In the types of racing where Safety Cars are used to neutralise a race, the need to avoid being lapped is paramount. It hasn't always been thus, but I don't want to waste this particular post debating the uses of Safety Cars and their effects on racing.
At the recent Bathurst 12 hour race, the Safety Car was used in perhaps its most primitive (and simplest) form to bring the field under control. The pit lane entrance is never closed, and cars are released from the pit exit whenever they arrive, unless the Safety Car queue is passing. It means that Safety Car periods are reasonably short - the longest period under yellow at the weekend was 28m 22s - and by making the pace of Safety Car laps quite slow (the average speed of a yellow lap was 4m 24s, or just over 50mph), the queue forms up quickly.
Erebus Racing pulled a very neat trick though, which was noticed at the time, but has since then been quietly swept under the carpet.
It happened under the third (and the longest) safety car period, when the Clearwater Ferrari spun, having hit the wall, at the top of the Mountain and was then struck by the works Nissan. Both Erebus cars had made routine pit stops at the completion of their 55th laps, and were - just - on the same lap.
Bernd Schneider, in the no.1 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG was on his 59th lap, and right on the tail of Will Davison in the other Erebus car; the pair of them 5 seconds ahead of the Clearwater Ferrari, which was a lap behind Schneider, but closing for position on the no. 63 Mercedes. On the same lap that Hiroshi Hamaguchi crashed the Ferrari, Schneider overtook Davison. It was three minutes later that the Safety Car left the pit lane, immediately ahead of the no. 48 M Motorsport Lamborghini (in the hands of Ross Lilley).
Thus, when Schneider crossed the line at the end of his 61st lap, Davison was next in line, completing his 60th lap, and with initially three cars separating them from the Safety Car. This became two on the next lap as the no. 95 Abarth came into the pits.
So it was something of a surprise to observe, as the Safety Car came past the pits for the fourth time, that the no.48 Lamborghini had the no. 63 Mercedes behind it and the no. 1 Mercedes behind that. Next time around, Lilley and Davison were given the wave-by and although the Lamborghini continued round to catch up the tail of the queue, the Merc headed for the pit lane having used only 10 laps of fuel. Of course, it was able to get going again without losing the lap, and as the green flag was shown to Schneider (completing his 66th lap), the no. 63 was already heading up onto the Mountain, also on his 66th, with a full tank of fuel and crucially, back on the lead lap.
Without any sector times available for the no. 63 Mercedes (it having lost its transponder earlier in the race), it is hard to know exactly what happened where, but it is hard to see how the cars can have swapped places while the Safety Car was out.
Less questionable were the tactics of the HTP Motorsport Mercedes, which was two laps down on the race leader and in 19th place, with less than two hours of the race gone following an unscheduled disk change (after contact with another car) early in the race. Later on, the front pads needed replacing - a legacy of the wrong pads having been fitted with the replacement disk - requiring a further long stop; and yet the team still managed to recover to within a gnat's whisker of the winning Maranello Ferrari at the end of the twelve hours.
One lap was recovered fairly easily when the Safety Car made its 6th appearance, to tidy up following the crash of the no. 35 Sennheiser Porsche. Luckily for the HTP crew, the race leader at that time, the no. 1 Erebus Mercedes, had just made a routine stop, and elected to use the full course caution period to make another stop. Although it maintained the lead, it did enable Thomas Jäger to refuel and rejoin as well as regain a lap while the safety car slowed the rest of the field.
By lap 218, Harold Primat was back in the HTP car, and the no 88 Maranello Motorsport Ferrari was leading the race, still a lap ahead of the Mercedes, with just over three hours of the race remaining. Crucially, though, the Mercedes had fuel for four more laps than the Ferrari. Craig Lowndes then brought the Ferrari into the pits after a 27-lap stint (his previous stint had been 28), allowing Primat to regain the lead lap, just as the Ginetta stopped out on the circuit. This brought out the safety car (for the seventh time), and enabled the HTP Mercedes (as well as the McLaren) to pit for fuel without losing any ground.
The green flag waved on the start-finish line as the Ferrari started its 225th lap, with the McLaren second, the Erebus Mercedes third and the HTP Mercedes fourth - all on the same lap, all full of fuel, and separated by less than 20 seconds.
The interesting thing is that the average lap times of the HTP Mercedes were roughly the same as the Maranello Ferrari (2m 05.8s). Even allowing for its two drive-through penalties, the Ferrari spent 3m 42s less time in the pit lane. So how did they end up less than half a second apart? Easy - the Safety Car bunched up the field - on eight of its nine appearances, the no. 88 Ferrari was ahead of the HTP Mercedes, and on each occasion, a gap was wiped out.
The fact of the matter is, that if you're on the lead lap, and the Safety Car appears, you're in with a chance. It may not be fair, but it makes the racing exciting!
Monday, 17 February 2014
Friday, 7 February 2014
Audi's WEC drivers for 2014
I was interested to read earlier this week, Audi’s
announcement of their driver line-up for the forthcoming WEC season. Two cars
for the full season, and a third entry for Spa and Le Mans. When Allan McNish
announced his retirement from prototype racing, my mind immediately
went to Oliver Jarvis, and the thought that here was the chance that the
under-rated Briton needed. I had first met Olly properly in 2008, at which time
he was driving an Audi in the DTM, and it was clear where Jarvis’s ambitions
lay. We spoke about his single-seater career (which had included a win at the
Macau GP – a fine indication of form if ever there was one) and whether he saw
himself one day driving prototypes.
