Porsche - dominating the WEC?

Porsche’s win at Le Mans in June may have come as a surprise, but their win at the Nürburgring ten days ago was predictable from the moment that Hans-Joachim Stuck waved the flag to start the race. Audi Sport Team Joest may have threatened occasionally through practice, but once the race started, it was clear that only mechanical frailty was going to stop the Porsche steamroller.

Porsche’s test programme has taken them through the various weaknesses of the 919 Hybrid, and one by one, these have been addressed – to the point where the Weissach cars put their rivals from Ingolstadt well and truly in the shade in the sunshine and soaring temperatures in Germany.

Take a look at the average lap times from the best 20% of green laps completed:

Lap Times

No.	Car	Drivers	Best Lap	Average of best 20%
1	Toyota	Davidson/Buemi/Nakajima	1m 40.207s	1m 40.940s
2	Toyota	Wurz/Sarrazin/Conway	1m 40.738s	1m 41.374s
7	Audi	Fässler/Tréluyer/Lotterer	1m 38.611s	1m 39.768s
8	Audi	Di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis	1m 38.608s	1m 39.581s
17	Porsche	Bernhard/Webber/Hartley	1m 38.307s	1m 38.904s
18	Porsche	Dumas/Jani/Lieb	1m 37.955s	1m 39.129s

Notice how the average lap time of the no. 17 Porsche is much closer to its best than any of the other cars. There is no doubt that the Porsches were quicker, this time.

Remember, at Le Mans there was nothing to choose between the average times of Audi and those of Porsche, and in addition, there has been a change to the Equivalence of Technology since Le Mans, which has handed Audi an additional 0.5kg/h of fuel (up from 79.0kg/h to 79.5kg/h) and reduced Porsche’s from 88.5kg/h to 87.0kg/h. Both teams also had a reduction in fuel capacity, but this would not have affected the raw pace of either car.

So, in theory at least, the casual observer might have expected the Audi to have been quicker – certainly not 0.5% slower. Except that Porsche brought what were effectively two new cars to the Nürburgring. In particular, the new cars featured a new, high-downforce aero kit, which had not been previously raced during the season.

At Silverstone – in conditions that were very different from those at the ’Ring – Audi used a high-downforce configuration, whereas Porsche was focussing its preparation on Le Mans, and had its cars very much closer, aerodynamically, to the configuration that it was to run at Le Mans. As a result, the average lap times of the Audis were a degree quicker than the Porsches.

Spa saw the debut of the Le Mans-aero Audis, and in terms of raw pace, this was the first time that Porsche’s race pace was quicker than Audi’s – to the tune of around 0.4%. Despite its pace, in the race, the Porsche used up its allocation of 24 tyres, and ended up with dramatically slower lap times as the tyres went into their second stint. The Audis, on the other hand, seemed to float above the tarmac: Benoît Tréluyer actually triple-stinting his Michelins in his final shift behind the wheel.

At neither Le Mans nor Nürburgring were tyres an issue – the regulations allowing teams to use eight sets of tyres in what was scheduled to be a seven-stint race in Germany – and Porsche’s dominance allowed them to overcome problems for both their cars.

In the early stages of the race, it seemed that either Timo Bernhard was deliberately holding up the Audis to allow Neel Jani to establish a lead, or that he had a problem of some sort on the car. Consider this:

Before/After FCY Comparison

No.	Driver	Average of laps 2-9	Average of laps 13-23
17	Timo Bernhard	1m 39.504s	1m 42.404s
18	Neel Jani	1m 39.128s	1m 40.379s

(In case you have forgotten, the FCY came between laps 10 and 12.)

In fact the explanation was that a dive plane had failed on the Porsche, ruining the balance of the car. Coincidentally, Marcel Fässler suffered a puncture on the Audi and headed for the pits, just as Bernhard gave up the struggle and brought the Porsche in for a new nose section.

From here on in, the no. 17 Porsche had it all its own way, continuing to lap quicker than anyone else. However, in addition to looking at lap times, it is also worth looking at top speed: a sure indication of how teams were playing the drag/downforce balancing act.

Top Speeds

No.	Car	Drivers	Top Speed (km/h)
1	Toyota	Davidson/Buemi/Nakajima	303.9
2	Toyota	Wurz/Sarrazin/Conway	311.2
7	Audi	Fässler/Tréluyer/Lotterer	316.2
8	Audi	Di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis	317.1
17	Porsche	Bernhard/Webber/Hartley	311.2
18	Porsche	Dumas/Jani/Lieb	312.0

From this, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that the Audi was not running much downforce – surely, with the benefit of hindsight, a mistake given the disparity in lap times?

The penalties that affected the no. 18 Porsche came as a surprise. To be clear, the penalties were for exceeding the so-called ‘instantaneous limit’, which relates to the maximum permitted fuel flow measured in kg/h. This should not be confused with the ‘energy limit’, which limits the amount of energy (in MJ) used per lap. It is far less likely that the latter will be exceeded, since it can be averaged over three consecutive laps.

As I have already said, the limit for Porsche had been reduced for the Nürburgring race, from 88.5kg/h to 87.0kg/h. Interestingly, the offending laps, according to the official bulletins, were not even that fast. Compare these with the average of the best 20% lap time for the Porsche of 1m 39.129s.

