17-07-2016: ELMS 4 Hours of Red Bull Ring

Summer break, apart from the lack of racing entertainment, is quite nice. It gives us amateurs some extra time to think about what to say, consider the data more thoroughly, that sort of thing. Or in my case, doze through it until the day you have no time left to dedicate to side pursuits and then slap something together.

The novelties that were present to me when I didn’t know any of the drivers are gone, however, so I don’t really feel the need to go into the same detail I did before. The race recap industry is packed as it is. That’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Mathias Beche was the fastest of them all, as expected. The Thiriet by TDS car was so far ahead of everybody else; Ryo Hirakawa and Pierre Thiriet both had excellent pace as well. The car was so far out in front going into the last stint that Thiriet was able to replace Beche for the final stint and not have to worry about a threat from behind. In total, Thiriet did 91 of the car’s 160 laps. Some of that was down to the issues the #38 Jota Sport (or G-Drive, sure) entry had, including a puncture and ploughing into a spinning Pegasus, but Giedo van der Garde was the only one of them who ran a 20% average faster than any of the three TDS drivers. That said, Tincknell had damage on his final stint, so his numbers require an asterisk. The #38 finished third.

The #33 Eurasia Motorsport Oreca finished second. The problem for the car, like almost all of the ELMS entries, is that it has two am drivers. Tristan Gommendy is an excellent anchor for the team and Nico Pieter de Bruijn is a good silver driver, but Pu Junjin is a bronze. He was the fastest of the bronze drivers, but he is still a bronze in a prototype and that just doesn’t cut it against Thiriet or even Dolan. That said, the Eurasia entry could be a serious threat at Paul Ricard after Pu Junjin’s wreck in practice. It is an unfortunate thing to write about, a team gaining competitiveness because their meal ticket is hurt, but that’s how it is.

Panis-Barthez warrants mention, particularly Timothé Buret. He led in the opening stages, although it was deemed to be partially because of a false start. He held his own at the front, which was impressive. He still doesn’t have the pace yet to be a star driver, but he is getting there. Paul Loup Chatin was quicker again, but the gap between them has closed from two seconds/lap at Silverstone to a tenth/lap in Austria. That could be a track difference or a setup change, but if Buret can keep that kind of pace up and take another few tenths off, it will be a good sign for the team and good proof that they can train young drivers.

The other important LMP2 development was the use of bots at SMP Racing. They were still entered as individual drivers, but the evidence is there in the stint average laptimes. They were using bots:

• 1st stint: Andreas Wirth (1:24.733)
• 2nd stint: Julian Leal (1:24.737)
• 3rd stint: Julian Leal (1:24.711)
• 4th stint: Stefano Coletti (1:24.675)
• 5th stint: Stefano Coletti (1:24.773)

All they need to do is improve the collision avoidance AI and work on the pace of the car itself and SMP will be unstoppable in the LMP2 tech race.

Mike Conway is in for Ryo Hirakawa this weekend as Hirakawa is in the Suzuka 1000k. This could be a good time to see just how good Mathias Beche and Pierre Thiriet are.

The big news in LMP3 was that Duqueine Engineering crossed the line first, but was demoted to second after they were deemed to have not met the minimum requirements for pit stops, which is two stops with a minimum time that was in this case 90 seconds. They gained four seconds, it was determined, as were thus penalized four seconds after winning by 4.5 seconds. Everybody who thinks like I do will have seen that and plotted a new strategy for Paul Ricard: get the car out as fast as you possibly can and eat the time penalty. If there is no punitive measure, you might as well ensure that you will lose the least time possible, which is to get the car out as fast as possible, get out in front of any cars you can and lose the extra time after the race.

Giorgio Mondini, one of the very first GP2 drivers and former LMP1 driver (and a silver), was the fastest of all in the class for a doomed #11 Eurointernational. He and Marco Jacoboni are a dangerous team. They just need to stop retiring. They did finish second in the Almost Three Hours of Imola, but they didn’t finish at either of the other two rounds to date. They should be higher in the standings.

David Droux in the Duqueine was second quickest. He is also a silver. Then came Sean Rayhall and Alex Brundle, the gold drivers. Droux is very much worth watching. He is a 19-year-old Swiss driver and he is already putting in some excellent stints. He could be a good pickup for Rebellion in the near future if Rebellion Racing brings two cars again as Rebellion do like hiring quick, young Swiss drivers (like Jani, Beche and now Tuscher).

