Following my previous safety car analysis for the 2015 Bathurst 12 hour, I thought I should provide some analysis of the green running. Lets be honest, the final part of the race was only for around 4 minutes we may all agree it was probably the best 4 minutes of racing you will see all year.
The data I have used was created from the notes I made throughout the 12 hours, I used the tracking template which can be downloaded free here. We shall be taking a look at total running in time and laps, longest and shortest periods of green and an average too. I’ve also taken a look at how much of an advantage a car would of needed to gain a lap back in the longest period of green running.
In the first table I have listed all the occasions of green running, 20 in total, you will see time and laps covered in each period. One thing I did note straight away was the fact that third longest period of green was set at the beginning of the race, while in the darkness. Another section of the data that struct me, is the fact that the race only ran for over an hour twice and on four occasions green running only lasted for 3 laps.
A minor contention during the race involved some of the fast cars that found themselves a lap down, sometimes through no fault of their own with an unluckily timed safety car. Looking through the results of the race you will note four cars finished one lap down from the leader. These include #49 Vicious Rumour Racing – Ferrari F458, #32 JBS Australia – Lamborghini Gallardo, #33 Clearwater Racing – Ferrari F458 and #16 Phoenix Racing – Audi R8-LMS Ultra. With this in mind I tried to calculate just how much of an advantage these four cars would of needed to gain a lap back. Using a base lap time of 2min 5secs and the longest period of green running of 36 laps (1hr 19mins). Each car would need to out-pace the leaders by 3.4secs per lap for the full period of green to gain back a lap, a near impossible task. The only possible way to get a lap back would be with strategy, pitting at a different time to the leaders, followed by a lucky safety car.
The final table of data I have prepared includes a quick overview, longest and shortest periods of green running. The minimum amount of time comes as no real surprise “safety cars, breed safety car” after all. Further analysis shows green running for 55% of the race when calculated in time, I have also broken down the green running in minutes 390 in total with the remainder being under safety car conditions.
In summary, a fantastic race, many viewers may say it was ruined by lengthy safety cars, others may say it’s the notorious Mount Panorama. I’m not really being drawn on either thought, a way to allow fast cars to get a lap back would be a good edition however it would lengthen safety car periods. I personally don’t think a code 60 would be the answer either, recovery trucks used the track to get to and from an incident, a code 60 would have both on the track at the same time, from recent high profile incidents, we all know that’s never a great idea.
I for one am not jealous of the Bathurst 12 hour organisers, does it really need fixing? Is it actually broke? Biggest crowd attendance ever (32,000), massive viewing figures from around the world………
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