Fuel Limit Offence - Porsche

No.	Driver	Lap No.	Lap Time
18	Neel Jani	27	1m 40.309s
18	Neel Jani	28	1m 40.547s
18	Marc Lieb	46	1m 39.482s
18	Marc Lieb	47	1m 41.205s

According to Porsche, a sensor on the engine malfunctioned, resulting in too much fuel being pumped through to the engine. Once this had been identified, it was switched off, as apparently (how very Porsche), it had a redundancy. Not before three stop/go penalties had been applied though, of five, thirty and sixty seconds. The total delay for the Porsche – accounting for the time lost driving through the pit lane as well – was around 2m 30s, which is roughly what the gap was between the two 919s at the end of the race (bearing in mind that they were separated by a lap). So it is fair to say that there was no real difference over the course of six hours, between the two cars.

There were suggestions (borne out by the difference between the best and average lap times) that Audi was not as consistent as Porsche’s. My preferred method for measuring consistency is to look at the standard deviation (a statistical term for measuring the spread of values around their mean) of the lap times – and this suggests that, if anything, the standard deviation of Audi’s lap times was actually less than that of Porsche. (Clearly, for this purpose one has to exclude pit stops, yellow periods, etc.) But certainly the consistency of the no. 17 car was better than the others.

Finally, a quick look at the performances of the individual Porsche drivers.

Porsche Driver Comparison

No.	Driver	Laps	Best Lap Time	Average Lap Time
17	Timo Bernhard	58	1m 38.422s	1m 38.758s
17	Mark Webber	81	1m 38.307s	1m 38.912s
17	Brendon Hartley	64	1m 38.428s	1m 39.020s
18	Romain Dumas	33	1m 38.822s	1m 39.420s
18	Neel Jani	107	1m 37.955s	1m 38.846s
18	Marc Lieb	62	1m 39.188s	1m 39.577s

The World Endurance Championship reconvenes at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas next week, and the LMP1 cars are going to be limited to six sets of (slick) tyres for qualifying and the race. Porsche will no doubt be hoping that their high-downforce configuration will preserve the tyres, since they will have to double-stint them at least once. And surely Audi will revert to a Silverstone-style high-downforce configuration for their two R18 e-tron quattros?

It will be dark for more than half of the race, which should see temperatures coming down from their seasonal high of the low thirties (Celsius), to more manageable levels, but if Audi doesn’t find some pace from somewhere, then Porsche is going to make the remainder of the season look very straightforward.

Reflecting on the Spa 24 hours

A few weeks have gone by since the Spa 24 hours, and although only one round of the 2015 Blancpain Endurance Series remains, there is still a month-long wait until the cars reconvene at the Nürburgring to round off the season. I enjoyed the Spa race, partly because I find it hard not to enjoy a race over that distance, but as well because just being at Spa is to be in the company of heroes from a time when motor-racing was rather more heroic than today. I’ll admit that it wasn’t a classic race in the true sense, but it was nevertheless full of intrigue and possibilities. I would even go as far as to suggest that the outcome could have been different, had things played out just a little differently, but you’ll have to stay with me to the end of this ramble to see that.

Before the race, the wise observers were predicting a two-way battle between BMW and Audi and they weren’t wrong.

The race had a slightly bizarre feeling to it for the first few hours, as yellow flags and Safety Cars prevented a pattern from emerging, and there was no flow to the race. In the first three hours, the longest period of green flag racing was just twenty-four minutes. It was unfortunate that the first SC period split the field – providing the leading three cars with an advantage of over a minute on the rest of the field. It was also unfortunate – although surely avoidable – that the fifth SC period (lap 99 to 102) had to be carried out with a single Safety Car, when two were used for the rest of the event.

It is doubtful that these shenanigans had anything to do with the eventual outcome, given that none of the cars that were given the advantage in the early stages (the two McLarens and the Rast/Vanthoor/Winkelhock Audi) finished in the top ten anyway. What was interesting was that the final half of the race was completed with the interference of the Safety Cars for just nineteen minutes – although a further twelve minutes were spent under Full Course Yellow conditions. None of which could hide the advantage that the BMW Z4 GT3s held, although when the no. 45 car spun to a halt on its 400th lap, there were no doubt some worried faces and nervous hearts beating in the Marc VDS pits.

As it turned out, the no. 46 BMW Z4 was quicker anyway, particularly when being driven by Nicky Catsburg. In addition, the BMW spent almost four minutes less in the pits than the WRT Audi, so the victory for Bas Leinders’ crew was indeed well-deserved.

Before looking at that in any more detail though, I want to spend a moment pondering the relative merits of using Safety Cars and Full Course Yellow procedures – for both were used, as race director Alain Adam indicated might be the case in the drivers’ briefing. The total race neutralisation time was as follows:

Safety Car

No.	Reason	From	To	Time
1	#90 off at Les Combes	16:53	17:12	20 mins
2	#15 off at Les Combes	17:17	18:11	55 mins
3	#3 off at Stavelot*	18:38	19:18	41 mins
4	#75 off at Blanchimont	20:43	21:25	43 mins
5	#888 off at Blanchimont	21:48	22:00	13 mins
6	#11/#29 collide at La Source	22:20	22:42	23 mins
7	#7 off at Les Combes*	23:09	23:16	8 mins
8	#19/#21 collide at Bus Stop	23:29	23:43	15 mins
9	#50 off at Bus Stop	03:43	03:56	14 mins
10	#30 off at Stavelot	06:23	06:42	20 mins

*indicates a Safety Car period leading on directly from FCY - some may not regard this as a separate neutralisation.