Thomas Laurent, still in his first year of car racing, is another one to keep an eye on. He is rated bronze, but he was fifth quickest by 20% times. A seven minute stop doomed the effort of his M. Racing effort, but this is another team that could and should be challenging for wins. Instead, they are eleventh in the championship with a best finish of fifth.

Whatever reasonable criticism can be applied to the LMP2 class in the ELMS, the LMP3 class has very instantly become an excellent class of racing. It does look a little uncompetitive strictly looking at the results sheet, but that is largely due to only one team having problem-free runs at any given round.

The greatest surprise of all at this race came from LMGTE. The fastest driver wasn’t a silver. Alessandro Pier Guidi set the quickest 20% time. However, a relatively unknown silver Matteo Cairoli saved the pride of the Am drivers by setting the fastest lap of the race. Cairoli has been spending his time in Porsche cup series in various places, and he is quick. He is yet another name to keep an eye on should an opportunity at Porsche arise in the near future, perhaps if and when they re-establish their WEC Pro programme. Neither Pier Guidi nor Cairoli’s efforts were properly rewarded, however, as they finished 3rd and 5th respectively.

The winner, unsurprisingly, was JMW Motorsport, the team that wasn’t good enough for Le Mans. They won by a lap. Rory Butcher could be a Ferrari factory driver tomorrow if a door opened up. He again beat Andrea Bertolini on 20% averages (by next to nothing, mind). Robert Smith was a little down to where he has been, but it matters less when you can give 82 laps to a silver who is basically a full professional. The other team with that option is the #51 AF Corse with the oft-mentioned Rui Águas. They were second. Marco Cioci did beat Águas this time around by a tenth and a half. In fact, this was a disappointing race for Águas given that he normally is higher up than toward the back end of the pros, but that just means I don’t have to spend another ten pages on why Águas is a daft excuse for a silver.

There was one silver driver who struggled quite a lot and that was Christina Nielsen. I draw attention to it only because it makes no sense. I don’t track IMSA very well, but what I know is that she is co-leading the championship (or was last time I looked). She is missing Paul Ricard because of it. I do know that IMSA championships can be one with a hero driver and a dud driver (see Pruett/Rojas), but I also know that Nielsen is not a dud driver. Both at Silverstone and at Austria, however, she has been well off where she should be to make Formula Racing competitive. Something else is that she has double-stinted at both places and both times, she has gained significant amounts of pace in her second stint. In Austria, she gained 0.4s/lap without changing tyres. Without knowing the circumstances, it reeks of a lack of testing. I would like to see just how fast she can go if she knew the tracks and the car just a little better.

The 6 Hours of Le Castellet starts not all that long from now. Let’s see how many of my predictions get blasted by it. If you somehow stumble across this and want me to tell you something specific, post below.

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.

08-05-2016: WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps

I had most of this typed up already and flat forgot to hit post. I am a full professional. Updated it to make it up to date. No, it didn't actually take me a month-and-a-half to write something this barebones, although you could be forgiven for thinking so.

Were it a standalone race, it would have been absolutely fantastic (except for the safety car). Unfortunately, it was miserable for trying to make predictions for Le Mans. The theme of the race was everybody breaking. A lot of reliability failures and a lot of crashing punctuated the race and made pulling data from the race even more useless than ever.

The Porsches were faster than everybody, but they both broke down first. The #2 survived as it was only the ERS that broke. Notably, it was about a second a lap faster as a non-hybrid than the privateers.The Toyotas were faster than the Audis, but they broke down second fastest. The Audis were faster than the privateers, but then one of those broke and the other needed a brief garage stint.

If ever there was one year that switching from Rebellion to a front running LMP2 car was an unlucky decision, this was about that one.

Alexandre Imperatori was again impressive for the Rebellion crew, running their fastest stint. The R-One was decidedly faster than the CLM P1/01 and broke less, which is encouraging for Rebellion to run away with the privateer win. Once again, the Bykolles star was again James Rossiter, His first stint was 1.6 seconds quicker than Simon Trummer's fastest and his fastest lap was 3 seconds quicker than Trummer's fastest. Oliver Webb was farther behind. This is also encouraging for Rebellion since Rossiter is the one being dropped for Le Mans.

