Le Mans 24hrs LMGT2 result under investigation..

This is a bit interesting .. LMGT2 results still remain provisional! It did state on the time sheet that ‘The results are provisional until the end of the time for protest and appeals. The time limit for protest expires 30’ after the publication of results and Results are suspended till the end of scrutineering’ this is the normal wording. The ACO don’t seem to have gone public with this. . It seems they are taking a serious interest in the two leading GT2 car’s engines...the Class winning #77 Team Felbermayr-Proton Porsche 997 GT3 RSR and the #89 Hankook Team Farnbacher Ferrari 430 GTC. We have had a look around the various websites and forums and can’t establish what they are looking for but they are taking their time. There is nothing on the ACO site. It seems that the ACO have confirmed that these engines are both ‘under going further technical checks’. The rumour is that the scrutineers are going through both engines with a finest of fine tooth combs and won’t confirm the results until next month. Presumably the cars were ‘pulled’ immediately after the race either because the ACO took an interest or one of the teams had protested them. I don’t know about you guys but we heard nothing at the time.
This does ask the question ‘why’ … to us it has a whiff of whistle blowing by another team or teams, we can’t really see why the ACO might have rowed in on their own account.
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The only possible reason one of the other teams might have protested is that GT2 is becoming the only ‘GT’ class , so the big movers like GM and BMW, who are coming on strong in this revised category, might be trying to get some ‘ground rules’ sorted?

Bearing in mind the Felbermayr Porsche is a quasi works car it seems a bit unlikely that Porsche would have cheated on purpose. Equally we don’t really think that the Farnbacher Ferrari team believed deep down they were going come 2nd in Class after qualifying a distant 9th in GT2 so why on earth would they want to bend the rules? Certainly if something was amiss it didn’t show up during qualifying!

So lets wait until the first week in July when apparently all will be made clear.

Making it home...

I don’t know about the rest of you heading North after Le Mans but we had a ‘bit of bother’.. Luckily we were not using the A28/A13 so didn’t fall foul of the monster peage queue.. luckily we decided to amble over Le Pont de Brotonne and avoid Rouen. That makes a nice detour by the way ..but there is no fuel to be found on it.

Luckily we had a ‘pathfinder squadron’ some way ahead telling us that there were other monstrous bouchons around Calais and you could not get to the Ferry Terminal without going most of the way to Belgium! Luckily we baled out in time and came in through the town and across those bleak unkempt warehouses and umpteen railway lines.. remember them !?

We think we know what happened .. Having practiced on a traffic management plan that meant our man in Le Mans took two and half hours to get into the circuit on Saturday, we did no better coming in from Arnage, they finally knew they had a cunning plan. The moment that last Peugeot expired at Le Mans somebody was on the ‘phone saying “We have zee crap Le Mans .. so let’s make sure zee rosbifs do too.. iz peety we can’t get to zee Germans but we can seriously peez off zee sousands of Brits who go to Calais.. so .. allez vite and get out as many traffic cones as you can find in Northern France and whatever you do don’t give them a clue that anything is wrong .. that is not what over head autoroute signs are for…OK”. To give them their due they did a superb job with this bit, they may not have been able to win the race but this ‘phase two’ assault and rear guard action on the fans was very impressive. It might still backfire because an awful lot of grumpy French got tangled up with this debacle.

Finally we have all recognised that les gendarmes are taking speeding rather seriously nowadays ..but how many men hiding in bushes and cars did you spot ..we got upto around ten … what is the highest score?

That really is it for Le Mans .. we may well fire up for LMS and other stuff now the site has been reshuffled .. So keep an eye on the blog and get on with planning 2011!

Peugeot hand victory to Audi.

I have got indigestion .. we have had to eat or words.. our hats .. and everything else! Nobody and I think I really mean nobody reckoned that Peugeot could possibly lose this race.  Then one after another the fast, stylish allegedly reliable Peugeots simply evaporated. Each time it happened you felt that was not too serious because it wouldn’t happen to all the cars .. surely…  There is an air of total disbelief as we watch some very emotional scenes in the pits. When the last of the Peugeot Sport cars fell to bits the baton was passed to the Team Oreca with their ‘similar’ car and it was Loïc Duval who got what we thought was the enviable job of simply getting out there and driving the bollocks off the #4 Peugeot.. it was official! So he was given carte-blanche to go for it.. He did an astounding job and with about 1hr 20mins to go it really began to look as if he might get an Audi scalp and get a ‘Lion’ onto the podium and salvage some Gallic Pride. To catch Lotterer was going to be tall order in front of this `massive partisan crowd.  Then ‘ker-boom’ his blow up was a splendid finale to a dreadful 22:30 hours of racing for Peugeot.
Audi behaved extraordinarily well when it fell apart for the French ..  mind you they knew from years of experience that on a day like this nobody was immune from disaster. This isn’t the first time that Audi have ‘done their own thing’ .. they will accept that they have been very lucky but as somebody once said ‘ We have  worked very hard indeed to be this lucky’.  Audi have a remarkable team of engineers, managers and above all drivers. They didn’t actually go to all this effort to roll over and have their tummies tickled by Peugeot. They were never going to blink .. Peugeot would have to blink first and they did, several times. It was a spectacular Audi 1st 2nd 3rd .. This will be 9th time Audi have won Le Mans ..  and the 4th time they have a clean sweep.
There had been a possible tweak in the tail surrounding the 009 Lola B09/60 Aston Martin.. David Richards had been pretty scathing all weekend about the way endurance motor-sport was heading all weekend and was threatening to withdraw his fleet of petrol cars unless the regulations evened things out and made the playing field rather more level… now here was an Aston Martin lying fourth and just one Audi had to break and he would have had an Aston Martin on the podium. But nope .. the 009 Lola B09/60 Aston Martin then went and blew its engine. But all was not lost for Aston.. they still had the 008 car in the frame.. until it got a puncture. In the end the 007 Aston Martin came home 6th. A good showing for a partially ‘Works’ supported team.