Full Course Yellow

No.	Reason	From	To	Time
1	Rain	18:35	18:37	3 mins
2	#70 off at Eau Rouge	20:08	20:14	7 mins
3	#7 off at Les Combes	23:02	23:08	7 mins
4	#35 off track	01:43	01:46	4 mins
5	Debris at Eau Rouge	09:05	09:10	6 mins
6	#45 off at Rivage	10:49	10:50	2 mins
7	#50 off at Fagnes	12:48	12:50	3 mins
8	#44 stopped at Bus Stop	13:09	13:13	5 mins

(Please bear in mind that this information was compiled from my own notes and observations, so may be subject to fatigue, bad writing or just plain errors. The organisers do not publish this data in an official form, so if anyone can correct me, I am very happy to hear from you - and give you credit!)

The advantage, as Alain Adam said, with the Full Course Yellow procedure, is that it instantly reduces the speed of everyone on the race track to 80km/h – in theory at least. If marshals need to gain access to the track quickly, then surely this is the best way to achieve it. The removal of Full Course Yellow is similarly straightforward: once the incident is cleared, wave the green flag and get on with the motor race.

However, when barriers need to be made safe or replaced, and a neutralisation of longer than ten or so minutes is required, then a Safety Car is a sensible option. It seems somehow intuitive that keeping to an 80km/h speed limit for a long period of time would create issues of its own that a Safety Car avoids. From a tactical point of view it is a different matter. During a Full Course Yellow, the pits remain open throughout, so stopping will enable work to be carried out on the car while the competition is travelling at a reduced speed, enabling relative time to be gained.

When the Safety Car is out, however, although the pit entrance is open, the pit exit remains closed until the last car in the queue behind the Safety car passes – meaning that anything up to two minutes may be spent stationary waiting to be allowed out onto the track. In order to minimise this time, a well-prepared team manager will know the threshold points where his car should be, both in terms of the stint elapsed time and the car’s track position, to be able to make the decision whether to call the car into the pits (or not) whenever the Safety Car appears.

With under six hours of the race remaining, the Marc VDS BMW, in the hands of Nicky Catsburg, was leading and drawing away from Stéphane Ortelli in the WRT Audi. Pierre Dieudonné blamed tyre pressures that had not been set correctly, preventing the 1998 Le Mans winner from returning respectable lap times and losing more than two seconds per lap on average. The decision was made in the Audi pit to bring the Frenchman into the pits early in the interests of damage limitation. However, bringing him in at the end of lap 419 meant that although the remainder of the race could be completed on four stops, it seemed to me that no account was being taken of the planned stops of the no. 46 BMW, which would most likely stay out two laps longer. It might have been pivotal.

The result was that the Audi’s stops came two laps earlier than those of the BMW in the final phase of the race and critically, the BMW had a lead of just over 30s, which the Audi never looked like being able to close on sheer pace alone. However, just after the Audi had made its 22nd pit stop, at 12:45 on Sunday lunchtime, the AF Corse Ferrari of Garry Kondakov had a problem just before the Bus Stop Chicane, and a Full Course Yellow was imposed. Lucas Luhr, in the BMW, was due in for his equivalent stop on the next lap anyway, so took advantage of the fact that everyone was going slowly to make a refuelling stop and hand the car over to Markus Paltalla. The stop took 2m 04s seconds, but instead of losing the best part of a lap, when the green flag waved the BMW was still 1m 13s ahead of Nico Müller’s Audi – some 40s further ahead than it had been before.

Now just speculate, for a moment, that Dieudonné had allowed Ortelli to stay out for three further laps. This would have put his refuelling schedule one lap behind the BMW, instead of two laps ahead. And further, what if that Full Course Yellow had been called one lap later? It would have been the BMW whose pit stop would have been under green, racing conditions, and the Audi would have had the good fortune to have pitted while the BMW was travelling along at 80km/h. The forty seconds that the Audi would then have gained would have enabled it to have leapfrogged ahead of the BMW – and then what fun it would have been to watch Catsburg fighting to get back past Nico Müller in the WRT-entered Audi!

This is not to suggest that the Marc VDS BMW win had anything to do with luck – it was a well-deserved and well-executed victory; only to show how a slightly modified strategy from WRT would have led to the possibility that the race might indeed have ended on a rather different note.

Your thoughts, comments and questions are, as always, welcome.

Still reflecting on Le Mans – some speculation.

It is partly due to the long break since Le Mans, but it is also in my nature to reflect on such matters; but I am still wondering how Porsche won the world’s most important endurance race. I have said elsewhere that it was as much a case of Audi, Toyota and Nissan losing the race as it was Porsche winning, and in the last quarter of the race a degree of inevitably developed about the destination of the winner’s spoils. The two leading Porsches had run routinely, and if there had been doubt about their reliability at the start of the race, the absence of any pressure from rivals made it hard to foresee mechanical woes interrupting their progress to the chequered flag in the final 100 laps.

But who were the heroes at Porsche? What were the deciding factors? Can Porsche win again in the remaining races of 2015? Will they make Le Mans 2016 look as easy as they did this year? Nico Hülkenberg, Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber, driving the winning car, of course received – and deserved – the greatest plaudits, but they won’t be driving in the remaining championship rounds this year.