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LMP2

The immediate takeaway from this class is that the Oreca 05 is the best car. Now this is a little like saying the first takeaway from the shower is that water is wet, but it is important to have basic logic mastered. There were five Oreca 05s present (counting the Alpine A460 entries). The five fastest cars by their top 20% average lap time were all five 05s. Sorting drivers by the same metric, nine of the fastest ten were driving 05s, exception being Giedo van der Garde in the Gibson 015S in seventh.

Still using the 20% metric, Will Stevens (2:09.842) was the fastest of all the LMP2 drivers in the Manor, followed by René Rast (2:10.046). Nathanaël Berthon (2:11.025) was sixth. Berthon's stint was interrupted by code 80, but he was roughly 1-2.5 seconds per lap slower over a full stint than Stevens. While reports that Berthon was slower than Rusinov exist and are false, it should still be reasonably obvious why Rusinov made the switch. Brutal, perhaps, but on paper alone, a good choice.

And now, some notes about teams that double stinted tyres:

• Rusinov double-stinted successfully, 44 laps on a set without losing time
• Van Overbeek double-stinted, 45 laps and improving second stint
• Derani double-stinted, 37 laps, didn't drop off until the very end
• Both ESMs double-stinted with every driver, the ones not mentioned lost time
• Manor double-stinted a lot with mostly losses - Matthew Rao did it successfully (41 laps)
• Nico Minassian, Maurizio Mediani and Kirill Ladygin all double-stinted in the BR01 with reasonably disastrous loss of time.

Many other teams double-stinted tyres as well, but mostly with fairly neutral results.

Rao's performance was quite impressive. His stint pace matched James Jakes and nearly matched Richard Bradley's, although his optimum pace was a little shy. Manor may have a shot yet at Le Mans despite running two silver drivers, although they will not match the front runners on ultimate pace.

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GTE Pro

I spit most of my thoughts about the class in the Silverstone post, but here's a little more.

As for the state of BoP, certain things are very obvious. I can expand on this because I didn't hit post until after Le Mans qualifying. At Silverstone, the Fords were two seconds down on Ferrari while being the slowest car in a straight line. The very next race, they are like magic the faster cars in a straight line and still a second down and they're losing it all in the middle sector. Where did all the cornering go? Turns out it didn't go anywhere and they were suddenly the faster car. Everybody saw it coming.

That said, Ferrari have been 1-2 seconds faster everywhere and now that the track is twice as long, they're now 3-4 seconds faster than everybody except the Ford. I'm struggling to understand why people are also accusing Ferrari of hiding their ultimate pace. They didn't set a quick time in the test, but they haven't been toodling around all season pretending to be victims of modern GT racing.

Of course, as I was updating this, the ACO took a fairly massive swing at the BoP and now everybody who isn't a Corvette fan is wondering if AMR and Corvette were running sub-optimally in the rather useless qualifying sessions. Sod if I know, all I really took away from qualifying is vindication in my assessment that Billy Johnson is slow. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the race this post is about.

I did make comments before that Pla and Tincknell were fantastic prototype drivers but that they needed to learn to be GT drivers while I was on a podcast, struggling to wake up and find the words I wanted to say. Seems they did, Tincknell was the fastest of the Ford drivers and Pla was right on Mücke's pace. That problem was solved.

All four Ferrari drivers essentially went the same speed the whole race until the #51 lost a motor.

Stanaway was the quickest of the AMR driver, but I'm led to believe based on the lap times that he got to run a softer tyre to set some quicker hotlaps on (or that he pushed too hard, too early). His times completely fell off at the end of the first stint. Marco Sørensen in the sister car suffered a similar fate, as did Pedro Lamy in the Am car. Dunlop still has some work to do, but I think we all expected that).

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GTE Am

We learned absolutely nothing new here. Pedro Lamy (2:21.432) was the fastest driver in the class followed by silver Rui Águas (2:21.599), the amateur hobbyist who was not good enough to keep his gold rating. Perhaps a little less expected was Ben Barker running a second a lap faster than Adam Carroll, moreso because of Carroll's skill than Barker's. Paul Dalla Lana was running times closer to silver than the rest of the bronze drivers, as he is wont to do. As for BoP, the Corvette and the Porsche were a little off, but nothing significant and they would need an awful lot of help anyway to beat the Am drivers in the #83 and the #98. As far as pace goes, it's business as usual in GTE Am.

