Free Practice 1.

At the third stroke  the time was  4 o’clock precisely ( that dates us!), the pit lane exit light went green  and Le Mans 24hrs 2014 was up and running. The Club Arnage Team are in place.. if a little fragile after ‘over-training’ the previous night. Tony is on pole ready to deploy our secret weapon .. looking out of the window and into the pit-lane.. hi-tech eh?  Lennart is exploring the ins and outs of Twitter  and other ‘social media’  Jock is scribbling as and when required. Le Grand Fromage is buried deep in the bowels of the ACO bit doing live texting for them under what appear to be rather trying circumstances.

Just as we started writing the #0 Nissan ZEOD RC ground to a halt on its ‘out lap’.. 12 whole minutes of racing. By the way ZEOD RC means Zero Emission On Demand Racing. The engines were working but not talking to each other so it seems the gearbox maybe the trouble and that was changed during a long stop. 

Would you believe that there are 42 ‘Rookies’ here this year.. where do they find them ! 

While we settling into the ‘Le Mans’ routine reality kicked in very suddenly when at 17:07 we saw pictures of the remains of #1 Audi which had a huge accident at the Porsche Curves. Loic Duval was at the wheel  and it was very worrying that the marshals couldn’t immediately start extracting Duval until a team technician arrived to ‘power down’  the hybrid system. Obviously the red flag came out and the session was stopped immediately. Loic was extricated  from the car and then sent off to the Medical Centre. We heard later that he had been on the phone talking to Dr Ulrich. The car almost certainly won’t be back for the race this year but Audi may have a spare tub etc to build up another one by tomorrow.

The session restarted again at 17;55hrs. 

We have already blogged a fair bit about the Hybrids and the technology. Finally we have found what you might call “ A Dummy’s  Guide to Hybrids”. After this you will have no excuses and will be able to impress your mates down the pub!

	Audi R8 e-tron quattro	Toyota TS040 Hybrid	Porsche 919 Hybrid
Engine	V6 4.0 litre turbo	V8 3.7 litre non turbo	V4 2.0 litre turbo
Fuel	Diesel	Petrol	Petrol
Power	540+ bhp	520+ bhp	500 bhp +
Torque	800+ Nm	Unknown	Unknown
ERS	Inertia Flywheel	Supercapacitors	Lithium –ion battery
Fuel tank	54.3 litres	68.3 litres	68.3 litres
Weight	870 kgs	870 kgs	870 kg

Audi Pros:-Well known , well tested hybrid technology, plenty of power from V6 TDI engine

Audi Cons:- The hybrid system is heavy and cumbersome for very little gain.

Toyota Pros:- A competitive and reliable hybrid system based on superconductors. Rapid ‘restocking’ and disposal of energy

Toyota Cons:- Drivers have to use the extra power under acceleration instantly

Porsche Pros:- F1 technology

Porsche Cons:- Weight of the battery . Question marks over reliability 

Back to free practice .. with about 30  mins to go the #67 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Erik Maris went off at the 1st Chicane , known this year as The Forza Chicane . We are not all that  familiar with  computer games but this is apparently a driving game on the Xbox! Anyway this brought out the Red Flags again and the session was stopped for about twenty minutes and restarted with 15 mins to go. The Red Flags came out because there was debris all over the track and it was too dangerous for the marshals to clear it all up.

In the end the session was stopped and that was the first free practice over.

Have a look HERE for detailed timing.

So, what can we pick out of that? To date your team have not made their traditional, alcohol fuelled predictions. Last night was an away win for the alcohol and we forgot!

In LMP1 it has been said all along that the Toyotas are not lacking in pace but of course this is free practice and nobody is going to show their cards . You may recall that Porsche got their wrists smacked for their ‘flexible’ bodywork and it didn't take long to explain to them that it as illegal and would have to go... and robbed some of their original straight line speed! Audi as usual seem to be working at their own very professional pace and while some say they lack speed they will make up for it in clockwork efficiency.  We are told that Audi can rebuild , if that is the right word, the #1 car that crashed. In effect it must be going to be based on a new tub, bodywork.. everything!

The #13 Rebellion car only did 6 laps while his team mate in the #12 car did 15. They are still off the pace despite a number of concessions but as always they surely won’t see the podium .

LMP2 needs watching.. it is producing some of the best racing at the moment but always gets ‘lost’ in amongst the LMP1 hype..the first six cars all share the same second.  OAK are up front followed by Murphy Prototypes and SMP racing.

Changes to the ‘Balance of Performance’ since Silverstone now means that a well driven ‘Am’ car can mix it with the ‘Pro’ drivers.  This means that the ‘ Aston Martin #95 ‘Am’ car is ahead of the #51 Ferrari 458 Italia by 0.013 secs !! Corvette #73 is fourth and the Manthey factory Porsches are languishing 7th and 8th . We rather suspect there maybe more to come..

By Jock Simpson