Furthermore, a close look at the evidence suggests that their car somehow had an edge over the other two Porsches. The table below shows the average of the best 20% of laps completed for the three of them:

Car No.	Drivers	Race Ave. Lap Time
17	Bernhard/Webber/Hartley	3m 20.609s
18	Jani/Lieb/Dumas	3m 20.731s
19	Hülkenberg/Tandy/Bamber	3m 20.040s

The driver breakdown, per car, looks like this:

Car No.	Driver	Average Lap Time	Laps Completed
17	Timo Bernhard	3m 20.352s	144
	Mark Webber	3m 21.069s	107
	Brendon Hartley	3m 20.604s	143
18	Neel Jani	3m 21.053s	162
	Marc Lieb	3m 20.858s	100
	Romain Dumas	3m 20.449s	129
19	Nico Hülkenberg	3m 20.053s	144
	Nick Tandy	3m 19.852s	120
	Earl Bamber	3m 20.219s	131

However good the drivers of the no. 19 car were at Le Mans, I will take some convincing that they are more than half-a-second a lap faster than the other Porsche drivers, so one has to conclude that the car had some kind of advantage.

Now it is not unheard of, even in this day and age, that one car on a team of three just finds the sweet spot: whether it is the ride height, tyre pressures, camber angles, aero trim or just the right combination of all of these. In my analysis for dailysportscar.com though, I suggested that the answer might lie in the fuel flow meters, and I have not changed from that opinion, although I accept that it is speculative.

While at Le Mans, I fell into conversation with Dan Partel, who is now the chairman at Sentronics Ltd, a company that manufactures fuel flow meters in competition to GILL, which is (or rather, was) the only FIA-homologated manufacturer of fuel flow meters for the WEC. He was expecting Sentronics to be added to the list “before the end of the season”, and lo and behold, on July 2nd, an update to the FIA Technical List No. 45 was issued, allowing LMP1 teams to use Sentronics’ AE-040-01 meter forthwith in WEC races.

If the advertising is to be believed, this meter offers better accuracy than the Gill product, although it is slightly heavier. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, the availability of the new meters will have at the next WEC round at the Nürburgring, but surely choice, competition and a free market will not do any harm.

Moving on, and regardless of the vagaries of fuel flow meters and their manufacturers, it was something of a surprise – and it remains a mystery to me now – why the Porsches at Le Mans chose to do 13-lap stints.

As a consequence of running in the 8MJ per lap category, Porsche was restricted to burning fuel at a maximum rate of 138MJ per lap. The regulations permit 68.5 litres of fuel to be carried, which should easily allow 14 laps of the 13.6km circuit. So clearly this was a strategic choice by Porsche. Theoretically, breaking the race into 14 lap segments would have allowed Porsche to complete the race on twenty-eight, rather than thirty pit stops. This would have saved at least 90 seconds on their total race time.

Certainly, by stopping every 13 laps, they were putting in less fuel, and thereby saved time on each pit stop. However – and here is the mystery – the fact that less fuel was needed at each stop only accounts for just over two seconds per stop. Porsche was on average nearly five seconds per stop quicker in the pits than Audi (for fuel-only stops).

I have no explanation for this, so I need to speculate again. One possibility is that by pouring fuel into a tank that already had fuel in it, there was less turbulence during the refuelling process, allowing the fuel to flow in more quickly.

I’m hoping that some of these questions might be answered during the Nürburgring Six Hours. One thing which is going to play into Porsche’s hands is that the Endurance Committee has met and decided that teams should be allowed to use eight sets of tyres for the Nürburgring race (just as they are for the races at Bahrain and Shanghai), rather than the six sets that were allowed at Silverstone and Spa. There is no getting away from the fact that Porsche’s tyre loading problems caused significant delay for them at Spa, so this will be good news indeed for the Le Mans winners, as they try to stop Audi steamrollering to the WEC title as some compensation for losing Le Mans.

It seems like it has been a long time since Le Mans, and the next round of the World Endurance Championship at the Nürburgring is still more than six weeks away. In the meantime, I have a visit to the Spa 24 hours, round 4 of the Blancpain Endurance Series, to distract me. A 58-car entry list (25 of which are in the Pro Cup) and a tremendous race between Audi, BMW, McLaren, Bentley, Lamborghini, Mercedes, Nissan and Aston Martin in prospect.

After that, I’m off on holiday for a welcome rest and some relaxation. Life is certainly not dull these days!

Single-seaters... proper racing cars?

These days, I admit, the majority of my focus on motor sport tends to be on sportscars. Sports prototypes, Grand Touring cars competing over longer distances in races that usually involve more than one driver and several classes of cars with a variety of potential – that’s what catches and holds my interest.

It was not always the case though. Devoted readers (do I have any?) might recall that the first race I ever went to was a Formula 1 race (here) and it was Grand Prix racing and the World Driver’s Championship that filled my thoughts in my youth. Even when I became involved in commentary work, there was little doubt that F1 was the pinnacle of motor sport and I although the strategy, tactics and drama of endurance racing came to enthral me, I was always interested to watch young drivers rising through the ranks of Formula Ford, Formula 3 and into the highest echelons. I watched many such, and they became personal favourites: Ayrton Senna, Derek Warwick, Johnny Herbert, Mika Hakkinen, Jenson Button – they all came from somewhere. Some never made it to the top: Tommy Byrne for example, or Marc Hynes … Some had raw talent, other sparkling personalities, but one somehow built up a knowledge through watching drivers go through their formative years.

