Calendars and Coverage for 2013

Next week begins the long winter off-season for International endurance racing, only the final round of the WEC remains to be run. For me that round will take place at 2:00AM Sunday morning on a Dailymotion video stream. I may have to take a nap first. For the ALMS and the ELMS the season ended at Petit Le Mans last Saturday.

Here are some odds and ends looking forward toward 2013.

All three ACO-rules series have released their provisional calendars for the 2013 season. I have combined them and listed them in chronological order:

I have created a public Google Calendar for the ALMS, ELMS, and WEC combined and named it "ACO Racing 2013". I will be updating it and adding information as the year progresses. There are three links to this calendar: HTML, XML, and iCal. All times will be for the U.S. East Coast time zone (EST/EDT, GMT-5/GMT-4) and I'll include maps, race local times, and event schedules as they become available. The first date on the calendar is March 16th 2013.

UPDATE: I have added the dates and locations of the Asian Le Mans Series to the "ACO Racing 2013" calendar.

Further UPDATE: There is a newer post about the 2014 calendars here

There is good reason to hope that the Sebring ALMS round might attract WEC and ELMS entrants, as well as the full-season ALMS competitors, as a tune-up for Le Mans even though it is no longer part of the WEC. Historically Sebring has been utilized in this way, and it is good to see that there are no time conflicts so that it can continue this role.

There remain several dates that conflict with one another, the most troubling is the Fuji WEC round conflicting with the ALMS Petit Le Mans. This year's Petit Le Mans was won overall by team Rebellion's LMP1 Lola/Toyota; they are privateer champions in the WEC. The race was much enriched by Rebellion's presence, especially during the early laps before Muscle Milk's LMP1 HPD/Honda had a major shunt while leading that took them out of contention for the race win. Next year the calendar will likely prevent any guest entrants from the WEC.

I would love to be at the Circuit of the Americas next September for the ALMS/WEC "Super Endurance Weekend". It is going to be the place to be if you want to see the greatest diversity of exotic race cars and their teams in the world. Unfortunately that is the height of hurricane season on St. Thomas and I can't leave my University professor wife on her own at that time of year as she is stuck here teaching.

The ACO have done some smart things to bolster the re-launched ELMS. Changing the format to 3-hour races, sharing the Silverstone weekend with the WEC, and adding additional support races. I just hope these changes are enough to keep the ELMS going. Not all teams can afford to compete in the WEC.

During the Petit Le Mans coverage (around lap 265) Scott Atherton, ALMS CEO, made his way into the announcer's booth and conveyed some information from his "State of the Series" presentation made earlier in the day. Among the most important things he conveyed was further information on the 2013 TV coverage which was accompanied by this graphic:

What is shown here as "Fox Media" is what used to be known as "Speed TV". The length of the Sebring and Petit Le Mans events were not suited to the 2-hour highlight broadcasts that were the only televised formats for them this year with ESPN/ABC; so, wisely they will be covered by Speed/Fox. That is good news for most fans, but unless things change, I am unable to get SpeedTV here in America's paradise and I'm geo-blocked from speedtv.com's videos. Atherton assured the audience that live Internet streaming of entire races and qualifying would continue, but could not say by which "portals" yet. As long as St. Thomas is still considered "International", I should be able to get video from the ALMS web site.

Right here I want to congratulate the ALMS for fixing their early-season technical problems with streaming. For the Baltimore, VIR, and Petit Le Mans rounds, streaming coverage was rock-solid and high quality, even better than the ESPNPlayer streams (higher sustained bit-rate, and no buffering). Atherton acknowledged the problem in his "State of the Series" presentation, and attributed the fix to changing "vendors". Let's hope that the "portals" chosen for next year are at least as good as the ones used for those final 3 rounds.

By the way, you can get a transcript of Atherton's "State of the Series" presentation here.

Not much new information was forthcoming about the merger or the 2014 season. The "moral imperative" of "getting it right" was re-iterated. We won't hear much solid new information until the Daytona 24 in January.

There was some good news for endurance racing last week: teams running Lola cars may actually have hope for spare parts and race support. Multimatic Engineering and Haas Auto have licensed Lola intellectual property and acquired the physical assets of Lola Cars. After watching Patrick Dempsey's shunt on Saturday, I would say he needs more than a few spares ASAP.

Let's hope that the 2013 season, ALMS's last, will be a banner one.

Light, Fast and Efficient

At the Donington Park round of the ELMS, one of the support series was the Speed Euroseries. Radiolemans.com's coverage of Donington included commentary on the Euroseries races and qualifying. This was my first exposure to this very interesting series. The car formula was of particular interest. The cars conform to the FIA "Group CN" specs. with additional restrictions: use of a 2.0L Honda engine and spec Cooper tires. Diverse chassis are in use within the Euroseries from several manufacturers: Wolf Racing, Juno, Norma, Ligier, WFR Ltd. Recently, Oreca have announced that they will sell a closed-cockpit CN chassis for 2013. The FIA Group CN regulations allow the use of engines from less than 1.0L up to 3.0L with a sliding scale of minimum weights from 475kg to 625kg. The Euroseries competitor with the 2.0L Honda had a typical weight of 570kg. Engines must be homologated production-based engines, naturally aspirated, with a maximum of 6 cylinders. Rotary engines are allowed, but are given a multiplier of 1.5 to adjust their equivalent displacement (i.e. a 1.3L rotary from a Mazda RX8 road car is deemed the same as a 1.95L piston engine, which would carry a 535kg min. weight). Personally, I would like to see something like the Group CN cars adapted to run in multi-class endurance racing, perhaps even the Le Mans 24. A CN chassis with engine costs about one-half that of an LMP2 chassis without the engine.

