Politics vs. Performance

Today was the long-awaited preliminary announcement of the unified ALMS – Grand-Am class structure for 2014. I never expected a comprehensive announcement that would include regulations, but I was disappointed and saddened by what came out today. Besides reading the announcement, I followed the Q&A at the associated press conference live on radiolemans.com (RLM) and participated in RLM's on-line forum. In this post I will be discussing the prototypes primarily: LMP2, LMPC and DP. The announced class structure reflects a bias of political considerations over performance.

My first disappointment was that, as feared, the intent is to combine LMP2 and DP into a single class and balance their performance (BoP). This is just wrong. It reflects a political stance on the part of Grand-Am that, no matter what , “their” DP cars must be in the top class, no matter that they are far slower on all 4 tracks that both series competed on in 2012 (see table). Why? Based on both performance and differing regulations, these two cars are in fact in two separate classes and should have been treated that way. There would be plenty of opportunity to rectify both cars in 2015 when regulations could be re-written to unify them into a single class in subsequent years. BoP should only ever be used within one class, not to force two classes to compete as one. Properly designed regulations should eliminate BoP altogether in a perfect world.

Table 1. Fastest Race Laps 2012

The inclusion of LMPC as a “second” prototype class was unexpected. I am sure this was done to preserve car-count in the prototype classes and I have no problem with that as a short-term strategy. That class has produced great racing in the ALMS for the last 4 years. Given that LMPC is to be included, the DPs and the LMPCs are nearer in performance than DP and LMP2, so I have to wonder on what basis, other than politics, that DP and LMPC weren't combined if they needed to combine two cars into one class. Of course the LMPC is still faster than the DP, but at least they would only have to use BoP on one chassis/engine combination against the DPs which are already balanced against one another. By not doing this the new series has made their jobs harder, for merely political reasons.

I have difficulty seeing a reason other than politics for slowing down two other classes (LMP2, LMPC) to allow DPs to run in the "top" class. Perhaps the intent is to better guarantee Grand-Am teams and sponsors that a DP will win overall? Where would that leave ALMS LMP2 teams?

Since the merger was first announced there has been a concern that too many classes would somehow confuse the fans. I don't see it. I know that ALMS fans enjoy multi-class racing and have done so for 15 years. Many ALMS fans also follow Grand-Am, so what is the evidence that this is a problem? This concern is one excuse for combining LMP2 with DP and I don't buy it. Multi-class racing came about to give more variety to larger fields of competitors, combining classes is just wrong.

There was a question asked at the press conference about tires. They answer was vague but the message seemed to have been suggesting that Continental might be the sole tire supplier. If this is so, that would be a huge change for all the ALMS teams, none of whom run Continentals. Another question was asked about alternative fuels, a major feature in the ALMS. The answer suggested that Sunoco would likely continue as the sole fuel supplier, alternative fuels or not. Both of these answers made it obvious, if it weren't already, that this “merger” is really largely a takeover of ALMS by Grand-Am.

One issue not addressed by the press conference at all was driver qualifications. The current LMP2 class is a Pro-Am driver class, there must be at least one “Bronze” or “Silver” (amateur) driver for each car as determined by the ACO. The GTC cars may only have at most one “Gold” or “Platinum” (professional) driver for each car as determined by the ACO. No amount of BoP will get around those regulations, it will have to be addressed directly.

The announcement of the merger last September has made life for the competing teams in both the ALMS and Grand-Am much harder. They could make no concrete plans for 2014, and getting and keeping sponsorship for 2013 was problematic.  The bankruptcy of Lola had already had a negative impact on the LMP2 class, in the U.S. As well as in Europe. This situation has thrown doubt about participation in the ALMS LMP2 class for 2013. Come 2014, there may be no LMP2 cars to worry about. This too is, at least partially, a consequence of politics. It would have been better to have organized a sensible class structure and had draft regulations ready prior to announcing the “merger”.

I plan to follow the 2013 endurance sports car season closely, (ALMS, ELMS, Grand-Am, WEC) as always. In 2014 it will take more than a good “show” to keep me interested in North American sports car racing. I am far from alone in feeling this way. I would hate to see U.S. endurance racing lose a significant portion of their fan base. My interest in racing has been driven by automotive technology. So far I don't see technology advancing in this new series. I'm with Patrick Dempsey, I don't want to see the prototypes “dumbed-down”.

Blast from the Past

About two weeks ago the ALMS posted the broadcast video of the 1998 Petit Le Mans on YouTube. It was a 90min highlights package of the 10-hour race, but it was my first opportunity to see the state of the art in North American endurance racing in 1998, the year before the ALMS came into being. If you haven't seen this race before it is worth a look.

On December 22nd John Dagys announced the date that the combined ALMS/Grand-Am series would announce  the new class structure for the 2014 season: At the “Roar Before the Rolex” on January 4th.

