How to do Le Mans

We didn't go to Le Mans this year, but here's how we made up for it:

• Listened to coverage of qualifying whilst watching the Eurosport live streaming video via a European proxy
• Moved the TV to the bedroom so that when we woke up on Saturday morning we just needed to push the power button and we were good to go. Also had the laptop on hand to tune into Radio Le Mans for audio (we muted the Speed Channel coverage) and for live timing and scoring
  
• Had fresh coffee, baguettes and croissants for breakfast, just like we do when we're there
  
• Then we moved the TV and laptop to the kitchen whilst we prepped for the evening's Le Mans party
• Taped Andy Blackmore's superb spotters guide to the wall, crossing off retirements as they happened, like you find in the local Le Mans newspapers
• Had people show up around 5pm, just before Speed Channel came back on, and made sure to only invite true Le Mans fans. The group this year was great!
• Provided French cheese and crackers for appetizers
• Drank Kronenbourg 1664 beer and French wine
  
• Cooked roast chicken and tartiflette, grilled fresh, hand-stuffed halal merguez sausage and borrowed my mate Dave's deep fryer to do proper twice-fried French fries. Delicious!
• For dessert we had tasty little European confectionaries
• We stayed up until 11:30pm Pacific time, got 3 hours sleep (like we do at the track) then got up for the final 3 hours

That's about as authentic as you can get I think. It was a Le Mans to remember.

Someone peed in their pasta

Remarkable events have unfolded before anyone even turned a wheel in anger at Le Mans.

When the entry list was first published, many people questioned the inclusion an LMP2-spec Lucchini prototype entered by veteran Italian team Racing Box. The chassis was old and slow and other more worthy entries had been denied in order to allow it entry.

Part of the paperwork requirements at Le Mans is a certification from a car's manufacturer that the entry is as originally homologated, and if any changes have been made by the team that they haven't compromised the integrity of the tub.

Racing Box asked for this paperwork from Lucchini prior to the LMS race at Monza and received it, only to make some modifications afterwards (and before the Le Mans test day). When Lucchini heard about the modifications they informed Le Mans organizers, the ACO, that they were withdrawing their certification pending a re-inspection of the car. The ACO informed Racing Box of this development and the team made hasty arrangements to bring the car to Lucchini. On the day of the meeting, Lucchini's CEO called Racing Box to say he couldn't meet with them due to a bad back. Later that day he called again and said that he would meet with them to certify the car but only if they paid him 28,000 Euro!!! This amounted to extortion and Racing Box immediately called the police who raided Lucchini's premises and caught them trying to destroy documents.

Racing Box still turned up at Le Mans but failed scrutineering due to the missing paperwork. As a result, a second Epsilon Euskadi LMP1 coupe has taken its place with the powerhouse lineup of Stefan Johanssen, Jean-Marc Gounon and Shinji Nakano. Quite why this happened is unclear - we are well past the deadline for reserve entries to take a place, and Epsilon seemed *very* ready for the turn of events. Perhaps the ACO suspected that Racing Box would run into trouble and informed Epsilon that they might be offered another grid place.

There's much to this story that remains a mystery, but for now it's just one more piece of Le Mans' rich and sometimes bizarre history.

BMW: Toyota's worst nightmare

Back in December 2006, I wrote a post about how Toyota should really be so much better than they are, not just in F1 but in all forms of motorsport. Here we are, 18 months later, and Toyota's generally poor showing in F1 has been brought into stark contrast by the remarkable first win for the BMW F1 team in Canada.

BMW seems almost to be the opposite of the behemoth that is Toyota. Perhaps the most successful "small" independent carmaker, they've made a point of generally kicking tail in every motorsport they've been in. Robert Kubica's win today is simply the latest in a long string of racing successes for the Munich-based manufacturer. Back in 1998 after a failed two-car Le Mans effort they radically revamped their V12LM prototype, realizing that revolution, not evolution was the way to go, and brought in the expertise of the Williams F1 design and engineering departments to help out. Whilst requiring more work, and representing greater risk of failure, it was this move that set the ball rolling for a victory at the Sarthe in 1999.

Since the return of the World Touring Car Championship in 2004, BMW has taken both drivers and manufacturers championships, always in the face of very stiff competition. Between 1973 and 1988 they won seven European Touring Car Championships, and the '88-'91 E30 M3 is often considered the most successful production-based racing car of all time.

When BMW brought their E46 M3 to the American Le Mans Series it was utterly dominant. It's not often that you see Porsche crying foul about another manufacturer cheating, but the success of the M3GTR drove them to such action. The car was swiftly banned for not complying with homologation numbers requirements. Next year sees the return of the M3 to the ALMS. I wonder how it will do? They're also going World Superbike racing in 2009 with a clean-sheet design, no doubt with series designs on the title.

And there's always the small matter of two Nurburgring 24 Hours victories with the aforementioned M3 GTR in 2004 and 2005.

For such a relatively small company, BMW have generally done a splendid job whenever they've gone racing. Toyota on the other hand have nothing but a string of failures to show for the ungodly amounts of money they've spent on their racing activities. The only bright spot in their racing portfolio is recent success in NASCAR, but based on this season's results, much of that is due to a certain Mr. Busch.

