Audi 1-2-3, but much of the excitement was in LM P2 and LM GTE

By Jock Simpson with pictures by Dave Davies

“It could have been more boring” ( an ‘off the record’ quote from anonymous but quite important ACO person!)

Oh Boy!! We really have seen some action this year, plenty more than any of us expected. For a start the Toyotas were really bringing the fight to the mighty Audis, and they were getting there by their own efforts rather than Audi failures.. with the possible exception maybe of Dumas who was in the #3 car and appeared to simply run out road while overtaking an innocent Porsche and then go on to attack the wall at the 1st Chicane (now known as Forza) with considerable enthusiasm. He looked to have made a pretty decent job of it. But his brain was (sort of) intact and, either on instructions from the pits, or off his own bat he set about physically ripping apart the deceased looking carcass by tearing off all the ‘dead’ bodywork to free the wheels and drive home. This is a sight I have never seen before, he looked utterly demented as he attacked the car with such determination and to his great a credit he freed off enough bodywork to drive the battered thing home, after a fashion. Our notes say that Dumas delivered the car to the Audi bodyshop at around 17:40 hrs and it was back out again at 20:12hrs an astonishing achievement.. OK so there was a safety car but pretty darned impressive all the same.

The Toyotas, particularly the #8 car with Davidson at the wheel looked as if they were deliberately trying to push the lead Audi #1 maybe just to see how fast it really could go. Was this a ‘hare and tortoise’ jobbie like the good old days? One car to push the opposition as hard as possible and the other one to keep out of trouble and head for the podium? More likely it was so that Toyota could establish more accurately what they were really up against.

Then it all went wrong .. big time! We have seen the movie ..Davidson was coming down the Mulsanne Straight, at full chat, when he came upon the #81 AF Corse Ferrari being driven none too briskly by Perazzini … then one of two things happened, depending on your point of view. Idea number one, the one generally held, says that it did rather look as if Perazzini had totally failed to spot the Toyota and as he turned in, so they touched. The Toyota was knocked sideways and it flew, literally, with a couple of neatly executed barrel rolls in mid air, it landed rear end first and piled/bounced into the tyre wall at scary speed. The Ferrari arrived just beside him having bounced across the gravel and hit the tyre wall also at a heck of speed and eventually coming to a halt on its roof. Both cars were ‘totalled’ but both drivers emerged battered but apparently basically OK. The other view, less common by the way (!), takes us back to the Rockenfeller incident and with the Audi .v. Ferrari accidents last year.. this is as follows, could it have been that the Ferrari was, correctly , sticking to his racing line to allow the much faster Toyota to sort itself out. This is the way slower cars are told to play it. Also could he really have totally failed to spot the Toyota (or something) catching him up in broad daylight? Agreed the 458 is not big on mirrors but everybody knows that. What was Davidson thinking? Why overtake there.. why not pause and be 100% safe after the corner? After all he had the grunt surely to overtake at will, anywhere safe. OK ..BUT .. it really did look as if Perazzini never saw Davidson which, if its true, is inexcusable. Something that once again didn’t seem to work was the ‘aero’ fin.. it didn’t work for McNish last year and it didn’t work for Davidson this year, a rethink must be a good idea. Your scribe favours the NASCAR gurney flaps that pop up during a spin and spill the air..

The red flags were out for ages as they rebuilt the tyre wall and re-welded up the Armco. A long job! The next disaster of note befell the surviving Toyota that was still running comfortably in the top three ahead of a couple of Audis. This time it was the DeltaWing car that it tripped over. This time the DW was minding its own business getting on with what DW’s are good at. The DeltaWing was then rudely assaulted and left stranded with a broken gearbox, a known weakness. The team wanted the car recovered and brought back to the pits to see if repairs were feasible but the organisation wouldn’t hear of it. We really can’t see why, unless they had seen enough and were concerned about where a DW would fit into their future plans. Nakajima took out the patched up Toyota and came straight back saying it wasn’t right, the Toyota had also suffered a fair bit of ‘below’ the waterline damage.. The team then set about a major service and rebuild from the floor upwards and it took ages and eventually after a further flurry back on track the second Toyota retired with engine problems. There was a strong rumour that a couple of very senior Toyota bosses actually went to see DeltaWing to apologise. Let’s hope that is true So the Toyota dream (and to be fair many people thought it would only be a dream) may have been snuffed out .. one by the problem with the Ferrari and then the other possibly as a result of driver error that resulted in the close encounter of the DeltaWing car kind. But they had been mighty impressive. They came ‘out of the box’ with no race mileage.