In LMP2 it is usually a miracle when one of them actually gets to see a chequered flag…even this year's driver's at the press conference admitted that if you actually managed to get the car across the line in previous years you generally got a Cup! This year was very, very different.. 12 out of the 14 cars finished. In the other classes the carnage rumbled on but LMP2 race was fast and interesting. The final result was:-
#42 Strakka Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 driven by Nick Leventis, Danny Watts and Jonny Kane
#35 Oak Racing LMP2 Pescarolo Judd driven by Matthieu Lahaye, Guillaume Moreau and Jan Charouz
#25 RML LMP2 Lola HPD COUPE driven by Mike Newton, Thomas Erdos and Andy Wallace
 
In the GT Classes things had to go plan surely? Nope .. From the start this weekend the GT1 Class has really been a busted flush since they will not be racing at Le Mans in the future in so there was no real sense in developing a car that would become obsolete almost immediately. This didn't bother the wealthy Ford GT racing enthusiasts. What was already an expensive weekend by most people standards steadily got more and more eye-wateringly expensive as they set about systematically destroying their precious steeds!

#60 Matech Competition LMGT1 Ford GT driven by Thomas Mutsch, Romain Grosjean and Jonathan Hirschi crashed and retired... #61 Matech Competition LMGT1 Ford GT driven by Natacha Gachnang, Rahel Frey and Cyndie Allemann caught fire forcing Natacha Gachnang to abandon ship as quickly as she could. Finally the #70 Marc VDS Racing Team LMGT1 Ford GT driven by Eric De Doncker, Bas Leinders and Markus Palttala was thrown at a wall so hard it virtually fell apart on the way back to the pits. This left the field open to the ageing Saleen S7R .. which we think once saw the podium back in 2001.. so people didn't view this as a good bet. But the much favoured #52 Young Driver AMR LMGT1 Aston Martin DBR9 driven by Christoffer Nygaard, Tomas Enge and Peter Kox had an appetite for drive shafts so kept falling out of contention.. The #69 JLOC LMGT1 Lamborghini Murcielago driven by Atsushi Yogo, Koji Yamanishi and Hiroyuki Iiri had a ball! After completing around five hundred yards last year it managed a stunning 138 laps.. OK it was only 259 laps less than the race winners..but our Japanese chums went bonkers.
#t73 Luc Alphand Aventures LMGT1 Corvette C6.R didn't make it due to transmission failure...
All this left the field open for the ten year old Saleen to storm home for a well deserved victory.

GT2 was an altogether different kettle of fish.. this was looking good .. with Corvette.v.Porsche.v.BMW.v.Jaguar.v. Ferrari.v.Spyker.v.Aston Martin.. once again there was a fair bit of carnage. The #64 Corvette driven by Oli Gavin expired out on the track after 255 laps..Andy Priaulx had an unhappy introduction to Le Mans when his BMW M3 E92 ceased to function due to a lack of petrol.. the much fancied Flying Lizard Porsche punctured a radiator and consequently ran into engine problems, like over heating, we believe..the poor old Jaguar XKRS never really conquered an on going series of electrical gremlins... The #82 Risi Ferrari 430GTC destroyed a gearbox and the #83 blew up its engine and neither finished.. so in the end it was Porsche who salvaged things after a very disappointing year in 2009 when the #77 Team Felbermayr-Proton LMGT2 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Marc Lieb, Richard Lietz and Wolf Henzler won the class followed by the #89 Hankook - Team Farnbacher LMGT2 Ferrari F 430 GT driven by Dominik Farnbacher, Allan Simonsen and Leh Keen.. followed by #97 BMS Scuderia Italia SPA LMGT2 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Marco Holzer, Richard Westbrook and Timo Scheider.

But 2010 will be remembered for the extraordinary turn around of fortune that the Peugeot team suffered. The team were devastated and the French, who had turned up in their droves .. 238,850 of them to be precise, left in their droves when the last Peugeot exploded; the media centre suddenly drained and even the grandstands started to empty.. they are a partisan lot The French ..

Kangaroo TV bounces onto the Club Arnage scene …

We have been keeping an eye on this innovative little gismo over the last couple of years but we were far too mean to actually hire one! So this year we got hold of one to give it a thorough ‘road test’.. particularly since the ACO no longer feel it necessary to supply us with TVs at each desk. Those of you who may not be familiar with kangaroos it is basically a hand held portable TV .. but it is rather more than that. The screen does indeed give you crisp TV picture, if only on a smallish screen. But fear not it also has other little buttons.. the ‘video’ button gives you a choice of five live channels, namely main TV feed, and four in car cameras in car #1 #9 #7 #8..plus occasionally a pit lane camera. Next button is ‘Stats’ .. This is a really useful source of info at Le Mans 24hrs next gives you the full race leader board.. and positions in LMP1, LMP2, LMGT1 and LMGT2. We found this immensely helpful. The next button is ‘audio’ which seems to be useless, because it does not have commentary just rather confusing ambient sound effects that go with the pics.. Finally there is the ‘home’ button has eight more options ‘Schedule’ .. ‘Team Info’.. ‘Track info’, ‘History’ and ‘winner statistics’, a description of how the classes are structured and finally ‘help’ and ‘settings’. On day one all was not well and the TV bit really wasn’t running at all well for technical reasons … but the Kangaroo guys got it sorted and from then on it didn’t miss a beat. The range is limited .