But for a number of reasons, my attention has wandered off single-seaters recently and I find myself struggling to keep up with the plethora of junior categories and Formula 1 seemingly populated by drivers who hardly warrant the same level of hero status that I conferred on the Grand Prix stars of my youth.

Despite that, in recent weeks I had the opportunity to visit both Battersea Park to witness the Formula E race and Silverstone, for practice day of the British Grand Prix. In both cases I spent the day wandering the spectator enclosures, rubbing shoulders with true enthusiasts: folk who had widely differing experiences but who were all united by a passion for racing.

Inevitably, Formula E at Battersea was an adventure into the unknown – not only because I hadn’t seen anything like the cars before, nor had I seen anything like the track through the park before. Initially, I have to say I was impressed. Arriving on public transport, walking over a bridge into the centre area; it reminded me more of the atmosphere of the London Olympics than a motor race. The raceday programme was a curate’s egg affair: only £8, printed on environmentally-friendly re-cycled paper, reasonably interesting articles (including one about previous races in London, at Crystal Palace), some good pictures, but no proper entry list. True, there was a full page description of each driver, but no entry list on a single page that you could have open as the cars went past.

Who was that in car number 21? Black, red and silver: yellow helmet? Er… look through the pages, find Mahindra Racing (oh, that's really Carlin)... aha! Bingo – Bruno Senna! It wasn’t helped by the fact that the PA commentator (not sure who he was) wouldn’t refer to the car numbers when talking about the cars either – it was all Nelson Piquet this and Loïc Duval that. And although we had paid for “Silver” tickets, the view of the track was rather limited: cars flashing between trees, and no big screen to see the rest of the action.

Another note to the commentator, you need to establish how much of your audience can actually see a screen before you say “you can see the damage on Chandhok’s car!” No I can’t – I need you to describe it to me!

I knew before I set off that there wasn’t much of a support programme, so the fact that there was a lot of hanging about with nothing to do came as no real surprise. Merchandising and fan areas were nicely laid out though – in very much more of a village fair way than one usually gets at a race meeting. What I found particularly annoying was the loud, modern music which was played through the sound system during the lead-up to the race. I’m probably being old-fashioned though – many of my fellow-spectators seemed to be enjoying it and dancing away the hours before the race.

But here the commentator let us down again: the build-up to the start, with cars obviously on the grid and drivers preparing themselves was not described at all. That increasing tension before the race was not communicated to the crowd at all: surely an opportunity missed. Once the race was underway, though, I have to say the atmosphere in the stand changed – and it was a real treat to watch the cars at close quarters, even if it was through a veil of trees.

Sam Bird was particularly impressive (I was there on the Saturday and was pleased he won Sunday’s race), and generally the racing was what racing should be. Only, if I may be allowed one final gripe: I would have far preferred to not have had to listen to an accompaniment of background music for the entire race. I know the cars are quiet, but actually being able to listen to them would have been nice…

What I found particularly pleasant, was being able to leave the venue at the end of the race (around 5pm), walk to the station and be home in less than an hour.

Silverstone, the following week, seemed initially to have slipped back into all its bad habits with traffic. I’ll admit I may have timed it badly, arriving at the traffic jam at the Green Man on the A43 at 10am on Friday, (Practice Day), but I did not expect to spend more than an hour to get from there to the circuit entrance. Traffic management was chaotic, I’m afraid.

However, once safely inside, Silverstone was at its best. The sun shone, the grass was green and everyone seemed in a good mood. When I mentioned to someone about traffic problems, he said that he had had no problems at all: arriving a little later, as he had, seemed to have done the trick.

The raceday programme was expensive – £15 – but at least included the traditional insert, with entry lists for all the support races as well as the GP itself, spaces to fill in grid positions, etc. Of course Formula 1 cars are too important to have numbers on the side (except for the Saubers), so knowing that the Hamilton and Rosberg were 44 and 6 was of little use. What was useful was the PA commentator telling us that the first-named driver had a black camera mount above the driver’s head; the other driver having a yellow one. Knowledge of that might have saved the crowd giving a resounding cheer to Fernando Alonso as he brought the McLaren-Honda round on one lap!

Although the two weekends were very different from one another in many ways, there were many similarities too – not least in that typical British weather at both venues meant shorts, suncream and umbrellas were all required. I would be interested to know how many people actually attended both events, how many of those at either event were attending their first-ever motorsport event, and how many will be inspired by their experience to come back.

I have always been of the opinion that witnessing motorsport (in fact witnessing anything first hand) is better than watching it on a screen from afar – even if the actual view might be better on TV, nothing compares to actually “being there”. But to make it worthwhile to be there, the event has to motivate the public in order to make people undertake the effort of paying the cost and going to the trouble of making the trip, rather than simply pressing a button on the TV remote control.

In that vein, it was not the technology of Formula E that attracted them to Battersea Park, it was the show; the novelty. The same is more or less true of Formula 1: regardless of the noise, the quality of the racing or whatever, it is the fact that it is the British Grand Prix that draws people to Silverstone every July, no matter what the weather does.

What about you? Were you there? Did you have fun? Will you go again? Answers below!

What's happening at Audi?