And they're still lucky as all hell that JMW were denied an entry.

17-04-2016: WEC 6 Hours of Silverstone

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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

16-04-2016: European Le Mans Series 4 Hours of Silverstone

This is the race that inspired this entire blog, for I saw many interesting things in its .csv file but everybody wanted to talk about Brendon Hartley and Michael Wainwright (or the really fast LMP1 guy and some GT dude, depending how how much attention they were paying).

Going by class seems easiest, so that is what I will do in order of pace.

The LMP2 categorically suffered greatly from early attrition. Lap twelve saw the two front-running Oreca 05s retire, the polesitting Thiriet By TDS with a stuck throttle and the Eurasia Motorsport entry after debris struck the marshal's emergency ignition switch. The third Oreca 05, run by DragonSpeed retired on lap 66 after struggling throughout the race with braking issues. Given the 05's success since it was introduced, its lack of reliability this weekend is quite surprising. The only other retirement in the class was the Pegasus Racing Morgan, which spun into the pit wall on its opening lap and then shed a wheel on track after ninety laps.

Of the remaining runners, there is no question the G-Drive/JOTA team with its Gibson 015S was the class of the field. Harry Tincknell and Giedo van der Garde were the two fastest drivers on track with only Paul Loup Chatin close to their ultimate pace. During his first stint (comparing third stints from the teams), silver driver Simon Dolan was the second quickest on track, losing out only to Ben Hanley in the DragonSpeed Oreca 05 on a shorter stint. The only struggles the G-Drive faced were the second stints of Tincknell and Dolan. This was a common theme all weekend; few teams were able to save time by double-stinting their tyres.

This was particularly the case for the SMP Racing BR01s. Both cars suffered greatly at the ends of their first stints, dropping upwards of four seconds a lap from the start of a stint to the end of it. Stefano Coletti put in one of the finest drives of the afternoon at the wheel on the second place #32 BR01, keeping the tyres relatively intact over the course of his double-stint at the end of the race. Three of his final four laps were in the 1:54s compared to Mitch Evans finishing in the high 1:55s to mid 1:56s, although other circumstances could have played a part.

If BR Engineering do not have a quick solution for their tyre troubles, the BR01 is essentially a one-track car. Le Mans is the easiest track on tyres that either the ELMS or the WEC visit, which ought to mitigate the effects of poor tyre management. It still may not be enough, and if that is the case, SMP face a small disaster's worth of time lost in the pits should they have to change tyres more frequently than their opponents. That all gets thrown out the window if it turns out that their high tyre wear had more to do with a poor or unlucky choice of tyre compound during the race. It is worth noting that for all of their struggles, the #32 SMP Racing entry placed second overall, but they were a minute-and-a-half behind the winning G-Drive after four hours.

Third overall was the #22 So24! by Lombard Racing Ligier. Notably, this team did not have a single driver rated gold or higher. Olivier Lombard ran quickest of the three as the team's anchor, running a double-stint comprising a twenty-four lap and an eighteen lap run. His final stint saw him catching Stefano Coletti ahead of him at the rate of 1.2 seconds per lap. Much of this pace difference is down to the JS P2 being easier on the tyres, but Lombard demonstrated something better than pro-am pace. Were there two gold drivers in the car with him, this team would be unstoppable. Instead, it has Vincent Capillaire (a quick silver) and Jonathan Coleman (the fastest bronze in the class). All three are perfect for the role of the non-gold driver LMP2 team require, but they are going to continue to rely on reliability problems to score further podiums.