What do these two events have to do with one another? Well, back in 1998 there were 7 classes of cars in the race. The reason there were so many was that endurance racing had been on the decline since  about 1993, and in order to make up a decent field IMSA had to include cars built to at least two differing rule sets, IMSA's and ACO's. Sound familiar? The very next year, the ALMS began and were able to adopt a single rule set guiding homologation, and the field at Petit Le Mans went from 31 in  7 classes in 1998 to 50 in 3 classes in 1999. Teams were ready for a new series.

The class structure for the 1998 Petit Le Mans should be a guide for this new combined series: accommodate current reality and migrate toward a common ruleset during a short transition period. This is the strategy that I suggested in a previous posting. I hope something like this is what we will get on January 4th. Not many days until we know the answer.

Here are the classes for Petit Le Mans 1998 and 1999. BTW, in  1998 a Ferrari 333 SP (LMP1) won overall but the fastest qualifier was a Porsche 911 GT1-98 (LMGT1) which DNFed.

Men in Sheds

One of the aspects of motor sport that I miss from the era of my youth are the experimental cars produced not by the factories, but by individuals and teams. They added diversity, personality, and interest to the sport. These cars of my youth (1950's - 1970's) made by "men in sheds" showed up, not only at the Indy 500, but in sports cars and even Formula 1. We may think of Ferrari and McLaren as OEM's and constructors now, but they were started by individuals in more modest circumstances at the time.

In the 1966 film "Grand Prix" Pete Aron (James Garner) won the world championship, but it was actually Jack Brabham in his own car powered by the Repco V8 that won that year.

The Repco V8 was based on an Oldsmobile F-85 3.5L aluminum engine. Brabham and the Australian parts company Repco developed the SOHC heads for the Olds block and added a bearing girdle to the bottom-end, put it into a Brabham chassis and went racing. It was not the most powerful engine on the grid, but it turned out to be more reliable than the competition and Brabham won the drivers championship in 1966 and the constructors titles in 1966 and 1967 with it. By the way, the Buick variant of that block was licensed to Rover and was the basis for Rover V8s for decades.

There was apparently something in the atmosphere surrounding the Brabham team. Two of Brabham's drivers went on to build their own cars, found their own teams, and become constructors themselves: Dan Gurney and Bruce McLaren. I feel that if Dan Gurney had stuck with Brabham for one more year (he left after the 1965 season), we might very well have had one more American driving champion in 1966.

If Dan had stuck with Brabham in 1966, we might have never seen the AAR Gurney-Eagles. Dan remains the only American to win a Grand Prix in a car bearing his name as constructor. AAR also produced successful Indy Eagles, and sports cars, culminating in the Eagle-Toyota MkIII GTP of 1992-1993. Dan was the instigator behind the Gurney-Weslake cylinder heads for small-block Ford V8s that were instrumental in the Le Mans wins for JWAE-Gulf Ford GT40s in 1968 and 1969, as well as the Formula 1 Gurney-Weslake V12 engine powering Dan's Eagle F1 car.

When Bruce McLaren left Brabham he built and raced successful formula cars, Indy cars and Can-Am sports cars. McLaren now has become one of the mainstays of Formula 1 and produces sports cars for the road and track, the latest being the MP4-12C. Seeing McLaren today, it is hard to believe how humble the McLaren operation was at the beginning.

The Indianapolis 500 used to be a showcase of one-off and experimental cars. Mickey Thompson always fielded something interesting as did Smokey Yunick, even if they were not terribly successful. I vividly recall Parnelli Jones's 1967 STP turbine car losing the race in the final laps due to a $5.00 part failing. (An aside: Parnelli and his partner Vel Miletich lived in my home town.) This era was very far away from today's spec Dallara DW-12 cars.

One of the most innovative and influential car designers is Jim Hall. His Chaparrals of the 1960's are arguably the beginning of modern automotive aerodynamics.

I doubt that there is any race fan who has not heard of Carroll Shelby. Shelby was not the first to come up with the notion of putting a big engine in a lightweight sports car, but he is arguably the most successful. After driving for Sydney Allard (another man who put a big American V8 in an English sports car) and Aston Martin, Carroll put a Ford V8 into the AC Ace to create the Cobra, founding Shelby American right up the road from my childhood home at the former Lance Reventlow Scarab shop in Venice California (Reventlow was one of the rich men in sheds). The Cobra is still the only American car to win the FIA World Sportscar Championship (in 1965), defeating Ferrari and Porsche.