It is no secret that I like Audi. I like their road cars (indeed I own one), I enjoy watching them go racing and I count as friends several of their drivers and engineers, not to mention Martyn and Theresa Pass, who have worked tirelessly and loyally as the PR representatives for Audi UK for many years.

Once again this year, the Audi UK Press Fleet allowed the Radio Le Mans team the use of some of their cars in which to travel to and from Le Mans - my mode of transport was a 2.0 litre turbo-diesel A4, which swallowed up not only pitlane commentator Bruce Jones, our chauffeur (‘the Baron’) Paul Tarsey and myself but also our luggage, which included a large case full of computer equipment and two boxes of books and other reference material. As the owner of the shortest legs in the crew, I sat in the back, but there was still adequate space, and although I didn’t keep track of refuelling (shame on me), as far as I remember we only needed to make one refuelling stop the whole week.

Earlier this year, I was also able to try out the new TT – the solution to rather a different problem – and had a great deal of fun. The model I drove was a 2.0 petrol-engined coupé with a six-speed manual gearbox. This delivered 230PS (227bhp), and 0-100kph in six seconds, according to the manual. The new body shape is appealing, and the driving experience – especially with the all-electronic LCD screen dash – extremely good. I’ve read some reviews that don’t like having the satellite navigation positioned in front of the driver rather than in the centre console, but for me it worked fine (I don’t need my passenger contributing to navigational decisions).

The most impressive technology was the matrix LED headlights, which were bright enough to bring dozing squirrels scurrying out of the trees; but intelligent enough to dim selectively when passing cars, cyclists or other road users were around. All in all, a very fine, if somewhat expensive, car. And it would be the cost that would probably prevent me buying one. That and the fact that I don’t actually want an Audi TT. For some reason, Audi’s small sports cars don’t quite stir the soul in the same way as certain other makes do. The thought occurs that for around the same price as a TT, I could get a Lotus Elise – with all its sporting heritage, and, having owned a Lotus Elan +2S many years ago, a brand for which I have a great sentimental attachment.

Lotus was founded by Colin Chapman way back in 1952, and I was surprised to learn recently that the first Audi to go on sale to the general public in the UK, was in 1965, just fifty years ago. It is not the cause of great celebration though; the current Audi brand having grown from the “Union” of Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer in 1936. If you want to go further back, though, the original Audi company (founded by August Horch) was started in 1910, eighteen years before Chapman was even born, so maybe my sense of sporting heritage is misplaced.

In 1965, though, the pioneering, four-stroke Audi F103 went on sale in the UK, and 32 examples were sold in that first year. (In case you’re wondering, the F102 was a two-stroke DKW.) This year, Audi sold its two-millionth car and has 51 different models for prospective buyers to choose from. For all its heritage, Lotus can’t match that.

In my view, what Audi does well (apart from the R8, which is simply astonishing), are big powerful saloons and estate cars. I have thoroughly enjoyed time that I have been lucky enough to spend in the S4, RS4, RS5 and S6. The combination of the ability to absorb luggage passengers and cover plenty of miles at impressive average speeds with technology at the fingertips and comfort in abundance is unparalleled.

The other thing that Audi does well, of course, is to win Le Mans – a feat that eluded them this year, but it was some of the detail from that which was the original intention of this article.

In terms of average lap times, there was very little to choose between Audi and Porsche. Porsche though brought two cars to the flag with only the merest whisper of a problem – some bodywork damage and a drive-through penalty.

All three Audis had – by their own high standards – significant problems. First was Loïc Duval’s encounter with slow-travelling GT cars when he was accelerating out of a slow zone; or more to the point the encounter with the barriers that came immediately after he took evasive action. That put the number 8 car a lap down. Then there were rear bodywork failures which led to Marcel Fässler spending nearly seven minutes in the pits having repairs made to the no. 7 car. Finally, the third-string R18 e-tron quattro, which for a while looked like the car most likely to take the fight to the Zuffenhausen-built cars, had problems with the hybrid system, which eventually led to the need to replace a front corner of the car, and costing more than a quarter of an hour.

Had Audi been able to deliver better reliability, they still might not have won the race of course, but they certainly would have enlivened the last six hours, as they would have been able to prevent Porsche from taking things quite so easily and potentially putting extra strain on their rival’s cars.

There will be many a post mortem meeting back at Ingolstadt – indeed there has already been a major investigation into a problem with the electronic engine seals on the no. 7 car that scrutineers uncovered following the warm-up session on the morning of the race. Due to a (manual) handling error on the seals, they were not able to be read: not by the official FIA/WEC reader, nor by Audi’s own equipment. Audi Sport Team Joest, having been found guilty of swapping the positions of the seals, admitted the fault on their side in a hearing held more than a week after Le Mans in Paris. The outcome is that the team has been fined €50,000 and deemed to have used four out of the five engines that they are allowed to use in the season. Lotterer, Fässler and Tréluyer will thus have to complete the remaining five races of the season with only one new engine – although the two engines used so far at Silverstone, Spa and Le Mans are available, if there is enough life left in them. Fortunately, Audi is famous for welcoming challenges!

