Because I am a proper professional, the second real post of this blog is a rushed job for a race that happened over a month ago. As I alluded to in the opening of the 4 Hours race is that the blog was inspired by a couple of thoughts that I'd put together for a podcast and had no time to properly express. Unfortunately, somebody decided to ask for my opinions on the WEC races at Silverstone and Spa and it occurred to me that I hadn't written them down anywhere.
One of the unfortunate things about writing about WEC is that I have no way of knowing if the data that gets published for the two most popular classes means a thing. In the case of LMP1, the only conclusion about comparative pace that can reasonably drawn is the between the Rebellion Racing drivers.
At Silverstone, far and away the fastest car in the field was the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid until it came together with the #86 Gulf Racing entered Porsche 911 RSR. All three of its stints were at least 0.3 seconds/lap quicker than the second fastest car. For the first two stints, that was the #7 Audi, but it was the #2 Porsche in the third. The #8 Audi was close until it ran into the electrical problems that soon ended its race. The Toyotas were a second off the pace for most of the race until Mike Conway popped in a lap at the very end of his second stint in the car that was 0.3 seconds off of the fastest lap of the race. The TS050s were the fastest cars in a straight line and were running a lower downforce package than the other two factory efforts, which is not encouraging for their championship hopes but very encouraging for Le Mans.
Rebellion continued their run of being faster than Bykolles, both dangerously close to LMP2 pace. The star for Bykolles at Silverstone was James Rossiter, who by essentially any metric was at least a second faster than both Simon Trummer and Oliver Webb. Rossiter's first stint was the only one for the team that beat any of the Rebellion's full stints. Rossiter is the substitute driver for Pierre Kaffer (who has been elsewhere driving GT3 and some GTLM) and has no seat for Le Mans.
Alexandre Imperatori for Rebellion, meanwhile, has been following standard protocol for Swiss Rebellion drivers. With Mathias Beche now at Thiriet by TDS and the only other Swiss driver on the team being the 19-year-old, silver-graded Mathéo Tuscher, Imperatori understood his task and put in the best 20% time for the privateers. Dominik Kraihamer put in their fastest stint and Nick Heidfeld the fastest lap.
Until he began racing more frequently in prototypes, it was difficult to get through a GT3 race without hearing the line, "René Rast is fast!" at least once. There's not much to that story, but he's still fast. G-Drive are in my mind the favourite to win Le Mans. The Oreca 05 is the fastest LMP2 car, René Rast is amongst the very top of the LMP2 drivers, and Roman Rusinov is one of the several silver drivers who probably ought not to be silvers. At Silverstone, Nathanaël Berthon and the fuel pump were the weakest links for G-Drive. If they can hold their car together for twenty-four hours, they are not likely to lose on pace.
Luis Felipe Derani is the other stand out so far this year. He was overshadowed by Gustavo Yacaman both in pace and in headlines for the second G-Drive entry last year, but managed to find a new ride when that squad closed shop instead of Yacaman. Once he moved to the American ESM team, Pipo almost instantly became a fan favourite. Nobody remembers that Olivier Pla was the fastest driver at Daytona, but everybody remembers Derani cutting through the field, passing DPs with ease and legging out massive gaps to the rest of the field after the rival Ligier ploughed into a GT car and then broke down later. At Silverstone, he was certainly flashy; he set the fastest lap of the race with a 1:48.909 on the second lap, the second fastest lap on lap 3, the third fastest on lap four and the fourth fastest on lap five. Rast's fastest lap was the next at a 1:49.506. The strategy was evidently to burn up the car and the tyres to build a gap for Chris Cumming, for Derani had to make his first stop after 20 laps (most made it 22 or 23). It didn't work. Cumming spun the car and gave away the advantage.
Later on, Derani struggled more as the track gained temperature and he had to run further than twenty laps. The relative uniformity of strategies in LMP2 makes comparing stints much easier. Derani finished the race for ESM, putting in the final three stints all on fresh tyres (as in the ELMS race, nobody saw a time gain in double-stinting tyres). On the first of these, he beat Berthon handily, but lost out by hundredths on average pace to Filipe Albuquerque (Albuquerque ran 26 laps to Derani's 23). For the next stint, Rast got into the G-Drive Oreca and immediately went quicker. Rast averaged a 1:51.097 over 24 laps to Derani's 1:51.258 over 23 laps. Both ran 22 laps to the end, Rast averaging a 1:51.619 to Derani's 1:51.949. Roberto Mehri in the Manor split them, incidentally, with a 1:51.747.
Why Rast was faster, who knows. Derani might have been backing off, Rast may simply be three-tenths quicker, the 05 could be proving its worth, any number of things. Pipo Derani is a very quick prototype driver and he will continue to improve as time goes on, but it's a little unfortunate that he has already become a meme in sports car racing. If and when he finally does become the best driver in prototype racing, there will be nobody left to acknowledge it because they'll all be tired of hyping him up by then.
