Musings on Le Mans 2014

Today’s Austrian Grand Prix may not have been quite as explosive an affair as the one we witnessed at Montreal, but the result was another crucial one for the title challenge of Nico Rosberg. The German’s third win of the season ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton puts him 29 points clear in the drivers’ standings, with the pressure now well and truly on for Hamilton to respond on home turf at Silverstone in two weeks’ time.

But, despite the title of this blog, this post focuses on the events of the preceding weekend, during which the 82^nd running of the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans took place. It was a race that Toyota should have won, Porsche could have won and Audi – for the 13^th time in 16 attempts – did win.

It was a classic race of attrition, and the victorious trio of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer would be the first ones to admit that their third triumph around the legendary Circuit de la Sarthe owed much to the superior reliability of their #2 Audi R18 e-tron quattro as well a fair dose of good fortune.

Not for the first time in recent history, Audi did not have the fastest car in the field at Le Mans – as evidenced by the German marque’s trio of turbodiesel machines lining up in fifth, sixth and seventh places on the starting grid behind all four of their petrol-powered adversaries in the LMP1-H class.

That plaudit belonged to Toyota, who, on the back of two WEC race victories from two at Silverstone and Spa, were understandably being billed as pre-race favourites. But, having the quickest car is no guarantee of success at Le Mans, much as Toyota themselves found out in the late 1990s with their ultra-fast but somewhat fragile GT-One contender.

And so it proved again around 14 hours into this year’s event, when the #7 TS040 Hybrid of Alexander Wurz, Stephane Sarrazin and Kazuki Nakajima – which had started from pole position and led virtually the entire distance up to that point – ground to a halt along the Mulsanne Straight after a wiring loom melted having established a cushion of over two minutes out front.

With the sister car of Anthony Davidson, Nicolas Lapierre and Sebastien Buemi already out of the running for victory following a shunt along the Mulsanne in the torrential conditions that arrived in the second hour of the race (which also eliminated Marco Bonanomi’s #3 Audi on the spot), that was it as far as Toyota’s victory hopes were concerned.

The fact the #8 car, which ultimately finished in third place and five laps down on the #2 Audi, ran pretty much trouble-free  thereafter and thus could have won race without its early incident will come as scant consolation to Toyota, whose search for their elusive first Le Mans victory goes on for at least one more year.

If Toyota are to finally break their Le Mans duck, they would be well-advised to enter three cars in 2015, thus maximising the chances of at least one car getting through the whole race unscathed. Audi lost a car at the same time of the #8 Toyota’s accident, but the Ingolstadt marque still had two chances left to win, while Toyota had just one – which was ultimately squandered.

The #2 Audi assumed control of proceedings after the demise of the #7 Toyota, but a 23-minute stint in the pits to replace a turbocharger around two hours later saw Lotterer, Fässler and Tréluyer relinquish the lead to the sister #1 car of Tom Kristensen, Marc Gené and Lucas Di Grassi.

It seemed at this stage that the trio were on course for a fairytale victory; the ultimate comeback after the #1 car was decimated in a terrifying accident at the Porsche Curves during first qualifying on Wednesday which saw Loïc Duval hospitalised. Indeed, Gené, originally scheduled to drive for the Jota team in LMP2, was a last minute call-up to Audi to replace the Frenchman.

Not only that, it would have been the 10^th Le Mans victory for Kristensen, as well as the first ever win for a Brazilian driver – but it was not to be, as the #1 machine suffered a more or less identical problem to that of the #2 with less than four hours to go, demoting it to an eventual second place at the finish, three laps down.

It was at this stage when the #20 Porsche took the lead, but the car shared by Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and F1 convert Mark Webber was suffering from a handling imbalance that was allowing Lotterer in the #2 Audi to close the one minute advantage that Porsche held with three hours to go by around five seconds a lap.

Still, without that issue, it’s not inconceivable that Porsche could have taken their first outright Le Mans win since they last fought for overall honours back in 1998. Second place, which would have been a remarkable comeback result, was certainly assured before an engine problem that eventually forced Webber to retire the #20 car with less than three hours to run manifested itself.

The #14 car of Marc Lieb, Romain Dumas and Neel Jani was never in contention, losing time in the first hour of the race in the pits solving a fuel pressure problem and suffering from brake problems en route to an eventual 11^th place finish overall, 31 laps down on the #2 Audi.

Nonetheless, Porsche’s return has to be regarded as a qualified success in spite of the lofty expectations with which some observers saddled the team, with the 919 Hybrid showing some handy pace in qualifying trim (lining up second and fourth on the grid) even if reliability clearly proved an issue. 

Indeed, many are already regarding Porsche as hot favourites to triumph in 2015, though the pressure that comes with such a tag will only make chasing a 17^th outright Le Mans victory that much tougher.

