The truth is important

In the novel “Life of Pi”, a story is told of a boy who survives a shipwreck and then shares a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.

Towards the end of the book, the possibility is raised that the tale is not true, and Yann Martel, the author, offers an alternative version, which may or may not be more believable, but which doesn’t involve any animals, exotic or otherwise. In the end, the reader is left with the dilemma of deciding for himself which makes the better story. Since it is a novel, and makes no pretence to be a record of history, I see no problem in any of it – indeed I count it among the better novels I have read, raising some interesting philosophical ideas.

History is different though. It is said that the difference between Herodotus (born circa 484 BC) and Thucydides (born 20 years later) is that only with the latter did history (as a subject) emerge from storytelling to become a truth-telling activity.

In this modern age, we might expect it to be easier to get at, preserve and report the truth. Well, yes, but that is to ignore the fact that people do not always tell the truth. Stories sometimes get embellished, and facts, sometimes, are the casualties.

At Creventic’s COTA 24 hours recently, we had the occasion to celebrate Jim Briody’s 100th 24-hour race. There was a big piece in the race magazine, and as well Cor Euser (for whose team Briody was driving) made a big banner across the pit, and a big celebration and fuss was made. Jim’s wife Pat had been in touch with venerable record-keeper and historian János Wimpffen, in order to chronicle the races. However, before the race, I received an email from János to advise that the real number of 24-hour races that Jim had contested was actually around 82, rather than the 100 that Jim and Pat were claiming.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, goes the old proverb, often raised in journalistic quarters, and I must admit that it did not seem apposite, in Texas, to rain on Jim’s parade. And in any case, competing in your 82nd 24-hour race, at the age of 75, is a worthy achievement indeed. But just in case anyone does ask Google “Who has made 100 24-hour race starts?” the answer isn’t Jim Briody.

I felt the same thing while watching the Le Mans ’66 film recently. It was certainly a good film, and I was delighted to see that Ken Miles’ efforts in the development of the Mk II GT40 were justly recognised, even if those of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme were somewhat overlooked. However, what spoiled it for me was the film’s willingness to play fast and loose with the facts. I don’t think I need to pick holes here, or bring your attention to what actually happened: all I would suggest is that you get hold of A. J. Baime’s book “Go Like Hell”, and compare it to the screenplay of the film.

The original Le Mans film (the one with Steve McQueen) made no pretence to tell a true story – nor for that matter did the John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix. But unquestionably both provided a sublime portrayal of the reality of racing (as well as a bit of glamour). But the more recent glut of motor-racing films – I’m thinking particularly of Senna, Rush and Le Mans ‘66 – have had an air of documentary authenticity about them and with that comes a responsibility to tell the truth. Misrepresenting the facts merely puts the rest of the story into jeopardy: where do you stop believing it?

There are some stories that have become the stuff of legend: the reason that Mercedes’ cars were silver rather than white in the 1930’s; the story of Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt’s win at Le Mans while hungover in 1953; Ed Hugus driving (or not) the winning Ferrari at Le Mans in 1965; right up to Hunt and Lauda’s rivalry in 1976. Often, the stories are better than the historical fact, so it is hardly surprising that they gain traction.

Motor racing is not alone in having its legends and myths, of course. Not just Hollywood, but many a respectable book-shelf is littered with examples of embellishment, exaggeration and downright fiction masquerading as fact. But history can be a very dry subject if not lubricated by a larger-than-life character or a tall story.

Yet still I am drawn by the need to seek out the truth of a situation; a desire to understand the motives, context and perspective rather than to hear glib sound-bites or watch a 20-second video clip. I am afraid that I believe that it is just as important to want to know – or find out – the historical facts as it is to be able to recount a good story. That is what distinguishes a good story-teller from a good historian. No doubt the former can win more friends; it is an unfortunate consequence that it is also the former that influences more people.

The Silverstone Experience

I had the chance recently to visit the newly-opened “Silverstone Experience”, and I have to say that I was suitably impressed. It is a project that has been a long time in gestation: having originally been conceived back in 2012, via a public announcement in 2016, the original opening was scheduled for October 2018, but various delays – including building contractors going into administration – meant that the £20m venture was finally opened at the end of October this year.

