19-06-2016: 24 Hours of Le Mans [Am classes]

Now for the second half, my favourite part, the Pro-Am classes. I'm now typing these in a separate program, copying it and pasting and throwing it onto here without proofreading to maximise professionalism.

LMP2:

The margin of victory in LMP2 was one safety car. Two cars spun off at the same time in the early stages of the race and the second safety car of the race was deployed over using multiple slow zones. During this safety car, the #36 Signatech Alpine was obliged to make an extra 5:07 pit stop for emergency maintenance (I never found out what it was for). Through a highly advanced technique of throwing numbers around like a champion in my Excel document, I came up with the time layoff (not a gain so much as simply time that wasn’t lost) of something like 2:39. Roman Rusinov in the #26 G-Drive crossed the finish line 2:40 after Nicolas Lapierre. Of course G-Drive also ate two minutes’ worth of penalties, which they could have avoided and they twice got unlucky with a 3^rd sector slow zone.

The 05s were far and away the best car on the grid. Next year, only four chassis manufacturers will be permitted to construct and race an LMP2 car. This is down from the four that were on the grid this year (six chassis, but Oreca and Onroak both had older models on track). As much criticism as the decision to limit constructors has received, it’s worth wondering who would buy anything other than a 05 when the car goes a full second quicker than a JS P2 and nothing else comes close.

Now this is my blog and while I am not especially active, nor do I have a long history, you should already know what this next section is. The only thing more important than having an Oreca 05 is having one of them silver drivers that go super fast. As usual, unless otherwise noted, listed times are an average of the fastest 20% of the clear laps.

Nobody did this better than the winning #36 Signatech Alpine, unsurprisingly. The Signatech team brought in Oreca-Matmut and Toyota veteran Nicolas Lapierre (3:38.451) and open-wheel and GT3 expert Stéphane Richelmi (3:39.739). Then somebody sat back and realized that their team lacked speed and brought in amateur F3 driver Gustavo Menezes, who went faster than both of them (3:38.411). Now Lapierre was a couple of tenths quicker on a full stint generally and Menezes getting the happy hour drive had as much to do with his beating Lapierre as anything, but he is the silver driver. He should not be the fastest driver on the race winning team.

That said, Menezes was not the fastest silver driver. Former-professional-F1-test-driver-turned-amateur Roman Rusinov was the fastest silver of them all with a 3:38.319 average. The #26 G-Drive was the fastest car on the track by just about any measure, which you might have guessed from tallying up the time losses in the first paragraph. René Rast did what he does best and went fastest of all (3:37.869). Will Stevens was a little off the pace (3:39.120), but he was four seconds/lap faster than Berthon. “Off the pace” compared to René Rast is a little unfair, perhaps, given that his 20% was the ninth best in class.

The other major contender was Thiriet by TDS Racing. Naturally, Pierre Thiriet was the third fastest silver (3:38.767). Thiriet is actually pretty close to the definition of a proper amateur. He races a rather limited schedule, but he is just ridiculously fast anyway. He was faster than both of his professional co-drivers, although Beche almost certainly would have gone much quicker had he gotten a turn later in the race. He ran 52 of his 92 laps during the first stages of the race where the track was very poor and ran stints equal to Rast’s stints in the same conditions, but unlike most of the super quick drivers who started the cars, he did not get to run a triple stint in perfect conditions. Rast, for comparison, was averaging stints that were four seconds a lap quicker later in the race. The unfortunate end for this car was Thiriet spinning off at Mulsanne. It reminded me a bit of Dalla Lana’s wreck last year, crashing a car out of a potential win that he put the car in the position to take

Roberto Merhi ran second quickest, driving the lone Manor entry. Manor ran both of their silvers for the race, which meant it was never really going to factor into the results, but it’s worth noting that Matthew Rao had another decent performance (1:41.306). He was the fourth fastest silver despite being so far off of Thiriet, which does bode well for Manor going forward in the year. Unfortunately, Tor Graves actually drove like a proper silver (3:43.074), and following the driver ratings’ suggestions in LMP2 is too slow for winning.