So, the good news is that it is a very effective and handy bit of kit .. bad news? Not much.. maybe battery life of about six hours is a bit short for a 24hr race.. maybe the screen could be bit bigger and that is about all. At €55 money well spent we reckon. They are also at The British GP..

Our thanks to Kangaroo TV for the loan of the Skippy the ‘Roo! Take a look at http://www.kangaroo.tv/kangaroo-sports/lemans.php

Jox Jottings - The race so far at 1:30am

It is now beginning to get a bit gloomy .. and the race is about 120 laps old and this is when Le Mans seems to come alive as far as many of the fans are concerned. Beer seems to taste better in the dark!
But back to the start.. As always the pressure cooker was building up steam.. cars on the grid .. crowds beginning to build up.. bands playing .. girls in rah-rah skirts ‘rahrar-ring’ their little hearts out. It seems the Hawaiian Tropic girls have not been seen for a couple of years so they may now be a thing of the past here at Le Mans.. shame really they were rather decorative. But the build up to the start was as impressive as ever, but I am delighted to announce that there was a rather relaxed slightly out of character up-cock! To keep the fans, media and a viewing audience of millions etc. all moist eyed with nostalgia the ACO had organised a ‘run to your cars across the track’ .. or ‘The Herringbone start’.. I can’t say I have ever seen a herring bone quite like that but hey .. it’s Le Mans .. so we had the impressive sight of 55 drivers all suited and booted.. lined up on the grass verge opposite their cars .. each driver with a little white circle to stand in… the ‘tension’ rose… then roughly half the drivers heard whatever the signal was to start and they strolled across the track and clambered into their cars .. but the other half didn’t hear whatever it was so it all degenerated into a confused amble ! So this was a false start and they were recalled for another go and to do it properly. So, start two was a gentle slightly better choreographed. And the cars set off for a familiarisation laps. Some came back to grid, others popped into to the pits for a fuel top up and then the real countdown began. It is tremendous skill to time the start to nearest second but year after year they do it..
One feature of Le Mans in recent years seems to be the fact that all the drivers seem oblivious of the fact that this actually is quite a long race .. about twelve F1 GP back to back or a quick trip to New York… instead they go ‘balls out’ in head-banging flat out sprint mode.. it is splendidly daft, but very tense.
Anyway .. things went according to form .. the lead #1 Team Peugeot Total LMP1 Peugeot 908 stormed off into a modest lead but nobody had told McNish not to scare the wotsits out of Lapierre in the #4 Team Oreca Matmut LMP1 Peugeot 908 by pushing him very hard indeed, suggesting that maybe the Audis are not so slow after all. OK so it didn't last for long but it was fun.
Hugh Chamberlain had taken a passing interest in the #19 Michael Lewis/Autocon LMP1 Lola AER and was rather scathing about its distinctly unspectacular performance when it didn't even make one lap of the race before the gearbox expired. He suggested the level of preparation left a wee bit to be desired, or that was the gist of it!
Over the opening hours of the race the mechanical carnage was much higher than last year.. at 19:00hrs ten cars had retired this year as opposed to four last year. While the #19 Michael Lewis/Autocon LMP1 Lola AER faded in rather an unspectacular fashion, the departure of the #3 Peugeot Sport Total LMP1 Peugeot 908 was being driven Pedro Lamy when 'summat' went wrong.. it looked like a puncture but Pedro drove on at a heck of a lick with ever increasing amounts of tyre smoke. He brought the car back to the pits and when the French Kwik Fit Fitters looked at the front suspension it was all over. The front part of front suspension had pulled out of the carbon fibre tub and it simply isn't possible to repair that sort of damage so the team withdrew the car. This was a big blow to the team but it apparently reduced Sébastian Bourdais to tears. Another F1 Superstar to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons was one Mr N. Mansell Esq. It seems that he might have got a slow puncture or possibly come upon the #81 Jaguar RSR LMGT2 Jaguar XKRS that was having a terrible time and going very slowly, whatever happened he had a series of huge spins while the car re-arranged the Sarthe scenery on both sides of the track doing a fair bit of damage to the car and worryingly the driver did not leap immediately out of the car. The emergency services carefully extricated him from the car and whisked him off to the medical centre. It seems all he suffered was slight bang on the head .. his legions of fans will be most relieved.. Another spectacular mess was the #70 Marc VDS Racing Team LMGT1 Ford GT . The Ford GT is achingly beautiful .. but less so after you have thrown it backwards into a wall. Bas Leinders lost it , but to try and make up for it he drove what can only be described as 'the remains' back to pits.. quite a fair percentage of the car did get back to the pit but in insurance terms it was 'beyond economic repair' and withdrawn.
Whilst on the subject of Ford GTs the Le Mans adventure came to a fiery end for the #61 Matech Competition LMGT1 Ford GT. Natacha Gachnang was driving when the car caught fire. She realised all was not well when the car filled with smoke and she could see where she was going.. so wisely she parked up. Unwisely she parked too close to Armco to open the door and get out! Escape was made even harder due to the fact she is just recovering from a serious leg injury.. however she exited the car remarkably fast .. I suppose with that kind of motivation one would!
The #81 Jaguar finally gave up the unequal battle and the team withdrew the car having failed to cure the electrical gremlins that had plagued the car.
On the plus side the #69 JLOC LMGT1 Lamborghini Murcielago is still in the race.. a vast improvement over last year .. OK it is running last only (!) 59 laps behind the leaders.

