A New Winner!

[Boorish Grobian]

In my 44 years of following the sport I always thought the 1992 Indy 500 was the biggest steaming turd of a race I've ever seen.  But no! This years LM 24hrs now takes the prize,
Between full course cautions for armco made of beer cans, and single stranded cars on a f**k*ng nine mile circuit, I've seen it all.
This place is a bad joke.  Glad I saw it before it got this f**ked up.
RIP Allan,
Fax

[gatordad]

So, how do you really feel?  You do remember the Indy race where the tires would go out after ten laps and the caution would come out for everyone to get new rubber, right?  Was that '92?  I thought it was more recent than that. 

[Boorish Grobian]

Hey Gatordad, Ithink you talking about that Brickyard 400 a few years ago when the tires would desolve into sawdust every twenty laps or so.   Since that was a Sprint Cup race I barely qualify that as racing, a bit like calling the WWE a sport.
Occasionally I'll post something on here late at night after one too many ales, and the next morning think " Christ, I probabay shouldn't have hit the send button"  But not this time, I stand by my thoughts.  That was a complete joke of a motor race.  One would think that with the advances in automotive engineering, and tire technology, that cars would be easier to drive in difficult conditions, than in the good old days.  I can only assume the standard of driving has gone into the toilet.
And WTF is going on with all the full course cautions?  Why in the hell do they feel obligated to bring out the safety car for one car beached in a gravel trap on a circuit nine miles in length? Apparently they agree with me that the driving standard is crap, and feel the current drivers can't be trusted to behave themselves under a local yellow while corner workers are freeing a stranded car.
And then we have the circuit itself, I don't think I've seen armco barriers torn up like that since the bad old days of early seventies when people were getting their heads lobbed off, or cut in two because of poorly sighted or installed barriers.  It occured to me that a row of simple tire barriers along the armco at Terte Rouge and Simonsen is still with us.  The ACO have spent millions on hospitality facilities over the yeras, but that circuit is a screwed up mess.  They have acres of gravel runoff in some locations, and unprotected armco right out to the edge of the track in others.
All led to one seriously shitty motor race.
Fax

[nickliv]

One row of tyres in all places of likely car impact and I suspect I you might be right,  we wouldn't have been robbed of Simonsen along with 3 or 4 hours o  racing.

If driving standards are so bad,  why aren't drivers being excluded from the meeting?  Why aren't offending drivers made  to stand in the pitlane while every marshal gets to kick them square in the nuts?

Driver standards are easily enforceable. Circuit safety is easily upgraded.  There whole event generates a colossal amount of revenue. Its time that the money isnt put into hoardings and hospitality, but in improvements to the circuit.

None of the above will bring Allan Simonsen back, but perhaps his indirect legacy can be that he will be remembered as the last ever driver to die at Le Mans. For the rest of time.

I know motor racing is dangerous,  they write it on the tickets after all, but it shouldnt be needlessly dangerous.

[Mr Termite]

I'm still not sure what happened to AS, as the video I saw showed the aftermath, not the circumstances.

Sportscar racing always was and probably always will be the preserve of the Gentleman Driver, and they pay huge sums into the sport, at a time when manufacturers' teams are fewer than we might like. After all, Tracy Krohn, having messed up one car big time, then managed to beach its replacement, too. The ACO is a completely commercial concern, just like any other sports promoter today. In fairness, they do make every driver demonstrate their competence by day and by night before allowing them to race. And, actually, finding 168 truly competent drivers could take some doing. The FIA now kindly ensures the race isn't on a Grand Prix weekend, but apart from Martin Brundle last year, it's been a year or two since a current GP personality dabbled elsewhere.

Conditions this weekend were very variable - successive laps could see quite distinct changes in grip on the same corner. Nick Lapierre is a good driver - Sebring outright winner - and yet he nosed the Toyota into the wall. McNish made the point that any driver could have been caught out, as was Belicchi with the Rebellion, Fred Mack with the Aston. Amateurs and rookies weren't the only victims.

Apart from the personal poignancy of the whole event, and the awful news of AS, I thought the weekend quite interesting - not the usual form of Audi walkover, at least. LMP2 was full of cars and variety, even if Nissan seem to be annexing large chunks. And the Manthey Porsches will have put a nose or two out of joint.