It was very much on his agenda, he said, and when in 2010, he
was given his chance at the wheel of a Le Mans prototype driving for Colin
Kolles I took particular note of his lap times, and was impressed as he easily out-paced his team-mates. His times were also noticed at Audi Sport, and two years later, he was included in the works squad,
driving a non-hybrid R18 with Mike Rockenfeller and Marco Bonanomi, as Audi took
the opportunity to run four cars - both at Spa and at Le Mans.
| Spa | Le Mans | |
|---|---|---|
| Jarvis | 2m 04.346s | 3m 28.068s |
| Bonanomi | 2m 04.492s | 3m 28.845s |
| Rockenfeller | 3m 28.818s |
My non-statistically minded readers can take a break now (until the next paragraph!),
for I want to spend a moment explaining how my opinion has changed recently on
the calculation of average lap times. The problem comes when one compares, say,
the average of the best 25 laps done by different drivers. Whilst clearly
weather conditions, tyre choice and fuel strategy all have a part to play in
giving drivers a reason to go quicker or more slowly, I have found that it is
the number of laps that they do altogether that can skew the average somewhat
more. For example, if one driver’s 25 lap average is from a stint of 75 laps,
it is unlikely that he will be able to record the same average as a driver
whose best 25 is taken from a total of 250.
So, what I have done above is to use what I call the 20%
average – in other words, to take the average of the best 20% of green laps
completed.
In any event, the table does seem to imply that Jarvis was
quicker than either of his co-drivers in 2012. Now, just for interest, I
thought we should perhaps also look at Loïc Duval and Marc Gené, both of whom
drove the non-hybrid Audi R18 at Spa and at Le Mans in 2012.
| Spa | Le Mans | |
|---|---|---|
| Duval | 2m 03.680s | 3m 26.887s |
| Gené | 2m 07.761s | 3m 28.168s |
Here’s where the theory breaks down somewhat, as at Spa, Gené was only out at the start of the race on a damp track, but at Le Mans, Jarvis’s times compare very well against those of the Spaniard. Duval, meanwhile is in a different league (still is, in my view).
Lucas di Grassi appeared in the Audi family in the Brazilian
WEC round at Interlagos, in August 2012. He landed a drive alongside McNish and
Kristensen - replacing Dindo Capello, who had retired after Le Mans. Interestingly,
di Grassi is also a Macau GP winner, two years before Oliver Jarvis.
At a track that he knew well, he was immediately quick. In
the race, his average lap times were quicker than any of the other Audi drivers
(in a race that was dominated by Toyota).
Interlagos was the Brazilian’s only race of 2012, but in
2013, he and Jarvis were to share a car – along with Marc Gené, as Audi focussed
purely on the hybrid R18 e-tron quattro. Jarvis, Gené and di Grassi would only
get two races though – at Spa and Le Mans, as the Ingolstadt manufacturer could
commit to full season entries for only two cars.
At Spa, it did seem as though di Grassi held the upper hand:
his average lap time was 2m 01.834s, compared to Jarvis’s 2m 01.945s, although Olly’s
stint was only 40 laps, compared to di Grassi who did 67. Gené’s average, by
comparison, was 2m 02.610s.
Le Mans was a different matter, with Jarvis doing more laps
than either Gené or di Grassi. The weather was probably kinder to him as well: Jarvis’s
average lap time was 3m 26.481s, di Grassi’s 3m 27.378s and Gené 3m 27.583s.
Jarvis must have been hoping for a season-long seat at Audi
this year. He’s the same age as the Brazilian, but somehow (a) his career has been
a bit slower getting going and (b) di Grassi seems to have made a ‘bigger’ name
for himself at Audi Sport than the modest Englishman, not least in terms of his ability to set the car up, which I suspect will be all-important with the new regulations
arriving for this year.
At Audi, it is all about the chemistry. I would like to
think that Jarvis’s day will come, and I would expect him to shine alongside
Bonanomi and Alburquerque. The tricky thing for the drivers of the number 3 car,
of course is that they will only get two races in which to prove themselves,
whereas the drivers of numbers 1 and 2 will have the full season. Not that
there was ever any question of breaking up the Tréluyer / Lotterer / Fässler
combination of course.
But one wonders how many more seasons Kristensen will drive,
and then, surely, Jarvis’s time will come?
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Impressions of Daytona - Sweet Sixteen?
For the second year running, there were sixteen caution periods during the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Despite an interruption that accounted for 1h 25m, during which time the race was actually stopped with the red flag, the time spent under full course caution this year was actually less than during the 2013 edition of the race.
Last year, you will remember, we had heavy fog in the early morning, which led to a full course caution of 1h 45m, so at the end of the race, the total time spent actually racing was seven-and-a-half minutes longer this year than last. With the cars stationery for around an hour while the rescue workers did their jobs following the Gidley/Malucelli incident, it was never going to be a record distance: in the end, the Corvette DP of Bourdais/Fittipaldi/Barbosa completed 695 laps, fourteen fewer than in 2013.
By the way, for the purposes of timing the race, I am assuming that the time spent stopped was actually part of the full course caution: but the “lap time” for the stoppage lap was just over an hour.
Had the cars been running behind the safety car for that period, they would certainly have been able to complete more laps than in 2013; but they weren’t, so they didn’t. In the end, the race distance (695 laps) was the same as in 2008, when there were 22 caution periods for 122 non-racing laps. I always struggle to count the number of laps under caution, what with wave-bys and what-not, but by my reckoning, the race winner passed the start/finish line 95 times while the yellows were waving.
I’ll confess here to not having followed the race itself very closely, as I had no professional involvement this year and too many other things to do at home on the domestic front. But from what I did see, it didn’t feel to have much of the American Le Mans Series about it and it did feel to have a lot of Grand-Am about it. I’m not really surprised by that, of course, as the United SportsCar Championship has clearly been a takeover rather than a merger, despite all assurances to the contrary.
