Sebring 12 Hours - What might have been?

The Sebring 12 hours was dominated – not entirely unexpectedly – by the Safety Car. In all, 5h 04m were spent under full course caution, in a total of eleven separate periods. At one point, the red flag was waved, and cars came to a complete halt on the Ullman Straight while the debris from the accident between David Ostella (Oreca no. 38) and Frankie Montecalvo (Oreca no. 52) was cleared up.

In the end, the winning Chip Ganassi entry, in the hands of Marino Franchitti, Memo Rojas and Scott Pruett came home the winner, but that was largely down to luck: although the efforts of Franchitti to keep the Riley-Ford in the lead for the last twenty minutes were indeed impressive, the car was only in that position due to its slightly higher fuel consumption requiring it to stop earlier than its competition, and the final Safety Car period coming at just the right time for the team and entirely changing the complexion of a race that was in some ways a fine strategic battle.

The Safety Car disruption meant that only three periods in the race were long enough for cars to use more than a tank of fuel, as shown in the table below:

From lap	To lap	From Time	To time	Period
22	52	11:34	12:30	56m
133	199	16:34	18:40	2h 06m
228	271	20:03	21:25	1h 21m

I thought it might be interesting to look at what happened in the race, based solely on the lap times recorded during these periods, and the results – unsurprisingly – bear little resemblance to the actual race results.

In the prototype class, the results were:

Pos	No.	Car	Laps completed	Time	Pit stops
1	42	Oak Morgan-Nissan	131	4h 19m 27.179s	5
2	5	Corvette DP	131	4h 19m 40.927s	5
3	1	ESM HPD-Honda	131	4h 19m 52.695s	5
4	02	Ganassi Riley-Ford	131	4h 20m 55.253s	6
5	2	ESM HPD-Honda	131	4h 20m 58.920s	5
6	01	Ganassi Riley-Ford	131	4h 21m 19.503s	6

I am not sure what, if anything, this all proves. Possibly that the race leaders in the United SportsCar Championship races do not push on as hard as they possibly can, knowing that any lead that they do establish will be eroded as soon as the next Safety Car appears. In any case, it is certainly interesting that the Oak P2-spec car was consistently quicker than any other, and also that the Extreme Speed HPD also came within a whisker of winning the race overall.

The balance of P2 and DP is probably about right, therefore, at least at Sebring. I suspect Daytona was probably somewhat extreme.

In the GT-LM class, the “All-Green” (using the same periods as above) race result looks like this:

Pos	No.	Car	Laps completed	Time	Pit stops
1	4	Corvette C7.R	126	4h 20m 31.371s	4
2	3	Corvette C7.R	126	4h 20m 44.205s	4
3	912	Works Porsche 911 RSR	126	4h 21m 10.127s	5
4	93	SRT Viper	126	4h 21m 59.109s	5
5	17	Falken Porsche 911 RSR	124	4h 19m 31.789s	4
6	55	BMW Z4 GTE	124	4h 22m 03.797s	10

From which the most evident thing is that this form of racing provides opportunities for recovery drives like no other - but then again, it was ever thus: racing for a team to exploit regulations, despite various setbacks. Hats off to the RLL BMW crew for getting back onto the class podium, despite losing two laps under green racing conditions!

New Approach Needed?

Readers here may have read the rather odd piece that I published on dailysportscar earlier this month – I was in two minds about publishing it there, but having asked for contributions to a general debate over the winter months on the direction of sportscar racing in general, I felt I had to tie up some loose ends: even if it meant some rather tenuous links.

And then Motor Sport arrived this month, with talk of a revolution in F1, and certainly elements of Mark Hughes’ (and Nigel Roebuck’s) articles struck a chord. If you haven’t bought a copy, I recommend that you do. Especially as, for some months now, it seems to be the only mainstream medium calling time on Bernie’s career. The time has indeed come. An era of post-Bernie may be just around the corner – and if that is the case, it will not just affect Formula 1, but all branches of the sport.

However, one theme that I particularly want to explore in this article, which I alluded to in the DSC article and which also features in Motor Sport, is the matter of procedure. There seems to be an idea these days that procedure is a good thing. A few years ago, when I went into hospital for a fairly major operation to remove a lump that was growing inside my skull, the surgeon came in before the operation to describe how he was going to hook the lump out, through a hole behind my ear, that was to have been drilled previously by a colleague of his. Then the anaesthetist came in to tell me how he was going to ensure that I remained unconscious for the whole time. All very sobering stuff. As he was leaving, I felt it appropriate to wish the anaesthetist “Good Luck”.