There was another case (or more) of silver drivers outperforming gold counterparts in LMP2. One I’m going to highlight is the #37 SMP Racing BR01. The BR01s are well off the pace over a full and comparing them them to Oreca times is a little misleading, so I’ll list some comparisons. The fastest of the BR01 drivers was Mikhail Aleshin in the #27 (3:41.200), followed by Vitaly Petrov in the #37 (3:41.642). There is a difference, but not that much of one. For the #27, the silver driver was Maurizio Mediani (3:43.878) and for the #37, it was Viktor Shaytar (3:42.303). Then there is Kirill Ladygin. He did an average of 3:44.495. It is slower than he was last year. His fastest lap slowed from a 3:41.513 to a 3:43.489. Somewhere, he lost two full seconds. Aleshin’s fastest lap, meanwhile, improved from a 3:41.402 to a 3:39.445 and Nicolas Minassian’s improved from a 3:42.444 to a 3:41.779. Even Mediani improved by three-quarters of a second.

Now if you’re reading through all of this, keep an eye on Ladygin’s driver rating next year. It’s unlikely he actually went from being equal on pace with Aleshin to three seconds a lap down, but all the FIA will use to consider are his accomplishments (getting smoked in a car that’s off the pace) and his ten fastest laps from every race. Ladygin may very well drop to silver next year, and then suddenly visit the same driver coach Rusinov did. Now it may also be that he simply had a very poor Le Mans, because his Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps pace was not that bad. He was dropped at the end of Le Mans for a two driver rotation between Shaytar and Petrov as well, lending more credence to the idea that he was simply not up for the race. Still, with Shaytar getting quicker and quicker and risking an upgrade, it’s worth watching anyway.

Final note for LMP2, I’ll mention the Ligiers. The fastest of all the Ligier drivers was Laurens Vanthoor (3:39.075), which is fascinating. Negri and Pew are both far too slow to make their car competitive, but they nailed the car setup at least. Vanthoor’s fastest lap was 1.4 seconds faster than the next fastest Ligier driver. The best placed of the Ligier teams was Greaves Motorsport. They were nowhere on pace as Nathaniël Berthon and Julien Canal both sort of straddle the gold/silver line and Rojas is a silver made gold by Scott Pruett’s championships, but they spent less time in the pits than any of the other Ligiers by a considerable margin.

LMGTE Am:

I’m tempted just to say “Águas” and leave it at that. I’ve mentioned him before. He was the fastest driver in the class. It’s bad enough when Rory Butcher does it in an ELMS round, but and at least Menezes and Rusinov had the grace to let Rast and Merhi go faster.

It’s tempting to leave it at that, but Scuderia Corsa made it difficult. Rui Águas’s 20% average was a 3:58.022. Jeff Segal, the #62’s silver, averaged a 3:58.442. He was the fastest of their drivers. Suddenly, it’s a race. Before you get to the professionals for those two cars, you find silver Ben Barker as the fastest Porsche driver, averaging a 3:58.780. Then you find Townsend Bell with a 3:58.951, then a silver Pierre Ragues, then Emmanuel Collard (3:59.265).

Now the FIA/ACO will look at this and note correctly that out of twelve three-driver entries in LMGTE Am, only four featured drivers out of the proper order, all of whom I’ve mentioned. The problem is that all four of them are ridiculous. There is no instance of a silver barely sniffing out a faster time in this class; the closest a pro in one of those cars came to the quick silver was Bell, “only” half a second slower. Two of the four manufacturers had a silver driver running the quickest. It could easily have been three had Aston Martin reckoned to run Stuart Hall and/or Alex MacDowell in place of Gary Hirsch and one of their bronze drivers. I wrote one article that with having both Hall and MacDowell and no JMW, it was AMR’s race to lose and they quite squandered that opportunity.

Second fastest in the class was Matt Griffin (3:58.200). He is just going faster and faster all the time. He did take the fastest lap of the race away from Águas by .005 of a second, restoring some order in the world. I do wonder how much longer Duncan Cameron will be able to keep hold of Griffin when he’s about ready to join the full season pro ranks.

Third fastest was Johnny O’Connell (3:58.343). If I recall correctly, O’Connell’s Le Mans announcement came a short while after Corvette announced their plan to start better utilizing their customer teams to develop drivers. I assume this means they are grooming the . . . uh . . . young and . . . inexperienced? . . . O’Connell for a future factory drive. It could be a good it, seems he has decent pace.