The State of Denmark may be a sadder place after this weekend, but sportscar racing isn't all rotten.

[Boorish Grobian]

Mr T, first of all let me express my profound respect and admiration for you, I know you have had a difficult past few years, and my thoughts & prayers go out to you.
Your point about the constantly changing conditions is well taken, and endurance racing isn't what it used to be, drivers now driving every lap of a 24hr race like its a 10 lap Formula Ford sprint.  I suppose my briggest frustration wasn't as much with all of the beached & shunted cars, but the way the situations were handled.  I can't understand for the life of me why they chose to run the SC's out there so often.  Locals yellows have always been perfectly adequate for a beached or shunted car, if someone is behaving like dumbass in areas where the yellow is being displayed, then give them a penalty.  But there's no point in breaking up the flow of the race the way they did. Even the commentators on Speed TV were growing frustrated the situation.
As for what happened to Allan, I've seen some footage from the Corvette immediatly behind him and it looks like it simply stepped away from him, and he slightly over-corrected, the car snapping back across the road hard into the armco at a sharp angle.  Why they had no energy absorbing protection (tire barrier, foam barrier, etc) in front of the armco there is a mystery to me, the barrier is right at the edge of the tarmac, and they're hard on it launching onto the mulsanne at that point.
Fax

[Piglet]

As a Clerk of the Course within the UK I routinely make the decision about whether to snatch and recover cars under local yellows or whether to use the safety car and risk affecting the race.

For me, tricky conditions make me more likely to use the SC - I've got soft squishy marshals out in the line of fire of the traffic and drivers often on the wrong tyres for the conditions so in those cases I make little apology for using the SC in that scenario.   

The other big deciding factor is whether I need to put a service vehicle on the track.  If there is a snatch vehicle at the incident location then I'm usually happy to snatch under local yellows as I don't have to put a truck/JCB etc. into the track.   I cannot think of any scenario when I would put a service vehicle onto a track without the SC being out.  I know some clerks who do and I know that it's very common in parts of Europe but it is not what I would do as in my view it is much too risky. 

There were clearly snatch vehicles at many locations around LM and where that was the case I saw them snatching vehicles under yellows, it did seem that the SC was used when there was a need to take a service vehicle onto the track which matches my common practice.   

Some of the SC periods seemed extended, especially the last one which seemed to go on for ever.  I was also puzzled by their use of pit exit and operating the old style SC procedures of only releasing cars onto the back of a train of cars.  The regs really didn't help to clarify what was supposed to happen.   

Barriers are a tricky question...the difference between the areas of the circuit where there are huge run off's (ie Dunlop) compared to say Tertre Rouge is fairly easily explained.   Dunlop sits within the area that is owned by the ACO and is permanent circuit, whereas there are of course large areas of the circuit that are public highway.   To some extent, it's the nature of road circuits and part of what makes circuits like Le Mans and in the old days Spa such special and challenging places.   

Now clearly I'm not saying that it's right that drivers are killed and injured and I think there is work to be done on the barriers and it may be that introducing some form of technical energy absorbing barrier like Monaco will be the way forward.   The barriers do look lighter in weight than I am used to seeing at UK circuits. 

Having said that, where there is a very short run off before a barrier, as is the nature of road courses, there is very little opportunity to retard the speed of the vehicle and the impact is always likely to be significant.   You can build bigger and stronger barriers but the stronger the structure you build, the less it actually absorbs energy and the more energy is pushed back into the weakest part of the car and that, inevitably, is the soft squishy person behind the wheel.    The fact that armco "gives" is actually a good thing, it's that give that absorbs some of the energy.  What we didn't see was barrier giving sufficiently that it rolled over and became a ramp as I have seen at times. 

Tyres absorb energy but also have bounce and that can bounce a car back into traffic causing additional risks and generating energy. 

The Eurosport commentators were getting their knickers in a twist in what, to me, was a very ill informed and insensitive way today about barriers.  Including a statement that AS was killed because there was a tree behind the barrier.  There is no point speculating at this stage.  The speed that AS's car went in was always going to generate a very hard stop and, as with jumping out of a plane, it's not the falling that kills you but the stop at the bottom.   

