Good to see Nurburging on the list for 2015, I hope it stays there!

There is no precise 'going rate'. Except for special circumstances, magazines and newspapers generally don't pay a fortune for editorial images (there are too many rich kids handing them out for nothing). As Mr Rick says, it is better to get a number up-front, than to go cap-in-hand after publication. Did they get you to sign a rights release? Your signature on the release is usually the moment when money is discussed. I've found that it is better to ask the editor what they think your pictures are worth, rather than picking a number out of the ether.

I've been a full time professional motorsport photographer for many years and the issue of 'how much' and 'for what' is a perpetual one. All I know is that editors don't like 'surprise' invoices. These days they'll assume they are getting pictures for free, unless you specifically tell them otherwise BEFORE you provide them.

Third and final race of the 2010 Intercontinental Le Mans Cup.

Jox Jottings …Le Mans Classic 2008 (July 11th-13th)

Was it really only a month ago we were all here for the ‘Main Event’! Those of you who are not hardened ‘Le Mans 24 hrs’ fanatics might like to consider ‘The Classic’. The whole atmosphere is entirely different and, even though it is pretty busy, there are far fewer people around. However the range and top quality exotic machinery is far and away more impressive and rather more than simply mouth-watering! We are not just talking about the cars out on the track; we are also talking about the ‘cruisers’ …. you know.. the ones that drive all the way to Le Mans, appear to wash their cars and then repeatedly drive round and round the fountain at Arnage ‘looking good’ and sounding a bit good as well!  There is a new trend this year and that it is to put your name and national flag on the door, plus putting a door decal and race number on the car. As we supped our umpteenth glass of beer we did wonder about the thinking behind this...

The other bit of excellent news is that the local eating establishments are not all obsessed with the dreaded 24 Heures du Le Mans ‘Menu Rapide’ so the full monty is generally available.

Then, if and when the beer has settled down a bit and if your anorak is fitting snugly, you should head off to the Bugatti Circuit infield and take a look at the ‘Car Clubs’ display. There you will find 6,000 cars from over 55 Owner’s Clubs! At one end of the scale you have the Porsche Clubs with over 1,000 cars and at the other end is the Swallow Doretti Owners Club with six cars!
 
So, what is it all about? That is not all that easy to explain. To give you an idea there are around 400 cars (representing 69 marques) here that will be competing, there are apparently some 900 drivers ready and waiting to drive them. The oldest cars here are a 1924 3.0 litre Bentley and a 4.5 litre Tourer of the same year … the youngest is a 1981 Rondeau 379C driven here by the great Henri Pescarolo himself. This is a wee bit confusing since the ‘cut off date’ is 1979! However Mr Pescarolo is French and lives locally! So imagine what the pits look like?

The cars are divided up by age into six ‘grids’, each grid (or plateau) has a maximum of 66 cars that will race. Each race is a maximum of 43 minutes. So if you ‘do the maths’ you will find that each car will race for just over 2 hours in total ... if you have two drivers that equals about one hour in twenty four behind the wheel! (And quite a lot of waiting around!) There is a mandatory pit stop that must last at least 1minute 30 second this has to happen after 15 minutes and before 30 minutes have elapsed.

At their first start all the drivers in grids 1-4 will get to run across the track in the traditional fashion and after an installation lap they will reassemble and have a rolling start. After that all their starts are ‘rolling’.

To give you an idea of the sort of machinery that is here, after practice the quickest in each grid were:-

Grid One (1923-1939):-
1st #5 1931 Talbot 105 driven by Gareth Burnett and Julian Bronson.
(6.2:44 secs)
2nd #24 1927 Bentley 4.5 Le Mans driven by Joe and Adam Singer and Stuart Fearnside
3rd #47 1937 Lagonda LG45 driven by Colin and Martin Bugler.