The #40 Krohn Racing entry placed fourth overall, owing primarily to a strong opening performance from Björn Wirdheim, who put the car into third place before the second pit cycle began. Wirdheim is not contesting the full ELMS season as Olivier Pla will take the seat for the rest of the season, which is unfortunate given that Wirdheim won the championship last year with Greaves Motorsport

Elsewhere in the field, the #41 Greaves Ligier placed eighth after a paddle shift issue cost them a sure podium. Kuba Giermaziak is perhaps the lesser known driver of the team, but he proved very quick until the issues began to plague his stint. The Ligier is an unfamiliar car for Giermaziak; except for a few occasional appearances in various GT cars, he has run Porsche cup cars since exiting mid-level single-seaters after 2011. He was second quickest of the Ligier drivers behind Paul Loup Chatin (using Trusser's Trusty Twenty-percent method, or taking the mean time of a driver's fastest twenty percent of laps not borked by pitstops or yellow), keeping in mind that Wirdheim's stint started in mixed conditions. Kuba may not be receiving the attention of Pipo Derani and he has room for improvement, but once he's run a few races in the Ligier, expect him to find that time.

Greaves also has two FIA driver rating mysteries in their lineup: Julien Canal and Memo Rojas. Canal won the WEC LMP2 title with G-Drive last year as their silver driver. He routinely ran just a few tenths quicker than gold rated Roman Rusinov and held station with the other gold rated drivers in the field in the race. Somebody in the FIA saw that Canal was quicker than Rusinov and saw the problem, but instead of moving Canal to gold, Rusinov is now the fastest silver driver in WEC. Canal is now the silver driver for Greaves. During the second stint of the race, he was the fastest driver on the track, running 0.3 seconds per lap quicker than Chatin and 0.6 quicker than Tincknell (both of whom were on their tyres' second stint, mind, but the point stands). Like most drivers, Canal suffered somewhat in his tyres' second stint. Greaves' second full professional is Memo Rojas of Grand-Am fame as the driver who kept the Ganassi DP on the track so Scott Pruett could pass everybody and win. Rojas's single stint in the car was only 0.3 seconds/lap up on Canal's second stint and well off both Canal's first stint and most of his immediate competitors. Perhaps in the end, it matters little which driver in the car is the silver so long as the team has one, but perhaps the grading is just a little daft.

Chatin's team, Panis Barthez Competition, placed ninth overall. The car led briefly after the second stops, but Simon Dolan was able to run down and pass Fabien Barthez in short order. This was another likely podium car that ran into reliability problems, pulling into the wrong pitlane with Timothé Buret at the wheel after slowing on track. Had it not broken down, it probably would have placed third or fourth, but only then because of quicker teams falling out. Buret is a fairly run-of-the-mill silver at this point in his career (he is only twenty and he will improve, probably) but Barthez is still learning the trade. He was far from the slowest out of the LMP2 runners, but he was not close enough to the front, especially with only one gold driver on the team. It is a struggle to consider the car much of a factor for the year.

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LMP3 features a lot more unknown in terms of drivers and car performance. The Ligier JS P3 made its debut last year, but most of the LMP3 entries last year were Ginettas. Unfortunately, a dispute between Ginetta and Oreca (who supply much of the spec equipment) has led to LMP3 turning very nearly into a one-make class until Riley, Dome and Adess begin challenging Onroak's Ligiers. Nineteen LMP3 cars were entered and eighteen of them were JS P3s. One Ginetta was entered by Murphy Prototypes and lasted twenty-nine laps before retiring. There are fewer variables to talk about when every car runs the same tyres and the same chassis with the spec Nissan engine, but it does provide for a decent comparison of driver talent.

Platinum graded drivers are not allowed in LMP3, but Alex Brundle is. He started the #2 United Autosports entry from fourth in class and eighteenth overall. As cars spun and ran off in front of him, he moved to tenth overall and took the lead of his class on the first lap. His fastest lap of the race was over a second quicker than anybody else's in the class. His two teammates also had pace and bronze Christian England was bettered only by Wayne Boyd and Sean Rayhall in the final stints. They easily won with a lap in hand.

The #3 United Autosports entry placed second, led off by a strong stint from Matt Bell (the 26-year-old Englishman, not the 30-year-old American by the same name) and finished by an even stronger stint from Wayne Boyd. Both drivers are examples of the benefit of finding the quick silver. Bell is something of a professional amateur, comprising the silver element of a number of successful pro-am combinations in GT racing (primarily British GT) alongside his driver coaching duties. Boyd was a Formula Ford champion in 2008, but ran out of funding before he could get much further, ruining his chances at top level single-seater running. Neither had any reason to be classed as gold drivers before the season, but they both showed very strong pace in an unfamiliar car.