At the last count ten cars had retired... we might do the same !! Watch this space!
At 01:30hrs the situation was:-
LMP1
#2 Team Peugeot Total LMP1 Peugeot 908 driven by Nicolas Minassian, Stéphane Sarrazin and Franck Montagny
#4 Team Oreca Matmut LMP1 Peugeot 908 driven by Olivier Panis, Nicolas Lapierre and Loïc Duval
#9 Audi Sport North America LMP1 Audi R15 driven by Mike Rockenfeller, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas
LMP2
#42 Strakka Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 driven by Nick Leventis, Danny Watts and Jonny Kane
#26 Highcroft Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 driven by David Brabham, Marino Franchitti and Marco Werner
#35 Oak Racing LMP2 Pescarolo Judd driven by Matthieu Lahaye, Guillaume Moreau and Jan Charouz
GT1
#50 Larbre Competition LMGT1 Saleen S7R driven by Roland Berville, Julien Canal and Gabriele Gardel
#73 Luc Alphand Aventures LMGT1 Corvette C6.R driven by Julien Jousse, Xavier Maassen and Patrice Goueslard
#60 Matech Competition LMGT1 Ford GT driven by Thomas Mutsch, Romain Grosjean and Jonathan Hirschi
GT2
#64 Corvette Racing LMGT2 Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 driven by Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Emmanuel Collard
#63 Corvette Racing LMGT2 Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 driven by Jan Magnussen, Johnny O'Connell and Antonio Garcia
#77 Team Felbermayr-Proton LMGT2 Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Marc Lieb, Richard Lietz and Wolf Henzler

Jox Jottings - Thursday qualifying

A Summary of the thrills and spills of Thursday evening’s first qualifying session.

This is where things start getting a bit more serious. With the weather forecast threatening rain there was a bit of tension in the air because this session may well be the one that decides the grid positions for the race. Traditionally this tends to happen during the last knockings of qualifying in the night. Quite how these guys can match their daylight times is a bit of a mystery.. even more so when you look at the in-car TV pics. Incidentally after a rocky start due to a bit of ‘local technical difficulty’ things got far better today and our Kangaroo TV is proving a bit of an asset, more of this later.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise that nowt changed at the top .. Peugeot are still easily holding the first four grid places ahead of the Audis. Their times were about three seconds slower than last night mainly because the circuit started off rather soggy but gradually a dry line began to emerge right at the end of the session. This is when Alexander Wurz in the #1 Team Peugeot Total LMP1 Peugeot 908 gird up his loins and decided to have serious if ultimately fruitless stab at pole. It didn’t come off by quite a margin, not only was the track still hiding a few wet patches but there was fair of traffic that had the annoying habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the #2 Team Peugeot Total LMP1 Peugeot 908 Stéphane Sarrazin was harbouring similar ambitions and quite fancied his chances of a fourth pole in succession but had the same problems with traffic and getting off the dry line onto the wetter bits.

What about the Audis? Well all you Audi fans out there it is not good news! Frankly they are still off the pace by a fair old margin. They simply didn’t find anymore speed in this session. So, the PR machine vors-sprang into action and the story emerged that they were not really all that concerned about pole position, or presumably the next three places either.. no.. instead they would settle down and be very diligent about sorting out a very impressive race strategy.. got a feeling this is what they say every time they can’t crack pole! It is worrying that they seem resigned to the fact that they won't be beating the Peugeots on raw speed. (or any sort of speed for that matter) So, they will have to rely on some very cunning plan .. The precise nature of this plan remains a bit unclear..

Every now and then there comes a moment when a driver must wish the tarmac would open up swallow you (and the car) to avoid embarrassment.. it could be Jonny Cocker felt this might be the case when the #11 Drayson Racing LMP1 Lola Judd Coupe simply expired after it passed the end of the pit lane. It ceased to progress in a forwardly direction after the exit so the team were not allowed to push it back down the pit lane. The symptoms indicated that the crank case sensor had ceased to ‘sense’… So the radio crackled into action and the team explained to Jonny how to mend it by using a sensor that did ‘sense’ and he limped back to the pits. Also very early on in the session the #85 Spyker Squadron LMGT2 Spyker C8 Laviolette stopped out on the circuit but they got going again lets hope this wont cause any repeats of those rib tickling quips about a whole load of rivets flying for moments at a time in hopefully in close formation.

Now devoted fans of Jaguar (even if this particular one comes from across the pond) will be concerned to hear that the #81 Jaguar RSR LMGT2 Jaguar XKRS was having a torrid time in ‘hospital’. last time it was the clutch you may recall but his time it was a gremlin in the engine wiring loom which really is the stuff of nightmares. The only solution is to rip its heart out and put in a new loom .. not the work of a moment but it had to be done. They did eventually get out and do some 22 laps thus getting most of the way towards getting their drivers qualified. There is possible glitch with Paul Gentilozzi but there is still the second session and he should be OK if the ACO play fair.

