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Le Mans 2013

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  

The Final Questions Answered - 3rd qualifying session.

Once again it all started slowly.. this seems to be trend this year. Unless the track dried out ...all the way round.. there was no hope of changing anything. Times were miles off the ones set in the first session. The track was still wet in places and drying in others. Really all you might achieve was to stuff the car into the barriers and give your hard pressed mechanics a long tiring night.

In the background things were moving a pace as far as the crippled Krohn car was concerned .(howzat that for alliteration!)  The original car wasn't exactly scrap but its career as a race car was clearly over. But there were a few bits , like an ash tray, that were  useful. So a new shell was rushed down from Sebastian Loeb Racing and we believe it was then vinyl wrapped in that lurid green. So they spent all day rebuilding the car using the best bits of both. Incredibly they made it.. and with only 35 mins left of qualifying they had to get Mediani sorted out with his five laps in the dark and they made it.The circuit had been like a skating rink all night and all the teams remain a wee bit in the dark regarding dry settings.

Once again we had an extraordinary number of race stoppages.. once again the red flag came out twice and messed up qualifying once again. Nobody can tell us at the moment whether there have ever been more stoppages in the same year ever before. But the excitement did break into a gentle stroll right at the end when the Audis decided to have one of their personal late night brawls at the very last moment. In the end the pole remained with Duval but Treluyer and Gene swapped places.

Rarely can the weather ever have screwed up the Le Mans qualifying likenthis before .. lets hope it is more predictable for the race.

   Pictures courtesy of "Dottore" ( kristof.vermeulen@gmail.com Raceshots.be )   

Wood warping thrills.

It isn't rocket science and even your scribe can grasp that wasting time, money, tyres and fuel to manage a lap that is about twenty seconds a lap slower is a tiny bit pointless. The problem lay with weather and quite a lot of it. There was a corking deluge just as the session started and from then on it was wet, drying, damp, wet etc all through the session. Mainly it was only the brave,ambitious or desperate who went out to play.  The #8 Toyota went out to see if they had cured whatever the gremiln was that had sidelined the car yesterday. We were not quite sure what Davidson's brief was.. maybe to see they could break the car again but he got stuck despite the track conditions. He didn't break it and things settled down into a rather boring session. There was no chance of going anywhere near as quickly as yesterday so the mostly the wise stayed safely at home in the dry simply putting in the odd sighting lap.

The initial heroes were the #32 Lotus that had not been out yesterday due to alleged 'financial' problems that resulted in the bailiffs 'borrowing' a few bits from the car! Anyway they sent the lads out to plough round in the dodgy conditions to see if they could remember where the track went!

There was really very little to talk about so we won't bore you.. however like all the other sessions this year it ground to a halt with a red flag when Matt Downs stuffed his #40 Boutsen Ginion Racing Oreca 3 Nissan into the barriers at some speed between Mulsanne and Indianapolis... roughly where the Mercedes went flying in 1999 and he did untold damage to the Armco and the debris was everywhere. We are wondering if this red flag in every session has happened before..

Anyway a rather dreary pointless session stopped ..

   Pictures courtesy of "Dottore" ( kristof.vermeulen@gmail.com Raceshots.be )   

L'orange est arrivée !

Photo : Ian Wagstaff

You may recall an earlier blog when we talked about the famous 'Orange' that Archie was taking with him in the car this year for good luck  (link here).

We were inadvertently a little off beam with the truth and the 'Orange ' wasn't actually at Testing. That has now changed and a member of the family has travelled south with what might become one of the oldest, fastest oranges in the world!! This is Archie with the 'Orange' here at Le Mans.

Ist Qualifying

Due to loss  of my mobile I was rushing around trying (and failing) to find it so I will leave you in the capable hands of 'Le Grand Fromage' to tell you ( and me !) what happened in tonight's first qualifying session... there was a happy ending though as the errant device resurfaced at 00:50 just as all hope of finding it had been abandoned.

With the threat of thunderstorms later, teams were keen to set fast times early in the session. Less than half an hour into the two hours of qualifying, the No.2 Audi Sport Team Joest Audi R18 e-tron quattro driven by Loic Duval set a blistering time of  3:22.349.

One of the Toyotas, the No.8 was stranded out on the circuit near Arnage and had to be recovered. At 23:04 Pierre Thiriet in the Oreca 03-Nissan No.46 had a big accident at the second chicane on the Mulsanne straight. Half an hour later, the barrier was still not repaired, and the race director Eduardo Freitas declared that the session would not be restarted.

In LM P2 it was the Russian entered G-Drive Oreca Nissan No.26 that finished with the fastest time, followed by the No.43 Morand racing Morgan Judd. Aston Martin set the top times in both LM GTE classes No.99 in Pro and No.95 in Am.

There will be more qualifying tomorrow from 19:00 to 21:00 and from 22:00 to midnight.

   Pictures courtesy of "Dottore" ( kristof.vermeulen@gmail.com Raceshots.be )   

Let Battle Commence!

Well not exactly.. this is a free practice session not a qualifying session. But at least teams are getting into their stride. The track condition is not good , nowhere as good as Testing. Maybe the torrential rain washed the rack down and left not much grip. Pole today is currently held by the #2 Audi with #1 second and #3 is third.

Fastest time testing was a 3.22.583 secs and today the fastest time is 3:25.415 sec. But this doesn't prove much, the proper job starts later this evening.

This session was brought to an abrupt halt when Tracy Krohn had serious difference of opinion with the tyre wall at The Dunlop Chicane. He walked away but went to the medical centre for a quick precautionary   check over. This is looking like a costly couple of weeks for Krohn since he dinged the car fairly firmly during testing as well. The damage to the tyre wall and Armco was such that the session was topped and qualifying will start again at 22:00hrs and go on into the dark.. Roll on 22:00hrs and then the action will begin in earnest.. the sky is looking very murky so it may be that some teams will go for a 'banker' time earlier.