Wednesday Racing Thread
Open to all subscribers, focusing on LeMans this week but anything goes
A remarkable number of my friends and acquaintances either flew to LeMans on their own dime, took one of the manufacturer flat-out-fuckin’-bribes experience opportunities to get the business-class best of everything at no cost, or simply perched in front of a paid stream all weekend to catch the race. Your humble author did none of the above and was content to get occasional updates via Instagram.
Intellectually, I know I should be interested. LeMans is the self-appointed pinnacle of closed-fender racing, a grueling test of man and machine, Truth In 24, all of that. Oh, but it’s just so boring! Here’s a dirty little secret of endurance racing: it bores almost everyone, even the people who are doing it. You can be in the actual car, doing the race yourself, and still be bored out of your skull at the prospect of turning fifty laps in a row at a pace that intrigues neither you nor the car but is exactly what’s required at the moment if your team is going to succeed.
Sixty years ago, the cars were on the legitimate technological edge and therefore it was a matter of some interest as to whether your chosen manufacturer was going to make it to the end. This is no longer the case. Everything south of LMP2 is a retail-sold customer car of one sort or another, driven by “spanks”. The prototypes are either Radical-adjacent LMP2 cars — back in 2010, the word “adjacent” wasn’t there, as Radical themselves campaigned a lovely Judd-engined “SR9” with mild success — or prototypes groaning beneath the Harrison Bergeron weight of a thousand competitive adjustments.
A lot of people were quite excited about the “Garage 56” NASCAR entry, which was strictly present as a PR stunt but which nonetheless made the viewers happy. The rest of the event was virtually pre-determined by the last-minute ballast penalties handed out to Toyota and Ferrari. The only real influence the drivers could have on the proceedings was a negative one, as shown by Jack Aitken (crashed a Cadillac on lap one) and Ryo Hirakawa (trashed the only Toyota with a chance of winning).
By all accounts it was good racing — but I’d sure like to see LeMans try a few years with no competitive adjustments, a stable rule book, and plenty of incentives for manufacturers to do their best. This year the Toyotas were a full fifteen seconds slower than they’d been in previous years. That’s not right. The cars should be getting faster, not slower. Perhaps the 250mph peaks of the Eighties are too dangerous — in which case you shorten the straights yet again.
In any event, I will turn the discussion of this and other motorsports events over to all of you; perhaps “Sherman McCoy” will be kind enough to offer his considered opinion.
balance...etc. is beyond loathsome...it's the 'political/sociological equity' of motor racing. ptui!
LeMans is boring AF so I echo the point. Watch MotoGP! Asian drivers wreck there too!