Help! I've lost the faith!

[Lazy B'stard]

Firstly, welcome to Club Arnage. I hope we manage to relight your passion for what is head and shoulders, still THE best sporting event on the planet.

Times have changed for sure. The marketing man is now more important than the engineer. That's sad and I don't see it changing. I agree that the cars are not getting any better looking, but that again is progress (although we still have a long way to go before they look as ugly as those current F1 cars.) I too miss the old village and rue the changes to the circuit that have erased years of character and some of the spirit. Things are, it seems, not what they were.

On the other hand......

If you need a reminder of glories past, go to the Classic. It's a great event that has a character all of its own. I love to head down and submerge myself in the sports history. It is the perfect antidote for the modern race.

On the flip side, it's not really a race is it. It's a celebration for sure and some drivers love to race no matter what, but after a great weekend at the classic I'm always ready to get back to the proper 24 hours the following year. It recharges your fever for the 24.

So aside from the Audi whitewash year on year and the cynical marketing, what is it that troubles you?

The atmosphere is still amazing, the place itself is still awe inspiring, the racing throughout the classes better than ever, and the individual stories that play out during the race can still make you laugh and cry in equal measures.

Like the teams competing, Le Mans is a year long journey for me. It's really got under my skin, and has Hugh Chamberlain said during the race this year 'this place becomes part of your very fabric' a sentiment I wholly agree with.

Everything builds up to it- the constant drip feed of news, rumours, hanging around places like CA and Beermountain, the races building up to LM- Sebring, Spa..., a weekly listen to Midweek Motorsport... It all ensures that  one the race you are well stoked up and even four blokes racing wheelbarrows would be enough!

The passion is still inside you. You just need to look deeper and find it.

Don't give up now. We are at the dawning of a golden age. Toyotas effort this year was magnificent. Porsche, Nissan, Honda will be here in the next few years to spice things up and you will always have the Davids to the Goliaths to cheer on should the factories leave you cold. How can you not be warmed by the stories behind teams like Murphy Prototypes, Rollcentre, RML over the years?

All said and done, it's still the greatest sporting event on the planet. Make the most of it while you still can.

Si

[Lazy B'stard]

Another point that I'd like to address is your cynical view of the Nissan/ Gran Turismo Academy.

Yes it's purely a marketing excercise but a brilliant one at that. During one wet miserable afternoon huddled in a service area on some rally out in the arse end of nowhere, my sadly departed friend Colin McRae once looked me straight in the eye and said 'Si, there is a Colin McRae or Richard Burns on every council estate in Britain. We were just fortunate enough to get the chance'.

Now I don't care what Nissan or Playstation get out of it, but the fact that one lad has been taken from Bedroom gaming to the podium of Le Mans is something that should be applauded. That is life changing. It also happens that he is a bloody tallented individual thus proving my old friends theory.

One of the magical things about Le Mans for me is it's accessibility. If you have the money you can go and race against the best in the world. If I liked tennis there is no amount of money that could get me onto centre court at Wimbledon next month, of if I were into football, I could get to the world cup final.

Surely that dream exists in every Motorsport fans heart? To be there? Can you imagine how it feels?

Great interview with Greg Pickett during the week where he described his first racing lap at Le Mans. He said he could hardly see for tears. He sobbed like a baby the whole way through his first few laps!
Now that's a hardened businessman and racer talking. Imagine what it feels like for a young lad plucked from nowhere. It's a fairy tale come true.

They made that dream come true. For that Nissan are heros.

[Fran]

(1)  The marketing man is now more important than the engineer.

(2)   All said and done, it's still the greatest sporting event on the planet.

Blimey Si, the muse is upon you today!!   Two points I would like to pick up tho....

(1)  I dont entirely agree with this - if the Engineer isnt doing his part, then the marketing man will have nothing to sell or at least will have a much harder job to shift the goods!  I wonder how many Lambos got sold off the back of their last "performance"!

(2)  I certainly agree here - I thought I wasnt too fussed about missing it this year (thinking that just going to the Classic would be compensation enough) - but no matter how much I had tried to fill the weekend with other "stuff" - I still spent lots of hours listening to RLM and jumping round blogs and video feeds - I even spent a good half hour or more watching the fixed camera feed of people wandering up the track after the race had finished!

F

[Lazy B'stard]

I still think the marketing man is king. The manufacturers are there to sell cars. Peugoet sell twice as many diesels in France than petrol and it was the marketing man who decided that Peugoet would return with a Diesel. It was also the marketing man that probably drew the curtain on the Peugeot effort.

Yes the engineer makes the car a winner, but for that he needs money and that money comes from the budgets given to the marketing man.

Audi will be making hybrid cars available to you and I next year therefore it was important to the Marketing Man that the newer technology became the first to win at Le Mans.

The days of a bright engineer approaching the Board with a plan and a design is long gone. It's now the Marketing man and his PowerPoint presentation that breeds a winner at Le Mans. The engineers, mechanics, tacticians and drivers just make it reality.