Anyway, here’s the driver data from the three cars:

Car No.	Driver	Average Lap Time	Laps Completed
7	André Lotterer	3m 20.412s	132
	Benoît Tréluyer	3m 20.421s	146
	Marcel Fässler	3m 20.786s	115
8	Loïc Duval	3m 21.767s	124
	Lucas di Grassi	3m 20.363s	161
	Oliver Jarvis	3m 21.175s	107
9	Marco Bonanomi	3m 22.317s	126
	Felipe Albuquerque	3m 21.306s	154
	René Rast	3m 22.070s	107

Nissan at Le Mans - a little more detail

Back in January, I have to admit that I was eagerly anticipating Nissan’s arrival in the 2015 World Endurance Championship, in particular because it represented the arrival of a fourth manufacturer in the LMP1 class at Le Mans. For several years, Nissan had been a successful supplier of engines to LMP2 teams and as their numerical domination of the category became clear, the marketing folk began to grasp the opportunities of motor-sporting success, and rumours of an entry into the top category began to circulate.

Simultaneously, the Nissan GTR Nismo started to make its presence felt in GT3 racing, particularly in the Blancpain Series; in the 24-hour races at Spa, the Nürburgring and of course at the Bathurst 12 hours, where Katsumasa Chiyo, Wolfgang Reip and Florian Strauss brought the car its first major endurance win at the beginning of this year.

Then there was the growth of the Nissan GT Academy scheme, bringing new drivers into the sport from their armchairs and Playstation consoles – whether purely on altruistic grounds or as a marketing exercise, it doesn’t really matter: the fact remains that it was a success.

Meanwhile, there was the DeltaWing and its successor, the ZEOD RC, which were not necessarily blessed with success on the track at Le Mans, but which undoubtedly captured the imagination of the public. I am told that the Nissan brand-awareness generated by the DeltaWing at Le Mans in 2012 was second only to that of the winning Audi; not only surpassing that of Chevrolet and Aston Martin in the GT class, but also of Japanese rival Toyota.

Then there was the marketing. Not only was it up-beat, but it was also open and, it seemed, honest; driven to a large degree by the infectious enthusiasm of Global Motorsport director Darren Cox. When news of the car’s unusual front-engine, front-wheel-drive configuration broke, I was intrigued. The diversity of Le Mans would surely be enhanced by this.

First pictures of the car were equally intriguing: I understood that the downforce was supposed to be generated at the front, but the proximity of the cockpit to the rear wing would surely disrupt airflow and I began to find those who criticised the concept just as convincing as those who justified it. Of course it was a disappointment when delays to the project were announced, especially when it became apparent that the car would not race at either of the first two rounds of the WEC.

The disappointment turned to alarm as rumours began to surface that the drivers were not happy with the car either. Marc Gené’s decision to step down from driving duties at Le Mans, and the fact that, at the Test Day, some of the drivers did their qualifying laps in Ginetta LMP3 cars all added to a sense that the claim that the cars would be on the pace of a non-hybrid P1 car – or even on the pace of 2013 P1 cars – seemed to be more than a touch optimistic.

Despite all this though, the three cars arrived, and although none of them achieved the minimum qualification time, they all started the race. With the race underway, the lap times were consistent – at around 10% slower than those of the leading Porsches and Audis.

Inevitably, the cars spent a lot of time in the pits; only one of them was still around at the chequered flag, and it was unclassified, having spent nearly eight hours in the pits, covering just 61% of the number of laps completed by the winning Porsche.

Nevertheless, I think it is still worth looking at some of the detail, for with the focus on the battle for overall honours, it may get missed otherwise.

Car No.	Drivers	Qualifying Best	Race Best	Laps	Race Ave. Lap Time
21	Ordoñez/Shulzhitskiy/Matsuda	3m 38.691s	3m 37.863s	115	3m 40.362s
22	Tincknell/Krumm/Buncombe	3m 36.995s	3m 35.888s	242	3m 38.745s
23	Mardenborough/Chilton/Pla	3m 37.291s	3m 36.525s	234	3m 38.848s

In my view, all the drivers are heroes, and the following is neither to condemn nor to criticise: they all deserve nothing but praise. All I am doing is recording their performances:

Car No.	Driver	Average Lap Time	Laps Completed	Longest Stint (Green)
21	Lucas Ordoñez	3m 42.660s	37	12
	Mark Shulzhitskiy	3m 40.653s	45	12
	Tsugio Matsuda	3m 39.396s	33	12
22	Harry Tincknell	3m 38.387s	88	11
	Michael Krumm	3m 39.434s	95	12
	Alex Buncombe	3m 38.565s	59	12
23	Jann Mardenborough	3m 38.579s	87	12
	Max Chilton	3m 39.924s	72	12
	Olivier Pla	3m 38.339s	75	12

Some readers may remember that following last year’s Le Mans 24-hour race, I gave a complete run-down of the average lap time of each driver in the LMP2 category (it’s here, if you want to look back). It should therefore come as no surprise that those members of the Nissan LMP1 driving squad who were driving LMP2 cars last year are roughly in the same positions in this chart. What perhaps is more noteworthy is the fact that four of the top ten LMP2 drivers last year were in the GTR-LM Nismo this year; and under the circumstances, gave a good account of themselves.

It will not have escaped their attention though that they were lapping no faster this year than they did in 2014 at the wheel of their P2 cars. The entire team must now regroup. There are still five rounds of this year’s World Endurance Championship remaining and while the cars cannot be expected to be contenders for overall victory in the 2016 Le Mans 24 hours, they must at least be in the hunt... and that means finding at least twenty seconds per lap.

