Post-race jottings: LE MANS 2008 ‘THE AFTERMATH’

[Grand_Fromage]

LE MANS 2008 ‘THE AFTERMATH’ …

That was a bit good wasn’t it? Just imagine for a moment  being French and getting beaten 4-1 by Holland and then throwing away Le Mans 24 hrs in flurry of hilariously incompetent pit stops and tyre choices!

Your Team that was ‘embedded’ in the Media Centre, allegedly ‘working alongside the French to produce information in English for the greatest web site in the civilised World’, had to pinch themselves on regular basis because we found ourselves rooting 100% for Audi! Now that is weird!

We don’t know about you guys out there bravely fighting exposure, the French and alcohol poisoning but we spent 24 hours really struggling to find out what the **ck was going on anywhere other than in LMP1 and Peugeot. On the rare occasions there was a chink in the news blackout and we managed to squirt some gem to the French about the Aston Martins in LMGT1 it went into a bottomless pit of doom, never to be seen or heard of again. In the same way a rather feisty interview that Villeneuve gave to Speed TV US that was none too flattering about the Peugeot handling in the dry, let alone the white knuckle ride in the wet, never made it onto the ACO site. Sadly we did our best but when things were going well… really well (!) our relationship was about as warm and sunny as a nuclear winter!Anyway that is not your problem but please don’t think that the English words on the ACO site were within sniffing distance of  the quality we could have produced.

The Race… wow .. what a corker that was. Putting all our ,newly found, ferocious anti-French venom to one side you have to admit that those Peugeots were indecently quick. They were rumoured to have at least 100 Bhp more on tap that the Audis plus what looked like a pretty effective aero package. ( Despite what our man Jacques was saying). But that extra 100 bhp came at price of course. The Peugeots were thirsty. From the word go Audi had a plan, a well proven strategy that had taken them onto the top step of the podium a few times in the past and they were not going to be phased by the sheer speed of the Peugeots. We get the feeling that Audi were well aware of what the French could achieve and largely ignored it. Where we think they might have got it wrong was that they surely never believed that all three Peugeots would be there at the finish. The drivers had often shown signs of a gleeful ability to throw the things with great enthusiasm at the scenery … we knew they were short of parts .. in the past they had not been unduly reliable .. add to that their ‘Keystone Cops’ approach to the fine art of pit-stops Audi had every right to believe that things should go their way.

But let’s make no bones about it those bl**dy Peugeots were quick and reliable. They also had a hot shot crowd of drivers.. but they didn’t have a ‘Team’ quite like Audi.
The last hour showed the huge difference between ‘Teutonic Efficiency’ and ‘Gallic Flair’. During Testing our bit of the Media Centre overlooked the Peugeot pits and even then you could look out of the window and wonder if a) they had radios b) if so had they turned them on c) they spoke French or d) ever spoke to each other! The cracks began to show even then but they had become gaping canyons after 23 hours. As we saw only too clearly when it dried they brought out ‘slicks’.. as it rained heavily they brought out ‘inters’ when it began to dry they wheeled out some nice fresh ‘wets’. When Sarrazin pitted for the last time, maybe because he had enough (!?), he leapt out of the car and then discovered there was nobody ready to get back into it! Cars came in, went out, came back on a random basis  .. then two came in together .. sorry but us newly converted Audi fans loved all this!!
Audi on the other hand brought their cars in and out in a calm and ordered fashion. Kristensen was brilliant.. but as our French chums moved onto slicks I think Audi moved onto wets!   
Throughout the entire race Peugeots were quicker, but made more pits stops and they were not of the highest order by any means. So the gained on the track, they lost in the pits .. So if they can tidy up that aspect and build a car that handled better in the wet then a French victory would be a very strong possibility. Until you hear rumours that Audi are well on the way to building the R11!

Next, imagine if you will that you have worked long and hard to raise the money, then produce a competitive LMP1 car that has the misfortune to run on that funny old stuff called ‘petrol’? You would be heroically p*ssed off because you simply don’t stand a snowflakes chance in Hell of keeping up with the oil burners. Martin Short summed it up rather well by suggesting he and the rest of the ‘petrols’ were actually racing in a new class called LMP1.5.. it has yet to be recognised by the ACO but surely unless they do something to rein in the diesels the serious ‘petrol’ teams simply won’t bother to waste all this money and just they won’t turn up. There was a glimmer of interest amongst the ‘other’ LMP1 runners and this was the Aston Martin engined #10 Charouz Lola. Nice to think that ‘production’ engines may creep into the sport .. this might not impress Judd and others however.
 
So what of LMP2 you may well ask? We didn’t see or hear much about them. Despite the two Porsche Spyders being privately entered I don’t suppose any of you missed the number of Porsche Trucks that had wafted in from Weissach.. plus the odd driver who is viewed as one of the ‘Porsche Prodigies’ like Sascha Maassen.. plus the hugely experienced John Nielsen .. plus Norbert Singer in background … I don’t think our chums from Germany were planning on losing LMP2.. It was a brilliant effort for a ‘newcomer’ to Le Mans. Porsche and diesel don’t mix at the moment so an LMP1 challenge is the stuff of dreams. We are big fans of the RML MG Lola but it had a bad weekend and enjoyed an early bath..

We like LMGT1… these are ‘proper’ cars in our view but they are not French and they are not prototypes so, surprise, surprise , they were hardly mentioned. But the Corvette.v.Aston Martin scrap was a gem. It was what endurance racing is all about. Tit for tat pit stops.. lap times always in the same league regardless of who was at the helm .. a simple loss of concentration, a small error in tactics, a mechanic who slips up and the whole thing would have been up for grabs. Brilliant and completely ignored by our hosts.. so what we need is a quick French GT1, painted blue and driven by a Frenchman and we may, just may get on TV.. then and only then might Radio Le Mans stop chatting about memories in ALMS and talk about the racing in LMG1.

If the coverage of LMGT1 was a trifle thin then LMGT2 was positively transparent. It started badly with two non French cars showing the way. Porsche had at last got their heads down and produced a rapid evolution of their ‘ageing’ (prehistoric?) 911 and they were looking good. In fact at one point Porsche could have had 1st/2nd in LMP2 and LMGT2. But the drivers made absolutely sure that didn’t happen when the two front running Porsches drove into each other! This meant that Christmas and birthdays all came at once  for the Ferrari 430GTs!! It was a bit embarrassing because even we began to admit that LMGT2 had become a bit of a ‘non-story’ because almost whatever the drivers had got up to they would have had to tried very , very hard to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory!

Anyway it was a pretty damn good Le Mans this year .. the French tells us ( and this time we are inclined to believe them!) that 258,500 fans came to watch. It was a pity that the ‘weather gods’ messed up the spectating but they did great things for the racing?

As a foot note to those who read the earlier ‘Jottings’ regarding the Police on the way there and back your scribe has to apologise since he didn’t see a single policeman, motorbike or speed trap all the way there and all the way back! So they succeeded in scaring the s**t out of me and then stayed at home and presumably watched Holland beat France and Peugeot throw away a good chance of winning Le Mans … shame they didn’t get beaten by Spyker! Roll on 2009 ..

JCS 17/06/08