Grid Two ( 1949-1956)..
1st #55 1952 Jaguar C=Type driven by Nigel Webb and Gary Pearson
(5.18:524 secs)
2nd #12 1954 Jaguar D-Type driven by Peter Neumark and Mark Griffiths
3rd #19  1955 Maserari 300 S driven by Nicolas and Henri Chambon

Grid Three (1957-1961)
1st #29 1957 Aston Martin DBR1 driven by Peter Hardman and Harry and Nick Leventis (5.3:931 secs)
2nd #8 1960 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta driven by Vincent Gaye
3rd #69 1959 Lister Costin Jaguar driven by David Wenman and Julian Bronson

Grid Four (1962-1965)
1st #30 1965 Ford GT40 driven by Ray Bellm
(4.31:711 secs)
2nd #33 1965 Ford GT40 driven by Richard Meins
3rd #20 1965 Ford GT40 driven by Shaun Lynn

Grid Five (1996-1971)
1st #19 1970 Porsche 917 driven by Jean-Marc Luco and Jurgen Barth
(4.19:195 secs)
2nd #16 1970 Porsche 917 driven by Jean Guitard and Soheil Ayari
3rd #33 1969 Lola T70 Mark 3B driven by Rene Arnoux and Shinji Nakano

Grid Six (1972-1979)
1st #5 1973 Lola T292 driven by Irvine Laidlaw, Simon Hadfield, Michael Schryver and Louis Dibrell. (4.13:787 secs)
2nd #26 1972 Gulf Mirage driven by Chris MacAllister
3rd #29 1978 Alpine Renault A443 driven by Jean Ragnotti and Alain Serpaggi.

Just for the record you will recall that this year’s Peugeot 908 did a 3:18.513 sec in qualifying (247.16 kms/h.. 144.375 mph) !!

The first grid (1923-1939) was waved off just before 16:00hrs by astronaut Buzz Aldrin (the second man to walk on the moon in 1969). This is all to do with the 100 year celebrations of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s official public demonstrations on 8 August 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track. Wilbur’s first flight lasted just 45 secs.

If you are looking for results and times may we suggest you take a look at www.ris-timing.be . To make life a little more complex there are several elements to the results..

The Overall Classification .. The winners will be
-   The drivers of the team winning the scratch classification after thee rounds
-   The drivers of the team winning the ‘Index of Performance’

The Round Classification:- Quote  “ the number of laps achieved, multiplied by the time established at the last crossing 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.” (Clear as mud eh?)

The General Scratch Classification: -
Quote “Addition of the laps and times of the three rounds” (Now that is a bit easier!!)

The Index of Performance Classification: -
Quote “The times realised by each car are multiplicated (yup.. their word!) by the coefficient which includes age, its capacity and its original category”… ( Ummm…)

The Teams: -
Quote “It is possible to build a team, associating a car of each grid. The six cars of the same team will bear the same race number (?!).. Then it gets confusing… we think it means you can build a team made up of a car from each of the six grids… (This makes quantum physics look pretty easy!)

It may come as a surprise that we may not be going to try and publish results of all 18 races … and the various categories/classifications… life is a little too short! Plus drivers can collect various time penalties for no apparent reason, or at least no reason that we know of …Oh yes .. and we don’t know the classes either.. So good luck.

There were six Astons here and they all finished.. a brilliant achievement. That is the sort of thing that Porsches used to do , but 100% finish? Even a bit rare for them surely. We can’t think of a model/marque that has achieved that sort of penetration in the past. There were a few challenges here and there but it was mighty impressive 24 hours work. With those dreadful conditions making it still more impressive. However the sole works Corvette began to gradually chip away at the Aston lead, as they tend to do. But a controversial safety car deployment during the last hour scuppered that plan.. actually I doubt they would have got there but it was interesting to speculate.

Somehow or other LM GT2 didn’t catch our attention. One problem was that nobody talked about them, not much seemed to happen and the timing screens petered out when it got to their details and became totally unreadable. It was a Porsche - Ferrari battle as expected. It was the much fancied Ferrari No.97 RISI Competizione Ferrari F 430 GT that led for ages but it died out on the circuit with a failed water pump. This gave the Porsche No.76 IMSA Performance Matmut Porsche 911 GT3 RSR (997) a chance and they took it. The nearest rival was the No.99 RISI Competizione Ferrari F 430 GT but they were a substantial six laps behind.

The finish was mysterious .. to say the least.. One of your drunken pundits is something very technical in computers and weather forecasting. Mostly he is delightfully out of touch with reality but he was bang on with the storm that hit the track during the last hour. The knackered heroes staggered on, donned their lifejackets and stoically used what power boating skills they could muster. But there were some team managers who had a different view. They, quite rightly some say, wanted the safety car deployed before their precious, if misguided, drivers threw their expensive charges into the deep end, without a rubber ring. Bearing in mind very few cars were on the same lap, or in the same puddle it wasn’t such a daft idea.