Having got some worthwhile laps under its belt it was time for The #26 Highcroft Racing team to try and find some more speed by tweaking the aero package on the LMP2 HPD ARX.01 hoping for a bit more speed later in the session when Brabham was due to have crack at pole.

The commentary mentioned that the crowds at The Porsche Curves had been building up after all the accidents there this time. They were not going to be disappointed because the next car to hurl itself at the scenery was the #13 Rebellion Racing LMP1 Lola Rebellion Coupe with Jean-Christophe Boullion at the wheel. He went off and hit the wall causing rather hard causing some pretty extensive damage, so there is a chance that it may not be out in the final session, the team are working on it. It seems that Boullion was pedalling along heading for a fast lap when he caught up a slower Porsche and fell off..

Some of the teams have now qualified all their drivers in the dark and daylight and reckon to have gone as fast as they are going to go so can set about rebuilding the car in readiness for the race. The #92 JMW Motorsport LMGT2 Aston Martin Vantage driven by Rob Bell, Tim Sugden and Bryce Miller falls into this category .. It is struggling for top speed and not looking like making spectacular progress later so the team have now changed the engine and gearbox and they didn't go out in the session.

Remember that bl**dy rain we have been banging on about? Well it seems that this was a bit of myth.. It never turned up in this session!
The weather was playing a part though because the track was still damp in places just to keep drivers on their toes. But it was #14 Kolles LMP1 Audi R10 driven by Manuel Rodrigues that found one of these and spun and with a bit of skill or maybe luck just brushed the concrete wall with the nose cone. I am sure it was skill! The damage was not serious and Rodrigues rejoined the race a wiser man.
WTCC fans will be delighted that Andy Priaulx is here in a BMW and that BMW are back at Le Mans after an eleven year break with a pair of BMW Motorsport BMW M3 GT2s. Andy was able to tell radio Le Mans that they were struggling with the pace, at the same time he but he did say it is their first visit to Le Mans and apart from anything else they were up against some highly experienced teams who had been coming to Le Mans for years. Presumably their busy saloon car commitments have meant that the team are having to do their development and testing in public which is not ideal. But it was all coming together pretty well and it is a long race. (it has taken a couple a days for that cliché to appear!) He freely admitted that they have a lot to learn as rookies.

The more experienced teams were making progress and rather at the last minute with around fifteen minutes left in the session a dry line was definitely beginning to appear so David Brabham took off in the LMP2 #26 Highcroft Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 and grabbed pole from the #42 Strakka Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 driven by Nick Leventis.

This was pretty darned brave because, as Mike Newton proved. while he was spinning his #25 RML LMP2 Lola HPD Coupe, there were still slippery bits to be found! .The next car to limp into the pits was the #008 Signature Plus LMP1 Lola Aston Martin driven by Pierre Ragues. He had done a brilliant job nursing the car home with a puncture without tearing the bodywork apart.

What was going on in LMGT1? Are you sitting comfortably? Then we can have a rant… for some reason that I just can’t fathom the Peugeots and the LMP1 battles totally overwhelm the media here .. after all the Peugeots are .. er .. let me think .. don't tell me.. French .. the ACO are … French… and so on. There is rarely any mention of the LMGT1 and LMGT2.. they rarely appear on TV and as a result it is very hard to know what is going on .. so , sorry people .. We do try but its bl**dy annoying because the Ford/Ferrari/Corvette/Porsche battles are great and involve cars that many of us know and understand. We will try and get some more meat tomorrow..

As is often the case some of the fastest times are set just as it is getting dark and it was Wurz and Sarrazin who both set off for a serious attempt to nudge fellow Peugeot Pagenaud off pole position but with too much traffic, a damp track and not enough time the order stayed the some until the chequered flag came out.

Jox Jottings – Wednesday qualifying

That was a short night! The Circuit action finished at midnight and your team needed to get back to Chateau Nouveau and unwind over a beer or two or three with Pastis chasers ( We are now hooked on ‘51’ .. apparently called this since it was first brewed in 1951 .. not a lot of people know that!). Anyway we are back in action again and trying to recall what happened last night.

For a start it didn’t rain in the end .. mind you who believes weather forecasts anyway.. so it was a pretty straight forward sort of session. The kind we have come to expect nowadays. So what did we expect? Well.. question one was will the Audis be in touch with the Peugeots? Will the Peugeots need to try at all? Will a petrol car get in amongst the diesels? What will the ‘swan song’ of LMGT1 be like? Will Porsche remember how to race at Le Mans? How quick will Nigel Mansell & Sons Ltd be? Will the Lambo complete an entire lap? Will the Jaguar XKRS risk coming off its axle stands and tackle a lap? Will the Ford GTs be mended in time ?

Lets take them one at a time… Since we are in France and are being ‘force fed’ all things French lets look at Audi.

They are here five cars here … three of which are R15 and two are veteran R10s. . All the R15s are actually run by Joest .. who are really a wholly owned subsidiary of Audi. One car runs under the Audi Sport North America banner and the other two under Audi Sport Team Joest. The R10s are run by Kolles… the same guys as run the Hispania F1 team.. which thinking about it doesn’t bode well!

