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.