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.