From the data that has been forthcoming from the timekeepers, though, I have managed to extract the total time spent in the pits for the first three finishers, and it looks like this:
Note that, as regular readers will be aware, the time spent in the pit lane includes the time taken driving down the pit lane, and the pit exit point at Daytona is just round turn 1. By my calculation, the time taken for this without stopping is around 49s, at the mandatory speed limit of 60kph, so the actual time spent working on all three of these cars indicates the high reliability factor of the Corvette DP.
It is worth making the point that time lost in the pits during the Daytona 24 hours is not as significant as at other endurance races, though, since so much time can be recovered under the caution periods. Speed on the track (particularly in the last eight minutes), is all-important.
No analysis from me would be complete without looking at average lap times; even though a hard-earned few seconds gained on the track can be wiped out by someone else's front bumper lying on the track and causing another full course caution. Let's look at the fastest 100 laps of each of the top three finishers:
For comparison, the average lap time over the same distance by last year’s winners, the Chip Ganassi Riley-BMW, was 1m 41.996s - an indication of the changed regulations as much as of technical progress, I fear.
Interestingly, the average of the no. 6 Muscle Milk Oreca-Nissan for its best 100 laps was 1m 41.653s, so maybe the organisers' performance balancing of DP and P2 could have been fairer. We'll see at Sebring - where again I will have no professional interest, unless someone reading this has any bright ideas!
Last year, you will remember, we had heavy fog in the early morning, which led to a full course caution of 1h 45m, so at the end of the race, the total time spent actually racing was seven-and-a-half minutes longer this year than last. With the cars stationery for around an hour while the rescue workers did their jobs following the Gidley/Malucelli incident, it was never going to be a record distance: in the end, the Corvette DP of Bourdais/Fittipaldi/Barbosa completed 695 laps, fourteen fewer than in 2013.
By the way, for the purposes of timing the race, I am assuming that the time spent stopped was actually part of the full course caution: but the “lap time” for the stoppage lap was just over an hour.
Had the cars been running behind the safety car for that period, they would certainly have been able to complete more laps than in 2013; but they weren’t, so they didn’t. In the end, the race distance (695 laps) was the same as in 2008, when there were 22 caution periods for 122 non-racing laps. I always struggle to count the number of laps under caution, what with wave-bys and what-not, but by my reckoning, the race winner passed the start/finish line 95 times while the yellows were waving.
I’ll confess here to not having followed the race itself very closely, as I had no professional involvement this year and too many other things to do at home on the domestic front. But from what I did see, it didn’t feel to have much of the American Le Mans Series about it and it did feel to have a lot of Grand-Am about it. I’m not really surprised by that, of course, as the United SportsCar Championship has clearly been a takeover rather than a merger, despite all assurances to the contrary.
From the data that has been forthcoming from the timekeepers, though, I have managed to extract the total time spent in the pits for the first three finishers, and it looks like this:
| No. | Car | No. of stops | Total Time in Pit Lane |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Action Express Millenium | 29 | 36m 59.915s |
| 10 | Velocity Wayne Taylor | 30 | 40m 29.334s |
| 9 | Action Express | 29 | 38m 23.274s |
Note that, as regular readers will be aware, the time spent in the pit lane includes the time taken driving down the pit lane, and the pit exit point at Daytona is just round turn 1. By my calculation, the time taken for this without stopping is around 49s, at the mandatory speed limit of 60kph, so the actual time spent working on all three of these cars indicates the high reliability factor of the Corvette DP.
It is worth making the point that time lost in the pits during the Daytona 24 hours is not as significant as at other endurance races, though, since so much time can be recovered under the caution periods. Speed on the track (particularly in the last eight minutes), is all-important.
No analysis from me would be complete without looking at average lap times; even though a hard-earned few seconds gained on the track can be wiped out by someone else's front bumper lying on the track and causing another full course caution. Let's look at the fastest 100 laps of each of the top three finishers:
| No. | Car | Average Lap Time |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Action Express Millenium | 1m 40.485s |
| 10 | Velocity Wayne Taylor | 1m 40.196s |
| 9 | Action Express | 1m 40.981s |
For comparison, the average lap time over the same distance by last year’s winners, the Chip Ganassi Riley-BMW, was 1m 41.996s - an indication of the changed regulations as much as of technical progress, I fear.
Interestingly, the average of the no. 6 Muscle Milk Oreca-Nissan for its best 100 laps was 1m 41.653s, so maybe the organisers' performance balancing of DP and P2 could have been fairer. We'll see at Sebring - where again I will have no professional interest, unless someone reading this has any bright ideas!
Thursday, 23 January 2014
Long Distance Runners in Dubai
The Dunlop Dubai 24 hours was an enthralling affair, and it was delightful to see Stadler Motorsport taking the spoils of victory. I'll confess to a feeling of Schadenfreude when misfortune struck the big teams - not that there are works teams, but it is undoubtedly true that there is factory interest in the goings-on at several of the pit garages, and to see a truly private team triumph in those circumstances is never a bad thing... pour encourager les autres - to be rather polyglot.
I walked down the pit lane after the race, and found the Stadler Motorsport team celebrating their victory, and it was a joy to behold. The delight of the “little man” when he overcomes the odds and triumphs against the “big guy” is easy to understand, and – the vagaries of the Creventic regulations aside – it was hard to find anyone who didn’t enjoy seeing the Swiss team savouring their win. To say it was like a lottery win would be unfair: although luck played its part in the win, the car was, as Rolf Ineichen noted, dirty but unscathed – throughout the 24 hours it had had no contact with anything – neither the barriers nor another car. It may not have been the fastest, but all five drivers conscientiously stayed out of trouble.