This was the end of the race and maybe the end of the project for the Delta Wing Nissan. It had impressed a lot of people and caught the headlines. Much credit is due to the ACO for their ‘alternative engineering’ philosophy The surviving Toyota might might still have had a charge in mind, but it was not to be. They unplugged it and that was that for 2012. Then another bit of bad news came in at around 02:00hrs, we received a Tweet from Anthony Davidson, sent from his hospital bed telling us that he had fractured his T11 and T12 vertebrae .. in other words he had ‘broken’ his back. We wish him a swift recovery.

So with the two Toyotas out of the equation it was down to which Audi would win and by how much would they stuff the petrol powered opposition. But nothing is ever straightforward here as you so well know. For a start both of the two leading Audis were utterly determined to win this race. Make no mistake .. they were giving it the beans with no sign of team orders! The Rebellion cars watched with interest!

The first challenge was almost a self inflicted wound when the #1 car arrived down the pit entry road going far too fast .. he braked hard, locked up the rear wheels and spun it, missing everything solid! Whoops! Next was #3 Audi .. that lost it and hit the wall in the first chicane.. it was a hefty bump that left debris everywhere. So out came the safety car . Before all this kicked off they were just ten seconds apart. There was a great rumour around that Audi were running out of bodywork so they had ‘borrowed’ some panels from a display car. When it rejoined it began to become apparent that an Audi 1/2/3 was on the books with a maybe 4th .

LMP2 tends to get ignored by the TV, Radio and Radio Le Mans so getting to grips with the goings on is tricky. You guys probably know far more about it than us. Nothing on TV, not much on RLM, the screens we see are hopeless and our continental chums don’t seem all that interested either. But we did get to see some of LMGT racing. This has been great.. in LMGT Pro it was all about Ferrari 458.v. Corvette.v. Aston Martin Vantage. In LMGT Am it was Ferrari again but this time up against the new rather more impressive Porsche 997 RSR. We won’t plough through the results as they are available elsewhere.

So what was 2012 all about… well for us it was the ‘new technologies ‘ . deep down people were asking us not who would win but what order the winning Audis would be in at the finish. Oh yes and presumably a hybrid would win for marketing purposes. Winning was a forgone conclusion.. wasn’t it? In retrospect we are not so sure. OK Audi would probably have win but we felt all along that the underdeveloped Toyotas would give the mighty Audi machine a fright, and they did. Sadly we didn’t reach any sort of finale due to unfortunate accidents but look back at Davidson’s times just prior to his accident.. we had two very different hybrid solutions giving us a view of the future and it looks fascinating. Add in the Green GT hydrogen ( bomb!) option and the hugely impressive and very popular Delta Wing Nissan and the future looks very ‘eco’. This will not appeal to the purist ‘racer’ fans ( remember our photographer chum who likened the Toyota leaving the pits as sounding like a bee farting!) who thrive on noise and all the other sensory inputs but it could extend the life of motorsport in what is a very hostile ‘pro-green’ environment. The ACO saw this coming and reacted… good on them. The Toyotas, Audis and soon Porsche will inject new life and money into our sport. We can’t see Honda taking all this lying down. But do have a think how much the Nissan and Toyota projects cost. Peugeot may back .. but not until they start selling a lot of road cars into the new economies like China. We have it on fairly good authority that there is no clash between both Porsche and Audi racing against each other , despite being part of the same group. We are not so sure… but did you see that hybrid racer on the Porsche stand at The Autosport Show? Ummm .. serious or what? Porsche are due back in 2014. This will add strength and depth to The World Endurance Championship and Jean Todt is talking to other manufacturers… the future looks rosy.