The Nurburgring 24 Hours

It's weird to be out of town attending a wedding in Portland and to be listening to the Radio Le Mans coverage of the fabulous Nurburgring 24 Hours and watching streaming video on the event's website. It simply reinforces my opinion that 24 hour races are terrific fun, and if I was ever to return to competitive motorsport it would be with an eye towards taking part in one.

Just like last year's Britcar 24 Hours, this years N24 is stacked with incredible drivers and professional teams. Check it out:

Sportscar drivers: Timo Bernhard, Marc Lieb, Romain Dumas, Christophe Bouchut, Marc Basseng, Patrick Simon, Claudia Hurtgen, Tomas Enge, Karl Wendlinger, Dirk Muller, Dominik Schwager, Marino Franchitti, Emanuelle Collard, Richard Westbrook, Boris Said, Adam Sharpe, Vincent Vosse, Peter Dumbreck, Hans Stuck.

Touring car drivers: Tom Coronel, Duncan Huisman, Christian Abt, Stefan Mucke, Frank Stippler, Armin Hahne, Pierre Kaffer, Warren Luff, Frank Jelinski, Bernd Schneider, Jorg Muller, Augusto Farfus, Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

Rally drivers: Carlos Sainz, Giniel De Villiers, Dieter Depping.

Industry figures: Ulrich Bez, Hermann Tilke, Volker Strycek.

Journalists: Richard Meaden, Jethro Bovingdon.

What a lineup! And to think that there's nearly 300 cars out there, sharing pits with 6-8 cars per garage, racing on the mad bad Nordschleife in front of hundreds of thousands of drunk Germans. Fan-frickin-tastic!

Shuntorama

What a weekend for big accidents. We saw two entirely different yet highly disturbing crashes, both of which illustrated the potential danger of the sport, as well as the incredible ability of modern race cars to protect its occupant when things go wrong.

Here's exhibit A. Stephane Ortelli's LMP1 class prototype experienced some kind of mechanical failure during the Monza 1000km and veered abruptly to the right. At this point the aerodynamics, which are designed to prevent a car getting air (like the Mercedes CLRs at Le Mans in '99) took over because the car was sideways, and aero is not designed for sideways travel. The car launched into a massive barrel roll. As with most accidents of this type, they look far worse than they are - the gradual release of energy throughout the crash ensured that Ortelli never experienced life-threatening G-loading. The scariest thing about this one is how close the flying Oreca came to decapitating Allan McNish in the Audi:



Onto Exhibit B. In the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix, McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen also experienced a mechanical failure that forced the car to go somewhere it shouldn't. In his case, the car speared off the track and he made contact with the tyre wall at an angle of about 30 degrees whilst doing 137mph. Unlike Ortelli's crash, Kovalainen DID experience massive G-loads, perhaps equalling Robert Kubica's record-setting 75G load during his accident in Canada last year. It's worth noting that 100G is enough to kill most people. An additional aspect of this shunt that was scary was the fact that the car dived UNDER the tyre barrier, and no matter how low down the driver sits, his head is very much at risk in that kind of situation.


I'm not that surprised that Ortelli was relatively unharmed (save for a broken ankle) but the fact that Kovalainen survived with nothing more than concussion and some bumps and bruises is incredible. I have no doubt that the HANS device played a key role in his survival.

The gains in safety since the Imola '94 have been remarkable and it's weekends like this, where we could easily have been mourning the loss of one, perhaps even two, professional racing drivers, that are testament to the work put in by many on this critical issue.

The M3 returns!

Yesterday's announcement of BMW returning to the ALMS with the M3 is possibly the best racing news I've heard this year. I'm a huge fan of the iconic M-car, having always lusted after an original E30 since I was a teenager. I would still love one, but these days they're firmly in "classic" territory e.g. slow for the price, difficult to find parts for and starting to need significant TLC from their owners just to stay on the road.

The E36 is getting very affordable these days and I also hold it dear since it's the first M-car I ever drove. The smooth, turbine-like rush of power is a party trick I don't think you can tire of.

Moving onto the E46, the car got bigger, faster and much more expensive, going for more than $60,000 when it first came out in 2001. Thankfully depreciation has now put it within reach of my own non-profit derived income and next month I'm going to test-drive one or two, something I'm very much looking forward to.

And finally today's E92 M3, which brings the concept bang up to date. It's received the usual raft of rave reviews but a return to racing has to be its most significant characteristic.

Racing was the very raison d'etre of the M3: a desire to race in the European Touring Car Championship demanded a number of big changes to the standard 3-series platform, resulting in a car different enough that BMW needed to homologate a new model. This dispatched thousands of street-legal M3s onto the roads of Europe and a legend was born. Meanwhile on the track M3s won touring car championships in Italy, Germany, the UK and Australia as well as European and World titles, and even made an impression in tarmac rallying.

The E36 never had a significant presence in racing, so it wasn't until 2001 that a factory-backed M3 was raced again. By now, the car had grown in size and performance enough (and rules packages evolved away from the M3 platform) that it found a new home in sportscar racing. BMW developed a V8-engined version of the standard 6-cylinder car and named it the M3GTR. In 2001 it was the car to beat in its class in the ALMS, but it was only through taking advantage of a rules loophole. That was closed before the 2002 season and BMW, facing potentially crippling weight penalties, pulled out of the ALMS. Their presence there was predicated on some questionable rules interpretation and I always thought an 8-cylinder M3, a car not available for purchase, was a bit unfair. It was damn exciting to watch though!