The project has benefited from funding from the National Lottery Heritage fund, and is housed in the only remaining genuine WWII hangar from the time of Silverstone’s foundation as a wartime aerodrome. I will admit that my expectations were not sky-high. Museums come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and having been to a number of car museums in my time, I was not convinced that the Silverstone Experience would occupy my attention, educate or entertain me. In fact it did all three.

I won’t spoil your trip by providing any ‘spoilers’ here – although if you want to know exactly what to expect then the website provides a virtual tour and lots of information to guide your visit. Like all the best events, the Silverstone Experience begins with a pre-show and ends with a highlight cinematic “Ultimate Lap”. In between, there are exhibits from all eras of Silverstone’s history – even from before Silverstone itself (whether as race circuit or RAF airfield) existed.

What I particularly liked was the way in which the exhibition finds things that will appeal to everyone. Even folk with no real interest in racing will find something of interest. There are lots of interactive elements to the exhibits, whether that be in the form of levers to pull or buttons to press, and I guarantee that even the most died-in-the-wool Silverstone aficionado will learn something new.

There was always a danger with making a hangar into an exhibition space that it would end up with the look and feel of Ikea, but that trap has been successfully avoided – it is the kind of space where you wander about, attention being grabbed by something in one direction and then falling back to go an alternative route to cover the other areas. And it bears repetition, there are a lot of facets to this exhibition.

Publicity material for the Experience suggests that it is a two-and-a-half-hour tour. However, when I went, it was relatively quiet and one was not curated around the venue or told what to do or see, or how long to linger (looking at an Audi R18 e-tron quattro, for example). However, I am told that if, or should that be when, the exhibition becomes busy, visitors will be required to move through the exhibition in a prescribed time. That would be a shame, in my view, as to fully get everything that the exhibition has to offer could easily eat into more than 150 minutes.

Inevitably, the Experience offers a gift shop, with all the usual sorts of trinkets, but there is a cafeteria as well, which I did not try. The intention is clearly for the Silverstone Experience to become a reason for making a trip to Silverstone even when there is no racing on, and I am sure that the estimates of half-a-million visitors a year depend on people making a special trip. It will also depend on the organisers’ ability to change the exhibits around. Museum CEO Sally Reynolds says that, with willing donors and the BRDC archive to draw upon, there is no reason for visitors to see the same things on show on subsequent visits. The plan is clearly to make regular changes to many of the cars on display.

At £25 for entry for an adult, it is not cheap – however, a visit to the aforementioned website: www.silverstone-experience.co.uk will provide various discounts and offers, of which I would heartily recommend that you take advantage.

The COTA 24 hours.

It’s a funny race, the COTA 24 hours. Among the various 24-races that Creventic runs, and of the other 24-hour races that I attend over the course of the year, it is unique; in that it has an “intervention break”, during which the cars are placed in parc fermé conditions on the start-finish straight for the duration of the night. For the second part of the race, which started this year at eight in the morning on Sunday, the cars are lined up in grid formation in the order in which they finished part one, but with the number of laps already completed in part one added to the number of laps that the cars cover in part two.

The entry for this year’s race was slightly down on numbers, with just 29 cars taking the start, compared to 34 last year, or 41 the year before. In the race for overall victory, it was going to be a tall order indeed for anyone to beat the Black Falcon Mercedes of Jeroen Bleekemolen, Felipe Fraga, Ben Keating and Cooper MacNeil and so it turned out in reality. After the eleven hours of part one, the WeatherTech-sponsored car had completed 278 laps, and was a lap ahead of the nearest competition. There were only two cars within five laps of the Black Falcon car – Toksport’s similar Mercedes AMG GT3 and the ever-efficient Herberth crew in their Porsche 911 GT3-II.

In the second, fourteen-hour segment of the race, the Toksport car fell down the order with suspension maladies, leaving the chase to Herberth, but Robert and Alfred Renauer, ably assisted by Ralf Bohn and Daniel Alleman (winners in 2017) had neither the pace, nor the luck of the Code-60 periods, to represent any kind of threat.

Undoubtedly it was a great team effort by everyone on the Black Falcon crew, and congratulations are due to all concerned, to team manager Sean Paul Breslin, to race engineer Renaud Dufour and to all the mechanics, but inevitably, the attention is focussed on the drivers – after all, they are the ones who stood on the podium at the end of the race.

It is always interesting to examine the individual performances of the drivers – especially as there was some banter before the race about whether Jeroen Bleekemolen (ranked by Creventic as a PRO) was really quicker than Felipe Fraga (who is a Semi-Pro).