A few details from the Silverstone Six Hours

The Silverstone Six hours was, for many, one of the best races ever in the World Endurance Championship: afterwards some were saying it was the best race they’d seen. Due to a family holiday, I wasn’t even there; but I did follow along with what was happening, and I would agree that it was an outstanding example of endurance racing in the current age.

In 2014, the WEC served up some splendid racing, but a combination of stability in technical regulations, a year’s worth of experience and development from the three leading LMP1 manufacturers and a few minor tweaks to the sporting procedures and the opening round of the 2015 season had action to keep everyone on their toes throughout the six hours.

It is a credit to the team behind the technical regulations that three very different configurations of car, one from each of the manufacturers, should end up in the top three finishing positions, separated by less than 15 seconds at the chequered flag.

That’s a percentage difference of less than 0.07%. The winning margin represents a difference of just over 0.02s per lap over the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. If you want to make the comparison (and perhaps you shouldn’t) that is less than the difference between Hamilton and Rosberg, in identical F1 Mercedes. Consider this: each of Porsche, Audi and Toyota have different types of hybrid systems, different size of engine and even a different number of cylinders in their solutions to the best way to go racing.

Inevitably, though, you can break it down differently, and then, as I shall demonstrate, there are some bigger differences to be seen. A good way of analysing the outright pace of each car is to look at the best 20% of the laps completed under full green conditions and here are the results for the top six LMP1 cars.

No.	Car	Drivers	Lap time
8	Audi	Di Grassi/Duval/Jarvis	1m 42.173s
7	Audi	Tréluyer/Fässler/Lotterer	1m 42.264s
17	Porsche	Webber	1m 42.301s
18	Porsche	Dumas/Lieb/Jani	1m 42.576s
1	Toyota	Buemi/Davidson/Nakajima	1m 42.975s
2	Toyota	Wurz/Conway/Sarrazin	1m 43.356s

It is interesting - and I must admit reassuring - that this clear pecking order is what I predicted following the Prologue at Paul Ricard last month. Whether this is a pattern that will change as the season progresses, remains to be seen.

Let us now take a look in a little more detail at the contributions of the individual drivers of the first three cars past the chequered flag and the stints that they completed, as here, as in so much else, different strategies are at play.

One of the ‘tweaks’ in the regulations referred to above limits teams to six sets of tyres per car for qualifying and the race (at least at Silverstone and Spa). This means that, at best, one set of tyres has to be used for a double stint: furthermore the tyres used in qualifying have to be used again, unless two sets of tyres are used for double stints. (This latter strategy is not necessarily impossible, and I believe was tried by at least one team at Silverstone.)

The following three tables show the race strategies employed by each of the podium finishers:

No. 7 - Audi R18 e-tron quattro

Stint	Driver	Laps	Average Lap time
1	Benoît Tréluyer	24	1m 44.040s
2	Benoît Tréluyer	28	1m 43.367s
3	Marcel Fässler	28	1m 44.630s
4	André Lotterer	28	1m 43.162s
5	André Lotterer	28	1m 43.688s
6	André Lotterer	28	1m 43.806s
7	Marcel Fässler	28	1m 43.478s
8	Marcel Fässler	1	N/A
9	Marcel Fässler	8	1m 44.156s

No. 18 - Porsche 919 Hybrid

Stint	Driver	Laps	Average Lap time
1	Romain Dumas	24	1m 43.943s
2	Marc Lieb	29	1m 44.442s
3	Neel Jani	29	1m 44.587s
4	Romain Dumas	30	1m 44.188s
5	Marc Lieb	30	1m 44.351s
6	Neel Jani	30	1m 44.171s
7	Neel Jani	29	1m 43.535s

No. 1 - Toyota TS040 HYBRID

Stint	Driver	Laps	Average Lap time
1	Sébastien Buemi	23	1m 44.167s
2	Sébastien Buemi	28	1m 44.825s
3	Anthony Davidson	28	1m 44.236s
4	Anthony Davidson	28	1m 44.158s
5	Kazuki Nakajima	28	1m 44.240s
6	Kazuki Nakajima	28	1m 44.359s
7	Sébastien Buemi	26	1m 43.857s
8	Sébastien Buemi	12	1m 44.001s

I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions - compare the lap times of your favourite drivers and see how they did. Certainly no-one disgraced themselves, but the differences are considerably more than 0.02s per lap. The fastest stint in the race, though, was not done by any of the drivers shown above; in fact it was by Oliver Jarvis, in the no. 8 Audi. In his second stint, after the car had lost time in the pits having damage repaired, he put in a 28-lap stint with an average lap time of 1m 43.137s. Earlier in the race, Lucas Di Grassi had also done a (slightly shorter) stint in 1m 43.180s, discounting the effect of the second full course yellow. Only André Lotterer’s first stint (see above, 1m 43.162s) is comparable.

It seems too that the track might have been improving towards the end of the race - in any event, it is impressive that all of the top three cars were going faster at the end of the race than they did at the start. Not much sign of wear and tear over six hours - I wonder what will happen over twenty-four?

But first, Spa-Francorchamps. Will the pecking order be maintained? Will the need to score points in the WEC outweigh the desire to test components ahead of Le Mans? Will there be special Le Mans ‘low-downforce’ aero trim in evidence? What will the weather do?

It’s a tantalising prospect...