Happily the magnificent GTRs lived on in the hands of Schnitzer Motorsport, winning the Nurburgring 24 Hours in 2004 and 2005. Meanwhile, PTG chose to run 6-cylinder M3s for one more year, and then again in 2006.

Given the somewhat abortive ALMS campaign in 2001, it could be argued that the M3's return to the ALMS later this year, in the hands of Bobby Rahal's team, is the first proper factory-backed effort for a production-derived M3 since the days of the E30.

And that's why this is such exciting news...

Thunderhill 25 Hours - A perfect end to the racing season

Earlier this year I wrote about the Britcar 24 Hours, an ostensibly amateur 24-hour sportscar race that had become well-loved by the entire racing community and was attracting big names who enjoyed its relaxed and laid-back energy.

This weekend I was able to attend an event which could lay claim to being the American equivalent to the Britcar 24 Hours, the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. The race had attracted more than 70 entries, from a Daytona Prototype and some Norma sports-racing prototypes all the way down to Spec Miatas and Honda Civics. Teams were generally amateur, and the vibe was friendly, grass-roots, supportive yet competitive.

Thunderhill is a terrific drivers track. I've done trackdays there both in cars and on bikes, and its diversity of corners and interesting gradients make it fun to drive on, whilst the huge amount of grassy run-off means it's incredibly safe. About 3 hours from San Francisco near the rural town of Willows, it is somewhat in the middle of nowhere, but this adds to the general feeling of camaraderie amongst everyone attending.

My friend Bob and I got there at about 4pm, with dusk approaching. My most recent 24 hour experience was at Le Mans, which starts at 4pm and doesn't get dark until 10pm, so it took some adjusting of my internal clock to deal with this. The race had kicked off at 11am, and by now the three prototypes had a healthy lead. We watched from a number of great vantage points before grabbing a warm cup of coffee and checking the scoring in the comfy clubhouse. With the leaderboard in hand we spent the next couple of hours wandering the pits and paddock, talking to teams, watching them at work and checking out pitstops. Drama was unfolding everywhere. There was the completely bare-bones effort from some local guys in an E30 BMW who had cracked an oil sump and were working feverishly to scavenge parts off a donor engine they'd brought in the back of a pickup truck. Then there was the big budget MER Mazda team (whose driver clients included Patrick Dempsey from "Grey's Anatomy") who had one of their five cars up on jackstands whilst they replaced the entire right-rear suspension, occasionally going over to a brand new MX5 they'd brought along to see how things were supposed to fit together.

Every now and then we'd see another car dragged into the paddock on the hook of a tow-truck, another victim of the night. Team members (or drinking buddies or work colleagues or family) would pounce on the cars, trying to figure out the problems in order to get their car back on track. It was motorsport at its most basic, survival of the fittest and survival of the most desperate.

The energy in the paddock was buzzing. Ten hours in, and the cans of Rockstar and Red Bull were disappearing from underneath RVs, whilst Gatorade and water remained untouched. The diversity of crazy marker lights punctuated the night like an Aston Martin's door mirrors at Le Mans. Barbecue grills smoked, generators hummed away, mig welding torches crackled and sparked, breath froze in the chilly night air and the constant background noise of straight-fours, V8s, inline-sixes and of course rotaries filled gaps in conversation.

Endurance racing, whether it's the multi-million dollar kind at Le Mans or the few-thousand dollar version at Thunderhill is essentially the same.

Unlike Le Mans, we opted for a proper night's sleep and returned the next morning, tea and croissant in hand, to find a gray, sad paddock. Rain during the night had hampered or ended many efforts. Crews who had retired had already vacated their paddock spot, whilst those still running were starting to clean up, given the three hours remaining. The wind howled across California's Central Valley, chilling everyone to their bones, as the 40 remaining cars pounded out the laps, covered in grime, trailing broken pieces of fiberglass and struggling for grip on the dusty, damp track.

With an hour to go the battle for third was truly on. MER Mazda number 92 held a slim lead over the factory-backed Honda Research S2000 effort, and before long the Honda took the lead. A final pitstop by the Mazda had effectively handed the podium spot to Honda. As we returned to the clubhouse for a final check on the scores, the Honda was leaving the pits. A pass under yellow had earned them a penalty, and the Mazda took full advantage, holding the spot all the way to the end.

As the final minutes ticked down, excitement returned to the paddock. People gathered on the pit wall to watch crews try to get their battered machines back on track for that one final lap, whilst the leader, the Parallax Racing Daytona Prototype, struggled with battery issues, praying for that checkered flag. The clock ticked over to midday and their prayers were answered. One by one, the cars crossed the finish line, and you couldn't help feeling that, even more so than at Le Mans, everyone who finished here was a winner.

What an event, and what a way to end what has been the busiest and most exciting season of racing spectating I've ever had. Wandering the paddock of Thunderhill at night stands equally with watching the sunrise at Arnage at Le Mans, cheering on shootout contenders at the top of the Mountain at Bathurst or watching in awe as the MotoGP field funneled into the Andretti hairpin at Laguna Seca.

Bring on 2008!