Analyses of this type are always fraught with danger, since unquestionably the pace slowed towards the end of the race as the lead of the Mercedes was pretty unassailable. But here, for what it is worth, is the data for each stint of the winning Black Falcon car:

Stint	Driver	Driving Time	Average	Best	Theoretical
1	Felipe Fraga	1h 06m 51.479s	2m 09.388s	2m 07.160s	2m 06.774s
2	Jeroen Bleekemolen	1h 24m 33.042s	2m 09.952s	2m 08.676s	2m 08.126s
3	Ben Keating	1h 10m 21.185s	2m 11.938s	2m 10.816s	2m 09.389s
4	Cooper MacNeil	1h 09m 12.944s	2m 12.622s	2m 10.947s	2m 10.669s
5	Felipe Fraga	1h 06m 51.479s	2m 09.388s	2m 07.160s	2m 06.774s
6	Felipe Fraga	1h 06m 51.479s	2m 09.388s	2m 07.160s	2m 06.774s
7	Jeroen Bleekemolen	1h 24m 33.042s	2m 09.952s	2m 08.676s	2m 08.126s
8	Ben Keating	1h 10m 21.185s	2m 11.938s	2m 10.816s	2m 09.389s
9	Felipe Fraga	1h 06m 51.479s	2m 09.388s	2m 07.160s	2m 06.774s
10	Felipe Fraga	1h 06m 51.479s	2m 09.388s	2m 07.160s	2m 06.774s
11	Felipe Fraga	1h 06m 51.479s	2m 09.388s	2m 07.160s	2m 06.774s

INTERVENTION BREAK

Stint	Driver	Driving Time	Average	Best	Theoretical
12	Jeroen Bleekemolen	20m 06.535s	2m 07.558s	2m 07.219s	2m 06.993s
13	Jeroen Bleekemolen	47m 50.142s	2m 08.722s	2m 06.747s	2m 06.617s
14	Felipe Fraga	1h 08m 59.325s	2m 09.475s	2m 08.201s	2m 07.898s
15	Cooper MacNeil	1h 12m 16.619s	2m 11.416s	2m 09.691s	2m 09.479s
16	Jeroen Bleekemolen	1h 11m 33.830s	2m 10.201s	2m 08.454s	2m 08.269s
17	Ben Keating	1h 14m 24.108s	2m 11.314s	2m 10.115s	2m 09.449s
18	Felipe Fraga	1h 14m 12.654s	2m 10.331s	2m 09.005s	2m 08.511s
19	Jeroen Bleekemolen	54m 09.090s	2m 10.053s	2m 08.439s	2m 08.405s
20	Jeroen Bleekemolen	52m 07.434s	2m 09.916s	2m 08.369s	2m 08.120s
21	Cooper MacNeil	1h 23m 46.086s	2m 13.848s	2m 11.771s	2m 11.643s
22	Felipe Fraga	1h 14m 35.039s	2m 11.738s	2m 09.360s	2m 09.293s
23	Ben Keating	40m 34.887s	2m 17.553s	2m 13.285s	2m 12.421s

Looking at the two parts aggregated together, gives us the following:

Driver	Green Laps	Average	Best
Felipe Fraga	205	2m 08.268s	2m 07.160s
Jeroen Bleekemolen	177	2m 08.259s	2m 06.747s
Ben Keating	114	2m 10.732s	2m 10.015s
Cooper MacNeil	100	2m 09.691s	2m 10.812s

In this table “Average” means the average of the best 20% of the Green Flag laps completed in either part. I think you have to agree that there isn’t much to choose between Bleekemolen and Fraga. Next year, according the FIA, the Brazilian will move up to “Gold” category. That’s where the Dutchman already is. I can’t see that he can argue with that one!

Proper racing...

If I spent most of July and early August travelling to and from Belgium for 24-hour races, and September at Silverstone to commentate for various race meetings (International GT Open, MSVR VW FunCup, Mazda MX-5 SuperCup and the Ferrari “Corse Clienti” Festival), then October and early November were very different again.

I spent consecutive weekends commentating at the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch, followed by the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting at Silverstone. Both meetings are feasts of FF1600 entertainment – the “Festival” on the Brands Indy circuit and the Walter Hayes on Silverstone’s National circuit layout. And both are two-day extravaganzas in which the scoring of championship points can be forgotten and all-out racing is the order of the day.

