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2011 STRATEGY - RACE REPORT


The three Peugeot 908s lost time as the temperatures dropped on Saturday night, though they clawed back the deficit


Bourdais, Wurz and Gene. In this context, it is worth emphasising that a pit stop to change drivers and tyres costs an extra 30 seconds over a stop just to refuel. I wonder, if the Wurz / Davidson / Gene car could have run on an ‘11-lap stint’ schedule, how different things may have turned out. It was certainly worth a roll of the dice. Meanwhile, over in the Audi pits, no one was going home, instead the entire might of the Joest operation turned its attention to the number 2 car. Possibly as a result of greater caution in the traffic during the night, the Audi average lap time slipped off slightly during the night. Admittedly, it was particularly cold, with air temperature hitting a low of 8degC, and the track temperature dropping below 15degC. Simultaneously, humidity peaked at 80 per cent, making it difficult for anyone to get heat into their tyres. Figure 6 shows how the average lap times compared. With better consumption and better lap times, plus the impact of further safety car periods at the end of this phase, the Peugeots were closing in on the Audi.


PHASE 3


As the sun came up and visibility improved, conditions were ideal for setting fast times. At 06:44, on lap 222, André Lotterer in


the no 3 Audi set a new fastest lap of 3m 27.710, eclipsing by three-thousandths of a second the best lap set by Anthony Davidson in the dead of night. Four laps later, Sebastien Bourdais in the Peugeot – now leading the race – set a 3m 27.388 but, on his very next time through, Lotterer went better still at 3m 26.298. On his next lap, Bourdais matched this time, to the thousandth of a second! Lotterer still had four laps of fuel in his tank, and on his 229th lap, at 7:08am, he set what was to stand as the fastest lap of the race at 3m 25.289s. At this point, as the graph


in figure 3 shows, the Peugeot was spending more of its time leading the race than it was in second place, but the final safety car period (between 7:37am and 8:07am) closed things right up. With the safety cars on the circuit, and André Lotterer running out of fuel, Audi had to make a pit stop. Benoît Tréluyer then set off as the clock struck 8am, on what was to be a quintuple stint. Figure 7 shows the average lap times during this shift. Meanwhile, things started to


go wrong for Peugeot. Just before 9am, Peugeot no 8 was given a one-minute stop-and-go penalty


Average lap time


Wurz Peugeot 908


7 Davidson Peugeot 908 8 Sarrazin Peugeot 908 9 Bourdais Peugeot 908 9 Pagenaud Peugeot 908


3m 34.7s 3m 33.3s 3m 33.9s 3m 32.3s 3m 33.8s 3m 31.7s 3m 33.1s


No of laps


because one of the mechanics had not been wearing protective goggles during a pit stop. This car had already dropped a lap behind, but this would put it right out of contention. Then, at 9:48am, Alex Wurz made a mistake at Indianapolis and went off into the gravel, damaging the front of the car. He managed to make it back to the pits but, by the time repairs had been made, some four laps had been lost. Now it was all down to the number 9 car. During the previous caution period, the team had taken advantage of the safety cars to change the radio


Figure 6: average lap time analysis, Phase 2 (from 01:05-06:15) No Driver Car


Comments


2 Tréluyer Audi R18 2 Fässler Audi R18 7


32 Three ‘green’ stints, from 01:32-03:28 21 Two ‘green’ stints, from 03:30-04:46 24 Two ‘green’ stints, from 01:34-03:01 35 Three ‘green’ stints, from 03:02-06:06 36 Four ‘green’ stints, from 01:14-04:07 12 One ‘green’ stint, from 01:34-02:17 36 Three ‘green’ stints, from 02:18-:28


Figure 7: Tréluyer’s quintuple stint (from 08:00-11:17) Comments


Lap at start


Start time End time Average lap time


240 08:00:40 251 08:43:50 261 09:19:29 272 09:59:00 283 10:38:45


No of laps


08:42:58 3m 50.7s 11 Safety car out until 08:07 (two laps) 09:18:38 3m 28.8s 10 Fastest stint of race 09:58:07 3m 30.7s 11 10:37:51 3m 31.9s 11 11:17:48 3m 33.0s 11


Le Mans • www.racecar-engineering.com


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