Government or the ALMS...

News broke yesterday of the remarkable career change of British politician Lord Paul Drayson.

After making gazillions in the pharmaceutical industry, Drayson moved into government in 2005 as a junior defense minister, and was dubbed one of "Tony's Cronies" for his closeness to Tony Blair.

This year Drayson has been racing alongside Jonny Cocker in a Barwell Motorsport Aston Martin DBRS-9 in the British GT championship. His run was noteworthy for two reasons: firstly, he came second in the championship, not bad for a politician; and secondly because the Aston ran on bio-ethanol, and became the first GT car to win a race using that kind of fuel.

The opportunity has come up for him to move to the US to take part in the ALMS with Barwell, Cocker and Aston Martin, although the exact details remain unclear. There's talk of the car being a GT2-spec Aston V8 Vantage, along the lines of a test car that was spotted at Goodwood circuit earlier this week.

Endurance racing's best-kept secret

One race missing from yesterday's Midweek Menu that should have been on there is the Britcar 24 Hours. Britcar is basically an endurance-racing championship for primarily amateur drivers in production-based cars. The rules are set-up to allow as much variety as possible in the grids, and costs for teams are kept carefully in check to retain the spirit of the series. I recently heard one of the organizers say that if a car came along that didn't fit into the rules, they would "find a way to allow it to race".

But a funny thing happened after a couple of years... the racing was so good, the grids so fun and diverse and with very few other options for drivers who wanted to go endurance racing, the professionals started to show up. Britcar started to become a place for some of the top drivers to "blow off steam" in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. It also allowed amateur drivers to pit themselves against some of the top racers in the sport.

Nowhere was this more in evidence than at the crown jewel event of the championship, the Silverstone 24 Hours. First run in 2005, and benefitting from the groundwork already laid by Britcar in the previous few years, it was an instant success. The event grew in 2006, and the organizers brought in the Radio Le Mans team to provide track and web commentary.

The entry list in 2007 is extremely impressive. Big names from sportscar racing such as Martin Short, Jamie Campbell-Walter, David Leslie, Michael Vergers, Marcel Fassler and Cor Euser are joined by touring car pros like Anthony Reid, Fiona Leggate and Gareth Howell. Other notable entrants include BTCC organizer Alan Gow, Duke Video boss Peter Duke, Evo magazine writer Jethro Bovingdon and the entire BBC Top Gear team (Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and The Stig) who are filming the effort for an upcoming TV show. Check out this thread at FinalGear.com for more info, and scroll down for some photos (the hilarious picture above is one of them, so photo credit and thanks to Arosamike from FinalGear.com)

Edge of the seat

Although I abandoned "weekend review" posts last year, it seems only right that I should reflect on a cracking weekend's racing in the ALMS and WRC. Having a three-day weekend to enjoy it also helped, especially with the lovely weather we've had here in San Francisco (finally...)

Marcus Gronholm and Seb Loeb delivered a complete nail-biter of a rally in New Zealand, featuring the closest finish ever in the history of the World Rally Championship, a scant 0.3 seconds. This is not how rallies are supposed to work. Generally you expect the bloke in second place to back off in the last few stages once it's clear he's not going to catch the leader. Not yesterday...

Marcus started the day about one second behind the Frenchman, and the lead see-sawed until the final stage. Seb went in 0.7 seconds behind, claimed back 0.4 seconds and ended up just missing out on the victory. It now leaves him one rally win (10 points) behind Gronholm. The balance of power is finely poised. The next two events are tarmac rallies that typically favour Seb: Catalunya and Corsica. After that is Rally Japan, which could go either way. The penultimate round is in Ireland. Although the surface is tarmac, and in theory should be best suited to Loeb, both drivers have done exploratory rallies in the Emerald Isle, making for a much more even playing field. The final rally will be in Wales, with the slippery gravel that might just be more Gronholm's cup of tea. The key for both of them will be to keep it on the road. If Marcus has a DNF with a corresponding win for Seb, they'll be even on points. If the opposite occurs, Seb might just have to kiss the championship goodbye.

Although the setting couldn't have been more different, the American Le Mans race in Detroit was very nearly as exciting as the WRC in New Zealand.

As much as I dislike seeing Audi win, due to their massive domination in Le Mans racing, I'm not too happy seeing them endure such a long losing streak (now 8 straight races). Part of it is down to the fact they've had some bad luck, but the bigger issue is that according to the rules, they shouldn't be losing. LMP2 cars, like the Penske Porsches that are so successful right now, are not supposed to win. They can be expected to challenge very occasionally on tight, slow tracks, but according to the ACO's rule book, LMP1 cars should rarely lose, especially when they are as highly-developed as the Audi R10.

Porsche were too frightened of Audi to enter LMP1. This was a bad decision for the fans who wanted to see a straight fight. To see Porsche win with an LMP2 car is like watching a badly-behaved kid get rewarded for beating up a classmate.

However, it has made for some great racing, in a season where it was expected that Audi would win everything! In Detroit on Saturday, where it was expected the Porsches would take advantage of the tight street layout, Audi looked to be taking a surprise win. However, with two laps to go, Romain Dumas in the Porsche managed to make a pass on Emanuele Pirro's Audi, and held on for the win. Pirro will have to take the blame after carelessly leaving the door open at one of the few points on the circuit where a pass was theoretically possible. Any of Pirro's three team-mates would probably not have made that same mistake.