For readers that are not familiar with FF1600, my only question is, why not? The concept was created in 1967 by John Webb, at Brands Hatch, as a low-cost entry formula into motorsport, initially for cars powered by 1500cc Ford Cortina engines, but swiftly uprated to the 1600cc Kent engine. The idea was that the cars would run on road tyres, and there is no doubt at all that in the first 25 years of its life it played a role in the career of virtually all racing drivers on their climb up the single-seater ladder.

For many years in the 1980’s I was lucky enough to witness the festival from the commentary box, and see such as Tommy Byrne, Johnny Herbert, Eddie Irvine and others take the winner’s trophy. Later, drivers such as Jenson Button, Anthony Davidson and Mark Webber also lifted the title. Truly it was a springboard to better things.

The Walter Hayes is a somewhat later creation; thanks entirely to the efforts and vision of James Beckett, and nowadays – arguably – attracts a stronger entry than the festival. In my view, Silverstone is a better circuit for FF1600 racing. Certainly, it is a simpler layout, which makes it easier for newcomers to learn.

When I was first involved in motor racing and attending national race meetings all over the country, one of my greatest pleasures was spotting talented young drivers progressing through the ranks. Drivers like David Coulthard, Allan McNish, Martin Brundle, to name but a few. Things are different now, but two things in particular strike me: one, that so many talented drivers are now ‘stuck’ in Formula Ford, with neither the budget to progress up the ladder, nor the profile to be picked up by the marketeers that control the sport these days. But also, looking further up the scale, outright talent behind the wheel doesn’t seem to count as much these days. A healthy wallet or a wealthy backer will far better ensure your progress as a career racing driver.

Anyway, if you have a heart for club racing in the UK, you will know that Jonathan Browne won the Formula Ford Festival and Jordan Dempsey the Walter Hayes Trophy. Both are from the Republic of Ireland, and it was great to see the enthusiastic fervour with which their countrymen greeted both winners. With Ireland also carrying off the Festival World Cup at Brands Hatch, I am surprised that Ireland is not regarded (as for example, Brazil or Finland are) as a hotbed of motor-racing talent. The reason? The economy. There’s a message there for us all, but what we do about it, I have no idea.

Immediately following the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting, I was off to Anglesey for the Race of Remembrance. Again, there may be readers that are not familiar with this event, but for this you can surely be forgiven, since this is a motor sport event like no other. First run in 2014, it has gone from strength to strength, and this year attracted 44 entries, some of which were relay teams using more than one car, but for the most part, competitors were after the “Heroes Trophy” for single-car teams.

But that is not true either, because the Race of Remembrance is not a race that people enter in order to win. Sure, racing drivers are competitive, and try to show who’s best, but it is participation in the event that is key. It is run by Mission Motorsport, the forces’ charity that aims to help rehabilitate former servicemen and women who have all manner of physical and mental disabilities. Their motto is “Race, retrain, recover”, and they do not limit themselves to getting disabled drivers into racing cars. An important part of what they do is to give people jobs around the car, in the race team, driving the truck. Step by step, the approach is to put people back on their feet.

The centrepiece of the Race of Remembrance is the Remembrance Service, held in the pit lane. Racing stops, people come to pause, reflect, remember, pray, sing some hymns and then we go racing again. Sounds simple, but you need to be there to properly experience the poignancy of the moment.

At the same time as all that was going on, the World Endurance Championship was having the third race of their 2019-20 season at Shanghai, China. A long way to go for a four-hour race, and the ACO’s “Success Handicap” was really beginning to bite. At least it was if you were Toyota. Sure enough, as many had predicted, the singleton Rebellion finally got the upper hand in terms of performance, and led the two works hybrid cars home.

When I wrote a month or so ago about the benefits of handicaps in motor sport, this was not quite what I had in mind as a formula for success. To handicap a car such that it is not able to go as fast as it is supposed to go is surely short-changing everyone? Not only the spectators, who can’t appreciate what a good car the Toyota TS050 is, but the drivers, who can only extract as much performance as the handicap allows.

What is exciting – for drivers and spectators alike – is to watch a car charging up through the field. Why can’t the handicap be imposed in such a way that Toyota has to finish the race two laps ahead, in order to win the race?

