Category: ELMS

European Le Mans Series

Trop de Course?

This guest post appears as part of the latest round of the VivaF1 Blog Swap, and is written by Maverick from the host site itself.

One group who currently seem to have no fear of being snowed under with Too Much Racing seems to be the French, with no sign of the return of the French Grand Prix and the motorsport industry in general, in the doldrums. That said, you could be forgiven for thinking that as long as they have 24 Heures du Mans, they’ll remain happy.

Often considered the original Grand Prix, having first run in 1906, the French Grand Prix (or Grand Prix de l’ACF as it was) missed just one season of the Formula World Championship in 1955. That was, until 2009 when the race was cancelled with organisers citing economic reasons. Since that announcement at the end of the 2008 season, the French Grand Prix has shown little sign of returning regardless of the number of proposed locations, most notably at Flins-Les Mureaux where plans for a new circuit were eventually abandoned. Despite Magny-Cours recently expressing confidence that a series of improvements would see the race return in 2012, the already crowed calendar would seem to prevent that prospect for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the longer the race remains absent from the Formula One calendar, the less it can rely on playing the “historic race” card.

It’s not only France’s international status that has fallen in to decline. In 2003 the French Formula Three series merged with its German counterpart to form the Formula Three Euroseries as entries dwindled. While the Signature and ART Grand Prix teams have produced a strong French showing in the series, its notable that the French only host a small proportion of the series and just one of this year’s nine meetings took place on French soil.

So Le Mans remains strong but the Grand Prix has gone, meanwhile the third part of French motor racing’s triumvirate, the Pau Grand Prix has become a shadow of its former self. The Pau Grand Prix, the first race to carry the title “Grand Prix” back 1901 was for a period a non-championship F1 race before becoming the jewel in the crown of Formula 2 and then F3000. However, it has gradually lost its lustre in recent years before being suspended altogether this year. It remains to be seen whether the ambitious invitational event for F3 cars planned next year can revive this grand old lady of motorsport.

It’s not only the motor racing though but the whole associated industry that appears to be in the doldrums.

French motorsport as a whole may end up as wistful as Rene Arnoux at the 2003 Goodwood FoS

While there are sparks of optimism, notably Peugeot’s Le Mans exploits while ART Grand Prix has been a force to be reckoned with in GP2 and F3, the inflexible labour market has prevented teams from being competitive with outfits from other countries. If you consider that Renault F1 is fundamentally an English team funded by the French (and now only partly so) then the last French Formula One team was Prost Grand Prix which folded at the beginning of 2002 with debts in the region of $30 million. Prior to that, AGS and Larrouse suffered similar fates while the DAMS F1 project got little further than building a chassis.

The result of that has inevitably filtered down the feeding chain in the form of a lack of support for up and coming, home-grown talent. In recent years, Romain Grosjean, Sébastien Bourdais and Franck Montagny have quickly come and gone and the last French drivers to make a substantial run in F1 were Olivier Panis and Jean Alesi whose careers came to an end in 2004 and 2001 respectively. Perhaps, the few prospects for the future are this year’s British Formula Three Champion, Jean-Eric Vergne, who tested with Toro Rosso in the recent young drivers’ test, and Ferrari test driver Jules Bianchi. However, a few years ago the same would have been said about Grosjean. Unfortunately, the question is whether any of them can secure the necessary financial backing to fund their way to the top echelon of open-wheel racing in a climate of French motor sport apathy.

Still, Le Mans carries on shouldering a nation’s motoring pride (alas, Peugeot’s self destruction spoilt the party this year) and while the French Grand Prix’s absence continues, that reliance will only strengthen in the hearts and minds of the French.

Overall, it’s a sad state of affairs that the country that gave motorsport to the world finds itself in. The French created the Grand Prix and for the early decades of racing their blue cars dominated. Yet that appears to be part of the problem: A look at the racing calendar of French circuits sees classic car races predominant. In short, French motorsport gives the appearance of being content to dwell on the glories of the past with no plan for the future.

Back from Silverstone

What an excellent day out, highly recommended even if the LMP1 battle fizzled out when McNish’s car did. So much else was going on on-track what with the petrol ‘sub-class’, the LMP2 fight was good and it also had a ‘sub-class’ of Formula Le Mans, and GT2 was as great a fight as it always is. At Abbey corner the Ferraris seemed to be the only ones in the entire field of 46 cars to take a huge chunk of kerb, many took a little bit and some gave it a wide berth.

The loss of GT1 is a real shame, the sole representative was the Larbre Saleen which looked the part and sounded fantastic, what a brilliant deep throaty engine noise. Surely a few more cars could have been found to send off the class in style, not that I want the class sent off. I’ve said before that I think there is still a place for GT1 in endurance racing, the cars under the new rules would surely become more reliable and faster over time.

I made a comment about RLM in my previous post and I should report that while I was in the areas the tannoy was loud enough to be heard*, there were no sarky comments from RLM about ‘not watching boring F1′ so thumbs up to them for that and indeed their coverage was as exceptional as always.

*The Belgians had theirs turned up FAR louder, Silverstone needs to do the same! Even the mighty Hindy couldn’t be heard, in fact some speakers weren’t even switched on.. I’m not expecting the audio to be heard over a car which is flashing past you, but it should be heard when the car is disappearing into the distance – often it wasn’t. Still, next time I’ll bring a radio.