[Fran]

The days of a bright engineer approaching the Board with a plan and a design is long gone.

"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams" - WB Yeats.

[Lord Steve]

Got to say that I side with Si on the marketing / engineer issue Fran. I'm not saying that I like it but it's simple economics. The marketing department generate sales, the sales fund the racing and the engineers make the car work. The car wins the race (in the case of Audi) and people buy more cars which generate income etc ad infinitum.

I can't see this cycle and the subsequent domination of works teams in LMP1 being broken unless some privateer happens to come up with a miracle.

GT racing on the other hand.......

Steve

[Fran]

.....the engineers make the car work. The car wins the race (in the case of Audi) and people buy more cars .......

Chicken->Egg or Egg->Chicken?!

 

[Lazy B'stard]

.....the engineers make the car work. The car wins the race (in the case of Audi) and people buy more cars .......

Chicken->Egg or Egg->Chicken?!

 

An interesting debate for sure.

If you look back at Audi's first foray into Motorsport back in the 1980's you will see that marketing has always been at the forefront.

Back in the 1970's we had Ford, Fiat, Lancia etc on the world stage with 'factory' rally teams but taking the chicken and egg scenario into context, all they had done was take the baton from gentlemen drivers or sportsmen (and ladies of course) who had been doing European rallies out of their own pockets for decades. Through the successes of these privateers they could see the benefits of winning on Sunday, selling on Monday. Thus was born the work teams. Although they were 'factory teams' they were often anything but... Ford/ David Sutton, Lancia/Jolly Club, Fiat/ etc. factory money, independent race team. BMC were probably the exception to this but for the sake of this debate, they were not in the same league.

Audi at that point had no recent sporting heritage to fall back on and very few non enthusiasts knew of the connection between the current company and the past success of Auto Union. It's easy to forget that back in the 1970's Audi was a very small manufacturer. They had to take a fresh approach and start from scratch.

It was an Audi marketing team that then decided to change the world of rallying forever by entering the sport with something radical. Audi certainly grew as a direct result of that Motorsport programe and still continue to this day as a direct result of that strategy. They were, it can be argued the first of a new breed when it came to promoting the company through sport. It could be said that SAAB did the same two decades before with Carlsson and the Monte victories but that was more to do with a small engineering department with a very small budget using rallying to improve its road car product. The slick marketing came second.

We now know that Porsche will join the party in late 2013/2014. The Porsche Group own Audi and many have said that as soon as Porsche are ready then we will lose Audi. I'm sure Porsche will take its factory drivers away from Audi next year, but I still think that Audi will continue to compete. How hollow would a victory be if that victory has not been torn from the hand of the giant?

Back to the original poster's points about Audi domination. I agree that it's not been great from a sporting perspective, but no one can deny that Audis presence over the last decade has lifted endurance racing's popularity to a whole new level. Gone are those terrible days back in the 80's and 90's when there were only 28 starters.

As in rallying 30 years ago, Audi's involvement has reignited the sport. Le Mans is once again a household name. That's got to be a good thing for everyone concerned, be that a fan, the ACO, another manufacturer looking to convince its board to pay for a campaign, right down to a small team looking to find sponsors.

It could be said, like them or not, we owe the continuing existance of our favourite sport to those guys from Audi.

[gatordad]

I am a long-time Sebring race fan and have been going to it since I was 10...in 1958!  My first love at 10 was the Porsche 550 spyder...not a bad first-love I might add.

I few years ago we heard rumors of Audi getting back into racing.  At Sebring there are corrals for different car type.  There has always been a Porsche corral.  Then they added a Corvette corral and a Ferrari corral.  The problem there, of course, is very few Ferrari's could make a real pleasure drive through Florida without breaking down on some back road...I digress.

Audi came to Sebring and in its first year got waxed pretty bad.  They continued coming back, got better, and now dominate the prototype class.  Before Audi came to the race, my bet is that there was not even one Audi driven by a spectator at the race.  Now?  There is an Audi corral, and Audi overflow paddock, and a whole Audi tent area to show off their newest cars.  The emblem is everywhere.

Now I love prototype racing as much as the next person but my passion is the GT class so I enjoy watching my Porsches go around the track.  Deep inside, I REALLY want Porsche to get back to the prototype class and wax Audi's arse...if you know what I mean.  Audi and Porsche have the same DNA and I like Audi for that.  My bet is that the Ferrari guys hated it when Porsche was winning all the back-to-back races at Le Mans as well.

We had our tenth annual Breakfast At Le Mans party last Saturday.  We loved it but it's still really about the friends you develop and the good times year to year.  Just my $0.02...see you at Sebring!

[Lord Steve]

Si, I think the fact that TK and Dr U were so keen to extol the virtues of the younger Audi drivers this year adds weight to your argument that they are being groomed for a Porche P1 assault in 2013 / 14. Actually, can't see it happening next year unless Porsche have a development plan underway that we don't know about.