Not so long ago what the ACO now call LMP2 evolved from LMP 675, which as the name implies had a minimum weight of 675 kilograms (LMP2 currently has a 900kg min.). These lightweight cars were fast but fragile, but evolved to the point that they could compete for overall wins even with a smaller, less powerful engine than their LMP1 bretheren (i.e. the LMP2 Porsche RS Spyder won overall at the Sebring 12-hour in 2008). By that time the minimum weight was up to 825kg. Now the ACO have changed the LMP2 rules into a cost-capped, pro-am driver, production-based engine class with the same weight min. as an LMP1 car. The lightweight formula has been lost. A CN-based class couldn't compete against even the LMP2 class at present; but perhaps they too could evolve. Here are some sample lap times:

The Deltawing is a demonstration of  a lightweight (500kg), fast ( 3:42.612 Le Mans lap time) and efficient (half the fuel, half the tires) car that might, in future, be allowed to evolve and compete for overall wins. The new direction that the ACO has taken, toward efficiency (they are going to a fuel-flow formula for LMP1 in 2014), is right in the Deltawing's wheel-house. I am not in love with the Deltawing's looks, but form should follow function so I can accept it's appearance. I could hope that there are more pleasing shapes that would be sufficiently slippery to contribute to speed and efficiency. I see hybrid cars, such as those mandated by the ACO for factory LMP1 teams in 2014, as a merely a transitional strategy for energy efficiency. Hybrids should not be the only technology allowed the showcase of Le Mans competition. I am curious about the new Mazda "SKYACTIV-D" turbo diesel that should debut in both ALMS LMP2 and Grand-Am GX classes in 2013. Imagine such an engine in a modified CN-based chassis of less than 600kg. The bottom line is: there should be a light, fast and efficient class that can compete for overall wins at Le Mans. Well, I can dream can't I?

Rules? Which Rules?

One of the major tasks facing the  ALMS and Grand-Am officials over the next year will be to come up with a set of rules and regulations that will allow teams from both series to compete. I am thankful it is not my task to do so. Let's just look at one fundamental piece of this rule-making task: pit stops.

Under Grand-Am rules, the pit stops are pretty simple and straight-forward. First let's look at the allowed pit personnel:

Other than drivers and "industry representatives", only 6 people are allowed in the pits during a stop. In a full-service stop (includes tire change), the car comes into the pits, goes up on jacks, fuel goes in, the tires are changed while fueling, the jacks come down and the car merges back onto the pit lane. Done. The engine may remain running and the mechanics can push (or push-start) the car.

Now lets look at the ALMS pit-stop. The ALMS follows the ACO rules for pit stops. As before let's see who is allowed in the pits during a full-service stop:

This pit stop is not simple. There are three phases to each full-service pit stop: Refueling, wheel changing, and repair. There are strict rules governing the personnel in each phase and what they can and cannot do. So, the car comes into the pit, the engine is shut off, refueling begins and other than changing memory cards, cleaning windshields, changing water bottles and drivers, no other work can go on and the car must remain on the ground. Tire and brake technicians may inspect those parts, but not work on them. Once the refueling has been completed, then the car can go up on jacks, the wheels may be changed and repairs can be made. Once the work is completed, the car comes off the jacks and must re-start under it's own power. The car may not be pushed or push-started in the pits. BTW, the pit crew is allowed 2 wheel guns, but only one may be used at a time.

Imagine a race where one class uses the Grand-Am pit rules and another uses the ACO rules. There would be a huge advantage to the class using the Grand-Am rules. So what will the new unified series do about pit stops in 2014?

Currently the ALMS gets a number of "automatic" invitations to compete in the Le Mans 24, including: LMP1 class champion, LMP2 class champion, GTE (Pro and Am) class champions, Michelin Green-X Challenge champions in prototypes and GTE. In order to keep this relationship with the ACO, what will be required? What if keeping ACO pit regulations were part of those requirements?

Most of the justification for the elaborate pit-stops under ACO rules have to do with safety. Specifically the avoidance of fire in the pits. The engine is shut off to lessen possible ignition sources. The car remains on the ground so it can be moved in the event of a fire. Then there are rules that are related to the endurance of the car: the car must start under it's own power. Finally, the restriction of using only one air gun at a time was a recent addition to the rules, and was done to discourage frequent tire changes by requiring more time for each such change, for both economic reasons and to add another factor to team strategy.

In Grand-Am, they use spec tires and are limited in how many they may use at any event; this is how they control tire expense. After watching archived videos of this year's Rolex races, I get the distinct impression that ALMS prototypes get much better tire mileage than the Daytona prototypes. At Le Mans, Audi was able to quintuple-stint their Michelin tires. The difference is likely to be in the tire development by the tire manufacturers fostered by the open tire formula used in the ALMS. Technicians from Michelin, Dunlop, Falken, Pirelli and Yokohama work with the teams to provide better tires for nearly every race. So a simple rule change can have a large impact on am important aspect of endurance.

I don't envy the technical teams that have been charged with unifying the rules of ALMS and Grand-Am (they still need a name for this beast). Simpler may be less expensive (fewer personnel) and easier to police; simpler pit-stops are easier to follow and faster, but are they as safe? What is the relationship of the LMP and GTE classes to the ACO with regard to pit stop rules? I will have to wait for the answers like everyone else.