In my dailysportscar article, I pointed out that the lion’s share of the driving was done by Rolf Ineichen and Christian Engelhart, and I thought that here might be a good place to develop that theme a little, by looking at the number of laps completed by each driver in the race. The top ten, in terms of number of laps driven, were as follows:
It is also interesting to note that 5 drivers did duty in two cars: the most notable of whom were probably Jeroen Bleekemolen and Khaled Al Qubaisi, who both drove both of the Black Falcon Mercedes-Benz SLS entries. Compared to the drivers above though, they were relative lightweights, completing just 163 and 134 laps respectively in total.
Javier Morcillo only just failed to break into the top ten above: he drove 52 laps in the no. 28 Team LNT Ginetta and 119 in the no. 127 KPM Golf, making a total of 171 laps altogether - more than nine hours measured in terms of time at the wheel. That is practically the same time that Basseng spent at the wheel, admittedly driving a lot faster, and covering around 200 miles further, but nevertheless a mighty effort. Interestingly, in a reciprocal agreement, Paul White did double-duty in the same two cars, but only did 66 laps in the Ginetta and 54 in the Golf.
For completeness, the other competitor who drove in two cars was Ralf Oeverhaus, who drove the no. 27 BMW Z4 for 128 laps and the no. 159 Bonk Motorsport BMW M3 for 34 laps.
All fascinating stuff, and if I weren't so busy doing other things, I might ramble on for longer.
I always welcome your comments and encouragement though, so please leave messages below!
I walked down the pit lane after the race, and found the Stadler Motorsport team celebrating their victory, and it was a joy to behold. The delight of the “little man” when he overcomes the odds and triumphs against the “big guy” is easy to understand, and – the vagaries of the Creventic regulations aside – it was hard to find anyone who didn’t enjoy seeing the Swiss team savouring their win. To say it was like a lottery win would be unfair: although luck played its part in the win, the car was, as Rolf Ineichen noted, dirty but unscathed – throughout the 24 hours it had had no contact with anything – neither the barriers nor another car. It may not have been the fastest, but all five drivers conscientiously stayed out of trouble.
In my dailysportscar article, I pointed out that the lion’s share of the driving was done by Rolf Ineichen and Christian Engelhart, and I thought that here might be a good place to develop that theme a little, by looking at the number of laps completed by each driver in the race. The top ten, in terms of number of laps driven, were as follows:
| No. | Car | Driver | Laps | km | miles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 38 | Mercedes | Marc Basseng | 249 | 1,344 | 834 |
| 20 | Porsche | Rolf Ineichen | 247 | 1,334 | 827 |
| 888 | Ferrari | Jordan Grogor | 219 | 1,182 | 733 |
| 38 | Mercedes | Rob Huff | 214 | 1,155 | 717 |
| 10 | Lamborghini | Jeroen Mul | 207 | 1,118 | 693 |
| 30 | Ferrari | Jan Magnussen | 205 | 1,107 | 687 |
| 9 | Porsche | Emmanuel Collard | 188 | 1,015 | 630 |
| 30 | Ferrari | Matt Griffin | 188 | 1,015 | 630 |
| 20 | Porsche | Christian Engelhart | 187 | 1,010 | 626 |
| 2 | Mercedes | Adam Christodoulou | 185 | 999 | 620 |
It is also interesting to note that 5 drivers did duty in two cars: the most notable of whom were probably Jeroen Bleekemolen and Khaled Al Qubaisi, who both drove both of the Black Falcon Mercedes-Benz SLS entries. Compared to the drivers above though, they were relative lightweights, completing just 163 and 134 laps respectively in total.
Javier Morcillo only just failed to break into the top ten above: he drove 52 laps in the no. 28 Team LNT Ginetta and 119 in the no. 127 KPM Golf, making a total of 171 laps altogether - more than nine hours measured in terms of time at the wheel. That is practically the same time that Basseng spent at the wheel, admittedly driving a lot faster, and covering around 200 miles further, but nevertheless a mighty effort. Interestingly, in a reciprocal agreement, Paul White did double-duty in the same two cars, but only did 66 laps in the Ginetta and 54 in the Golf.
For completeness, the other competitor who drove in two cars was Ralf Oeverhaus, who drove the no. 27 BMW Z4 for 128 laps and the no. 159 Bonk Motorsport BMW M3 for 34 laps.
All fascinating stuff, and if I weren't so busy doing other things, I might ramble on for longer.
I always welcome your comments and encouragement though, so please leave messages below!
Saturday, 4 January 2014
World Endurance Championship - Season Review
I suppose I always knew when I started this blogging thing, that there might be times when nothing inspired me to write. I suppose I also knew that, as there is no money to be made from blogging, there might be times when my motivation to write anything was also reduced. There are also the other things in my life that occupy my time, such as my family, my day job, writing for dailysportscar and - hard though it may be to believe that I have any - other interests.
All of this has kept me from posting anything recently, and if you have been visiting and have been disappointed not to find anything, then I apologise, but hopefully the year ahead will be a year of change: and that might mean I get to write more; but it might equally mean that I don't.
Anyway, here we are in 2014, and it is almost too late now to look back on the year past, but I am keenly aware that, at some point during 2013, someone asked me about fuel consumption at different circuits, and I promised that I would write something on the subject.
I have now had a chance to crunch some numbers, and in the following table show the respective fuel consumption figures for each of the factory LMP1 cars in each race (figures shown are miles per gallon):
For the purposes of the calculation, I have assumed that the car always started with a full tank of fuel (which is probably fair enough), and always finished with an empty tank (which is patently wrong, particularly in those cases - shown with an asterisk - where the car stopped before the end of the race).