The all-new Rebellion R-One finished a commendable fourth place in only its second race outing, but was massively off the pace of the hybrid-powered factory machines, the #12 car of Nick Heidfeld, Nico Prost and Mathias Beche ending up 19 laps adrift of the winners in spite of enjoying a relatively trouble-free run.

Such a result has to throw into question the point of the LMP1-L class (L stands for light), ostensibly designed to allow private teams such as Rebellion Racing, who cannot afford to develop complex hybrid systems, to at least be in a position to pick up the pieces when the works-entered cars run into trouble – as they all did to varying extents.

What’s more, seeing Heidfeld, Prost and Beche stood alone on during the LMP1-L podium ceremony was an odd sight to behold. The only other entry in the class, the #13 Rebellion, was an early casualty after engine trouble, although a third entry in the form of the Lotus-backed Kodewa team was due to compete before withdrawing due to delays in completing their new chassis.

The LMP2 class was a rather more keenly contested affair, class honours ultimately going to the #38 Jota-run Zytek of Simon Dolan, Harry Tincknell and Oliver Turvey (a late replacement for the Audi-bound Gené) after the pace-setting #35 OAK Racing Ligier developed a spark plug problem late in the race which cost it straight line speed.

It was a bitter pill to swallow for the exceptional trio comprised of GT Academy graduates Jann Mardenborough and Mark Shulzhitskiy as well as Alex Brundle, who would have been fitting class winners; instead, the trio had to be content with finishing fifth in class, but all three can take solace in the fact that they established themselves as endurance racing stars in the making.

In fact, the LMP2 class right now is full of bright young talents who have found their paths on the single-seater racing ladder blocked: Tincknell, who showed some impressive pace on his first visit to Le Mans; Jon Lancaster, another debutant to catch the eye behind the wheel of the #34 Race Performance Oreca; and Oliver Webb, who co-piloted the #36 Signatech Alpine to third in class, to name a few.

It’s good to see that the secondary prototype class is enjoying such strength in depth at the moment, with plenty of ELMS entries bolstering the meagre contingent of WEC cars. And, with Zytek, Dome and HPD in the processing of developing new cars to join the new-for-2014 Ligier, the class looks to set to continue providing a gripping sub-plot to the main event at Le Mans for years to come.

The GTE classes had their fair share of drama too, with the #51 AF Corse Ferrari of Gianmaria Bruni, Toni Vilander and Giancarlo Fisichella taking a comfortable victory in the Pro division after the challenge of its closest rival, the #97 Aston Martin of Darren Turner, Stefan Mücke and Bruno Senna, faltered late in the race with a power steering failure.

The British marque could however celebrate victory in the Am class with victory for the all-Danish #95 crew of Nicki Thiim, David Heinemeier Hansson and Kristian Poulsen – a fitting tribute to the late Allan Simonsen, who was tragically killed at the start of last year’s event in a crash at Tertre Rouge driving for the team.

The future at the moment is looking very bright for Le Mans, as well as sports car racing more generally. Porsche’s return meant that the 2014 race saw three manufacturers in true contention for the overall win for the first time since 1999 (the petrol-powered Aston Martins of 2009-11 couldn't touch their diesel-propelled rivals for pace), and that number looks set to swell in the coming years.

Nissan have already confirmed their comeback to the LMP1 class next year, following on from their ‘Garage 56’ entry this year – which, while failing to complete more than five laps during the race, succeeded in its primary aim of completing a lap of La Sarthe under pure electric power – and are bullish about their prospects with their GT-R LM NISMO contender, which begins testing this autumn.

Then there’s Ferrari. Fernando Alonso, present at Le Mans to wave the tricolore to officially start the race, gave the strongest hint yet that the Scuderia have set their sights upon an LMP1 assault. Rumour has it BMW are also weighing up whether to have another crack at the endurance classic and attempting to give marketplace rivals Audi and Porsche a run for their money.

The beauty of the LMP1 regulations as they currently stand is that they allow each and every manufacturer to approach the category in any way they see fit. Audi, Toyota and Porsche all use completely different engine configurations and methods for deploying their hybrid power, and Nissan claim that they are going to employ a new approach on at least one of those counts next year.

That makes it a far more attractive prospect for prospective new entrants than, say, F1, where the regulations are much more restrictive. Even if a manufacturer isn’t winning, they can at least enjoy the R&D benefits of a trying out a particular technology on the race track that has direct relevance to how they wish to evolve their road cars, making it a far easier task to keep the board happy.

The increasing popularity of the race among the manufacturers was reflected by the number of spectators present. The ACO claimed 263,300 made the trip to Le Mans this year, up by 18,000 from the previous year’s figure, no doubt boosted by the presence of Porsche and Webber – which will have made some that were hitherto on the fence choose to finally make the pilgrimage.

Were Ferrari and Alonso to join the party, it’s more than possible that figure could begin to nudge towards the 300,000 mark, which would give Bernie Ecclestone and the F1 fraternity some real food for thought. It seems endurance racing is on the brink of another golden age to rival any other seen throughout its history so far.