At Silverstone, in the Walter Hayes Trophy, Michael Moyers, winner for the last two years, clashed with Joey Foster (a three-time winner) in the heat, leaving both with back-of-grid starts for the “progression race”. Moyers fought back through “Progression”, “Last Chance” and “Semi-final”, to take second place at the end of the Grand Final. It was thrilling stuff. I am sure he would have won the event easily without that incident, and although it wasn’t an externally imposed handicap, it made for a great spectacle. When I spoke to him about it afterwards, he was obviously disappointed, but nevertheless he knew the extent of his achievement and took satisfaction from that.

Old-fashioned musings

I had a conversation with someone recently. It went something like this:

ME: Well, if you feel so strongly about it, you should write to your MP.

HIM: I might write a strongly-worded letter to the BBC, but not to my MP. My MP is useless.

ME: Well, you voted for him.

HIM: No I didn’t.

I should stress that the exchange was far more light-hearted than the words above might convey. No argument ensued and we swiftly moved on to other matters. But it got me thinking, as these things often do, about the way of the world these days. Our democracy involves us electing a Member of Parliament, whose job it is to represent his constituents in the House of Commons. Inevitably, therefore, there will be a number of people in each constituency – indeed, sometimes a majority – who didn’t vote for the elected candidate, but whose views that candidate is obliged (morally at least) to represent. I’m not sure that this ever happens. Certainly not these days, but I am not learned enough to know whether it ever happened, or whether it was ever thus.

The same scene is replayed across the political spectrum, whether in terms of a candidate elected to serve their constituency, or a political leader elected to lead their party – or country, come to that.

In these politically turbulent times, you may be thinking: ah, here’s Trussers going all political, or that you are about to see my Brexit colours nailed to a mast. Well, sorry to disappoint, but if you think that’s about to happen, then perhaps you don’t know me as well as you thought.

Those who know me well will know that I use this blog sometimes to comment on the culture of the day, but with particular regard to motorsport, not politics. It may be that it is impossible to disentangle politics from anything these days, but in any case, it does seem to me that the rules of the game have changed.

Motorsport News may no longer have a letters page, but in general, journalism and broadcasting are no longer one-way streets. When I was growing up, whether I was watching motor sport on TV (very rare), going to Brands Hatch, Silverstone or Crystal Palace (more commonly) or reading about it in newspapers and magazines, I did not feel compelled to interact with anyone. Admittedly, a PA commentator once irritated me to the extent that I wrote to him, but it was an effort (bashed out on an old type-writer I inherited from my parents) and went through several iterations before I sent it off. But I tried to make it constructive, and in no way could it be described as ‘trolling’ (indeed the word didn’t exist in 1980).

Then I read recently that Autosport magazine is to cease publishing its magazine and rather will concentrate on its online offerings. Bizarrely, then, a clarification in the magazine itself revealed that the magazine would still be published in its traditional form, but at a price of £10.99, compared to the previous £3.99, an increase of 275%! Something rather incongruous there. I get the feeling all may not be what it seems.

Anyway, that is not my point. My point – I will get there eventually – is that the world is changing. Indeed, it has already changed and I don’t think it is going to change back. My way of thinking is now out-of-date. There, I’ve admitted it. I like books and magazines, but I am in the minority. I don’t like consuming my motorsport from a screen, I want to be at the event: whether that be behind the spectator fence or behind a microphone. I’ve been lucky this year to have spent time in the team garage, and the intensity of that feeling is even more palpable, visceral.

But when I see how many motorsports events are streamed online these days, and how often – with some notable exceptions – spectator enclosures are empty… again, I feel like I am in the minority. Look at period photos from club races in the fifties, and you will see rows and rows of spectators in the enclosures. These were unquestionably popular events – you could get close, and see, hear and feel the action. Compare that to the empty grandstand that overlooked the final round of the ELMS at Portimao last weekend.

Even if the streaming coverage is good (and frequently it isn’t), I find that I cannot experience the whole race if I am not there. And I hate being implored to “join the conversation”, to “let us know what you think”, whether I use a hashtag or not. But I think that the majority of people enjoy that aspect of it: and any resulting feeling of celebrity or notoriety.

The point is, that being in the minority is not that simple. I am not going to stand up and suggest that I am right and the rest are wrong – these are subjective matters, I recognise that. And I am prepared (grudgingly) to go along with the majority.