Hugh Chamberlain tells us that the team managers first attempt failed so they decided to storm the Bastille of race control and ‘assert’ themselves …. By some astonishing co-incidence the safety cars popped out and the matter resolved, as if by magic!

At the time the No.8 Team Peugeot Total Peugeot 908 was looking unhappy in the pit garage and showing signs of being on the way out of contention with an engine bay full of oil.

Then a miracle occurred the safety car came in despite the weather being worse than ever. This allowed the No.8 Peugeot to come out and get itself sorted out by overtake things, or maybe even being overtaken. Under the safety car it might have had to do another lap which, as one of the drivers later admitted, was beyond it. So it staggered out to finish, come what may.. and claim its 2nd place.

However over the years any number of teams have sat in their garages and then miraculously fired up the car to take the chequered flag. So in their great wisdom the ACO set out regulations to stop this. Anyway the last remaining Peugeot went out and then stopped out on the circuit to allow the Audi to pass it (this couldn’t have happened if the safety car was out) and make sure it didn’t have to do another lap, then it could finish and take the accolades of the crowd…. Ummm …A glance at the Regulations revealed … Rule one… you must not stop on that final lap and wait… so the Peugeot did, for several minutes … Rule two you must complete that final lap in under six minutes (or maybe more due to force majeur) … so the Peugeot romped round in a white knuckle inducing 10 minutes to clock the slowest lap of any, repeat any, other car… So.. ‘Joy Oh’ rapture it rejoins the rest of the pack just behind the Audi and arrives at the finish as part of a splendid ‘ Audi only just beat us’ photo opportunity! Then to rub salt into an already open festering wound, Bourdais, inadvertently we are sure,  took leave of his senses and stopped on the start- finish line before going to Parc Ferme and got out of the car to wave at the .. er… ecstatic French crowd… bingo .. Sorry officer .. Two more hanging offences!
At the press conference Peugeot stated in a public forum that the car couldn’t have done another lap!

Ummm … This might not have been so bad had it not kept Martin Short in his No.18 Rollcentre Racing Pescarolo Judd  off the podium. We discussed the idea of Henri Pescarolo protesting.. with what we thought would be a strong case .. well .. The only minor hurdles we could think of were:-Peugeot are a French team … they speak French … we are in France … a French car was on the podium .. Then on the minus side maybe we should consider the fact that Martin Short isn’t very French!
At the time of writing no protest seems to have been lodged… maybe this is because Pescarolo works out of a factory unit in Le Mans .. maybe he is French .. etc etc ..

It left a slightly sour taste … we did wonder how many of their own regulations the ACO would break during a 24 Hour period. It seems “ As many as they like”.

Summary of random high/low spots:-
In their wisdom the French had ‘improved’ the traffic system. Nuff said!
We have the greatest sympathy for those who camped out in the various storms of biblical proportions.
We hope Apicella gets well soon. Last we heard he was pretty well OK but still in hospital while they kept on eye on some internal injuries.
A moments thought for K.Ojjeh who for no apparent reason threw the No.32 Barazi Epsilon Zytek 07S/2 into the pit wall on the Start Finish Straight. He then sat close to the car in amongst the tyres of the tyre wall for ages.. maybe considering hari-kiri?
Dr Wolfgang Ullrich various comments  “When Mike Rockenfeller made a mistake at the Tertre Rouge corner, I wasn't happy at all.”
"I really believe that if a manufacturer makes a brand new car with full resources, they will compete with us." Porsche will not bother with petrol LM P1, they can’t see the point. They will stick with nimble (and reliable!) LM P2 type cars in US and win races.
“The concrete "crashed into the car" and they saw rising temperatures and brought the car into the pits” Surely the car crashed into the concrete not vice versa!

“ I cannot see the problem with diesel and petrol cars competing together”. Of course not .. you have fastest thing out there!
There were a couple of the new Audi R8 road cars floating about. Jury is out on looks etc but in the flesh it is bit like a TT with extended back end.

Best sounds came from the Spykers .. worst from Audi/Peugeot .. they don’t make much of it!

Well those of you that felt miserable being stuck in UK need not have worried, it was perfectly easy (and more expensive) to be wet, cold and miserable here at Le Mans. I know us Brits tend to rabbit on about the weather but this time it was a bit special. Rumour has it that there were around 250,000 spectators here, whether that is the total number over the weekend is unclear but it was busy. The ‘Peugeot factor’ must have kicked in big time. They have not been here since 1993 this made up for it. They made up for their absence by building a medium sized town accompanied by a modest trading estate.

