Jock Simpson
Images from Lemansclassic.com
It is a bit deceptive all this.. It felt like there were a heck of a lot of spectators here yesterday but maybe that is because they were all concentrated around the sort of grandstand end of things. Many of the traditional camp sites are closed but the rest look busy. For The 24hrs of Le Mans the crowd is spread out all around the circuit. The traffic was appalling. So, to beat the crowds today we started marginally earlier, came in by a route that even ‘Le Grand Fromage’ has never tried in order to miss the traffic and guess what? There wasn’t any! It was a bit like the place had been ‘nuked’or become victim of some kind of chemical warfare attack, the buildings were intact but there were no people! So on today’s results it looks as if the Sunday is a better day to come in future. However the weather may have also played its part. While it would be nice to suggest that we were nursing serious sunburn and heat exhaustion it would not be entirely true... it would be a bit nearer the mark to tell you we are chilly and rusty...
Part of the challenge is to get to grips with all the ‘penalties’ that seem to be imposed on a random basis and there do seem to be boundless opportunities to collect them. We have ploughed through the Regulations (in French, which may not help!) and we can account for some of them. So try this;
- There is a mandatory pit stop in each race that has to happen between the 15th and 30th minute of the session. If you take a pit stop outside the ‘window’ you will collect a two lap time penalty..
- If you decide not to stop at all (i.e. you don’t want waste €42.5 a minute in the pits but would rather be out there actually driving your pride and joy) .. you will earn a five lap penalty.
- ‘Downtime’ not respected.. between 1min 15 secs and 1min 29 secs...ummm .. not sure about this , we think it means the time stationary in the pits.. this disrespect will earn a 30 sec ‘Stop Go’ penalty. This tends not to bother the drivers they simply batter on enjoying themselves!
- For the more ambitious competitor who chooses not to respect his ‘Downtime’ by less than less than 1 minute 14 seconds he will find he will be richly rewarded with a 2 min ‘Stop Go’ penalty. It will come as no surprise to hear that we reckon drivers would rather stay out than waste two minutes plus an ‘in’ lap and ‘out’ lap.
- Each round will be run by a different driver. Er .. we assume this means that if the owner wants to go and play for the whole weekend he can’t!
We have a feeling there are plenty more ways to incur the wrath of the organisers but we can’t find them in the regulations. This really doesn’t have much impact on the proceedings, after all we are here to see classic machinery being driven at racing speed around the full 13,629 km lap with its 21 bends.
OK so now we want a ‘winner’ after all that is what these guys are here for, we think... Describing the ‘Calculation of Classification’ is as easy as falling off a log. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin ... I quote ... ‘The Round Classification’ is calculated based upon ‘The number of laps achieved, mulitiplicated (sic!) by the time established at the last crossing of the line, of the finishing line, of the team winning the scratch classification after the flag, before the 53rd minute of the race. After that, the car gets a fixed time. So that is clear then? The Scratch Classification.. ( this must be easier?) Addition of the laps and times .. (It was!)
The Index of Performance .. ( not so confident here) .. The times realised by each car are multiplied by a coefficient which includes its age, its capacity and its original category. ( OK .. happy now?)
Do you know what? I am beginning to lose the will to live! Let’s lighten up.. or, just as I write this .. maybe not ..
We have just got our hands on a copy of his book called “ My Own Story by Joakim Bonnier”, which has recently been translated from the original Swedish. It is sadly relevant since he died here at Le Mans in 1972. It happened on the Sunday morning, when he approached Indianapolis bend just before Arnage and tried to avoid a slower Ferrari 365GTB4 #35 driven by Florian Vetsch. The cars touched, Bonnier's was launched over the barriers and ended up in the trees. The Lola was completely destroyed, debris from the car were spread all around the forest, Bonnier had been killed upon impact. There are echoes here of the McNish/Rockenfeller/Davidson accidents thankfully they all survived.
Due to the inclement weather reading matter has become rather relevant and for once there has been time to look at the Official Programme. This is some publication! It could be worth trying to get your hands on one. It is about a foot and half thick and would have cost you €10. I would never have imagined I would find myself saying it but it is superb and good value for the money. It’s got 182 pages that are not packed with advertising even though it has its fair share of International Banks, champagne, expensive cars, posh Parisian boutiques and so on. More importantly it is full of excellent articles and, believe it or not, useful information.. surely this will never catch on!
Browsing through the programme one thing that has struck your team down here is that there is money to be made selling exotic watches.. Take sponsors Richard Mille, you can spend £102,895 on one! Alternatively, your scribbler (who likes his watches), was forced to buy a new watch on the ferry when his old one stopped dead, never to go again and the new one cost him a staggering £33:00.. OK the first one only ‘staggered’ along for about an hour before expiring, luckily we were still at sea so it was swapped for another one. (Which, miraculously, seems to doing rather better) But Sekonda and Richard Mille do have one thing in common... they tell both the time!!
We did a straw poll amongst the team ( Their choices maybe skewed by the fact that their combined ages add up to a modest 192 years !!) to see what our favourite Le Mans cars ever were .. Jock ... 4.5 Bentley (The jammy sod has actually driven hundreds of miles in one!) .. Ford GT40 Mk II (not choosy).. 1970 Porsche 917K (Has to be Gulf/Wyer). Steve... Porsche 917K ( The Gulf one!).... Ford GT40 Mk II (Any one) ... Jaguar XJR12 (Silk Cut) Tony ...Matra MS670B ( first time he came to Le Mans 1973) ... Porsche 911 GT1 (Mobil) ...McLaren F1 GTR ..( Kokusai Kaihatsu Racing )
A little earlier we were talking about pit stops.. Steve has just observed the ‘classic version’.. in the final race for Grid 1 cars a beautiful dark blue Bugatti 49 stormed into the pit lane (what speed limit?) and screeched to a halt directly below us... but some 50 metres beyond where his pit crew was standing, (on the opposite side of the pit lane) including the second driver who had his helmet dangling nonchalantly from his right hand, complete with balaclava and gloves inside!! He rushed across the pit lane and attempted to board the car from the same side as his partner was exiting! He then ran round to the other side (the opposite one to where the steering wheel was), hurled his helmet across onto the driver’s seat and then proceeded to climb across and sit on said helmet. A lengthy charade then ensued as he disentangled his legs from the steering wheel and gloves from within the helmet, before he finally got fully dressed and going! That was the last we saw of him as he never made it round the lap, at least not before the race ended. At the same time, by some cunning technology, we were watching a rerun of the last F1 GP ... pit stops have changed a bit! (However McLaren, prior to today, have been doing their very best to emulate our chums here at Le Mans!)
Your scribbler loves trivia ... what is the connection between Starsky and Hutch and this year’s Le Mans Classic? OK.. Give up? It is the Ford Gran Torino that raced at Le Mans in 1976 sponsored by Truxmore, and it is back. Jacques Alvergnas created the largest used car sales centre in France and then he found the original car in the US in 2011 and set about getting it restored by various local specialists over there. This involved six months of regular trips to US supervising the restoration. The good news is that it is back and up and running in its former glory with its splendid 7.0 litre V8 Ford lump making all the right noises. It will be racing against one of its old NASCAR adversaries the Dodge Charger.
Next up is The British GP watched on a lap top here in France courtesy of some cunning software...
That has just ended and wasn’t it a cracker !!
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