Even so, and although it is an interesting exercise to mull over the fuel efficiency of Messrs McNish, Kristensen and Duval, or to ask what was different about the configuration of the no. 3 Audi at Le Mans, it is probably still misleading data, as it is the average fuel consumption for the whole race, including periods of slower running: for example, behind the safety car. So questions about the actual consumption of the cars are not answered.
So what I have done in the table below is to take a single stint and calculate the fuel consumption for that stint, based on the distance covered in the stint and the amount of fuel put in the car at the end of the stint. I have, as far as possible, chosen stints that were unaffected by Safety Cars or by adverse weather, and also chosen only a 'full stint', where the car was refuelled to within 90% of its total capacity. Within those constraints, I have then chosen the fastest stint as given by the average speed achieved during the stint. What is interesting is that it is not that much different.
So what does it all mean? Well, I like to think that you, my dear readers, are a fairly intelligent lot, so to a large extent you can work it out for yourselves. Remember that these are miles per gallon figures, so the higher the number, the better the consumption (although it is interesting to compare these numbers to those that we get in our road cars. Maybe I shouldn't complain so much about the 23 mpg that I get!) To me, it seems that the teams are setting themselves a fuel consumption target, and are going as fast as they can on that amount of fuel.
Certainly, looking at the Audi figures, and recalling that they ran in both long and short tail form during the year, the variation in consumption is just 10%, whereas the average speed variation is over 25%.
Also, it is clear that a lot of fuel can be saved behind the safety car (or in the wet), as at Le Mans - although, if you look more closely, notice that Audi's race-long fuel consumption average was 11% better than its single stint average (calculated for the most economical car, the no. 3), whereas Toyota (no. 7) was only 6% better.
At Toyota, it seems that their improved competitiveness in the later season races came at the cost of worse fuel consumption, which matches what you might expect - going faster means using more fuel.
And finally, the higher altitude of Sao Paulo seems to help the fuel consumption - the calculation no doubt goes that less air into the engine means that less fuel is also required for the same amount of energy.
I have to admit that this exercise was less illuminating than I had hoped - like a lot of research, it is interesting but not earth-shattering. I hope it was worth it nevertheless. And I hope that 2014 is a good year for you all too!
All of this has kept me from posting anything recently, and if you have been visiting and have been disappointed not to find anything, then I apologise, but hopefully the year ahead will be a year of change: and that might mean I get to write more; but it might equally mean that I don't.
Anyway, here we are in 2014, and it is almost too late now to look back on the year past, but I am keenly aware that, at some point during 2013, someone asked me about fuel consumption at different circuits, and I promised that I would write something on the subject.
I have now had a chance to crunch some numbers, and in the following table show the respective fuel consumption figures for each of the factory LMP1 cars in each race (figures shown are miles per gallon):
| Race | No. 1 Audi | No. 2 Audi | No. 3 Audi | No. 7 Toyota | No. 8 Toyota |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silverstone | 6.94 | 7.01 | 5.57 | 5.61 | |
| Spa | 7.10 | 7.17 | 7.21 | 5.01* | 5.74 |
| Le Mans | 7.82 | 8.01 | 8.19 | 6.70 | 6.68 |
| Interlagos | 7.50 | 7.77 | 4.00* | ||
| Austin | 7.03 | 6.79 | 5.60 | ||
| Shanghai | 7.05 | 6.97 | 5.31 | 5.22* | |
| Bahrain | 6.91 | 6.51* | 4.28* | 5.06 |
For the purposes of the calculation, I have assumed that the car always started with a full tank of fuel (which is probably fair enough), and always finished with an empty tank (which is patently wrong, particularly in those cases - shown with an asterisk - where the car stopped before the end of the race).
Even so, and although it is an interesting exercise to mull over the fuel efficiency of Messrs McNish, Kristensen and Duval, or to ask what was different about the configuration of the no. 3 Audi at Le Mans, it is probably still misleading data, as it is the average fuel consumption for the whole race, including periods of slower running: for example, behind the safety car. So questions about the actual consumption of the cars are not answered.
So what I have done in the table below is to take a single stint and calculate the fuel consumption for that stint, based on the distance covered in the stint and the amount of fuel put in the car at the end of the stint. I have, as far as possible, chosen stints that were unaffected by Safety Cars or by adverse weather, and also chosen only a 'full stint', where the car was refuelled to within 90% of its total capacity. Within those constraints, I have then chosen the fastest stint as given by the average speed achieved during the stint. What is interesting is that it is not that much different.
| Race | No. 1 Audi | No. 2 Audi | No. 3 Audi | No. 7 Toyota | No. 8 Toyota |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silverstone | 6.95 | 7.12 | 5.60 | 5.68 | |
| Spa | 7.23 | 7.37 | 7.28 | 6.13 | 5.83 |
| Le Mans | 7.14 | 7.28 | 7.37 | 6.32 | 6.28 |
| Interlagos | 7.30 | 7.59 | |||
| Austin | 7.17 | 6.93 | 5.95 | ||
| Shanghai | 7.14 | 7.26 | 5.48 | 5.64 | |
| Bahrain | 7.00 | 7.16 | 5.23 | 5.26 |
So what does it all mean? Well, I like to think that you, my dear readers, are a fairly intelligent lot, so to a large extent you can work it out for yourselves. Remember that these are miles per gallon figures, so the higher the number, the better the consumption (although it is interesting to compare these numbers to those that we get in our road cars. Maybe I shouldn't complain so much about the 23 mpg that I get!) To me, it seems that the teams are setting themselves a fuel consumption target, and are going as fast as they can on that amount of fuel.