The ‘works’ Audis are of course immaculate.. the team personnel all match in size, shape and attitude .. haven’t we seen this before somewhere? Their driver line up is mighty impressive but their track record this year has not really come up with the goods. Dr Wolfgang Ullrich told the press that Audi are here to win.. ummm… and that they will be building an R18 for 2011. The ‘front running’ Audis certainly did not look like race winners at any point during qualifying .. bit harsh that, but true. Their quickest car was the #9 driven by Bernhard,Dumas and Rockenfeller and they were a massive 3:23.578 secs behind the quickest Peugeot. More worrying was that we reckon the ‘star’ car ought to be #7 with Capello,Kristensen and McNish but they were languishing 7th with a 3:24.668 secs. But , as usual, Audi were giving away nothing and seemed their usual unperturbed selves. That well used cliché '24 hrs is a long race' springs to mind.

It was Peugeot who looked very quick indeed and seemingly not really trying all that hard! Proof, if proof were needed, was when the #4 Team Oreca Matmut LMP1 Peugeot 908 driven by Nicolas Lapierre got stranded out on the circuit with a 'fuel' problem (rumoured to be more of a 'lack of fuel problem') after just six laps but it still stayed at the top of the times for a large part of the session eventually fading back to 4th.

In the end Bourdais decided that he was bored and would go out and play and promptly banged in a rather tasty 3:19.711secs.. which was rapid, particulary when compared with last year's 3;22.888 secs... I bet you have just glanced back at those Audi times .. The 'Lions' settled into a relaxed sort of routine which resulted in them cleaning up the two front rows on the grid! With the weather forecast looking distinctly damp for later today this may well be the grid for The Race. Surely not what Audi had in mind..?

The diesel.v.petrol contest really is a non starter .. the diesels (mostly French) are so, so much quicker and the regs still seem to be loaded against the petrol ( mostly not French!) cars.. do we spot a trend here? David Richards has gone to press stating that an Aston Martin 'Works Team' won't be back in 2011 if the regs don't change.. at first glance the 2011regs don't seem to be going to help. But we would be happy to stand corrected.

The #007 Aston Martin Racing LMP1 Lola Aston Martin driven by Harold Primat, Stefan Mücke and Adrian Fernandez Aston Martin Racing LMP1 Lola Aston Martin put in a 3:26.680 secs, this was two seconds off the Diesel pace. The #009 Aston Martin Racing LMP1 Lola Aston Martin driven by Darren Turner next. There are a few other 'stars' in LMP1 this year.. Milord Grayson's was 45 secs slower than F1 Superstar and 1992 BBC Sports Personality of the year, Nigel Mansell ! But ##11 the Drayson Racing LMP1 Lola Judd Coupe driven by Emanuele Pirro just pipped the Mansell family car Greg Mansell into 15th place .

In LMP2 .. the naturally aspirated petrol class and basis for future of Le Mans cars.. was comfortably cleaned up by the #42 Strakka Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 driven by Jonny Kane. They were four seconds quicker that the #26 Highcroft Racing LMP2 HPD ARX.01 driven by David Brabham.

LMGT1 is on the way out for 2011.. they will no longer be eligible.. which this scribe feels is a pity since he is 'anti prototype' and 'pro' cars that look like GT machines! The prospect of Aston Martin .v. Ford GT .v. Corvette really is rather tasty... three rather different approaches to a 'proper' GT car. Assuming you were taking 'her indoors' for a whizz to Monaco for a flutter any one of these would fill the bill .. you might lose your licence but at least they are proper 'Grand Tourismo' machines with transcontinental ability. Top of the pile at the moment is the #52 Young Driver AMR LMGT1 Aston Martin DBR9 driven by Tomas Enge. The Young Driver Team is semi-works supported operation and more details will emerge when the press packs get here from Copenhagen tommorow ! Second in LMGT2 is #60 Matech Competition LMGT1 Ford GT driven by Thomas Mutsch. This car, you may recall, attacked the scenery yesterday and looked a bit second hand but they did a grand job getting it straightened out and it is back on the pace. We keep on getting waves of nostalgia every time we see them out on the track.. they really do look like the real things .. ah ..what memories .. good to see Ford Motor Co back at Sarthe! Third in class is #73 Luc Alphand Aventures LMGT1 Corvette C6.R driven by Julien Jousse. These big bangers do sound delicious and they really don't look in slightest bit stressed.. The Corvette guys have always tended to be heroically laid back and probably 'sand-bagging'.. who knows. By the way Luc Alphand is a bit of a hero in these parts. He was a great international skier who turned to rallying and won the Paris Dakar in 2006. This all action man is currently out of action having crashed heavily on motorbike rally earlier this year.

So, what next? It all kicks off again at 19:00hrs with the first of the qaulifying sessions... tonight the entertainment has changed and it yet another famous French Group called 'Les Tambours du Bronx'.. they are 17 'French Industrial Percussionists' .. the mind boggles.

It is raining at the moment and forecast is not encouraging ..

Jox Jottings – Wednesday free practice.