In GT it was great to see Aston Martin back on the pace after their dreadful time last year. It was also interesting to see that the latest evolution of the Porsche 997 RSR is now competitive despite some of the questions being asked about the aero effects of that wide, wide body. Porsche are well down the road nursing a 911 replacement that will possibly be ‘mid engined’ with a look of the old GT1 about it… ummm very tasty… go back and look at pics of the Autosport Show car! As for GM and Corvette they have had finally had a dodgy Le Mans, it is usually their favourite play ground but this year was tough. Ferrari have cracked it.. they have finally produced the delicious 458 Italia which is quick and reliable .. a reliable Ferrari? Yup .. a reliable Ferrari! So we think that despite the absence of Peugeot this was a good year .. not a great year …

On the way home we got the strong impression that the Brits and their mad motors we not out in force. The autoroute was quiet and the ferries were also quiet but in a right mess after that mine clearance operation… mine clearance? There were claimed to be 240,000 tickets sold this year … it didn’t feel like it.

There are plans in the pipeline (on the way from the beer cellar to glass via handpump) to revitalise some aspects of Club Arnage and make use of you guys and all the energy and goodwill there is out there. Roll on 2013.

Race Day ...who can challenge Audi?

We could almost be back in good old Blighty, it is reassuringly wet and chilly! Morning ‘warm up’ , maybe not the best description, took place in nasty wet rainy conditions and the track was very moist and mighty perilous. Plenty of cars explored the extremities of the track (and way beyond) but no serious damage was done. There was a brief ‘Red Flag’ period while they sorted out #29 and #25. The incidents were not related but #29 proved hard to move with what looked like transmission problems. #25 dug itself out of the kitty litter and headed home. Lost count of the number of cars that went straight on at Arnage. Next up is the Group C race ... this old f*rt simply loves these ‘proper’ cars.. aaahh what memories! Porsche 962, and 956, Lancia LC2, Jaguar XJR16, Mercedes C11, Veskanda ( eh?! WTF is that .. Google and Wiki here I come?) and so on... permission to dribble.. Righty.. back to Veskanda.. There was this Aussie commercial photographer called Bernie von Elsen (good Aussie name) who caught the bug and set about building the one and only Veskanda. It was powered by a Chevvy lump and was Australia’s fastest ever sportscar. We are not entirely sure if anything else was in the same league. It never raced at Le Mans but it does look the part. The track claimed its first Group C victims when it looked like #111 Mike Donovan’s Spice SE88 and #181 Alain Schlesinger in his Tiga GC285 touched. This launched Donovan into a spin that results in several impacts along the Armco wrecking both ends of the car. He emerged unharmed. Schlesinger eventually stopped in the middle of the track facing the wrong way. He also emerged and walked over to the medical car with a painful looking limp. It was a long safety car session while they rebuilt the Armco. Finally the green flag came out and after about five laps of actual racing the chequered flag came out ... bit of an anti climax. Derek Bell was not entirely happy with his ‘long tail’ Porsche 962... not much grip and plenty of vibration! This could be the last time we see him out racing .. but he has said that before ... several times..! The outcome? #31 Bob Berridge Mercedes C11 #5 Roger Wills Lancia LC2 #62 Gareth Evans Sauber Mercedes C9 C2 #116 Pierre-Francoise Rousselot Spice SE89 #170 Tommy Dreelan Spice SE89 #164 Adrian Watt Argo JM19C It was a very wet rather short race but for reference Pole Position went to Gareth Evans in the Sauber Mercedes with a 3:44.333 which was a respectable time for a modern LMP2… the fastest lap is a bit academic because of the weather but Roger Willis clocked a 4:32.826 in the deep end of the pool! If you are reading this around race time we are now going off air to earn some money (Ha!) and you can follow the race on http://www.lemans.org/ or http://live.lemans-tv.com/en/ and we believe Eurosport GB … Radio Le Mans online etc .. but you all know that !! Have a good race ..