Certainly, looking at the Audi figures, and recalling that they ran in both long and short tail form during the year, the variation in consumption is just 10%, whereas the average speed variation is over 25%.
Also, it is clear that a lot of fuel can be saved behind the safety car (or in the wet), as at Le Mans - although, if you look more closely, notice that Audi's race-long fuel consumption average was 11% better than its single stint average (calculated for the most economical car, the no. 3), whereas Toyota (no. 7) was only 6% better.
At Toyota, it seems that their improved competitiveness in the later season races came at the cost of worse fuel consumption, which matches what you might expect - going faster means using more fuel.
And finally, the higher altitude of Sao Paulo seems to help the fuel consumption - the calculation no doubt goes that less air into the engine means that less fuel is also required for the same amount of energy.
I have to admit that this exercise was less illuminating than I had hoped - like a lot of research, it is interesting but not earth-shattering. I hope it was worth it nevertheless. And I hope that 2014 is a good year for you all too!
Thursday, 19 December 2013
Thoughts on the Asian Le Mans Series
Readers of www.dailysportscar.com will, I hope, have read my race report from the final round of the 2013 Asian Le Mans Series at Sepang, Malaysia. It was a trip organised very much at the last minute, thanks to the ACO and its partners, Total and Michelin. And it was a very short trip: my outbound flight left Heathrow late on Friday night, and I was back home early enough on Monday morning to see my children off to school.
In all, I spent a little over 24 hours in Malaysia, and a total of 10 hours at the Sepang track itself. But it was a most enjoyable trip; one which I was glad I had made, but one which by its very nature revealed the lengths to which the ACO is willing to go to promote its Asian Le Mans Series.
I spent some time talking to Mark Thomas, the man who is in charge, and you can read that interview here. But despite the upbeat nature of it all, the Le Mans Series races that have been held thus far cannot really be regarded as unqualified successes.
The first race which carried the title of an Asian Le Mans Series race was at Okayama in Japan in November 2009 - two 500km races held back to back, which was supposed to be followed by a further ‘double 500’ at Shanghai in China. A 23-car grid took the start in Japan, which was, by the standards of the time, somewhat disappointing, and the Chinese race was cancelled.
In 2010, the ACO contracted Mark Thomas’s S2M Group to take charge of sales and marketing in Asia, and ILMC races at Zhuhai in China were organised in 2010 and 2011. Renewed efforts were made, and a six-round Asian Le Mans Series for 2013 was announced last year, which planned to visit China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. In the end, of course, only four of those took place, with the final round at Sepang, in Malaysia, in a season of uncertainty and small grids.
What has become clear to me, though, in the last fortnight since my interest in the Asian Le Mans Series has been piqued, is the size of the prize. Or at least the perceived size of the prize. A conversation over dinner when I arrived in KL on Saturday night revealed how big the market place in Asia is to companies like Total and Michelin, and how badly they want to get a part of the economic growth of the Asian region.
For the ACO, their Endurance Racing pyramid is underpinned by continental Le Mans Series in Europe, America and Asia. Even if the American Le Mans Series name no longer exists, endurance racing of one form or another seems set to continue in the US, and the ACO will ensure that it maintains the transatlantic links originally forged by Don Panoz. In Europe, there are strong national championships, and a tradition of long-distance racing.
But Asia has been, as the ACO is all too aware, a tough nut to crack. The biggest problem is the nature of the beast itself. To the uneducated and simplistic western eye, Asia is a different culture; sure, but it is the sum of many disparate cultures. If one excludes Australia and New Zealand (which is fair enough, for that belongs to Australasia, in my mind, but then the AsLMS compromises itself by allowing drivers from the Antipodes to count as Asian, in terms of their rules concerning crew composition), one still needs to consider whether India, Russia and the Middle East should count as being within the continent, and therefore on a full Asian calendar.
At the moment, the brief is clear: the footprint is restricted to Japan and South-eastern Asia. But even within that zone, there are logistical, cultural and political obstacles to overcome. As Mark Thomas noted, there is no other pan-Asian sporting series, even on the scale of the Asian Le Mans Series; and if that is the case, one wonders why not, when the countries of the area clearly have a sporting heritage, as shown by their Olympic successes.
The answer, in my view, lies in the fact that the constituent parts of Asia do not necessarily have an ‘Asian Identity’. In much the same way, Italians, Germans and Spanish (to take but three) may be part of Europe, but they do not regard themselves as being European. For a Japanese or Chinese team to pack up and travel to, say Sepang, they might as well go the whole hog and go to somewhere with real heritage, such as Sebring or Spa.
But what is also clear, is that this is a complex situation. It may well be the case that there is more money available in Asia for business in general, and racing teams and sponsors in particular, to go after. Just look at the brand visibility of names like Petronas. Traditionalists like myself may drone on about motor-racing heartlands and the heritage of the sport, but the future doesn't belong to us; it belongs to those with vision and an entrepreneurial spirit.
I am put in mind of the so-called Serenity Prayer that can be found on tea-towels in cheap tourist shops: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” it goes.
It may be trite, but it is a prayer that many of those involved in the Asian Le Mans Series could well offer to their respective deities. The ACO is only a club, remember, not a multinational business. Its prized possession is the 24 hours of Le Mans. To build a structure that promotes and supports this pearl of great price is a worthy ambition, but it is that event itself that needs the focus. Its survival and prosperity are not dependent on the Asian Le Mans Series. My biggest concern, on returning from Malaysia, is that there doesn’t seem to be an exit plan.
In all, I spent a little over 24 hours in Malaysia, and a total of 10 hours at the Sepang track itself. But it was a most enjoyable trip; one which I was glad I had made, but one which by its very nature revealed the lengths to which the ACO is willing to go to promote its Asian Le Mans Series.
