MOTORSPORT: Le Mans - the greatest race of all

Le Mans this weekend looms as a ‘World Cup’ final between Germany and Japan – with Germany the red-hot favourite.

This is not two teams playing each other for 90 minutes, as in football, or six to eight hours, as in cricket, but four manufacturers – two German, two Japanese – fielding 11 of the highest-tech hybrid prototype sports cars that must endure twice around the clock and then beat all other survivors.

Apart from these top-tier, or LMP1, factory cars there are another three entered by two privateer teams, Switzerland’s Rebellion and Austria’s ByKolles, as well as the less-sophisticated LMP2 machinery and two categories of GT cars, making a field of 56.

It is the race that requires speed, reliability and increasingly efficient use of energy.

It is the one major race of the year that indisputably has great relevance to the road car industry.

For example, fuel consumption of the lead cars has been reduced 40 per cent in the past decade.

The Le Mans 24-Hour is much more about the machinery than the drivers, but this is Australian Mark Webber’s chance to add a victory in the world’s sports car classic to nine Grand Prix victories in his Formula One days.

Ryan Briscoe is the other Aussie racing at the revered 13.63km French circuit this year – in a Chevrolet Corvette chasing GT glory on top of success at America’s Daytona and Sebring enduros already this year.

But inevitably the major focus is on LMP1, in which there is a great variety of technical approaches in the engines used and the way the cars harness, store and re-use energy.

Germany is represented by Audi and Porsche, Japan by Toyota and Nissan – although the Japanese cars are built in Germany and America respectively.

Audi has won Le Mans 13 times in the past 15 years and its fifth-generation R18 e-tron quattro has won the World Endurance Championship’s two six-hour lead-up races this season, at Silverstone in Britain and Spa in Belgium, after Porsche set the qualifying pace.

The Audis, with 4.0-litre turbocharged diesel V6 engines, are relentlessly reliable and, brilliant at cornering, have the form for yet another success at Le Mans.

Porsche won this classic a record 16 times last century and is in its second year back at the top level with its 919 Hybrids, which have turbocharged petrol 2.0-litre V4 engines and a top-speed advantage over the Audis.

One of its two cars last year, with Webber in it, led the race with a couple of hours to go before it failed – 11/12ths is not enough at Le Mans. It has to be 12/12ths.

Webber is feeling the happiest he has in four Le Mans campaigns – two with Mercedes (one of which infamously ended before the great race began) before his F1 car and now his second with Porsche.

His co-drivers are German veteran Timo Bernhard and lightning-fast young New Zealander Brendon Hartley.

“I didn’t do much night driving ahead of last year’s event, so it was important to get lots of experience of that in the race and note how the track changes – where the rubber builds up and so on,” Webber says.

“It changes so much once the race gets underway and this is something you can’t experience in practice.

“I’ve also become more confident about passing backmarkers, so I think I’ll be a lot more relaxed this time around.”

Nico Hulkenberg, a German still racing in F1, is venturing to Le Mans to co-drive Porsche’s third entry this year.

“When some people hear ‘endurance’ they think of cruising, saving the car and the tyres, but it’s not,” Hulkenberg says.

“We’re flat out for every lap – the tyres are very consistent and this lets us push hard throughout.”

Only once has a Japanese car won Le Mans – a Mazda, almost a quarter of a century ago – and never a Japanese driver.

Toyota is the reigning World Endurance Championship champion manufacturer but, while it improved its TS040 this year, it has found that its cars – with 3.7-litre naturally-aspirated petrol V8s – have lost ground to the Germans.

Perhaps Toyota is deliberately playing down its chances, but its technical director Pascal Vasselon says that already it can see a need for a major review of its engine design and its energy retrieval and storage systems for next year.

Vasselon says Toyota, the only one of the four major manufacturers fielding only two rather than three cars, is “going for a strategy based on maximum reliability” this weekend.

That is all very well, but it needs to be quick enough too.

An LMP1 car that is a second a lap slower than its opposition risks finishing at least 6½ minutes behind after 24 hours.  

Nissan arrives at Le Mans with unraced and little-tested LM GT-R NISMOs.

They are radical for this era in that they are front-engined and front-wheel-drive, with bigger tyres ahead of the driver than behind.

Powered by twin-turbocharged petrol V6s, they have enormous straight-line speed but were 20 seconds off the pace at the official test day two weekends ago.

One of Nissan’s nine drivers is Jann Mardenborough, who was unearthed through computer gaming – as were two of the drivers of Nissan’s victorious GT-R at February’s Bathurst 12-Hour, but they were not considered for this campaign because they were too tall for the design.

Of the Japanese company’s unorthodox Le Mans challenger, Mardenborough says: “You have to adapt to understeer and, from a set-up perspective, what you ask your engineers for is often very different from what you’d ask for in a rear-wheel-drive car.

“The steering inputs are similar – you try to be as smooth as you can – but the way you come off the brakes is different and you pick up the throttle a little earlier than you would in a conventional racing car.”

So what can Nissan realistically expect at Le Mans, up against the might of Audi, Porsche and Toyota?

“The more laps we do the better,” its motorsport boss Darren Cox says.
“Last year one Porsche retired and the other car finished 11th.

“They got a car home and learned a huge amount about the tyres.

“Our aim has to be to get one car home, too, but we’re all racers – we’re not there just to tool around.

“We know that we’re not going to win or get a podium, but we want to be credible in terms of pace.”

Nissan is in the smallest of the energy classes – 2 megajoules, while Audi is in 4MJ, Toyota 6MJ and Porsche 8MJ.

Nissan’s first goal needs to be to avoid embarrassment as this is the best and most competitive LMP1 field in Le Mans history.

And on Friday the Ford company is expected to confirm its return to the French classic next year, albeit with GT cars – half a century after the historic outright victory of its fabulous GT40.

That fulfilled Henry Ford’s dream of topping Ferrari at Le Mans.

Just imagine if Ford and Ferrari were to come back in LMP1 – it’s been mooted for Ferrari – and make it a ‘World Cup’ with America, Italy, Germany and Japan. Then, surely, Britain would have to re-enter the fray as well.