All good fun stuff to watch....

The Enge situation

I feel bad for Tomas Enge. The likeable Czech driver admittedly pulled some very boneheaded moves at the Lime Rock round of the American Le Mans Series, but his dismissal from his team for on-track contact with another car at Mid-Ohio last weekend seems like a serious case of overkill.

Enge has always been known for his no-holds-barred, old-school driving style. An article by Malcolm Cracknell on Daily Sportscar compared him quite rightly to the late Gilles Villeneuve:

"Both could legitimately be accused of over-driving at times, both undoubtedly cost their respective teams extra outlay for repairs, but both were/are good, old-fashioned drivers with, we’d suggest, not an ounce of malicious intent between them."

At Lime Rock he made a number of questionable passes on both backmarkers and cars with whom he was racing for position, and caused both Risi Competizione Ferraris to crash, as well as one of the Tafel Motorsport Porsche GT3s. He accepted responsibility for the accidents and was placed on probation.

His team, looking to appear upstanding, supported the decision of the officials, and pledged to fire Enge should he incur any more penalties. This, in retrospect, was a bad move: a botched call by the officials would now require the team to either fire their driver for doing nothing wrong, or go back on their word and appear two-faced.

Unfortunately, the call at Mid-Ohio was a bad one. Enge was involved in what can best be described as a racing incident. He was racing closely behind the Risi Ferrari of Mika Salo, but being careful to not try any aggressive moves. Coming into a corner, Salo was suddenly balked by a prototype car, causing him to slow suddenly, and Enge ran into the back of him. It caused minor damage to the Risi car, requiring them to pit. Hardly Enge's fault...

Officials, conscious that the spotlight was on Enge's driving, chose to impose a 5-minute stop-and-go penalty. This punishment hardly fitted the crime, and seemed to be vindictive more than anything else. Sadly, the penalty forced the team to fire Enge on the spot. He got out of the car after the minimum 45-minute stint and was dismissed there and then.

What is worse to me was the behavior of Salo. Following the incident with Enge, he came back and deliberately punted him off the track, causing both cars to spin. Salo admitted afterwards that it was revenge, pure and simple, but had the gall to accuse Enge of "playing" with powerful, dangerous cars. Salo's maneuver copped a two-minute penalty.

So let's dish out some blame here, because no-one smells of roses in this one:

• Enge, for his idiotic driving at Lime Rock that got him in this mess in the first place

• Petersen White Lightning, Enge's team, for making a pledge that basically took their ability to make personnel decision out of their hands

• Salo, for inexcusably dangerous driving that should have been far more heavily penalized than Enge's innocent racing incident half a lap before

• ALMS race officials, for inflicting a penalty that had absolutely nothing to do with what happened on track, and for not giving Salo a larger penalty

• CBS Sports pitlane reporters for stirring the pot. Their interviews with those involved should have been much more tactful rather than looking to rile up their interviewees

The departure of Enge is a big loss. He's an exciting, fast, characterful driver who's good for the series to have. Hopefully another team will pick him up soon.

Open cockpits - a risk worth taking?

Motorsport is so safe these days. Or so we're led to believe. I believe we may very well be in the same place as we were prior to the tragic weekend at Imola in 1994 in which both Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna were killed. Prior to their accidents, Formula had had no race weekend fatalities for twelve years, and everyone involved with the sport felt that safety was at a high enough level that there would never again be a death in the sport. Sound familiar? Ask anyone in Formula 1 for example if any major changes could be made to improve safety and you will probably get an answer that goes something like this: "no"...

The accidents of Robert Kubica in Canada and Ernesto Viso in Magny-Cours (and come to think of it, Katherine Legge's Champcar crash at Road America last year) were as much examples of how luck plays a part as how strong the cars are these days. I have little doubt that improvements in safety cell technology saved all three drivers' lives, but there remains one huge risk factor to open-wheel drivers, and that is a situation where the top of the head makes a direct, high-speed impact with something immovable. Viso's crash showed this most visibly: once the car was airborne and upside-down it landed on the top of a concrete wall. Had it made the impact six inches further forward, it would have been his head that took the brunt of the force as opposed to the roll hoop and surrounding safety cell structure.

The collision between Alex Wurz and David Coulthard at the Australian Grand Prix this year is another example of how objects are still able to get into the cockpit and make contact with the driver. The vectors of that impact were such the Wurz was uninjured, but the fact remains that cars without roofs introduce an additional safety risk factor that is not present on those with roofs.

Open wheel motorsport is not the only place where this is an issue. The plans of the ACO, organizers of the Le Mans 24 Hours, call for the elimination of open-topped cars in their top class by 2010. Whilst their reasons for doing so are varied and include responding to the majority opinion of fans who prefer the aesthetics of closed-top prototypes, the safety benefit is worth noting.

There are numerous ways to address this safety issue. Concrete walls played a major role in the crashes of Kubica, Viso and Legge, and repositioning, redesigning or simply removing such walls would be a good start. The addition of a lateral roll hoop to these cars would be a major step forward in risk alleviation, but would be an aesthetic challenge that would no doubt incense fans of F1, Champcar, GP2, IRL or anyone else who might implement the idea.