“No need for that,” he cheerily replied. “There’s no need for luck, it’s all procedure.” To an extent, this put my mind at rest, but nevertheless, the thought that there was no room for the virtuosity of the various professionals at work on me to demonstrate their skill – their artistry – made me feel more like a car being repaired than a piano being played.

And it is this disapproval of any expression of virtuosity in motor sport, in order for it to gain the approval of the FIA, that I find perturbing. Mark Hughes, in Motor Sport, refers to the ‘punkish’ spirit of the sport in the past, which has been lost today, and I know exactly what he means. Any place for spontaneity is being removed. Unpredictability makes people in authority nervous. But the fans love it.

I have said before that 24 hour races at Le Mans, Daytona, Nürburgring and Spa have nothing really in common as far as their organisation is concerned; and even if they are part of wider championships, they still stand alone in terms of specific sporting regulations, organising bodies, starting times, practice and qualification procedures and so on and so forth. With the exception of Daytona, they all draw substantial crowds, and yet have minimal impact on the sporting radar of mainstream media. Other races also spring to mind: the Sebring 12 hours, yes; but also the Indianapolis 500, the Monte Carlo rally – all events that have a culture of their own, above and beyond being ‘just another round of a championship’.

Twenty years ago, the great god was television. Great lengths were gone to, in order to ensure that ‘our’ product was suitable for televising. The world has moved on though. The public no longer watches television in the same way as it did twenty years ago. People want a race summary broadcast of an endurance race (in much the same way as they wanted DSJ’s GP reports back in the seventies), but more important today is the niche broadcast to those who have a specific interest. Those who watched BBC Ceefax to get news of Le Mans through the night in the eighties were perhaps ahead of their time.

The reason that what I call the “FIA Formula” evolved was that it made it easier for media organisations. Fixed times for press conferences, practice sessions and races, prescribed podium formats and an entry list fixed for the season meant that life became quite routine, if you were involved in the season-long championship; but it was meaningless for ad hoc reporting. And of course, the market, if you are selling a championship, is those with a season-long interest. The ad-hockers have to look after themselves.

What makes Bathurst, Le Mans, even the Indy 500 appealing is their uniqueness in the motor sporting calendar. By their very nature, they are ad-hoc events. In some ways, they provide a template for others to fit to, if they choose so to do.

What is not quite clear to me is whether the market wants something predictable, or whether part of the fun is in piecing together the various strands of information to extract what is going on. I get the impression, that to an extent, the internet-savvy motor sport fan of the twenty-first century derives a certain pleasure from finding video streaming channels, timing and scoring outlets, news and comment; even commentary (possibly).

But there’s another strand to this argument. Motor racing is something to be experienced first-hand. Formula 1 has undoubtedly sacrificed this principle to the dollars offered by television, but most people I speak to talk of their experiences being at races, seeing cars in the paddock, of talking to drivers and catching them in perhaps an off-guard moment, being – well – human. It’s my belief that it is this aspect that generates the appeal in the first place. Having kindled the fire of interest, then certainly, interest in a race may be clearly maintained by all manner of media outlets. But surely the most critical thing is making something that will get people through the gates in the first place – that is what will guarantee the future fans of the sport.

To my mind, the storyline of the race, whether it is won by clever strategy, sublime driving technique or sheer grunt under the bonnet, doesn’t have the same impact as standing beside the track, watching, feeling, smelling and of course hearing the action take place in front of you. However erudite and entertaining the commentators are, they will never be able to convey the full atmosphere of actually being there. However sophisticated online timing screens are, they are no substitute for seeing a car on and occasionally beyond its limit, controlled by someone whom you might have seen walking in the paddock earlier in the day, or standing in the bar later in the evening.

As always, your thoughts on the matter are welcome!

Getting on the Lead Lap

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!

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.

Rocky wasn’t at Spa, due to a clashing DTM commitment, but nevertheless, a look at the average lap times for the three of them from Spa and Le Mans is interesting:

	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?

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:

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!

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:

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!

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):

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!