It just means that I might seem a bit grumpy to some. For that, I apologise. But leave me alone, I will get over it. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy motorsport, in whatever role I have. I am sure that others will enjoy their motorsport in their own way as well. That is what freedom is all about.

Since I have become dependent on it for my income, however, I understand better those who need motorsport for their livelihoods. I realise how easily passion for the sport can be compromised by commercial interests. And from there it is a short step to the self-centred, greedy motives that seem to drive the sport (and politics) into some rather strange directions.

Handicapping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit Belgium. Race. Eat. Repeat.

My last post described the busy weeks I spent traversing Europe in June, and since then I have been equally busy in July and the early part of August, spending three weekends out of five driving to and from races in Belgium. Unusually, none of these trips was to commentate – instead I was asked by three different teams to ply my trade in the pit garage, helping (in various ways) with strategy matters.

It always amazes me how many times the same faces show up at each event – drivers, engineers, technicians – I wonder how many spectators actually visit them all?

Anyway, it started with an arrangement that had been made back in February to assist DRM Motorsport at the VW FunCup 25-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps. Readers may not be aware (indeed, I wasn’t) that DRM is a pretty major player in the European VW Fun Cup, and somehow, Team Principal Matthieu de Robiano put together an ambitious plan to run twelve cars in the 2019 edition of the “longest race in Europe”.

As can be imagined, the crew to run such an enterprise is extensive: mechanics, race engineers, tyre technicians, physiotherapists and catering staff. I don’t know exactly how many people were there for the team, but just consider that we had more than fifty drivers to cater for, and most of them had at least one (usually several more) family members along as well.

We were assigned four adjoining garages in the F1 pit lane: three garages for the cars (four in each); the fourth as a lounge/seating/spectating area for team VIPs and guests. Another factor to be considered was the “Bi-place” (i.e. two-seater) car, which, unlike the normal Fun Cup car, with its central seat position, was fitted with a full-sized passenger seat. Two championship points were awarded for each passenger that was carried during the course of the race (and you weren’t allowed to count the same passenger twice, you had to find a different victim each time).

The rules for the two-seater demanded that thirty timed pit-stops be made during the 25 hours, and so of course we changed the passenger at each pit stop. But that meant as well having thirty-one passengers (in addition to the fifty drivers) lined up, suited and booted, at the right time and in the right place. All things considered, we did quite well – I thought – to get thirty of them into the car, and a second-in-class result (as well as top points at the six and twelve-hour points in the race).

The one exception was a gentleman whose girth hadn’t been properly checked beforehand, and despite the team’s best efforts, he couldn’t be squeezed into the seat alongside its driver. Two championship points lost, but still we came out of the weekend leading the Bi-place standings.

The other eleven DRM Motorsport cars were single-seat “EVO 3” cars, which in some ways were more straightforward to run. There was no restriction on pit stops – the strategy was merely to go as far on each stint as the fuel would allow. No problem there, except that the Fun Cup car has no fuel gauge, nor telemetry to tell you how much fuel is being used. So it has to be done based purely on consumption calculations. Refuelling took place at the circuit’s Total fuel station in the paddock, and every visit to the fuel station had to be at least five minutes, regardless of how much fuel went in. Driver changes (in front of the pit box) had to be done as quickly as possible, and the whole race could be completed on two sets of tyres, so tyre changes were something of a rarity, thankfully.

Radio communication with the driver was allowed, but the coverage was rather patchy, which meant a couple of rather close calls on those occasions when the driver failed to hear the instruction to stop. There were also some challenging language issues on occasions. Each of the 12 cars had its own race engineer, who were from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, England and any other country I might have missed. We had one car crewed entirely by Mexicans, another was an all-Chilean team, and other cars had other mixtures of both language and culture. Adam Christodoulou was a late call-up to replace an indisposed Wolfgang Reip in one car, while Nico Verdonck and Maxime Martin shared the driving of another car.

In the end, some lucky safety car breaks meant that our best-placed car finished fourth overall (just 13s off a podium place). Even though we didn’t manage to bring home any silverware for the overall positions, the team managed to get all twelve cars across the line and classified at the end of the race.