'Mad' Friday

Friday... for some of you lucky chaps this is a ‘rest day’ so that you can build up the stamina needed for the challenges ahead and get terminally blatted! We have the same basic ambitions but the ‘Day Job’ has conspired to mess things up. The website we contribute to is a greedy beast that constantly devours raw meat by the hundredweight. However all is not lost since the ‘Club Arnage Militant Tendency’ is utterly determined to take a break and drift off to our secret restaurant and have a lazy lunch. OK so we can dream! This project has not gone well over the last couple of years since the ‘Day Job’ beast has simply got hungrier and hungrier! Anyway what about qualifying.. it actually turned out to be rather more riveting than we had expected. We also suspect that Audi are a tad miffed that they failed to occupy the front two rows of the grid. There was an interloper fresh out of its Bento Box delivered hot foot from Japan... Toyota! As is often the case qualifying hotted up right at the end of the session. Lotterer was flying and had already secured pole with a blindingly quick 3:23.787.. that is brisk! This was about 0.70 secs quicker that last year. The man whose job it was to try and spoil Audi’s ambitions was young Mr Davidson in the #8 Toyota. It may have been clever timing by Toyota.. or bad timing by Audi but Davidson got out of the pits just ahead of Kristensen in the #2 Audi and put in a couple of terrific laps and squeezed his Toyota onto the second row just 1.055 secs behind the pole sitting #1 Audi. We have a feeling that Toyota will be fairly happy with that .. as will the #7 Toyota which was a very healthy 4th . You have to scroll down to 7th to find the first petrol powered car, the #17 Pescarolo Dome Judd. As usual the spotlight and of course TV homed in on the LMP1 cars and it was easy to forget that we still had LMP2, LMGTE Pro and Am to keep an eye on. But before that what happened to the #0 Nissan Delta Wing? That is rather a good question; they wound up 29th overall and 16th ‘in LMP’. They ran at what looked like a comfortable but conservative 3:42.612 sec lap. The team keep on telling us that they are going fine and trying not to upset anybody. We think there is a bit more to come.. OK .. quite a lot more to come! LMP2 is the province of Oreca..Of the first six cars five of them are Oreca Nissans. Credit then to the Oak Racing Morgan Judd which is 2nd on the grid. Of the nineteen LMP2 cars no less than twelve of them are Nissan powered. The #25 ADR –Delta Oreca 03 driven by John Martin, Jan Charouz and Tor Graves is on LMP2 pole. LMGTE Pro is led by the #59 Luxury Racing Ferrari 458 Italia followed by the #97 Aston Martin Vantage V8 and then the #74 Corvette Racing C6.R. Nice mixture of very competitive cars. It is bit of mystery how the highly professional #79 Flying Lizard Porsche 911 RSR is an ‘Am’ car but even so it went very rapidly. LMGT Am is now the playground of the newly revitalised Porsches. Ok so it now raining but our weather guru has looked at the tea leaves and predicts that it might be a wettish start but it should dry out during the 24 hrs. For those of you that didn’t make the pilgrimage to La Sarthe this year it seemed busier that we had expected. The lack of Peugeots may not have had the catastrophic consequences some had predicted .. even so this could still be an Audi walk-over. Your scribe still reckons that Toyota have brought the fight to Audi and rattled their cage .. they may not last the distance but it will have been a very impressive debut. Let’s see what happens !

Qualifying. Toyotas fast but Audis faster.