So I'm not going to advocate for any changes right here. Instead, I'm simply going to suggest that sanctioning bodies are ignoring a major safety concern in just the same way that things were ignored prior to Imola 1994, and that discussion of this topic by the powers-that-be should be happening right now. The clock is ticking before we have another fatality.

A Le Mans marketing disaster

Look at all the people in this photograph. This is the pitwalk on the Friday afternoon at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Thousands of sportscar racing fans descended on the pitlane, as teams made their cars available for viewing (from behind the safety of prehensile barriers). This is the kind of thing sponsors live for. It's the perfect opportunity to hand out posters, collector cards, promotional materials and other swag, all emblazoned with the sponsor's logo.

So how many of the 54 teams do you think were doing this? Maybe 75%? 50%? 25%? Surely at least 10%? No. Only two teams had ANYTHING to hand out, and only one had a human being making direct contact with the public. As such, The Fastest Lap Blog's Award for Best PR Effort at Le Mans goes to the Flying Lizard team. More about them in a moment....

In the meantime, here's a message for all the teams at Le Mans that missed out on the award: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ALL DOING???? This is top-level racing, with many millions of dollars invested, and only one team is able to put together any semblance of a PR effort! European sportscar fans constantly complain about lack of promotion in FIA GT and the LMS, and I finally witnessed this in person. As a regular attendee of ALMS events, I'm used to mandatory autograph sessions, free posters from every team distributed all day long in front of the teams' rigs, scoreboards around the track and the excellent Radio Le Mans to keep me abreast of on-track developments. I'm also used to seeing tie-in promotional events in local cities, TV advertising, magazine and newspaper promotion, ticket giveaways on local radio stations, and a wealth of marketing campaigns from associate sponsors when the ALMS comes to town. Sponsors look for value, and one indicator of this is the number of people reached per dollar spent. At Le Mans, that number could have been dramatically higher for any team that wasn't the Flying Lizards, and what's even more infuriating is that this is a highly-targeted, pre-qualified audience. I KNOW that many of these teams have commercial directors or marketing individuals, and to them I say "do your job". It was a piss-poor performance, and they should all be ashamed of themselves.

As for the Lizards: they went to the trouble of hiring a marketing contractor specifically for Le Mans, a fellow by the name of Shane. He was out front of their garage during the pitwalk, handing out cards promoting all the Lizard merchandise that was available at a booth they were sharing with Radio Le Mans. A double-whammy then, since they got many, many mentions during the Radio Le Mans broadcast, and seemed to be doing a roaring trade in their new line of clothing that featured (guess what?) the fantastic (and newsworthy) new livery. They were in fact one of only a handful of teams who even had merch, the others being Audi, Pescarolo, Peugeot, Corvette and Aston Martin. That's some very impressive company to be in, and they were the only small team in that group.

Shane took the time to chat with us for a while, and he was pleased to meet up with other folks from the SF Bay Area. The Lizards are our "home team", based up at Infineon Raceway, a mere 35 miles from San Francisco. We got an invite to visit their workshop and were made to feel vested in the team's success. Guess who we cheered for in the GT2 battle?

Job done, Lizards - you may not have finished the race, but your other successes at Le Mans were in many ways even more notable.

Off to Le Mans

This blog will be rather quiet until early July. On Monday I leave for France, where I'll be making my fourth trip to the Le Mans 24 Hours. After that we're spending a week in the Loire and another week in the Dordogne.

Unfortunately the weather forecast for the race is really rather crappy, so my fingers are very crossed that it improves in the next few days. Some showers could shake things up a bit, but we certainly don't want another 2001 or 1995. That would make my merguez soggy.

Last year I wrote a very comprehensive preview to the Le Mans 24, but this year I've seen so many equally good previews that I'd just like to point you in the direction of The-Paddock.net's Le Mans preview.

Petrol vs diesel at Le Mans

My compadres over at the Ten-Tenths sportscar forum are all a-twitter at the moment about equivalency formulae between diesel and petrol Le Mans Prototype cars. I've tried to stay out of the discussion because it seems like one of those threads where no-one really hears what anyone else is saying and it all ends up being a bit pointless.

But it's an important issue that impacts the future of Le Mans sportscar racing. The perceived problem is that the current rules format favours diesel-powered cars unfairly. In theory, ACO Le Mans rules are supposed to offer teams and manufacturers the option of running different fuels, none of which offer an advantage over any other, thus encouraging innovation and use of alternative fuel technologies.

In reality, there are two teams running cars with diesel engines, and both those teams appear to be running significantly faster than any of their rivals. As a result, many people are saying that the rules favour diesels. The one point I made on the aforementioned forum thread was that it just so happens that the only two teams running diesels are the only two Le Mans entrants in the prototype class who can effectively be considered "manufacturers".

So is the apparent pace of the Peugeot and Audi diesels down to their engine or their HUGE AMOUNT OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES??? This is a question that will be answered in 2008 (maybe) and 2009 (certainly), when Acura step up their ALMS prototype project to the LMP1 class. It will be the first time EVER that a factory Audi will have been challenged by a petrol-powered prototype from a manufacturer with a legitimate shot at winning Le Mans. Until then, Audi and Peugeot's closest rivals will be privateers such as Pescarolo, Creation, Zytek and Courage, all of which run petrol engines and all of which operate on a fraction of the budget of the two big diesel teams. It's like comparing apples and oranges, something that some of my friends over at 10/10ths seem to be missing.