There were a few other pretty solid drives from some others. Mikkel Mac, whom I know next to nothing about, ran fifth fastest (3:58.471), Patrick Long, Wolf Henzler and Adam Carroll were steady as ever, but the gap to Ben Barker is a little intriguing, like he missed a memo or got superpowers. The whole #99 team was just depressing. It did seem just a bit hollow without JMW there. The news that recently came out about So24!’s financial stability made it just a bit worse. Even with Segal’s and Bell’s pace, JMW would have easily been a match for them. As much as this Le Mans has taught about assuming victories and as much as I would have drawn even more attention to the driver ratings, I will have this nagging suspicion for a long time that JMW Motorsport were robbed of a Le Mans win by simply not being invited.

18-06-2016: FIAWEC 24 Hours of Le Mans [Pro classes]

A month has passed since this race. Everybody who has had them has posted their thoughts on it, which have by and large been about the heartbreak of the leading #5 Toyota. But since then, the emotion has waned. The post race depression has come and gone, another 24 hour race has taken place, as has the SRO's first endurance race of the year (I refuse to acknowledge three hour races as endurance races). I will now throw a lot of numbers onto this page and semi-relevant thoughts in light of these facts.

LMP1:

On pace, the LMP1 hybrid teams were very close. Less than three-quarters of a second separated the five fastest prototypes using my version of the 20% average (the #7 Audi that suffered a turbo failure and then a number of other niggles being the anomaly). The fastest of them all was the #1 Porsche that led early on before a water cooler failed. Notable, the #2 Porsche was, on average, 0.3 seconds/lap faster than the #5 Toyota, but spent a minute and forty seconds longer in the pits as its longer fuel stints allowed it to make two fewer pit stops.

A few years ago, Neel Jani drove Rebellion Racing, which has not lost an LMP1 privateer championship that it fully competed in since 2010.  During the 2013 Silverstone round, wacky conditions allowed Jani and Nick Heidfeld to qualify the Rebellion Lola fourth ahead of the #1 Audi. Jani started the race and nearly took third from Allan McNish on the opening lap before he finally gave up his fourth place on lap four. Later that year, he came less than a tenth away from putting the Rebellion ahead of the #7 Toyota in Le Mans qualifying. I have no proof that I’ve been hailing Jani as even with the very top of LMP1 drivers and as more than a qualifying specialist, but I have vindication nonetheless; Jani was the fastest at Le Mans by 20% average times (3:23.229).

The nature of how close the top class is leads to some fairly high standards by us speculators. The five fastest drivers overall in the race were Porsche drivers. Romain Dumas was the odd one out. He averaged a 3:24.173. That is only 0.9 seconds off the very fastest average, but fifth place Marc Lieb average a 3:23.448. It is perhaps telling that Dumas only ran 103 laps, his final stint being nixed in favour of Jani and Lieb rotating. It may also not be telling; he was the fastest of the #2’s drivers at Silverstone.

The LMP1 privateers were, as expected, ridiculously far off the pace. On top of being six seconds a lap slower, the AER unreliability ensured that the #13 would not come close to any kind of success. Dominik Kraihamer was the fastest of the Rebellion drivers (3:29.894) followed by Nick Heidfeld (3:29.006) and Alexandre Imperatori (3:29.475). As for Bykolles, I wrote before that I was rather concerned that their fastest driver was the one not at Le Mans. Pierre Kaffer turned out to be the slowest of the three, 1.3 seconds/lap off Oliver Webb. The great embarrassment is that Kaffer was slower than six LMP2 drivers. Kaffer is not a poor driver, but the lack of race running in a car as lacklustre as the CLM P1/01 was just a bit unfortunate.

LMGTE Pro:

If you want an article on GTE BoP, you can find one. I wrote before that I tend to write about problems without having the premise of a solution, but everybody has done that about GTE BoP. Unless I discover I am the sole provider of sports car knowledge for a lot more people than I currently have reason to believe, I am not going to touch such things.

I will, however, talk about the drivers a little bit. I have written in my last two posts that Billy Johnson is the weakest link in the Ford camp. Then he set the fastest lap of the race for GTE Pro. Scott Dixon snatched it at the end, but that is not going to make it significantly easier to explain why I think I’m still right at this point in time. Much of it has to do with Ford’s strategy.