RGR Sport by Morand won the race. None of their drivers had a particularly exciting stint. Silver graded Ricardo Gonzalez did beat Scott Sharp by half a second on average time in identical equipment during his first stint, although that was tempered by Rusinov going even faster on the second half of a double-stint on tyres. Bruno Senna ran 0.8 seconds/lap faster than anybody during his second stint (on fresh tyres), but the front runners all had their slowest driver in the car except for the #31 ESM, which had Dalziel on the second half of a double-stint. They won simply by never really going slowly during the whole race and not having any problems, which is the proper way to win an endurance race.
LMGTE Pro is an absolute mess. In GT3 racing, balance of performance works and it works well. Maybe everybody hates it, but just about every race turns out well and while certain cars work well at different places, the global uniformity (kind of) of the GT3 regulations over the ten thousand series that run GT3 cars means that the balance of performance works pretty well. If a manufacturer wants to sandbag, they have to get all of their customer teams to quit enjoying their racing and throw away points in all of the championships and whatever they win doing that probably isn't worth the loss. In theory.
That theory not only doesn't work in GTE, it doesn't exist in the first place. Two series in the world run LMGTE Pro. Customer teams exist in a very loose sense, but they are driven exclusively by professionals. IMSA races are generally ignored by the public at large when reckoning what they think the FIA/ACO ought to do in balancing Le Mans because IMSA races are held primarily on strange tracks and with a host of safety cars.
There are four manufacturers in LMGTE Pro in WEC. Aston Martin are in a transition year. They are running Dunlop tyres after years of running Michelins like every other factory Pro entry. Porsche are in a transition year. They completely axed their factory GT campaign on the world stage, leaving a single Proton Competition entry with Patrick Dempsey's backing as their Pro effort. They have a completely new car this year like everybody else, but unlike everybody else, their brand new car is still in testing and they're only running relative minor updates to last year's car. Ford are in a transition year. They're getting used to actually racing competitively on an international stage, which they don't usually do. As usual, they made somebody else build and run their car for them, but it's a step forward.
Ferrari are not in a transition year. They do have the brand new 488, but it worked perfectly as soon as they tried it out. They are the only team who have brought a factory effort that had everything together. They are the only team who don't seem to need to be running test sessions during the season itself. AF Corse is also probably the only team in WEC that would see Toni Vilander as a liability to its efforts.
Something else to keep in mind when assessing the BoP in WEC is that Ford's factory effort is being run by Chip Ganassi. Ganassi won the Grand-Am championship four years out of five using Memo Rojas's money, Scott Pruett's speed, and a second place in the Roar. Naturally, the year Bob Stallings beat Ganassi with the Pruett/Rojas combination was the one year Ganassi was quickest in testing. The team got better and better as the years went on; in 2012, they ran 6th fastest during the Roar and then won their third straight title, although it required them to torpedo one of the Starworks cars at Indianapolis. Chip Ganassi has played this game a lot.
The Fords were the only cars to double stint their tyres with every driver, which contributed to their lack of pace. Only two of their drivers were previously full-time, top level GT drivers and those two drivers outpaced the Aston Martins during their first stints before the cars tailed off. Harry Tincknell and Olivier Pla are both prototype drivers with very limited running in GT cars and Marino Franchitti has driven a little bit of just about everything. Billy Johnson has had plenty of GT experience, but it has been concentrated in Grand-Am feeder series with a side of some part time drives in the Rolex Sports Car Series and endurance entries in the ALMS and TUSCC. It's a primarily a lineup of good drivers and by the end of the year, it will probably be a lineup of good GT drivers, but it isn't yet (unless, of course, the prototype and Grand-Am drivers are just better at sandbagging than Mücke and Priaulx).
A lot of people saw the result of the first race and promptly cried foul at Ferrari's pace. A lot of people have claimed that the BoP is a joke because Ferrari are a second a lap faster. I am inclined to believe that Ferrari have earned their right to be quick given the state of their opponents. I will be sorely disappointed if a BoP adjustment between now and Le Mans costs AF Corse a win.
Then there LMGTE Am, where the name of the game is silver drivers. First place went to the #83 AF Corse. They had the fastest silver driver. Second place went to the #98 Aston Martin. They had the second fastest silver driver. Those two teams had the two slowest platinum drivers, but nobody could match them on pace. The gap between them was opened largely by the #83 stopping one less time and spending a minute and twenty seconds less time in the pits.
This is going to be a very short section; Rui Águas was the silver for the #83 and my last post explained my thoughts on him. His 20% time was less than a tenth off of Emmanuel Collard and Pedro Lamy (the #83 and #98 platinum graded drivers respectively).
Paul Dalla Lana was the fastest of the bronze drivers. He is now fifty years old, which means that he will never be upgraded to silver. For all the fuss I and others make about silver drivers who ought to be upgraded, Dalla Lana provides the same effect as a bronze with silver pace. The only difference is that there are very few bronze drivers with that potential compared to the relative abundance of super quick silvers.
As an aside, only Klaus Bachler beat Rory Butcher's 20% average time and only Bachler's and Wolf Henzler's opening stints on Sunday beat Butcher's second on Saturday.
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