The attention for the outright lead at Le Mans can distract many from the tight battles a little further down the field, the best of which can normally be found within the GT classes. Inside Second has taken the opportunity to take a closer look at GTE-Pro in 2014. The 24 hour long fight between #51 AF Corse Bruni / Vilander / Fisichella, #73 Corvette Racing Magnussen / Garcia / Taylor and #92 Porsche Team Manthey Holzer / Makowiecki / Lietz continued until the end, nothing is ever certain at Le Mans.
The data we have used tracks the cars throughout the race from lap 30 until the final lap 335, we have used the time stamps from the raw data to calculate their relative time difference per lap, we then displayed them in the graph below. The #51 Ferrari is not on the graph because the car is our control, it is effectively on zero and the other two cars are measured from that, where the graph goes into a minus shows either Corvette or Porsche are ahead of the Ferrari 458 in the race.
Early on in the race, the fight was extremely close with all three cars covered by seconds, with changes of position becoming regular. Interestingly you can pick all the pit stops from the basic data, where the line rises, shows pit stops by that particular car, and where the line sinks points to #51 either pitting or losing time. One thing we did notice, around lap 56 of our data the #73 Corvette loses time to both Porsche and Ferrari for a prolonged pit stop losing five-minutes, However all is not lost, 250 odd laps later Corvette gains second place back from Porsche, surprisingly Porsche continue to lose time to both it’s competitors until the end of the race, I would assume the car had a problem the team were unable to fix. An assumption from the data appears to show the C7 was much happier in warmer temperatures, The gap remains consistent at the start of the race, the only deviation due to pit stops, then from around lap 144 of the data the Corvette appears to keep losing time as temperature drops through the night until around lap 244, where is gains speed as temperatures began to rise through the morning. It manages to rescue second place in the race, however the AF Corse Ferrari remained out of reach.
The stints that cemented the race for AF Corse, were 23 laps completed by Bruni where he averaged 3min 59.613 Seconds, followed by eight interrupted laps by Toni Vilander. It appears the team made a smart call to bring the car in under safety car conditions, I believe this gained them even more time, an unassailable lead.
In summary, it just goes to show that winning the greatest race in the world is not just having a fast car, it’s about strategy, setup and outstanding driving ability. Corvette’s weakness appeared to be night-time setup, Porsche appeared to get out-smarted, then compounded by a car issue. AF Corse got everything right and won the race by a comfortable margin in the end.
James Foster
Photo credit © Gabi Tomescu – AdrenalMedia.com http://www.fiawec.com
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