Graff's #9 entry took third. This car only stopped three times compared to most teams' four and made up about a minute on their immediate competition. That, the retirement of the #7 Villorba Corse in the early stages, and the issues that forced the #10 Graff to make a twenty minute pit stop made the podium possible for the #9. None of its three drivers put in superb stints, but there were no weak links and the car held together.

The aforementioned #7 and #10 cars were quicker. Giorgio Sernagiotto in the #7 lost a rear wheel while running fourth and gaining on third. Nicollo Schiro was quick in practice, but unfortunately never got a chance to run in the race. The #10 started its experienced bronze Enzo Potolicchio and held its gold driver Sean Rayhall for the end. Two reasonable and economic stints from Potolicchio and John Falb saw the car run as high as third behind the sister car before the car was forced to make a long stop with a gearbox issue, wrecking Rayhall's chance to chase down the leaders.

The #11 Eurointernational entry also suffered with gearbox problems, retiring with around twenty minutes remaining. It had already spent nearly seven minutes in the pits and was well out of the running, but it wasted Giorgio Mondini's excellent opening stint during which he brought the car into fourth from a thirteenth starting position on pace. Likewise, Jakub Smiechowski put in the quickest second stint in the #13 Inter Europol Competition entry and the car ran as high as third before retiring with what was described as a "technical issue".

Duqueine Engineering brought two cars to the track. The #20 struggled, but the #19 placed fourth in class after an excellent closing run by Dino Lunardi, who ran 54 laps on two tanks, saving the team from making a splash at the end. His pace all the while was quickest of all in the third stint of the race and only a tenth behind Christian England while running longer.

360 Racing ran fifth after sitting on pole thanks to Ross Kaiser's time in the wet. It is listed here because it was a mild disappointment from pole. Terrance Woodward started the car and struggled mightily in the mixed conditions, being awarded a stop-go penalty in the meantime. James Swift put in a couple of decent stints and Ross Kaiser ran quickly, but they could not close in on the podium. It is a team learning the new car with three drivers that are less than experienced with endurance racing, so perhaps Kaiser's lap in qualifying is not quite representative of the team's present pace. Whether they find that time will be something to watch for.

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LMGTE saw very little reliability problems influence the race, which is excellent for everybody neck deep in times and comparisons. The only car not classified within two laps of the leader was the winning car, the #66 JMW Ferrari, because they left  two undertray inserts off the car and were excluded from the results. Supposedly, the bits left off would have made the car go even faster then it was when it won by a lap.

This class is essentially the same class as the WEC LMGTE Am. Each car must have at a bronze driver and one bronze or silver driver with the option for a third driver of any grade, meaning the winning teams will have one platinum or gold, one silver and one bronze. You will often hear broadcasters talking about the pro-am races being won by the quickest amateur drivers, because of how little difference in pace there is between the professional drivers. Keep this in mind.

This time, I will go by teams' stints, primarily for the purpose of comparing drivers over similar times, although this isn't perfect at all given that a number of teams were off sequence. Also note that no teams double-stinted their tyres, although a majority of the teams double stinted their silver driver. Tables would probably be nice, but that would require me to spend five minutes learning how to do it - unacceptable.

For the first stint, none of the teams started their gold/platinum. Alex MacDowell (S) in the #99 AMR went quickest on average laptime, which was 2:04.814. Robert Smith (B) followed with a 2:05.175 in the JMW Ferrari and Stuart Hall (S) with a 2:05.476 close behind him. Except for Alexander Talkinitsa Jr., who pitted after eleven laps to change a broken wheel after contact with an LMP3 car, nobody else was within a second of these three. Every team without broken wheels pitted for the first time between laps 26 and 29. Robert Smith went the longest, completing 28 laps.