As ever, I think it's easy to criticise.  I've worked with Eduado who is the Race Director and he always seemed a safe pair of hands, not overly cautious so that he wouldn't do anything but not reckless and, having had a driver killed in the first few minutes of the race, I don't find it at all unusual that he may have been more cautious during the rest of the event.

[smokie]

Thanks for that post Piglet, gives the "other" perspective.

I heard them say that there was a tree right behind the armco which meant that it had no "give" but it did seem a bit speculative to me at the time...

[gatordad]

It looks to me that he hit the beginning of the rumble strip and possibly cut his tire from this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ITXBv01io&feature=endscreen

Sad day for sports car racing.

[Andy77]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Q623g1mKpdE

That's the in car cam from the directly following Vette. Right before AS gets over the curb there is some sort of twitch in the car, just like he hit a bump. Just a little movement of the car, but there.
Then he gets onto the curb, possibly caught out from the twitch a bit and tries to correct it.
But then the car turns in abruptly, another try of countersteer but the car snaps completely. I have the feel that this was a puncture or suspension failure where I am more behind the sudden puncture than the suspension. I guess we will get to know the exact reason in a couple weeks time.

As been said before the race gets held partly on public roads with public areas around. The ACO has bought land in some spots, that's where you find more run off. As for the area around Tertre Rouge, I think there is a roundabout where the Bughatti circuit joins the Hunaudiere towards Mulsanne with public non ACO owned area. Please correct me if I am wrong there. A tirewall here might have helped significiantly.
Also the AS accident reminded me a lot to Tim Bergmeisters accident at Fuji last year in many ways. You can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjKmdC28oWA

I felt the safety car was overused and three safety car groups didn't help it either. Unfortunately, the procedure destroyed some GT teams hope early and finally ruined the GT Pro battle completely. Also Toyotas chances of catching up with the Audi flushed down the loo further with each safety car and finally cost them a full lap. If anything, it showed that you can't win purely based on fuel consumption strategies but need some speed too.

Personally, I wonder if it is a possibility, like at the N24, to operate under locally waved yellows with a significiant loss of speed in the responsibility of each driver passing by. Sort of local code 60. With all the telemetry data and gps it should be easy to detect if a driver bumped the limit. Who doesn't play along the rule gets a hurting penalty.

A sad 90th anniversary in many ways.

Godspeed Allan.

[Lazy B'stard]

Some interesting and well thought out debate. Particularly a good post from Piglet. Personally I feel that some of the SC periods were a little long, especially the final one. But that's racing.

I don't really want to study the YouTube footage in any depth, but from what I have seen the car does look to squirm and then turn hard left. It is a fast corner these days but it is smooth and the mid corner bump that used to catch out drivers in the last is long gone. Fred Mako's car also went round really quick later in the race. Those Astons looked like they were running on the very edge all weekend. It was once a requirement that your Le Mans set up was aimed towards being driver friendly, it's a long race and you wanted your car to look after its driver mentally and physically. The pace is such these days that they are all looking for a few hundredths of of a second and running 'skinny' on downforce is very much in vogue. Allan was one, if the not the best 'hired hands' in GT's. his pole setting lap was a second faster than anyone in a really competitive pack. Likewise, Fred Mako is considered to be the best GTE driver about at the moment. They're both very competent pilots. Personally I think driver error had no part in these incidents.

So where do we go from here?

It's been some time since we have had a fatality at LM. I watched the podium presentations (it wasn't a celebration this year). I could see it was a great comfort for the drivers to have Jackie Ickx there amongst them. It was a reminder to all of us, that in Jackie's day that the pain we all suffered this weekend was an almost weekly occurrence in his day. We have come so far since those dark days. Any death is one too many and we should never be complacent, but we must avoid any knee jerk reactions in the fallout of this tragic incident. After all, every racer knows the risk, no one makes them take those risks. If that risk is unacceptable then take up fishing or crochet instead. Simple.