I spent some time talking to Mark Thomas, the man who is in charge, and you can read that interview here. But despite the upbeat nature of it all, the Le Mans Series races that have been held thus far cannot really be regarded as unqualified successes.
The first race which carried the title of an Asian Le Mans Series race was at Okayama in Japan in November 2009 - two 500km races held back to back, which was supposed to be followed by a further ‘double 500’ at Shanghai in China. A 23-car grid took the start in Japan, which was, by the standards of the time, somewhat disappointing, and the Chinese race was cancelled.
In 2010, the ACO contracted Mark Thomas’s S2M Group to take charge of sales and marketing in Asia, and ILMC races at Zhuhai in China were organised in 2010 and 2011. Renewed efforts were made, and a six-round Asian Le Mans Series for 2013 was announced last year, which planned to visit China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. In the end, of course, only four of those took place, with the final round at Sepang, in Malaysia, in a season of uncertainty and small grids.
What has become clear to me, though, in the last fortnight since my interest in the Asian Le Mans Series has been piqued, is the size of the prize. Or at least the perceived size of the prize. A conversation over dinner when I arrived in KL on Saturday night revealed how big the market place in Asia is to companies like Total and Michelin, and how badly they want to get a part of the economic growth of the Asian region.
For the ACO, their Endurance Racing pyramid is underpinned by continental Le Mans Series in Europe, America and Asia. Even if the American Le Mans Series name no longer exists, endurance racing of one form or another seems set to continue in the US, and the ACO will ensure that it maintains the transatlantic links originally forged by Don Panoz. In Europe, there are strong national championships, and a tradition of long-distance racing.
But Asia has been, as the ACO is all too aware, a tough nut to crack. The biggest problem is the nature of the beast itself. To the uneducated and simplistic western eye, Asia is a different culture; sure, but it is the sum of many disparate cultures. If one excludes Australia and New Zealand (which is fair enough, for that belongs to Australasia, in my mind, but then the AsLMS compromises itself by allowing drivers from the Antipodes to count as Asian, in terms of their rules concerning crew composition), one still needs to consider whether India, Russia and the Middle East should count as being within the continent, and therefore on a full Asian calendar.
At the moment, the brief is clear: the footprint is restricted to Japan and South-eastern Asia. But even within that zone, there are logistical, cultural and political obstacles to overcome. As Mark Thomas noted, there is no other pan-Asian sporting series, even on the scale of the Asian Le Mans Series; and if that is the case, one wonders why not, when the countries of the area clearly have a sporting heritage, as shown by their Olympic successes.
The answer, in my view, lies in the fact that the constituent parts of Asia do not necessarily have an ‘Asian Identity’. In much the same way, Italians, Germans and Spanish (to take but three) may be part of Europe, but they do not regard themselves as being European. For a Japanese or Chinese team to pack up and travel to, say Sepang, they might as well go the whole hog and go to somewhere with real heritage, such as Sebring or Spa.
But what is also clear, is that this is a complex situation. It may well be the case that there is more money available in Asia for business in general, and racing teams and sponsors in particular, to go after. Just look at the brand visibility of names like Petronas. Traditionalists like myself may drone on about motor-racing heartlands and the heritage of the sport, but the future doesn't belong to us; it belongs to those with vision and an entrepreneurial spirit.
I am put in mind of the so-called Serenity Prayer that can be found on tea-towels in cheap tourist shops: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” it goes.
It may be trite, but it is a prayer that many of those involved in the Asian Le Mans Series could well offer to their respective deities. The ACO is only a club, remember, not a multinational business. Its prized possession is the 24 hours of Le Mans. To build a structure that promotes and supports this pearl of great price is a worthy ambition, but it is that event itself that needs the focus. Its survival and prosperity are not dependent on the Asian Le Mans Series. My biggest concern, on returning from Malaysia, is that there doesn’t seem to be an exit plan.
Sunday, 15 December 2013
Wirth Research
Nick Wirth is a very clever man. And as the owner of Wirth
Research, whose Bicester premises I recently was able to visit, he can be proud
of an establishment unique in the world of motor-sporting endeavour. The
curious thing is, that nowhere on either of the two sites we visited, were
there any cars. Nor even any pictures of cars (well hardly any). Just the odd
Le Mans trophy perched on the edge of a coffee table in the board room – the
casual visitor would be unsure what kind of ‘research’ Wirth was involved with
– until one came to the Indycar-based simulator, which was undoubtedly the main
attraction of the visit; and of which more anon.
The subtitle on the company logo is “Development in the Digital Domain” and after a while of talking to Wirth, you understand how his philosophy runs through everything he does. Nick Wirth himself has been involved in the world of motor sport
for most of his working life, starting his career as an aerodynamicist at
March, and founding the Simtek Formula 1 team in 1993. From 1996 until 1999 he
worked as Chief Designer at the Benetton F1 team, but then branched out to
found RoboScience, where he created the RS-01 – the world’s largest and most
advanced commercial, legged robot.
Wirth Research came into being just ten years ago, initially
to provide technical support not only in the Formula 1 arena but also to
manufacturers and independent teams in other motor sport disciplines. Wirth is
clearly a visionary, but like most intelligent people, is able to see the
patently obvious when others seem myopic.
Wirth has a telling motto, which encompasses all the undertakings of his company. It is a sublime case of, not to put too fine a point on it, stating the bleedin' obvious, but I would nevertheless advise you to mull it over a couple of times before reading on:
“To develop the performance of a product substantially beyond the level at which a manufacturer has supplied it
requires
the application of technologies substantially more advanced than those used to design it.”
