Little did we know in 1989 that we were getting toward the end of a golden age of sportscar racing. The FIA Group C rules which had given us a diversity of engine and chassis philosophies, manufacturers were numerous and crowds growing. In Paris there was disquiet. The FIA were unhappy that manufacturer involvment in F1 was effectively Ferrari and a bunch of sundry engine suppliers, whilst sportscars had full works entries from Porsche, Mercedes, Jaguar, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Aston Martin, Peugeot were on the way a year later, and these are just the entries I can remember off the top of my head. In order to siphon off these premium brands, new rules were confected in Paris specifying F1 engines in chassis that were pretty obviously going to cost as much, if not more in R&D and manufacturing, as a full blown GP car.
Within a few years entries in sportscars had fallen to two Peugeots, a couple of Toyotas, a Nissan on a good day and a handful of makeweights. It spelt the end. Le Mans had some strikingly thin looking years and the FIA quietly cancelled the whole sportscar class. Mission accomplished – F1 got a large injection of works engines, teams did deals and we reached where we are now in GP. Ruled by corporate entities for better or for worse and innovation increasingly squeezed out.
Quietly though sportscars went into one of its regular rebuilding periods. Initially, back in the nineties, the signs weren’t good, slow tricky cars that made drivers appear hamfisted. Now in 2008 we’ve got a partial return to health. The cars are now undeniably quick, practice times for a LeMans this year, even with the track blighted by yet more chicanes were not dissimilar to those recorded at the end of the eighties If the weather had held Van Lennep/Marko’s record average would quite possibly even have taken a pasting.
In America Daytona Prototypes being notably old school in their approach and slower than FIA GT2 cars (they were recently outpaced to the tune of about 20 seconds a lap by support race for historic GTP cars at the Rolex 24 hours) but now see strong entries and races that are far from a foregone conclusion. The budgets for the LeMans series are a lot higher, the rules and the pace broadly on a par with the LMES series in Europe.
In Europe we have LMES mixing increasingly high tech prototypes and FIA GT1 and 2 cars. Grids this year have been large in Europe, and attendance has improved, Silverstone seeing a new record of 53,000 for a six hour race but I get a niggling feeling…..
All of this years races have been won by Diesel powered entries, under rules tipped in diesels favour at the request of the manufacturers concerned, the same manufacturers that are unprepared to make the same engines available to anyone with the money to pay. All of the races bar one have been won by Peugeot overall, despite which both titles have ended up at Audi. The only time a petrol engine has shone was in a race where all of the diesels had trouble and half were seriously delayed. Even then it was laps down despite suffering no such delay itself.
In my opinion, the rules need a tweak to equalise petrol and diesel technologies, or the manufacturers of the diesels need to start making engines available so that we have more than 4 potential winning cars. There is certainly no shortage of diversity and creativity in the chassis market, there are a lot of talented drivers. In my view, if the disparity of engine tech were tackled, or suitable engines released to privateers, with more possible winners, I think the days of a 53,000 strong crowd might just become the rule, not the exception.
Silverstone today was a great reminder of sportscar racings glory days. I’d like to thank the chaps at Gamers-Crib for a first wicked meet up, and very especially the the Barazi-Epsilon Team, Fernando Rees and his folks who made us all feel like friends and honoured guests. Links to the guilty parties to be added after I get a couple of hours kip, by the way.
Cheers
Tags: diesel ? ugh!, LMES, motorsport, Sportscar Racing