How can we improve the track to avoid the lengthy delays? This is something that needs looking at. We do need to keep track workers and marshals safe, that is without question, but is traipsing around behind a SC the way to do it in the 21st century? As a few of you have said, the SC periods did influence the results of the race this year and when you have a sport that has so much money riding on it, then that isn't going to make the bean counters very happy at all. As Fax says, this is a long circuit, why have a full course caution for a hundred yards of trouble?

OK, if we need to get an ambulance or doctor around the track then yes, bring out the safety car. To drag a car out of the gravel and sweep up on one corner? Why? (That said, we even had drivers spinning behind the SC on several occasions). So whats the solution? Seeing as all the cars have telemetry, radios and trackers on them, then why not control the drivers locally under localised yellow flag situations. It's a long circuit so you couldn't do it at say Brands, but what if someone in race HQ threw a big switch that limited the cars, through those electronics, to say 30 mph for a half mile before the incident area, and make the drivers follow yellow flag protocol (no overtaking etc), allowing them to continue racing on the other twelve and a half kms of unaffected track.  Anyone overtaking or driving dangerously in this yellow zone would face instant exclusion from the race to ensure that they behave themselves in these situations. It would be a much neater solution that the current system of three safety cars and lengthy result effecting delays. It would be a very simple an economical system to adopt.

As for circuit safety. Well Tetre Rouge is just a balls up now. It's impossible to put in a gravel trap because 360 days a year it's a main road. It has to re-open shortly after its use as a race track so there can be no permanent solution in place. So facing this problem, what did the ACO do a few years back? They changed the corner from something low speed and technical (and one of the best places to watch the cars) into a flat out sweeper with f**k all to save you when it goes wrong! Accidents are rare on that corner granted, but such are the speeds now, that if there is a mechanical failure, or a tyre failure, then it's going to be a big one. We saw Rocky have a nasty accident in his first race for Audi there a few years back early on in the race, and luckily we have not had a bad one there since, but it was only a matter of time until something serious happened there. Certainly this accident would not have happened if the track was in its original form.

I've kinda rambled a bit here. I can't really think straight after a long weekend.  What I'm trying to put across in a round about way, is that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the water. We need to keep the spirit of the race the same as a priority, whilst making reasonable and continued efforts to keep everyone safe. It all boils down to the risk. As a spectator, sometime marshall and competitor I understand those risks and accept them. We should all do the same or go and find something else to do. We can't expect to be nannied all the time.

Si

[Mr Termite]

The disruptive nature of an SC period is, as pointed out above, often the cause of an artificial race result, where a competitive team has its potential neutralised by being in the wrong SC queue. Aston Martin came to LM with 5 fine cars and some ace drivers. They went away with a third-place, three broken cars and a dead driver to contemplate.

This is C21, and frankly I don't understand why we still have SCs at all. Piglet's point about protection is absolutely indisputable, of course - but haven't we all heard of GATSOs? Truvelos? The Race Director pushes a couple of buttons, and on a section of the course with yellow flags anyone exceeding the temporary limit gets black-flagged, with a printout to offer the team chief if he protests his driver's innocence. Neat, fair to all, self-evidencing - and probably on hire for the duration of the meeting.

Why hasn't it been done?

[gatordad]

As an old race car driver once said when asked by a reporter "How can you get into that car when there is a good chance you will die in it?...answered by asking the reporter how he expected to die..."Well, in my bed asleep probably"  Then how can you get in your bed every night?

[Chrisgr31]

The issue of safety cars and indeed driver behaviour around yellow flags was discussed several times.  Basically they were saying that the drivers do not slow enough for yellows these days.

In F1 they use lap times and sector times to check if the drivers are slowing enough and I guess they could do the same here although I suppose part of the problem is the different classes of car and the sheer number of them which would make checking them all more difficult.

It does seem that a new system would be good if only one could be found which protects marshalls drivers etc.

[Mr. Rick]

I've seen photos that show that Allan might have been going a bit wide to avoid a spinning Ferrari (see the slow moving car getting back up to speed that the Corvette overtakes). As for the lack of tyres/padding in front of the barriers, we had only been talking about this on the Friday evening.

Incredibly sad