The elephant in the room here is Porsche. Despite running very close to Audi in the ALMS all year, they believe that the current engine equivalency formulae in LMP1 are so tilted in the favour of diesels that they are considering delaying their entry into LMP1. Personally I think Porsche should suck it up and get on with the job. If it becomes clear that petrol engines are being unfairly legislated against, I'm sure the ACO will make adjustments.

The numbers seem to indicate that any adjustment is either unnecessary or would need to be tiny. Last year, Pescarolo ran a 3:30 on the Le Mans test weekend, and a 3:32 in qualifying, with Audi doing vice versa. So performance was close prior to the race itself. In the race, Pescarolo lost by four laps. Audi's 27 stops gave a total of 2700 litres of fuel taken onboard. In 2007, Audi's fuel tank will go from 100 litres down to 81 litres, giving 34 pitstops. So if both teams run the same pace with the same fuel economy this year, Audi's seven extra stops will cost them an extra 11 minutes, which is equal to three laps. What this means is that the change in fuel tank size has gone a long way to levelling the playing field, and that really it seems as though petrol performance is only about 0.25% below what it should be (at Le Mans at least) in order to produce a straight fight against diesels.

We'll know in 18 days. I'll be watching very carefully from my pitlane grandstand seat how many laps diesel teams are getting on one stint versus what the petrol cars get.

Grand Am - get your act together

I spent the weekend down at Laguna Seca at the Grand-Am Rolex Sportscar event. I wrote four pieces: a qualifying report, a report for the GT race, an interview with Porsche factory driver Pat Long and a report on the Daytona Prototype race. In addition to the two races I wrote about, I watched the two Koni Challenge events. Of those four races, THREE ended under a yellow flag.

There are not many things I can think of that are more unsatisfactory than a race ended under yellow. But to see 75% of the weekend's races end that way was terrible. It seemed to me that Grand-Am officials were far too quick to throw full-course cautions when local yellows would suffice. Yes, they utilized local yellows on a couple of occasions, such as a car spinning on track. But will somebody please tell these people about the step between the static yellow, and the full-course caution... it's called a waving yellow, and it's used for a situation that requires a driver to not just be cautious, but to actually slow down. A stalled car in the middle of the track is a good example of a situation where this would be necessary. Ultimately, the car may need to be retrieved, in which case a safety car may be needed. But sometimes a car can get going again. By this time, Grand Am would have sent out the safety car, when it was not required.

To make things even worse, when a safety car was utilized, it stayed out at least two laps too long. Generally, after the hazard was cleared it would be two more laps before the field was released. In a race where seven (YES, SEVEN!!!) cautions were called, that equates to a loss of an additional 14 green flag laps, or more than 15% of the race. There were 30 laps run under yellow, which theoretically could have been just 15. Having extraction equipment in different parts could also have helped, instead of needing the one crew to scramble from and to the pit lane each time.

All in all, it was a pretty pathetic show, and added to the impression I got as a member of the media that the ALMS are light years ahead of Grand Am when it comes to professionalism. From a press conference where the drivers showed up 15 minutes late, to a press room where race notes and results seemed to take hours to be distributed, I was very unimpressed.

Like London buses

You wait seven months for a race at a local track, and then two come along at the same time. Last time I was at either Laguna Seca or Infineon was for the American Le Mans Series last October. If I hadn't got my fix at the Long Beach ALMS race in April I'd probably be going nuts right now, especially with my Le Mans trip just around the corner...

This weekend sees the Rolex Sportscar Series at Laguna, and the AMA Superbike Championship at Infineon. I went to both last year since they didn't clash but have to sacrifice one this weekend. Since The-Paddock wants me on-site to report on the Rolex event, that's where I'm headed. Luckily I can check out the Superbikes twice this year, when they support MotoGP at Laguna in July, and again for a stand-alone event at Laguna in September.

Last year I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the Rolex race, mainly due to the mellow crowd and the close racing. The cars were still silly and slow, but a day in the sun watching sportscars is never a bad day. Hopefully this weekend will be a repeat, although I'll be burdened with the task of reporting on the event (not a bad thing since it's free admission, all access, a spot in the media center and the opportunity to interview some great drivers).

One final note: there was a fun spot on the morning news on a local TV network, featuring an interview with Steve Rapp, rider for the Attack Kawasaki team in the AMA's Formula Xtreme class. Although most of what was covered was aimed at viewers who didn't know anything about the sport, it was very cool to see our beloved bike racing get some mainstream coverage.

About damn time....

My Le Mans tickets arrived. That means that I'm definitely going, LOL!

The drama to get these tickets was more than I expected. We knew that we wanted seats in the stands directly above the pitlane, since you can get a great view of pitstops all the way along the pitlane, and it's as good as any other for a view of the start. When I "applied" to the ACO for these tickets they were sold out. In a state of panic I then contacted JustTickets.co.uk and picked them up at a premium price from them. Two weeks later the ACO comes back to me to say that the stands were now available. Alas, it was too late, so we had to suck it up and deal with the extra cost of having bought through a broker.