We have to assume that we fell for the propaganda because a lot of people assumed that the Peugeots would be blindingly quick, but fragile. Testing and qualifying seemed to suggest that they were in fact pretty damn quick. As it turned out it was all bollocks!

Audi, bless them, had been cunningly sandbagging the whole time and in race specification they could comfortably take 3-4 secs a lap off the Peugeots. This even surprised our French chums!

The new-fangled diesels arrived with smaller fuel tanks (9 litres less fuel) and smaller restrictors. It was important not to scare the petrol teams off. Especially Pescarolo … they are French, they race petrol cars and Henri badly wants to win Le Mans as a Team Boss. So the regulations were written to calm the diesels down a bit! But …Surprise!! The oil burners were quicker than last year and seemed at least as ‘economic’ (Not an expression you immediately associate with a modest V12 5.0 litre lump with 650 bhp and ‘sufficient’ torquies).. but they were!

This was the ‘slowest’ Le Mans since 2001 despite this the LM P1 lap record fell, as did LM P2, LM GT1 did, so did LM GT2. The weather slowed things up a bit overall! It was utterly disgusting… the rain was often torrential with no warning at all. Over and over again teams got caught short. The leading car made 35 visits to the pits for service, tyres etc. It would be raining at Mulsanne and dry in the pits and then the next time … all change … torrential rain in the pits and so o n.

We had the usual bru-ha-ha at the start but no drivers parade. Maybe because the start was at 15:00hrs and there were French dignitaries around. About the only constructive observation we could come up with was that the Hawaiian Tropic girls still drawn an enormous amount of attention. They have been coming here since 1983 apparently and maybe it is time to move some of the original girls onto other duties and bring in some new ones!

 At the start Bourdais got mightly over excited and blew his pole position by going ‘all agricultural’ at the Dunlop Curve and he was not a happy bunny. Nobody else to blame, he simply over cooked it, pilot error! This saved Audi from cruising round for a lap or two behind him and thus losing some good TV coverage. (Didn’t matter much because looking at some of the French TV coverage you could have made the mistake of thinking the only cars running were Peugeots!) The leading Audi simply yawned, stretched and ambled off into the distance. We are not anti Peugeot but suddenly all the bullshit stopped and even their drivers admitted they had been shocked by the casual pace of the Audis.

But Audi decided to keep the commentators busy and make life easier for the Peugeots (and maybe even the distant petrol powered Pescarolos) when Rockenfeller seemed to lose the will to race and threw his car into the scenery! The team management were highly unimpressed and seemed to have bought up the TV footage since we never saw the incident again played in glorious Technicolor. However there were some rather touching shots of him trying to re-arrange the meccano kit of bits of rear suspension that were all jumbled up in a heap. Eventually it must have dawned on him that a trackside miracle was not on the horizon .. so he gave up.

The No.8 Team Peugeot Total Peugeot 908 began to cause lots of speculation. It seemed that at every pit stop the team extricated dead rubber (marbles) from the side pod louvers, they also kept big hair dryers  blasting cold air at the radiators.
It looked like a cunning Baldric plan to make a huge collection of second hand, useless rubber in the pit. The two cars looked identical but nothing like this happened with the No.7 Team Peugeot Total Peugeot 908 . So we worried (?) about the No.8 car.

Ironically it was the No.7 Peugeot that took a mysterious ‘early bath’ when, much later in the race, it made a very low key exit with unspecified engine problems and a total lack of emotion from the team.  It was almost as if it was pre-planned… no .. silly idea!

Then Audi decided to level the playing field all once more and keep French spirits up by reducing their challenge by another one car yet, this time it was the No.2 Audi Sport North America Audi R10 TDI that lost a wheel and attacked some rather solid scenery. Nope.. It wasn’t a wheel nut that wasn’t done up properly and fell off, closely followed by the wheel.. Instead we were told by Audi PR it was all highly complex and that a scientific explanation was sought, but not before the scientists back at the ranch had studied all the evidence. To be fair if it was a cock up by the pit crew it didn’t show up for 54 mins! Audi management shifted about restlessly… they had never visualized their three car challenge would become a loner!