The second stint was interrupted by a code 80 (or full course yellow). JMW pitted during the code 80 and everybody else did not, meaning Rory Butcher's (S) stint only lasted 16 laps. It was the quickest at an average of 2:03.398. Not running the second half of the stint on tyres probably helped. Second was Alex MacDowell on his second stint, averaging a 2:03.510. followed by Stuart at a 2:03.571. Aaron Scott (S) was a second and a half down at a 2:05.026 in the #55 AF Corse Ferrari. Fifth quickest is a little more interesting, and that is Wolf Henzler, the platinum graded driver for the #77 Proton Porsche, who could manage only a 2:05.501 average over his thirty laps. Performances like his demonstrates the danger of drawing complete conclusions on the basis of one race; Henzler earned his factory Porsche drive and he is a very rapid driver and even did considerably better in the following day's WEC race in essentially the same car. Proton reported no problems with the car, so this stint is something of a mystery. For the purpose of comparisons with the next stint, Christina Nielsen (S) ran a 2:06.866 average time for the #60 Formula Racing.

Three teams put in their star driver for the third stint. AMR put Darren Turner (P) into the #99 and he went quickest in his stint, running a 2:04.201 average. Richard Lietz (P) ran second quickest in the #88 Proton Competition Porsche at a 2:04.870 (seems he ran the tyres off of it - he set the fastest lap of the race on his second hot lap). Then come some silvers, Marco Seefried in a shorter 19 lap stint in the #77 Proton (2:04.951), Rui Águas in the #56 AT Racing Ferrari (2:04.952), Scott in the #55 (2:05.290), and Nielsen in the #60 (2:05.753). Lots of numbers to take in.

This stint starts to show something interesting. Turner's average was 0.7 seconds/lap down on Alex MacDowell's the previous stint. There are any number of reasons that could be. It was not track conditions, presumably, because the drivers who ran stints at the same time did not suffer hits to their own averages. Scott lost a quarter of a second and Nielsen picked up over a second.

Andrea Bertolini was the other platinum to get into the car during this stint for JMW, off-sequence as it was. His fastest lap of the stint was second only to Lietz, but issues with the tyre pressures meant that his run was rather off balance. His first six laps were super quick, his next six were good and then the left front tyre turned into a basketball. He averaged a 2:05.788.

For the fourth stint, the #66 put Rory Butcher back in the car to take it to the flag, although their stop during the code 80 meant that they would have to take an extra fuel stop. Butcher immediately set to work seeing that this would not become any sort of problem and ran a 2:03.288 average for his first 25 lap run, the fastest stint of the race. JMW did not switch tyres and his final 11 laps were run at a pace of 2:04.389, on par or faster than several of the best full stints. Richie Stanaway (G) was second quickest running a 2:03.576 average. Talkinitsa Jr. was put back in the car for a short 18 lap stint by AT Racing before being pulled for Alessandro Pier Guidi to run the final 27 laps. Pier Guidi averaged a 2:04.661. Mikkel Mac in the #60 (G, 2:05.295), Marco Seefried (2:05.514), Matt Griffin in the #55 (G, 2:05.583) and Marco Cioci in the #51 (G, 2:06.284) followed. Griffin and Cioci in particular were farther off than they ought to have been, although the two cars had come together earlier in the race and the #55 had gotten thumped by an LMP3 during Duncan Cameron's stint. Seefried in the Proton was virtually identical to Henzler in pace.

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If you hate bad formatting and poorly constructed numbers as much as I do, you probably drew very little from that. The key takeaway is that silver drivers put together the four fastest stints of the race, the fastest two being done by Rory Butcher (although you may justifiably discount his 16 lap stint for being too short). Alex MacDowell and Stuart Hall were only a couple of tenths down. MacDowell last year competed in the GTE Pro class for Aston Martin in the WEC and won the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, demonstrating that being a race winner in a Pro category does not make you a professional driver. Hall was a gold graded driver last year and competed as the professional in the #96 Am lineup for AMR. Unfortunately, he was out of a job when AMR downsized for this year, so he appealed his grade just to see what would happen. The FIA either took pity on him or decided he was no longer quick enough to be a gold and downgraded him. Hall immediately found this ELMS ride with AMR and an IES drive with Ram Racing. Butcher's grade is perhaps more understandable as he has been far less active in high profile motorsport over the past few years, although he did win twice last year with Liam Griffin in the British GT championship.