To be fair, JustTickets did send them via overnight international, quite a cost on their part, after I told them we'd be leaving significantly earlier to start our vacation in France.

By the way, the picture is of me and my dad eating dinner at the legendary Stella Bar on the outside of Tertre Rouge corner at Le Mans in 2004, during the Thursday qualifying session. Only 29 days until I'll be doing the same again!

TV coverage - the good, the bad and the downright ugly

TV coverage can make or break a motorsport championship. I watched the second round of the Australian Rally Championship last night, which is produced by the same folks who do the WRC coverage, with the same style of graphics, same music, same editing style and an overall similar feel. The goal is clear: regardless of what happens in the rally, MAKE IT COMPELLING...

They have succeeded. Despite an absence of flame-spitting WRC cars, replaced instead by tamer Super 2000 and Group N machinery, and even with a runaway leader, I was very entertained. Quick edits, smart, diverse camerawork and an excitable commentator all helped, and the show was put together in a manner that allowed me to keep track of what was going on.

In contrast, MotorsTV's coverage of the Le Mans Series race at Valencia was a disaster. Many on the sportscar racing forums are decrying the lack of spectator-friendliness of this series, and a piss-poor TV package is not helping. Unlike the ALMS, which provides excellent trackside commentary, internet radio, position indicator lights on the cars and numerous live-timing scoreboards at the track and online, it seems as though the LMS exists just for the competitors, and the TV coverage is one more example of this.

The MotorsTV highlights show had a wonderful opportunity to pack 6 hours of action into a tight 90-minute presentation. Instead, they took three segments of the race, stuck them together and called it a day. Tough luck to the viewer if something happened in the time between those segments. For an endurance event, it is vital that the viewer or spectator know what's going on, because it is often hard to see unless you follow closely over a long period of time. This is impossible if one moment you're watching action from lap 70, then a second later, it's lap 170.

As much as I like Mark Cole, an extremely knowledgeable commentator, he needs to be teamed with an entertaining co-commentator. He needs to function more as the expert, and sit next to someone like Martin Haven or John Hindhaugh, who can provide some excitement. Even his normal partner of Carlton Kirby is a little better. But when it's just Mark and David Leslie, or even worse, the pillocks they dug up for this weekend's event, it makes a potentially interesting event rather dull.

The top racing championships have it right - MotoGP for example does a great job, with good graphics, excellent camerawork and a solid commentary team. But the Aussie Rally folks prove that you don't need to be a major worldwide championship to have a great broadcast package. In fact, for smaller championships it might actually be even MORE important to have exciting, compelling TV shows.

Stefan Bellof

A question was raised on the Ten-Tenths sportscar forum the other day about people's favourite Porsche sportscar teams. This got me thinking about all those great Group C teams of the 1980s, like Kremer, Brun, Joest and Obermaier who ably backed up the factory team from 1983 onwards. So I hopped over to the RacingSportsCars.com site that has a fantastic archive of photos and entry lists from sportscar races, and started browsing through their Group C archives.

So many great cars and evocative liveries and so many great names. One driver in particular stood out as I looked over the entry lists, the late Stefan Bellof. There are very few drivers in the world who would be more deserving of the unfortunate title of "greatest talent lost before his time".

There was no doubt that he was one of the fastest drivers of his generation, winning the German FF1600 title and nearly winning German F3 despite only competing for half a season. He had a tremendously competitive year in Formula 2 before being drafted into the Tyrrell Formula 1 team. Even though the car was perhaps the slowest in the entire field, the young German managed to give Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell a run for their money when the rain fell at Monaco in 1984 and levelled the playing field. He even scored two points finishes in 1985, grabbing a staggering 4th place at the US Grand Prix. It was widely believed that he had signed for Ferrari for the 1986 season, and I personally feel that that would have been the catapult to stardom for him. It's quite possible that he could have ended up alongside Senna or Prost in the McLaren team in '88 or '89. Who would have owned the title of "most successful German F1 driver of the 20th century" had Bellof lived?

His sportscar career was equally spectacular. Although he failed to finish during both his outings at Le Mans, he clinched the 1984 World Endurance Championship ahead of illustrious factory Porsche team-mates such as Derek Bell, Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass. He won numerous races and showed that raw natural talent that team managers dream about.

In 1985 the factory Porsche team replaced him with Hans-Joachim Stuck, perhaps knowing that his Formula 1 commitments would make it more difficult to focus on his sportscar career. He had a number of outings for the privateer Brun outfit and it was in a Brun Porsche that he lost his life at Spa-Francorchamps on September 1st, 1985. His car was slower than the factory machines, but his sheer speed found him dicing for position with Jacky Ickx's Rothmans Porsche 962. Impatience got the better of him, and he collided with the other car at the brutally fast Eau Rouge corner, taking both cars into the armco where they caught fire. He was pronounced dead one hour later.

I tend to think of the loss of Bellof in the same way as I think of Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison. All had huge talent, and all had so much more to give to the world.

All were 27, too.

**LAST MINUTE EDIT**: I forgot to mention when I posted this yesterday that Stefan Bellof holds the record for the fastest EVER lap around the Nurburgring's Nordschleife circuit, set in a Porsche 956 in 1984. The fact that the 23-year old record still stands today is incredible...