In LM P2 it was a bit like a tag wrestling match .. eleven cars entered the ring and just two made it to the podium .. and that was a damn close run thing, it was very nearly only one … the two survivors were separated by a nerve jangling 17 laps! When the No 31 Binnie car arrived for a long ‘rest’ in its pit garage with unspecified engine trouble it looked like maybe one car might survive.

Your drunken pundits were wondering a) why the ACO remains obsessed with Prototypes and b) even more confusing why LM P2? They may be cheaper but they are fragile… fragility is not a major bonus at Le Mans.

So the No.31 Binnie Motorsports Lola Zytek B05-40 romped home a ‘convincing’ victor … OK .. put it another way …  it fell apart rather less often and rather less comprehensively than the others! Sadly our favourite LM P2, car the No.25 RML GBR LM P2 Lola AER B05-40 broke leaving us very little to cheer for.

LM GT1 was looking good Aston .v. Corvette.. the bad old, laid back Yanks versus the good old spunky Brits. Then Corvette did a sort of Audi. Ollie Gavin excused himself from the meeting very early on with a broken carbon fibre drive shaft. Not a regular problem with ‘Vettes. Apparently this simply shook itself to bits and delaminated. It happened because when the safety car came out they ‘turned off’ a handful of cylinders as an economy measure and this caused a healthy, if eye watering, vibration. This in turn damaged the prop shaft … Ummm … Seems a tad far fetched but who are we to argue?

Jox Jottings Le Mans 2007 Test day

It is now the Saturday before Sunday ‘Testing’.. and the sun is out and the sky is blue and God is in his heaven! Or putting it another way we have been in France for a week and it has poured with rain everyday, so today is a bonus!

Any of you regular pilgrims to Le Mans will have a big surprise when you get here. The whole place has been flattened (nuked?) and rebuilt and nothing is quite where you might have expected it to be. Currently there is a “ It will be nice when it is finished” feel about the place. The inner paddock is largely unmolested except for the nine new, solid, genuine pits garages that have been built where the old temporary Bedouin tent encampment was before. A vast amount of earth has been moved during this €6.3 million stage one development. We can well believe it… it is remarkably hard to try and remember where everything was before.

The only sensible outer paddock access is at the far end (the control tower end) and it will take very little policing to keep the public out. The ‘outer’ hospitality paddock is now about twice the size, flat and has an all asphalt surface. One of the bonuses seems to be lots of power sockets and shrubbery (that may one day become trees!).

In one fell swoop a lot of the old slightly eccentric atmosphere has been lost. But maybe like the new Twickenham Rugby ‘Stadium’ it will settle down and mellow a bit. I suppose it is bit hard to tell this weekend, let’s see how it shapes up for the main event.

Naturally the talk is all about the oil burning Audi tractors versus the oil burning Peugeot tractors. Let us hope that Peugeot have a good weekend because they have shipped in a colossal amount of real estate to eat, sleep and party in. As usual Audi are not skimping so this is a genuine head to head conflict. But where would you put your money? Peugeot should have done around 5,000kms testing but instead they went to Monza and Valencia, and won both races. Audi however were not there to play with!

Audi on the other hand are heading for their second ‘diesel’ year at Le Mans plus they have a fellow called Reinhold Joest running the show and he is not entirely unfamiliar with the business of winning Le Mans. Don’t know where your money is but we think maybe not with Peugeot.

Previous readers of Jox Jottings will know that we have a spot of bother getting excited about LM P2. However Mike Newton, Thomas Erdos and Andy Wallace are all nice guys and bloody quick so if the car holds together it could be three in a row for them. Not sure about the rest except car No 40 Lola AER V05-40 entered by Quifel-ASM Team which won at Valancia.

LM GT1 is all about Corvettes , Aston Martins and perhaps the Team Oreca Saleens. They came 1st and 2nd at Monza.… It is hard to really tell since Corvettes seem to go well here and in America and the Astons don’t always travel well.

LM GT2 caught us out badly last year when they went and confounded the pundits by beating the Porsches. So far this year it is honours even between Porsche and Ferrari but there are five 430 GTs up against  four 911 GT3 RSR Porsches and a pair of Panoz. This year the Porsches are the new 997 models but the Ferraris have plenty of speed and are now thoroughly reliable. We will let you know if anybody shows their form during testing. Keep reading!

Logo done - Avatars to follow tomorrow