Been a few bits of drama and stress amongst the team here … your scribe discovered just how difficult it is to get an appointment to see those nice people in London who hand out passports. Why is this relevant? Weeeell your scribe had the misfortune to ‘lose’ his passport between Dover and Le Mans. Not easy when you think we only stopped for the ferry, fuel and a beer at Arnage. Having begged and grovelled to get and appointment it was all pretty straightforward. Memo to staff .. don’t lose your sodding passport. Your scribe had time to reflect on why it is possible to cover every inch of Europe by road without ever showing a passport but then have to show it when you come and go in UK? The next hiccough was our chum Dan who had flown in all the way from Canada, via Paris, TGV and Le Mans station.. he arrived at the right time and at the right place.. spot on .. but his luggage remained safely in Canada. OK so he faced a knicker shortage but more importantly his was short of a race suit and helmet for use in the pits. Your scribe leapt into action and before heading south packed two race suits and crash helmet. Now.. you need to know that Dan is of ‘sensible’ size.. your scribe is not. One is 6’ 4” and built like a fully functioning brewery.. guess which is which … as it turned out he didn’t look quite as silly as we had all hoped, which was disappointing. Anyway he has now been reunited with his luggage and God is in his heaven and Dan is a happy bunny and looking less like an bright yellow oompalumpa and more like a serious photographer! Your scribe sadly missed the thrills and spills of Pesage or scrutineering as we call it while he sorted out the passport saga. But ‘The team’ were there and so were the public.. lots of them! The whole show took place in the Place de la Republique in the centre of Le Mans. They were ensconced in the luxury of the Borse de Commerce rather than the leaky tent village that is more usual. It is a wee bit tricky to generate much fire and brimstone over scrutineering but it is great chance for the some of the media and the public to meet and chat with drivers. Our chaps however were stuck indoors and missed a fair bit.. not ideal! Plus this time it rained.. quite a lot! The next couple of days seem to have disappeared into a semi alcoholic haze with the team generating words for the Le Mans website. Finally on Wednesday the cars hit the track and at last they got to see some cars. This session and the following ‘into the night’ session threw up very few real surprises. With people wondering which Audi would win and who would come, maybe 3rd or 4th ( assuming not too many of them get destroyed in huge accidents). Your scribe was keeping an eye on the Toyotas. Rest assured these are pretty darned serious bits of kit. They were on the pace and looking pretty cool. However our pit lane chums say they are downright dangerous.. they make no noise! Even ‘blasting’ out of the pits is all wrong.. it sort of clicks very quietly and then barely even hums away.. ( bit like a bee farting apparently) .. no tyre noise .. no drama.. no chance of hearing it just prior to when it runs you over! Is this the future? The Audis are nice and raucous ..thank goodness for that.. back to the plot. Some cynics are suggesting that Toyota will wind the elastic bands up really tight and have a serious go at ‘pole’… then probably expire in haze of sparks and lightening about an hour or so later. We are not quite so sure… they seem to be taking this seriously. During qualifying they were definitely mixing it with the Audis but as we have learnt to get used to the moment when Mr Audi finally says ‘OK enough is enough lets go and blitz them’ ( bad choice of word maybe!). So, very politely and with great precision they sorted themselves out into numerical order. #1:#2:#3.. The #7 Toyota was demoted to 4th place. The gap? A very respectable 1.738 secs behind the leading Audi. As you now know the other ‘star’ car for us is the outrageous ‘Nissan DeltaWing’. This is getting fascinating. It seems that a tentative sort of deal was struck between the team and The ACO that they should run at a ‘target’ time of 3:45.00secs .. this would put them up amongst the LMP2 cars but not upset anybody. That proved rather easy and they eventually popped out on fresh tyres and did a 3:42.612 sec lap. There was no indication that this had been unduly stressful and there was clearly plenty more to come. However to use a technical phrase things went tits up when Michael Krumm slipped up. He planted the front wheel precisely in the right spot for the apex of the corner but he forgot that backend is rather wider than the front end! The result was that he rattled the car over the kerb with some enthusiasm.. so much enthusiasm in fact that it caused the exterior fire extinguisher switch to shake loose and unload the entire contents of the system to put out an imaginary fire.. messy and it stopped the car! We are told that it has been hoovered out and will be ready to run today. Another casualty was the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia. . Fisichella threw it at the wall, with some enthusiasm, in the Porsche Curves and wounded it so badly it needed a new chassis. The ACO allowed the team to make the change and new chassis was put on a truck at the AF Corse workshops in Piacenza and driven 700 miles over night to reach Le Mans at 09:45hrs. Overnight the team had been busy and stripped the ‘old’ chassis down and were ready to rebuilt the MarkII from scratch on Thursday. Wow! We will watch this with interest. The drivers will be doing their mandatory night laps in the #71 sister car. Luckily Bruni, Fisichella and Vilander are all well seasoned Le Mans veterans so everybody is pretty well OK with all this . Next up will be qualifying for the Group C cars and then the serious business of qualifying starts again ..

Test day and beyond.