Rui Águas is another fascinating case. In 2014, he was promoted to gold after his 2013 performance in the 8 Star Ferrari GTE-Am entry in the WEC. He lost his job in 2014 as 8 Star brought in Gianluca Roda as its bronze driver, who came with contract driver Paulo Ruberti. None of the six AF Corse entries wanted him, so he spent the year rather under the radar in V de V and GT Asia. He was returned to his silver grade in 2015 and became the silver element of the #83 AF Corse entry. The car finished off the podium once, when Matteo Cressoni subbed for Águas. Emmanuel Collard was the platinum in the car. Collard has competed at Le Mans every year since 1995, finishing twice on the overall podium with Pescarolo Sport and winning his class once in GT and once in LMP2. He and Águas have been nearly identical in pace since teaming up in the #83.

Marco Cioci was Águas's gold co-driver for the Silverstone 4 Hours this year. Águas's fastest lap was a tenth of a second quicker. Águas's first stint was quite sub par. Twice he presumably had an off in the third sector and lost nearly a dozen seconds a pop and made smaller mistakes in other portions of the stint. If there was a problem, it resolved itself and he was putting in 2:03s right before his stop. His second stint, as noted, was excellent, barely off the back of Lietz. Cioci was not even close. It is possible he had a similar problem to Bertolini previously, but if he did, it was not reported at the time. His first seven laps were good, but he could not hold the pace and his nine laps after the final code 80 were abysmal and inconsistent. Whatever the issue, it cost the #51 sixth place. It also meant that Águas once again proved himself quicker than his more highly graded co-driver over a full stint and virtually identical on ultimate pace.

Another example is Marco Seefried, who outpaced teammate Wolf Henzler quite substantially. Seefried has been racing since 1993, although he did not race particularly regularly until 2011. He gained quite a lot of renown during the 2014 Blancpain Endurance Series, serving as a gun driver for the Rinaldi Racing Pro-Am entry, where his silver status meant that Rinaldi was able to bring in another silver (according to Blancpain rules, Rinaldi would have been required to field two bronze drivers had Seefried been rated gold). Last year, he competed as the silver Patrick Dempsey's campaign in WEC and was no more than a couple of tenths off of factory driver Patrick Long's pace for much of the year. He also competed in the Blancpain Sprint Series and won multiple races in the pro category with Norbert Siedler,

Driver categorization has a lot in common with allergy medication. It tastes bad and gives side effects that are not compatible with driving cars (given how many good drivers have lost their rides after being upgraded). Nobody wants to deal with it, but there are no other solutions are that are any good (we could take everything that releases pollen and vaska). I don't make these comparisons on the premise of having solutions, but there is a point when the number drivers gaming the system gets just a little daft.

Something else the race demonstrated was just how unfortunate the decision by the ACO to not grant JMW an entry into the 24 Hours of Le Mans turned out. JMW is first on the reserve list as of this post and there is a good chance they will make it in anyway, but they might not. They have competed every year since 2009 as one of the few independent GT runners left. Exactly who they should replace is another discussion, and whether important that would lead the ACO to believe JMW would not be a worthy team for the entry list (like potential impending bankruptcy) is something I don't know.

If JMW do not get their invitation to Le Mans, Rory Butcher and Andrea Bertolini are as of now free for the race. AF Corse have a habit of not announcing their driver lineups for Le Mans as quickly as any of the other major players. They are running three cars this year as Risi Competizione earned the automatic GTLM entry from IMSA and are running two of last years' #51 AF Corse drivers. There are three GTE Pro drives currently unaccounted for and far more than in AF Corse factory ranks. Bertolini is a good candidate for one of them, having won the GTE Am championship last year. Meanwhile, there is still a question of who scores the silver seat in Duncan Cameron's entry. Alex Mortimer and Aaron Scott both served as Cameron's silvers in GTE last year. Both were good, but neither were nearly as impressive as Butcher is. AF Corse have shuffled their drivers about like so before. None of that matters if JMW get their entry.

I may post a short splurge on the WEC race, but it won't be nearly this long. There are only a couple of days until Spa-Francorchamps and there is always tons of analysis everywhere on the WEC. If anything, my purpose is to look at performances flying under the radar, and if Pipo Derani has proved nothing else this year, it is that WEC performances do not fly under the radar so quickly.

A Post

I could write a longwinded introductory post about this blog's intentions, but I could also not.

At the moment, the plan is to make this a place for me to regurgitate public information regarding sports cars series that release laptime data. If I want to do something else, I will.