The first successes for Wirth Research were not slow in
coming. Undertaking chassis development for the Honda Performance Development
arm of Honda in the USA, he helped Honda to win the 2004 and 2005 IRL driver’s
championships, as well as the Indianapolis 500 in 2004 and 2005.
Interestingly, Wirth relates that Honda’s focus was not
Indy, however. Nor was it the IRL championship. It was to win at Motegi. For Honda, a win at Motegi was that important. Wirth believes, with the benefit of hindsight, that
Honda was too successful at Indycars. “Everyone needs to have their day in the
sun,” he says, “and even if we were doing a better job than anyone else, it
damaged the reputation of the series that we were so dominant.”
However, the reputation of Wirth Research was only enhanced,
as far as Honda was concerned, and after some encouragement from Wirth himself,
they commissioned the build of an LMP2 sportscar, using the upmarket US Honda
brand name of Acura to compete in the 2007 American Le Mans Series. An
indication that Nick and his team knew what they were doing was the fact
that the Acura ARX-01a won its class first time out in the 12 hours of Sebring.
For 2009, Wirth Research moved up to the LMP1 class with the
ARX02-a, and amazingly took pole position on its debut at Sebring, against the
might of the works Peugeot and Audi teams. The car was the first LMP1 car to
make use of the large front wheels (although Audi and Peugeot later had the
benefit of bespoke tyres on the front wheels – the Acura had to make do with
using rear tyres on the front). It also pioneered the ‘swan’s neck’ rear wing
mounting – another design feature of which Nick is justifiably proud. Eight
outright wins came the way of the HPD (now no longer called an Acura), on the
way to the 2009 ALMS title.
In 2010, the lure of Formula 1 called Wirth again, and
having won a slot on the F1 entry list, intended to build a ‘cost-capped’ car
for the World Championship. The Virgin Racing VR-01 was designed entirely using
‘virtual engineering technology’, CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), and in
many ways was the epitome of what Wirth Research, and Nick in particular sees
as the perfect way to design a car.
“No parts ever get produced, no wind tunnel testing is
necessary, we develop the whole thing using software,” he says. “We do aero work using a virtual wind tunnel - that way you don't need to create a model of the car first.” What he doesn’t
say explicitly, but one can tell that the fact grieves him, is that it wouldn’t
be possible, under the current F1 regulations to spend as much on CFD and
computer simulation as Wirth Research currently does in the production of the
ARX series of sports-prototypes.
The piece de
resistance of the visit, and to some extent the final piece in the jigsaw
of the virtual development environment, is the aforementioned simulator. This
means that a driver can drive the car on the race-track, before the car is even
built! A great deal of work has gone into the development of the tyre
simulation – an area of technology that many similar simulators cannot deal
with. MuriTyre (Multi-ribbed Tyre) simulates the performance of the tyre across
its entire tread width, enabling the driver to experience, in the simulator,
the behaviour of different tyre compounds.
The simulator, can, of course, be set up to ‘be’ a different
car as required – the configuration that I tried was an LMP2 HPD, on the Mid
Ohio circuit. Jonny Kane was on hand to provide coaching, guidance and general
information. He didn’t provide the details, but he did let slip that the
simulator could be configured to provide different levels of grip depending
which part of the circuit you were on – enabling the driver to be on a ‘drying
track’ for example. The grass was also, he said, just about as grippy as the
track, so minor offs were easier to control. Hitting the wall at 100mph,
though, as I did, meant the use of the only non-standard button on the steering
wheel – a white reset button: but at least there was no expensive bill to pay
or visit to the hospital to make.
Setting up information for a new track is painstaking, but
glorious in the detail to which Wirth Research goes. There is a team of
surveyors that hire the track for, on average two days, and they go around with
laser imaging cameras to record every detail of the surroundings, the track
layout, fences, trees and so on. The track surface itself is laser-scanned, so
that different grip characteristics of different surfaces can be modelled,
along with detailed analysis of the kerbs, so drivers know where they can use
the extremities of the track.
Unfortunately, I have never been to Mid Ohio, nor have I
ever driven anything remotely similar to an LMP2 car, so my evaluation of
whether it was a good simulation of the real thing is not really relevant. It
was, though, a great deal of fun: I had Jonny’s calm voice in the ear patiently
telling me that I needed to shift down, and my ten minutes at the wheel, were,
he said very consistent. Consistently slow, I said; and he was too kind to
agree, but we were able to look at data traces to see where I was earlier on
the brakes and later on the throttle than he was.
Given more time, I’m sure I could have improved, but the aim
of the exercise was not to turn me into a racing driver, rather it was to show
me Wirth’s capabilities, of which we barely scratched the surface.
Another notable development is Emersio,
which is a head-mounted display, enabling the wearer to view and interact with objects in the room (or pit garage) with you. A simple example would be to illustrate the pick-up points for removing the nose-cone. Like many of Wirth Research’s innovations, this is
not something that is specifically geared to motor racing. It would be entirely
feasible for Emersio to be used for dismantling a washing machine, or
constructing flat-pack furniture.
And this is why Wirth Research is such an exciting place
right now, as it branches into architecture, transport and some very hush-hush
stuff for Lockheed Martin for the US military. You come away, quite frankly, reeling from it all,
and yet you know that Nick Wirth has let you see only a tiny bit of what is
going on in his head.
In terms of motor-racing, he is committed to sportscar
racing work, and it would seem that Honda is committed to Wirth. It would be easy to put two and two together, which is not what we were invited to Wirth Research to do; however, anything that involves a chassis with a Honda badge in sportscar racing in the next year or two will be worth watching. Whether it is the
United Sportscar Championship in the USA, or the World Endurance Championship, you can be sure that Nick Wirth and his team have a winning reputation to build on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