Surely they won't want to arrive with an underprepared factory team and be embarrased by a few Audi diesels.

Do you think Porsche will run diesel or petrol cars?

Steve

[Brad Zarse]

Scottie, I think you're looking at this wrong.

The Le-Mans experience is not about who wins.  It never really has been.  It's about the atmosphere, the people, the comradery, and to some degree, the feeling that the Brits give it, of being our race, which happens to be held in France.  

On the DeltaWing - Le-Mans is about future technology - that's the only reason it needed to run, and I for one, was glad it did - indeed, I hope they develop a class for 400kilo cars, running lightweight, with low power/fuel consumption - that Deltawing proved so many doubters wrong.

If you want the true fan experience, then I agree with GatorDad - go to Sebring - it's far more fan friendly, it's all about the racing, and I had an absolute blast there this year.  But for me, whilst I might have to make the choice between Sebring and Le-Mans again in the future, missing it Le-Mans this year, has proved to me, that whilst Sebring was better in SO many ways than Le-Mans - it's not Le-Mans.  Missing Sebring would be frustrating, and I'd hate it.....but missing Le-Mans again, would rip me to the core.  

[Lazy B'stard]

Petrol Hybrid for sure Steve. It has more relevance for their road car output. As Toyota have shown this year, a petrol powered car can be as fast and efficient as a diesel despite what Henri has been trying to tell us for the last six years.

The programe is already underway. They will test in 2013 and race in 2014. It's been mentioned that at least two of the current Audi drivers wil be testing for Porsche instead of racing for Audi from the end of this year onwards.

[Martini...LB]

Simon. Stop all this writing and get your van finished... the amount of time spent 'museing' lately you could have finished your car!!

>Martini...LB

[Lazy B'stard]

Simon. Stop all this writing and get your van finished... the amount of time spent 'museing' lately you could have finished your car!!

>Martini...LB

Jesus, stop nagging, you are worse than the wife!

It's post Le Mans week. Lots to talk about. The van is over in the paint shop so everything is in hand.

[termietermite]

Well, Scotty, for one thing I don't think it's fair to judge LM by the Eurosport broadcast.  I loathe footy but when I have been to the odd match (in the days before I had acquired a sensible husband and went out with guys who watched funny sports), even I was sucked in by the atmosphere in spite of the cr*p going on on the pitch.  You just have to be there.

I agree the Audi dominance is tedious but when the Toyotas put in some really decent laps, there was a real sense amongst the crowd that it may well be possible to beat them.  Yes, it seems that nothing will break them and that Audi is prepared for any eventuality or failure but whose fault is that?  Surely not theirs - they do what they need to win.  Is that such a bad thing?  If anybody wants to bring it to them, the opportunity is there.  And it's a lot cheaper and has a much higher demographic profile than F1.  But that's the marketing person in me talking, not the engineer!

And anyway, it doesn't really matter that much when you're here.  I watched 20 hours of the race in all and I barely knew who was leading once the second Toyota bowed out.  But I watched the leader board on the big screen opposite me for lap after lap as P2 and GT cars slugged it out uninterupted for hour after hour.  There are four races going on.  If you're not interested in one of them, you're free to watch one of the others.  And all the little stories being played out at the same time.  JRM got a great result with just 5, yes 5, mechanics.  Unsurprisingly they won the pitlane award.  F1 eat your heart out.

On PQ weekend we were greeted like long-lost buddies by the Lizards.  Now, we don't know them except as fans and yet it's like meeting a bunch of old friends.  Pat Long, for example, is one of the most charming guys you could wish to meet and doesn't have a big stick up his backside like so many F1 types seem to have.  At scrutineering, I had an IMSA Matmut poster with me that came out of the programme so decided to get the guys to sign it.  Nicolas Armindo was so intrigued by the thing that he asked me where I'd got it and when I explained it was in the prog' seemed to be as delighted as one of those little kids who spots themselves on TV during the race.

On top of all that, there's us.  Hard to imagine a bunch of people who in many ways have very little in common, being so friendly, warm and welcoming, as well as being so very supportive of one another.  The good turns which have been done for me over the years are too numerous to mention, but nobody - well, almost nobody - ever does anything for any other reason than out of friendship and shared interest.  Sorry, but I bet you wouldn't get that out of any other form of motorsport (with the possible exception of rallying) because we all stand there for hour after hour in whatever kind of weather either watching the race or enjoying one another's company.  The Classic is great and few recent experiences have matched having been woken up at Mulsanne in the wee hours in the morning by the sound of 6 approaching GT40s but it isn't quite the same, and for me will never quite beat the real thing, for all its other attractions.

So before you pass final judgement Scotty, come back here again and give it another go.  It's easy to be an armchair critic and there are lots of things that the ACO does that get up my nose (and the noses of several of my French petrolhead friends too, so it's not just the Brits), but don't write it off yet.  The moment you come back, it gets under your skin again.