All four Fords ran very steadily through the race. There was some clear if narrow disparity in either driver talent or grip available to the car through every stint, but the plan seemed to be to run high 3:54s to low 3:56s for a triple stint on the tyres. Some drivers struggled more with the tyres and had to double stint. Sébastien Bourdais, for example, ran a fuel stint that was much faster than anybody else, but he could only double stint that set of tyres. The only driver who failed to complete a single triple stint was Billy Johnson. His first two stints in the car were double-stints, both elements of which were over a second slower than both of his #66 teammates (Olivier Pla and Stefan Mücke).

Then something happened for the last quarter of the race or so: all of the Fords picked up roughly two seconds per laps. Billy Johnson’s third time in the car was something of a qualifying stint. He set what was the fastest lap of the race at the time (3:51.582), but killed the tyres in the process; the average time for the fuel stint (3:53.482) was slower than Mücke’s previous middle stint (3:53.465) despite the sparkling fast lap. His second stint was mediocre at best, but it wasn’t off the pace. Pla was next in the car and while his fastest lap was a tenth off Johnson’s, the average time for the stint was a half-second per lap quicker (3:52.902).

Billy Johnson is not a poor driver, but he has yet to prove he is a world class driver. Maybe he will at the Nürburgring. It is evident that the “Team UK” squad that competes in the pinnacle of sports car motor racing is the B-Team.  Stefan Mücke was perhaps the only established GT star on the squad and while Olivier Pla and Harry Tincknell have adapted to the Ford impressively, Andy Priaulx and Marino Franchitti have not.  It’s possible that they are using advanced tactics beyond my comprehension, but without added car speed, they cannot compete like this against AF Corse (even as Johnson departs for the remainder of the season).

Of the Ferrari drivers, James Calado was again fastest, followed closely by Alessandro Pier Guidi. Until I started tracking GTE performances, the only real impression I had of Pier Guidi was him setting two straight poles at the Spa 24 Hours and spinning out of the lead both times, which of course led me to the assumption that he was a qualifying specialist. Turns out that when he isn’t spinning out of the lead at the Spa 24 Hours, he’s a top flight driver. Giancarlo Fisichella was the fastest out of the Risi team. I expected a little more out of Vilander and Malucelli, but neither were that far off and given the reception Malucelli’s announcement got, I think he still exceeded virtually everybody else’s.

Porsche had a bad day. Two of their cars were gone by lap 140, but they were never going to make an impact anyway. The fastest 20% average of the Dempsey-Proton team was set by Michael Christensen and was 1.2 seconds/lap off the pace of the slowest of the factory Porsche drivers. This was almost certainly by design. Both Richard Lietz and Philipp Eng were within 0.4 seconds and the #77 finished the race.

For Aston Martin, the most notable thing about their drivers’ pace is that Nicki Thiim was the fastest of them and it was not even close. His fastest full fuel stint was 0.9 seconds/lap quicker than the next fastest and his 20% average nearly 0.8 seconds/lap faster than the second fastest (both second best times by Marco Sørensen). The other outlier was Jonny Adam, who was over 0.8 seconds/lap slower than any of the other AMR drivers. He has since been reassigned to focus more on his customer GT3 efforts. Fernando Rees was much closer on pace; but he has also been booted. I started to write about how little I understood it, but if the plan was simply to reduce each car to two drivers, they had to get rid of somebody and there hasn’t really been anybody significantly slower.

There is not much to comment on for Corvette since they are not sticking around in Europe, but the Taylor brothers were embarrassingly slow. Antonio Garcia was the quickest of the Corvette drivers (3:54.829). Jan Magnussen was fourth fastest (3:56.244). That difference is enough to concern me somewhat, although Magnussen does have other examples of being quick at Le Mans. Jordon Taylor’s average was 3:57.452 and Ricky’s a 3:57.552. Again, it’s possible that these are simply advanced anti-BOP tactics to have two of your six drivers nearly get beaten by Águas in last year’s Ferrari, but I don’t get them.

As an aside, I wrote this bit in a comment on Paul Truswell’s blog, but I’ll repost it here since I don’t get original thoughts very often.

Then again, it’s long and the whole reason I suddenly decided to split this race up into two posts was how long it was getting to be. Have a link to the article instead. You can find the comment if you want it.

LMP2 and LMGTE Am will show up shortly, and then the last ELMS race sometime before the next one.