At last .. things have kicked off.. ‘free practice’ is underway … guess what.. we will actually see racing cars on the track at last. As Le Mans regulars will know this opening session is ‘free’ .. In other words the cars and drivers will be timed but the times don’t go towards the qualifying times and grid positions. All a bit pointless you may say... nope … this is about the only chance these guys have to sort out niggling problems, or in the case of the #81 Jaguar XKRS rebuilt the car from the ground up. It has been quite a lively session if you happen to be the proud owner of Ford GT run by Matech and sponsored by Sintez. Today they are showing signs of having a couple of close and meaningful relationship with the scenery. First to hit the local architecture was Romain Grosjean in the #60 Ford car.. he arrived at The Porsche Curves pedalling a wee bit too hard and locked everything up while braking on a bumpy bit, he then left rubber all over the track, followed by very respectably ploughed furrow in the gravel before breaking his fall against the tyre wall… the back end bore the brunt of the impact and looked a bit the worse for the close encounter. Not wishing to be outdone ‘les jolie femmes’ decided to grab the spotlight and Rahel Frey spun a bit sooner and a bit slower and hit the wall a bit sooner. The car emerged looking rather second hand with its rear spoiler detached and a somewhat crumpled rear end. The fragrant Rahel seemed to emerge undamaged. Now.. this presents the team with a tiny weenie problem .. they are currently short of a fully functioning car and really have to get all three girls out for ten laps each during this free practice session and they won’t manage it, their cause was not helped when Grosjean’s accident brought out ‘Le Drapeau Rouge’ and the session was stopped. Another car struggling badly is the Jaguar XKRS because they have spent almost the entire session on axle stands with two ‘rookie’ drivers kicking their heels in urgent need of ten laps qualifying as well.


We have just heard that the ACO have stepped in and are allowing the teams to carry on into tonight’s session to clear the backlog.. this will possibly get the Jaguar out of a hole but we don’t know how badly damaged the two Fords are .
So, what is going on at the sharp end of the field.. well just at the moment the Peugeots are looking ever so slightly rapid.. rather more rapid than the Audis to be honest. How can these good ‘ol oil burners possibly go that bl**dy quick. The weather is cold, cloudy and overcast so if the rain holds off we may see some very rapid times later this evening. The Peugeots give the impression they are just warming up and having a gentle stretch by way of a warm up, they have comfortably smashed last years pole position times with, we rather suspect, more to come.

The Audis are their usual Teutonic selves .. no fuss.. ‘am I boffered.. do I look boffered? Well we think they maybe ought to be a bit boffered.. they simply don’t seem to have the raw pace of the Peugeots.

The ‘petrol’ challenge is being led by the two Lola B09/60-Aston Martins.. 009 and 007 and the stunning Lola B10/60-Rebellion is third. (take a look at the livery if you get the chance!)

GT1 is rather nicely poised .. with the No52 AMR Young Driver Aston DBR9 ahead of the No72 Luc Alphand Aventures Corvette C6.R who in turn are ahead of the No70 Ford GT .. nice mix?

In GT2 the ‘works No64 Corvette ZR1 tops the sheets , actually it is ahead of some rather swift GT1s! At last Porsche look like getting their act together after last year’s debacle, this time Marc Lieb is second in the No 77 Team Felbermayer-Proton Porsche 997 GT3 RSR ( snappy eh?) and sounding confident.. He has however split the factory Corvettes.

Any surprises? Not really .. except maybe the JLOC Lamborghini Murcielago R-SV.. after a spectacular one lap extravaganza last year it has actually done an impressive 29 laps today with only one puncture. That is real progress for a car run by the Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club. The Ford GTs have shown their pace during the season so far so it is a pity that one is badly dented at the moment. We have eyewitnesses that suggest the damage ‘wont polish out with T-Cut’.

It looks like some of the best actual racing might come from the GT Classes.. It is good to see the Astons taking on the ‘Vettes.. But the No64 ‘Vette in the hands of Emmanuel Collard looks dangerously rapid and they are so darned laid back at this stage of the game.

Next up is proper qualifying in the dark …

Jox Jottings - Tuesday

A hawkeyed member of our team just spotted that, despite what we were told, all 56 cars did not pass ‘Pesage’ with flying colours.. 21 of them have ‘technical irregularities’.. So maybe Pesage was exciting after all.

If yesterday was an eye-wateringly undramatic day.. Today has been even more so.. watching drying paint is really quite exciting compared with this. The tiny problem here is that very little is actually happened.

The nearest thing we have to a major drama is the health of our beloved leader, Le Grand Fromage, he is ‘broken’ with a brain shrivelling ‘migraine’.. which in French translates as a ‘migraine’ … our multilingual knowledge pool gets ever deeper.

Things were briefly salvaged by a few moments of pure nostalgia that revolved around the ACO’s very own Porsche 917 LH. The Porsche 917 is of course the prototype that set all sorts of records here at Le Mans.. for example in the ‘pre-chicane’ years the short tailed ‘K’ version set the distance record covering 5335,313 kms in 24 hrs and the ‘LH’ version that, when driven in testing by Jackie Oliver, a Le Mans winner in his own right, in April 1971, recorded what was at the time, the fastest lap ever timed. It was being driven by Jackie Oliver at an eye wateringly rapid 3m 13.6s (250.457 kmh/155.0 mph). One of these cars, (chassis 045) was given to the ACO by Porsche in 1972. It has been on display in the Museum for a long time and needed urgent restoration. Motul came up with the money and the work was entrusted to The Heritage Foundation.

So the car arrived here today ‘ready to run’ and the honour of driving it went to Gerard Larrousse. Gerard had won the 1971 Sebring 12 Hours in a Porsche 917, and he also won Le Mans with Henri Pescarolo Le Mans 24hrs in 1973 and 1974 but driving a Matra- Simca MS670B.

