car	2015 Best	2016 Best	Percentage Improvement
Porsche 919	1m 37.220s	1m 37.445s	-0.2%
Toyota TS-050	1m 39.949s	1m 38.273s	1.7%
Audi R18 e-tron quattro	1m 39.058s	1m 38.827s	0.2%

Next, my favourite, the best average lap time for a stint of ten laps or more:

Car	2015 Best	2016 Best	Percentage Improvement
Porsche 919	1m 40.5s	1m 39.8s	0.7%
Toyota TS-050	1m 42.0s	1m 41.9s	0.1%
Audi R18 e-tron quattro	1m 40.5s	1m 40.7s	-0.2%

If anything, this just goes to show the difference between best laps and average lap times over a full stint. So just how far were the cars going in a stint?

Car	2015 Longest	2016 Longest	Percentage Improvement
Porsche 919	31 laps	29 laps	-6.5%
Toyota TS-050	29 laps	10 laps	-65.5%
Audi R18 e-tron quattro	30 laps	20 laps	-33.3%

Here is where the story of tyre wear comes in though. The length of the Toyota stint was not constrained by fuel, but by the tyres – according to my information – and the races at both Silverstone and Spa restrict the LMP1-Hybrid teams to just 26 tyres (6 sets plus two ‘spares’) for the race – meaning that at least one set must be used for 90 minutes. This, along with reliability, could well end up deciding the outcome of the first three rounds of the championship.

I mentioned before that there are three phases to the WEC – the bit before Le Mans, the bit after Le Mans, and of course, Le Mans itself. This year, with an extra race in Mexico in the third part of the season, the first two races are relatively less important. Like last year though, Silverstone and Spa make up just two of the nine-race calendar, and just two-tenths of the points. In addition, Silverstone, Spa and Le Mans, although they all have sublime sections of high-speed cornering, are as different from one another in technical terms as any three circuits on the calendar.

So although Silverstone and Spa are important races, one should perhaps not use them to determine what will happen at Le Mans - just as last year, the first two races can throw you severely off the scent. At Le Castellet Porsche, Audi and Toyota spent their time running through some quite different programmes; programmes that were different from one another, but also different from what they did last year. For example, both Audi and Toyota experimented with different aero configurations whereas Porsche stuck to a ‘high-downforce’ set-up. At both Silverstone and Spa last year (as well as at the Prologue) Porsche was concentrating on its ‘low-downforce’, Le Mans aero package. This undoubtedly contributed to its success both at Le Mans and in the championship, but now that the data is gathered, this year will see the team from Weissach attempting to gather points early in the year as well.

Another way to look at the data is to look at the top speeds recorded, again with a comparison to last year’s Prologue:

Car	2015 Top Speed	2016 Top Speed	Percentage Improvement
Porsche 919	338.6 km/h	301.7 km/h	-10.9%
Toyota TS-050	334.4 km/h	340.7 km/h	1.9%
Audi R18 e-tron quattro	313.0 km/h	310.3 km/h	-0.9%

Times through Paul Ricard’s second sector (which includes the main back straight) also indicate that the new Toyota TS050 has prodigious speed, but also confirm that Porsche was most likely running a lot of high-downforce drag during the test.

Rumours suggest that the reliability of the new Audi R18 e-tron quattro is not what the Ingolstadt team has wanted. However, despite spending much of the evening session in the garage at Ricard, Audi actually completed more laps in this year’s Prologue than the car did last year, as the table shows - note that as teams ran two cars each in 2015, I have only included the figures for a single car (the better of the two):

Car	2015 Laps Completed	2016 Laps Completed	Percentage Improvement
Porsche 919	393	372	-5.3%
Toyota TS-050	311	266	-14.5%
Audi R18 e-tron quattro	229	235	2.6%

So what does it all mean? Can we use the data from Paul Ricard to make some predictions about the Six Hours of Silverstone? Is there already a favourite emerging for Le Mans?

Of course, there was a lot more going on during the Prologue than was apparent on the surface. Even the data that I have extracted is far more limited than the teams themselves have. But one thing I have noticed is that the teams tend to be so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t always spot the shape of the bigger picture.

The structure of qualifying remains this year – the two best laps from two different drivers, both of whom have to drive the car during a twenty-minute session. Here’s my prediction for Silverstone then:

Car	2015 Pole time	2016 prediction	Percentage Improvement
Porsche 919	1m 39.721s	1m 39.684s	-0.0%
Toyota TS-050	1m 40.382s	1m 39.574s	0.8%
Audi R18 e-tron quattro	1m 40.352s	1m 40.136s	0.0%

This is the two-lap average, and I have taken into account that Porsche last year at Silverstone had a very similar aero package to the one that they would run at Le Mans, whereas this year they will probably run a higher downforce package. Overall, despite a reduction in fuel consumption allowance of around 7.5%, I expect the times to be very close to those we saw last year. LMP1 fuel tank capacities have also been reduced by an equivalent amount, so the overall stint lengths are probably going to be about the same as they were last year – about 29 or 30 laps. Last year we had two short full course yellow periods, and the race ran for 201 laps (a record). Given some decent weather, some shorter pit stops and clear running, the race should run over 200 laps again this year.

Who’s going to win? There’s no way of knowing. My analysis above indicates that there will be a lot less than a second separating the first three rows of the grid. So much is new: hybrid systems, engines, aero. Michelin brought new tyre compounds to Paul Ricard as well, which further complicates the mix. Although the six hours will be run as a sprint, traditional endurance values like reliability, consistency and efficiency will probably be the deciding factors.

Let’s just hope that the race - indeed the whole season - lives up to expectations!