Less than a fortnight later, I was back at Spa, for the Blancpain Endurance Series 24-hour race. This time, I was working with Barwell Motorsport, who were running a Silver Cup class Lamborghini Huracan EVO for James Pull, Jordan Witt and Sandy Mitchell, and an identical car in the AM class for Adrain Amstutz, Leo Machitski, Patrick Kujala and Richard Abra.

I suppose it was inevitable, given the much higher profile of the Spa 24 hours, that this would be an altogether more intense experience that the Fun Cup. My role with Barwell was described as ‘strategy support’, which meant that the race engineers for both the no. 77 (AM) and the no. 78 (Silver) cars would decide what to do with pit stop calls, etc., but that I would be on hand to help out if things were not clear-cut. The trick with such things though, is to work out before the race what the best course of action will be in each scenario. It is better to be prepared for every eventuality, rather than having to decide ‘on the fly’ what to do under a certain set of circumstances.

As a result, a lot of time was spent, leading up to the race, looking at “what to do when”-type of questions. It was time well-spent though, because, come the race, most of the decisions had already been made, so it was just a matter of execution. Except that the rain became so bad just after half-distance that the race had to be stopped.

For a long time, it wasn’t at all clear how long the stoppage was going to be. The rain certainly eased off from time to time, but most forecasts suggested that more rain was on the way, although most agreed that the Sunday afternoon would be dry – at least drier. So, for the AM car, we spent a lot of time drawing up potential driving schedules to get us to the end of the race. But as each hour went past, it was an hour that we didn’t have to put a driver in the car for, and thus provided some more driving time for the faster drivers, whose time at the wheel was limited to six hours.

Things were simpler for the Silver Cup car, whose three drivers were able, more or less, to return the same lap times, so it was not so much of an issue – they would just cycle through in the normal order.

Finally, the race got underway again at 11:30am, leaving five hours’ racing to go. Sandy Mitchell, in the no. 78 Silver car revelled in the conditions, and asserted the cars’ position at the top of the class standings. Things were not as good for the AM car, in which neither of the AM drivers really enjoyed driving the car in the damp conditions. It was a typical Spa case of the track not really being dry enough for slick tyres, and although both Richard Abra and Patrick Kujala were able to get the best out of the Lamborghini, they ran out of drive-time, and our two AM drivers were not able to match the pace of the Rinaldi Racing Ferrari.

Second in class, and enough championship points (following a top score at the six and twelve hour intervals) to ensure that the AM drivers’ championship was won, along with a class win in the Silver Cup Class meant that there was a good deal of SRO silverware to be collected up from the podium. The celebratory curry for the whole team after the race was well-deserved.

It was a rather strange set of circumstances that led to me be asked again to Belgium for yet another 24-hour race two weeks later – this time for the Zolder 24-hours. I had been asked to the race to demonstrate the HH Timing software to Belgium Racing, a multiple winner of the race, but who would have to struggle this year with their GT class Porsche against a host of CN-class Norma prototypes. A second team, Redant Racing, were sharing the technology with Belgium Racing, so I ended up demonstrating the software to both teams.

Now, although HH Timing is strategy software, it will not make the strategy decisions for you. It merely gives you the tools to make those decisions yourself. So, come the race, it ended up coming back to me to decide whether or not to pit, particularly when Full Course Yellow or Safety Car periods came into play.

Inevitably, such decisions often involve an element of risk, and on top of that, all the clever strategy in the world cannot help you deal with things like brake wear – in the end we needed two changes of disks and pads. The pit crew were amazing, completing the second change in under two minutes. The driving crew of Louis Machiels, Dylan Derdaele, Nicolas Saelens, Marc Goossens and Lars Kern kept up a great pace, (particularly the latter two), and we managed to bring the car home in second place overall (and class winners) behind a Norma that was three seconds a lap quicker, took 40 litres less fuel at each stop and could double-stint its tyres.

At the end of the race, as I made my way back through the paddock to my car, I met Lars Kern as he returned from the podium celebration. “I’m not sure whether to be pleased with the class win, or disappointed that we only finished second,” I said. “I thought we could have won.”

“You have to be disappointed,” was his reply. “Always you have to try to win… and I have never won a 24-hour race!” Having experienced – and, I would like to think, contributed to – a fourth and a second place overall, had two class wins and two class podiums in the three races, I know what he means. Winning is important. And although I am not likely to give up commentary any time soon, nor am I going to give up getting involved with teams and trying to share in that winning feeling.