Well, here we are again, happy as can be! The weather is doing its best to mess things up but otherwise your team is mostly up and running. Testing was rather more interesting than we had expected. It is hard to believe that, with Peugeot taking a sabbatical and nursing the wounds inflicted by their wobbly road car sales, anybody will beat the Audis. So this is turning into the year of alternative technologies. It came as shock to this ‘old fart’ when Audi and Peugeot went down the blindingly quick ‘oil fired’ route so imagine the state he is in with the new breed of ‘Hybrids’. Their development has been spectacular. It started with the quaint concept that a hybrid had to be able to propel itself along the whole length of the pit lane and is now giving us a four-wheel drive Audi that seems to as quick as its standard oil burning chums! As Peugeot left the scene, bingo, Toyota sprang out of the woodwork .. We wonder what the deal was that brought them to Le Mans. Some reckon they have arrived a year earlier than expected. Also have you seen the 2012 Le Mans poster? Umm.. That Toyota is clearly overtaking the Audi mmm.. We kind-of feel that might not have impressed Audi! After testing it became very clear that Toyota were not here just here for the wine and hospitality! Maybe Audi were sandbagging, who knows, but the Toyotas were bang on the pace. Let’s see how they go in qualifying but there are some that think they might/could even take pole.. they might last for several hours.. they might get plenty of TV and media coverage.. but what if they hold together? There are rumours that they might capable of doing a couple more laps between stops than the Audis. However during testing they were quicker in a straight line than Audi.. but that is a classic way of hiding a car’s potential! Quite a lot of 'mights' but this is early days! Next up in the ‘fascinating’ stakes is the Nissan Delta Wing. We gather from reliable sources (probably the Harlequin Bar in Arnage) that the ACO suggested a ‘target’ time that the Nissan should aim at and not to go any quicker to save embarrassing the LMP2 brigade. Interesting thought. They cruised along and ended up 3 or 4 secs off that time straight out of the box with only Snetterton testing behind them. It would be embarrassing if a 1.6 litre engine based on the one in the Nissan Juke was able to beat the highly sophisticated LM P2 machinery. The Delta Wing really is rather curious beast but it works.. rather well it seems. The specification is very ‘un Le Mans like’.. The engine is a 1588 cc four cylinder turbo.... Power output 300 bhp at 7400 rpm .. five speed sequential gear box. .. top speed 196 mph. . fuel economy 12 mpg. .. unladened weight 475 kgs and a chassis that owes quite a lot to the ill-fated AMR One, but with a dragster-style front end. We also wondered how well it would see in the dark , some pics we have seen show that there are a couple of thumping great headlights built into each rear wheel arches. . not sure why they won’t dazzle the driver in his wing mirrors. . Other gems of useless info are that a 0-62 mph time of 3.3 secs is claimed ...the front wheels are set 24 ins apart and measure 15x4 ins. . same as on a Citroen 2CV. .only a quarter of the weight is over front wheels.. ..and the front dampers are the same size as the ones you might find on a mountain bike. . (eek!) The next ‘big thing’ looks like the Green GT. This seems to be basically a controlled hydrogen bomb on wheels, that dribbles water not exhaust gas.. We went to the launch and the first impression is ‘Wow.. what a bloody great huge thing it is’! But on closer inspection the engineering is superb and this is one serious bit of kit . As one might expect some 5 million quid down the line. It has the added bonus that it could double up as an aircraft carrier should the need arise. The two tanks for the hydrogen will possibly unhook and would be replaced at pit stops. The team reckon that this would take no longer than conventional refuelling. The ‘bombshell’ (maybe an unfortunate turn of phrase), was that the ACO have invited The GreenGT to take part in Le Mans 24hrs 2013. This caused the odd raised eyebrow amongst the team! However they have told us that they will fire it up at Silverstone in August and all that compressed air whooshing around makes it sound like a fighter jet on take-off. With your scribe temporarily stuck in UK ‘sans passport’ ...long story ! The rest of the Team have been dodging the showers at scrutineering so more info will follow. So, it may well be a rather more interesting race than some of us expected.. but as you know by now we have a 100% track record for getting things hopelessly wrong. Let’s see what occurs during qualifying.