Sadly That Was Le Mans 2013

Your scribe had planned to craft a witty, cheerful summary of this year's race but that will not be the case.

The sport lost a key player here at Le Mans and he left a huge gap in so many of our lives. Simply take a look at Facebook and see the masses of tributes to Allan Simonsen. He was Danish and this 34 year old racing driver had a huge following in Denmark along with a sizeable fan base in UK. GT drivers don't always attract this type of admiration. Tributes poured in from people who had worked with him and raced against him and without exception they all talked of one of the world's 'good guys'. No doubt it will take months to establish what went actually wrong and what caused the accident but the decision that Aston Martin Racing made to carry on with the race may seem a strange and insensitive one,  but his family, who were here at Le Mans, were absolutely adamant that they should carry on and David Richards went along with their wishes. This sad event cast a massive shadow over this year's race and Allan won't be forgotten, maybe the only glimmer of hope was that lost his life doing something he truly loved .. racing motor cars.The podium was a very emotional affair.

RIP Allan..

This cloud hung over an event that was cloudy, cold, wet and frankly pretty miserable. Allan's untimely death made it infinitely worse. Those of you who were down here will leave with memories of rain, storms and flooded campsites. Le Mans needs to be warm sunny and awash with BBQ's and beer, in 2013 it was just awash. The Race was a curious affair as well, it all began with overtones of last year.. Audi .v. Toyota.. plucky private teams trying to keep in the same league... a big grid of LM P2s very closely matched... In GT it would be a battle between  Aston Martin, Ferrari and the newly revitalised factory Porsche Team.. Corvette were, as usual, heroically upbeat but on this occasion heroically off the pace.. The Vipers looked sexy and probably wouldn't feature anywhere!

What could possibly go wrong? As it turned out practically everything. There must be something wrong with the Armco here because almost every incident resulted in serious , time consuming damage.. rebuilding, re-welded and so on. As a result the safety car was deployed an astounding 11 times and the race cars spent more than 5 crushingly boring hours,  ploughing around behind them. Would the safety cars run out of petrol.. would they qualify as finishers? It does not make for heart stopping excitement. We are sure that it caused the teams no end of tactical conundrums. We had rain of various varieties from cloud bursts to misty drizzle with the odd glimpse of the sun. Car after car went into the gravel.

But it did make for lively final hour or so.

The expected Audi domination was spoilt by those cheeky Japanese Toyotas who hadn't read the script. They would never win outright but they gave Audi a serious run for their money as far as podium places were concerned. They didn't have the outright pace of the Audis but they were more economical and the weather seemed to suit the Toyotas. Anyway it was No. 8  who squeezed onto the podium and knocked one of the Audis off their perch... it was a brilliant effort with the other Toyota coming 4th despite a big accident that looked irreparable but again nobody told Toyota and brought it back out looking a good as new and upto 4th. Unusually Audi did hit bother which meant the game stayed alive. You will need to read other race reports to catch up with that but there was wheel to wheel racing all the way,

Aston Martin arrived with big hopes of victory in both 'Pro' and 'Am'... sadly these plans were knocked sideways emotionally and tactically so I do doubt if we saw the best of Aston Martin Racing this year, it must have been very hard indeed. Porsche on the other hand were preparing for battle next year and what better way than to run a pair of 'Factory' cars and get their act together. Initially people thought the threat to Aston would come from the reliable, nimble and economic Ferraris. That never happened... any more than the possibly tongue in cheek optimism of Corvette. For Porsche this was surely a dress rehearsal  for their return to LMP1 next year and a very good dress rehearsal it was too... the team functioned well and they got what they wanted.. a 1st & 2nd in LMGT Pro. Not bad for their return to the big time. I suspect Ferrari will be concerned for GT since Porsche have a new engine in the sidelines to bring on as soon as they have sold enough road cars to get it homogolated. Corvette were keeping their hand in with an 'old' car that was going slower than last year for some inexplicable reason.  The C7 can't arrive soon enough for them! Viper will be back and they certainly used to know how to win.. you don't forget that!

It was a rather 'grey' sort of race that was only enlivened in the last hour or so when everything kicked off. Everything came together in a recipe that could only have 'Le Mans 24hrs' written on the box! All the ingredients that make 'Endurance Racing' such a drug for us all came came  together at once. In no particular order... the weather having being a bit unfriendly became hostile and dangerous! Weather radar was predicting different things and the timing was  crucial. Wets...slicks..wait and see... despite persistent rain go for slicks because by the time the safety car session it would be dry .. a gamble? Hell yes !! With so many safety car sessions where was everybody on fuel? Go for it and run out .. or tread gently and finish?

This was a year that many team managers will have relished and many will have had a nervous breakdown. There was probably no middle ground! The best scrap was in LM GT Pro between Aston and Porsche.. what precisely went on is a bit hard to grasp but in the modern idiom they 'lost it'.. bad tyre choices and bad planning versus Porsche cool. Porsche cool won. Aston must have been devastated it was the end of terrible 24hrs for them, and to complete the misery, the #76 IMSA Performance Matmut won the LM GT Am class.

That is it for the moment .. thanks for reading these blogs.. tell your friends because we would like to revitalise the actual motor sport part of  Club Arnage .. but Le Grand Fromage can look after all that.

Here is the link to the official  ACO statement regarding Allan's accident.

 Pictures by Dave Davies www.davedaviesracing.com