I’ll bring a full report soon and there’ll be a photo gallery online Monday night.

Off to Silverstone

I am going to the Autosport Silverstone 1000km today, the final round of the Le Mans Series and the first qualifier for what I suppose you could call the ‘trial’ Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, which this year is a series of 3 races comprising Silverstone, Petit Le Mans and a race at Zhuhai in China. The ILMC will be expanding substantially next season and could become the de facto ‘world championship’ in all but name for Le Mans-style racing, something that has been missing for many years.

The reason I am going is because it sees the first battle between Audi and Peugeot since Le Mans, it’ll surely be epic. I’m also going because I’ve never been to a race like it before and also because I need to see more live racing.

I’m not doing this to make a point. Unlike many other fans of sportscar racing I am not one of these snooty types who hold their nose up at Formula 1, there seem to be plenty in that community who take great pleasure in making their distaste of F1 known to all and sundry and making snidey sarcastic comments as if everyone agrees with them. In the 1990s it was cool for F1 fans to act this way about all other forms of racing. Thankfully I’ve noticed over the last couple of years this attitude has largely disappeared. It is a shame to see it rearing it’s ugly head amongst sportscar fans, a group I consider to be among the most ardent of motorsport fans and so a group I expect to have an appreciation of all forms of racing (even if they don’t like some of it). Unfortunately it seems some among RLM are guilty of this and I’m going to be very annoyed if I have to listen to that kind of diatribe all day on the tannoy or the radio (if I can find a radio).

I’m actually quite annoyed to be missing the Italian Grand Prix particularly with the grid the way it is and I’ve been agonising over whether I’m making the right choice. For the last two years I’ve bottled out in favour of watching Monza, this year after coming back from Spa I’ve got the trackside buzz back again and I want to get one more fix in before the winter arrives, so off I go.

It’ll be interesting to see how easy the race is to follow, I’ve heard multi-class racing is very difficult to follow in person. It should last about five and a half hours so I’m hoping to see the cars from many vantage points. I want to see the start from somewhere cool, either Becketts or Stowe, whichever I have time to get to. After that I’ll be wandering around the circuit trying out different stands, perhaps finding my way into the paddock at some point.

If you see me, I’ll probably be wearing a blue raincoat and a Goodwood hat, a bit like in this photo. In the unlikely event it is as warm and sunny as Saturday has been I guess you’ll have to just look for the hat.

I’ll be tweeting as much as I can during the day but I’m conscious of how much of my stupidly small data plan I’ll be using up, particularly after the continental trip. Since it is a little more than 3 hours from home each way you won’t see a wrap-up post until late evening or Monday, and I’ll probably save the full details until I’ve posted my Belgium wrap-ups.

Enjoy the GP and if you’re able to follow the LMS on Eurosport, RLM and live timing, enjoy that too.

2010 Race Calendar

During the 2009 season I thought it would be a great idea to create a race schedule in Google Calendar featuring different racing series. I was busy with accounts studies at the time and I never got around to taking it further. Early last month I decided it was worth exploring so I set up a trial with F1 and IndyCar dates. I’d add more later if I decided it looked okay. Again I let it drop when other things got in the way.

Christine from Sidepodcast recently created a calendar highlighting F1 events and the SPC / F1 Minute podcast schedules and she did a great job, enough to inspire me to get on and finish my idea.

Here it is!

(note – WordPress doesn’t allow the iFrame code that makes the embed work so I have had to leave it out for now)

My schedule includes F1, F2, GP2, IndyCar, Le Mans 24hr, ALMS, LMS, MotoGP, WRC, IRC and WTCC. I’ve also put in Dakar, Goodwood and a couple of other things. I’ll add NASCAR Sprint Cup and DTM soon – there are categories already so if you add them the events will hopefully appear in your calendar automatically.

Christine’s calendar is F1-specific and it includes Free Practice, pre-season testing and car launches. My calendar includes none of these things, only qualifying and race. I highly recommend adding Christine’s F1 calendar if you would like this extra information.

Click the “+GoogleCalendar” button to add to your own Google Calendar account. I have split events by race series so you can just pick the ones you want. I think there is a way to get them into iCal and other systems, though I don’t know how.

The calendar is set to UK time because that’s where I am and that’s most useful to me. I’m not sure but I believe when you import it, it will adjust it to your own default timezone. Have a play with it and see.

Race start times are estimates apart from F1 and Le Mans. This information is surprisingly hard to find. E.g. IndyCar.com only lists TV start times, not race starts. Many sites only give the dates and I’ve had to improvise. Then there’s the issue of timezones which I may have got wrong. I plan to make each forthcoming weekend as accurate as I can, beyond that just use this as a guide.

I’ve included qualifying for F1, Le Mans 24Hrs and IndyCar (times estimated). I don’t intend to include any more qualifying.

I hope you find this useful and please let me know if there is anything you would like to add. If the demand is there and I think it warrants adding, I’ll do so. I’m already considering Indy Lights.

As you can see I’ve also added a list version to the sidebar. When I create the new site I will have a version similar to the one above on its own page.

EDIT – WordPress does not allow embeds so I have linked them on the sidebar. This means you can pick and choose the series you are interested in! I’ve also since created calendars for Indy Lights and GrandAm.