He didn’t drive it far or fast.. instead he did several runs up and down the pit straight overseen by Frédéric Néraud , the General Manager of Heritage Foundation and several other awfully important local dignitaries. Thankfully he didn’t stack it up or blow up the engine so a ‘symbolic’ ignition key will be given to Jean-Claude Plassart, President of The ACO. Not unsurprisingly Monsieur Larrousse drove the car very sensibly, taking particular care over changing gear. Apparently engines and gearboxes don’t come cheap for a 917 and they can’t be found on eBay!!

So what else is going on? Don Panoz is back here at Le Mans, he was last here racing in 2002, this time he was here to announce a brand new road car called The Panoz Abruzzi ‘Spirit of Le Mans’.. a catchy name, apparently derived from an area in Italy not far from Rome. It is also a name that sits comfortably alongside The Esperante GTR and his LMP1 Roadster. It is certainly ‘eye-catching’ like all Panoz.. if you catch our drift! It is pretty muscular bit of kit with a 6.2 litre Corvette LS9 up front pushing out a very acceptable 620 bhp through a six speed manual transaxle. Being a huge American lump of iron it has lots of ‘torques’ .. 590 ft lbs to be precise. I This a key change for the Georgia-based manufacturer, since they traditionally used Ford-based engines in its Esperante and other models. Interestingly they don’t tell us what it weighs.

With a price tag of around $500,000 it will be reassuringly expensive and right up there with other ‘supercars’. There will only be 81 cars built.. eighty one? This slightly strange number comes about because it is based on the number of Le Mans races there will have been between 1923 and 2013. 2013 presumably the launch date for the new model. To keep the price and exclusivity of each car it will be linked to a specific year. The new owners will have to be rich but in exchange they will be a pretty privileged bunch.. The cars will be delivered from the factory to the Circuit where the new owners will receive some driver instruction. Then they will be invited to Le Mans 24hrs as guests of The ACO and use the hospitality facilities in the spectacular ‘Model Sportif’ (The building that looks like the bastard child of Babylon 9 and The Starship Enterprise). Owners will also get the chance to drive a display lap around the full circuit ..they will be invited to a ‘Spirit of Le Mans’ reception as guests of The ACO, Derek Bell and Jacky Ickx. The only minor snag we can see is that nobody knows quite how the cars will perform but we do know it might cost around $500,000!

We had a very interesting chat with the nice man from Kangaroo TV .. We threatened him with physical violence and amazingly he was concerned about his health and well being and he has leant us a Kangaroo to play with. (Not a real one .. silly..a TV!)
So we will be able to let you know how this impressive bit of kit works. At first glance, staring at a blank screen (it has not gone live yet) it looks like it could be €55 well spent. Watch this space!

Here is a video of Jock having fun on Tuesday afternoon behind the house where we are staying. Our host has a new toy and we got to play with it.

Jox Jottings - Monday

Now .. this is a bit new to your friendly scribbler so bear with us.. I have a bus pass, a quill and sheets of parchment so don’t expect too much. The aged and infirm amongst you may recall ‘Jox-Jottings’ in the past .. well this is a 21st Century version of that.

Unusually most of the team is here from Day One.. Le Grand Fromage himself, Lennart Sorth, Jock ‘the bearded one’ Simpson and our tour manager and designated ‘responsible adult’ Tony Light. Others will be joining us such as Matthew Coutard our French speaking Welshman ( yes it is a bit unusual) and by Friday pm Ros will be here to help scribble and take a few pics. Even the immortal Janice “Mummy” Minton will be here from time to time . So, in the unlikely event of all of us being sober at the same time, it is actually quite a strong team.

We will be slotting things onto the site when we can because we are also supposed to be producing a few English words for the ACO website. So keep an eye out.

It is not easy to make ‘Pesage’ ( scrutineering to you and me) appear rivetingly exciting and nerve-janglingly dramatic, mainly because it isn’t! Plus none of the ‘officials’are available for comment. But yesterday that didn’t stop thousands of locals cluttering up Le Place de Jacobins and fighting over autographs and photos of their heroes. However we did get some good , if slightly bland, interviews with drivers. They tend to follow the party line.. wonderful car, wonderful sponsors, pleased to back at Le Mans and so on. These are on the ACO site along with other stuff we produced yesterday. Some of the English speaking drivers were interviewed by a French person, then translated into a form of English for us to disentangle and put back into English ‘like what we speak’ !

As far as we know all twenty cars that went through yesterday passed.. however it is unlikely we would be told if they hadn’t.. such is the way things work here.

It was amusing that long after the entries had closed and long after the last possible chance to enter , the #28 Radical Judd SR9 popped up to fill the newly built ( or rather partially built!) garage . Now, it will come as no great shock to discover this is a car entered by a Swiss/French Team…but driven by two French drivers , it might even be painted blue!

For those of you that have been to Pesage before you probably wouldn’t recognise the place. The ‘fin de siècle’ theatre that over looked the square has been demolished and will eventually be replaced by a futuristic , whizzie glass and steel architectural pile that is totally at odds with the cathedral. The actual scrutineering has been packed into a much smaller area within the Place de Jacobins. It is all a bit ‘compact’ and today, Monday they are running an hour behind schedule and it isn’t even midday yet. Could be a long evening.

Le Mans 2010 - The build-up

The 24 hours of Le Mans 2010

This Blog is a new departure for Club Arnage. Please feel free to comment.