Many things have contributed to the decline of car/engine diversity and individuality in motor sport. Safety regulations and strict testing are necessary and laudable, but it makes building your own car difficult and expensive. The trend toward cost-controls have encouraged spec cars, effectively preventing one-offs by regulation. Modern materials and production techniques, along with the required crash-testing and certification, not to mention the high costs of wind-tunnel time and engineering, tends to price individuals out of the market. Cars have become much more sophisticated and the people qualified to design and build them are relatively scarce.

I think it would be desirable to bring back "men in sheds" to motor sport. Perhaps not in formula cars or Indy cars, but at least in sports cars. What got me thinking about a way to do this was the Le Mans Garage 56 project and the Deltawing. To reduce development time and lower costs, the basic "tub" was adapted from the Aston Martin AMR-1 (another AMR-1 tub ended up in the Pescarolo LMP1 at Le Mans). This tub had already gone through crash-testing and certification by the FIA, so the Deltawing constructor (Dan Gurney's AAR) didn't have to spend the time and money to re-invent the wheel.

What if there were mass produced, basic safety-cell tubs, tested and certified, that could be incorporated into cars built by men in sheds? This might allow individuals and teams to design their own suspension, bodywork, control systems, and drive trains more readily and save significant time and money in construction, testing and certification. The effect of Moore's Law combined with the ongoing development in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) acting to reduce expensive wind-tunnel time, could herald a new flowering of those wonderful one-off cars that have been missing from the grid for such a long time. This approach would work best in a (currently non-existent) lightweight prototype class that encourages innovation.

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.

Two-Way Radio

I grew up in a time and place in which radio was a richly diverse medium. In Southern California in the 1960's and 1970's you could find radio stations playing any genre of music you can think of, plus dedicated sports stations, news stations, religious stations, talk stations etc. The DJ's were for the most part live on the air and controlled their own playlists. Since those times, radio has become a comparatively sterile pre-fabricated experience. The Internet has largely replaced radio with many richly diverse media outlets.

When I followed endurance racing as a kid in the 1960's, it was at a remove; there would be hourly reports during the Daytona 24, Sebring and Le Mans on one of the sports stations, I could read about preparations before the big events and after them in magazines like Road and Track, later there were highlights on ABC's "Wide World of Sports", but that was about it. Today I have many more ways to follow endurance racing.

In 2004 I went searching for ways to re-connect with my youthful enthusiasm for endurance racing and found Radio Le Mans (RLM, www.radiolemans.com) and simultaneously the American Le Mans Series (ALMS). With on-line timing and scoring and the commentary on RLM I had a much richer experience than I had in my youth. John Hindhaugh and his colleagues on RLM didn't just cover the race, they conveyed their knowledge, enthusiasm and humor to the listener. They are experienced fans with microphones and a gift for bringing the races to life for their listeners. In addition to race coverage, RLM has a weekly 2-hour show called "Mid-Week Motorsport" (MWM) on Wednesdays at 8:00PM London time. This "weekly window on motorsport ..." is ostensibly a news show, but it is, to say the least, informal and not like any other such show that I know of. The adjectives that come to mind that describe MWM are "informal", "quirky" and "personal". MWM comes across as a get-together of friends at a pub with a common interest in motor sport. This impression is strengthened by including real-time listener comments from RLM's on-line forum into the show.

The same richly diverse media provided by the Internet that brings me my race coverage allows RLM to become much more than news and commentary, they are interactive. Even before the RLM forum went on line, email from listeners was encouraged and sometimes read out live during race coverage and on MWM. RLM now use Twitter and Facebook along with email and their on-line forum to extend what comes to seem like a conversation with listeners to their coverage. Their audience is International, and thanks to the Internet, available wherever English is understood. We are a community, a "tribe", referred to as the "Mid-Week Motosrport Listeners Collective", or just "the collective".

Elsewhere I have described how I would rather have RLM audio commentary with live timing and scoring of entire races, than mundane commentary of race highlights on TV or video. Up until the 2011 season, RLM covered all the ALMS races live and in their entirety. That year the ALMS decided to take their coverage "in-house" and RLM was no longer permitted to cover their races. At least the ALMS and ESPN kept part of the RLM team (John Hindhaugh and Jeremy Shaw) on as commentators for the International audience, but some of the informal and interactive qualities found in RLM coverage were lost, even as quality video was added. Those qualities are still found in RLM's coverage of the WEC and other series they cover. In my opinion, the ALMS is missing the opportunity to fully connect with the RLM "tribe".

While watching "Top Gear" on BBC America, Clarkson, Hammond and May were participating in an endurance race in a BMW. When they wanted the suggestion of Le Mans conveyed to the audience, they had the Radio Le Mans theme song, the instrumental intro to "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult, on the soundtrack. RLM is strongly identified with endurance racing in general and Le Mans in particular. To me and I assume many others, RLM is part of endurance racing in a way that is hard to express.

No time to explain, get in the Llama. Drink! :-}