One of the aspects that immediately caused discussion at the 24h of Le Mans was the new Safety Car entry procedure, which in the fourth event of the FIA World Endurance Championship unfortunately affected the show in some stages.
At the beginning of April all the news in terms of sports management on and off the track for the Centenary edition of the French endurance classic had been confirmed, but someone immediately turned up their noses when they saw how the stages would be treated with the car safety on the track.
Until last year, there were three Safety Cars and this has been maintained for 2023 as well, entering the three sectors along the 13.626km Circuit de la Sarthe. But here is what has been added, namely the grouping of the marshals behind a single car and then the subsequent phases of doubling and subdivision into the three categories.
To clarify how the processes took place, it is worth recalling how everything works below. As in previous years, initially three SCs – A, B and C – enter in as many distinct points of the route. Here the pit lane will remain open for entry, but not for exit until the last car of the big snake that arrives has passed line 2 of the SC, then the red light will return to the pit lane.
Safety car
Photo by: Nikolaz Godet
Once the conditions allow it, we proceed with the ‘Merging behind one Safety Car’ (point 14.6.4 of the regulation), or as described below:
– The entrance to the pit lane will be closed.
– Safety Car B and Safety Car C will turn on their green lights, then the cars positioned behind Safety Car B and Safety Car C will overtake their respective Safety Cars and continue as quickly as possible without compromising safety and without overtaking each other , until you reach the line behind the Safety Car A.
From now on, and until the end of the Safety Car procedure, every car entering the pits must first inform the Race Direction via the official messaging system.
Any car that has entered the pit lane once the entrance is closed will only be allowed to rejoin the track after the last car in the queue behind Safety Car A has crossed the Safety Car 2 line once more.
Subsequently, the third phase takes over, ie that of the ‘Pass-Around’, which allows the cars behind the SC and in front of the leader of their category to ‘double up’; here the safety car will turn on the green lights and the group will move to the left to allow the lapped to pass the line and the Safety Car from the right side, always proceeding in the same order and without warming up the tyres, covering the track as quickly as possible and always in safety to reconnect with the troops.
Each team is responsible for its own vehicle, therefore for communicating or not to the driver at the wheel at that time whether or not he is eligible for the Pass-Around. Infractions will be punished with a Stop & Go equal to two laps of the race.
Once the Pass-Around has been completed, we finally arrive at the fourth and final phase, that is the grouping of the categories with the ‘Drop Back’. We return to traveling on the left side and without swaying to warm up the tyres, starting with the LMP2s which will take to the right to be overtaken by the Hypercars and the LMGTE AMs, following up in order.
Then it will be up to the LMGTE AMs to step aside and allow them to be overtaken by the LMP2s, re-establishing the hierarchies between the categories. At this point it will be possible to start again as soon as the communication from the Clerk of the Course arrives and the pit lane will be open at the entrance when the group reaches Line 1 of the SC, as well as at the exit when the last car of the lot has passed beyond Line 2.
Safety car
Photo by: Marc Fleury
On the one hand, the choice has taken a lot from what happens in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, which often uses (and abuses) the Safety Car to solve problems on the track, giving away restarts at loggerheads among all with even sprint arrivals (see Daytona 2022, for example).
In the days before the race there had been several back and forth between the riders. Most of those Europeans and those involved only in the FIA WEC rejected the decision a priori, while those who also race overseas expressed their favour.
The fact is that Le Mans 2023 had its first Safety Car already after the opening lap, when Jack Aitken crashed into the barriers exiting the first chicane of the ‘Hunaudières’ straight with his Cadillac, necessitating lengthy repairs to the guard rail .
And shortly afterwards the rain also forced the Clerk of the Course, Eduardo Freitas, and his collaborators to neutralize the race after a series of cars that spun or went off the track as they were still on slick tires in the points where the downpour was unleashing.
Safety car in front of #94 Peugeot Totalenergies Peugeot 9X8 of Loic Duval, Gustavo Menezes, Nico Muller
Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
In the first 4h of the race, no less than 120′ were lost behind the Safety Car (which also intervened later) with all its new procedure and in the total calculation of the race, no less than 3h01’47” saw the protagonists proceed in single file behind the security car.
In fact, an eighth of the race ended like this, also because on a track as long as Le Mans, proceeding at SC pace meant taking about 7′ to complete the lap, which combined with the three phases – transition to a SC, pass-around and drop back – resulted in at least a half hour lost. Too much to be able to think that it can be re-proposed like this also next year, for which changes or revisions will be necessary.
It can be said that the idea, with a view to increasing the show, could also have been valid on paper, but when you run 13.626 km in the end it’s more boredom and precious time lost to be able to say that the procedure works. Safety first, of course, but on balance, the 24h Le Mans centenary didn’t deserve to lose 181′ like this.
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