INSIGHT: BoP could hurt 2016 GTE-Pro winners
Tuesday, 13 June 2017
By Marshall Pruett / Images by Risi Competizione, JEP/LAT
Will the price of success at Le Mans in 2016 end up costing Ferrari and Ford a chance of winning this year's 24-hour race? Using lap times from the June 4 official Le Mans Test Day as our guide, new Balance of Performance tables gave the factory cars from Aston Martin, Corvette Racing and Porsche a fighting chance. Mired at the bottom of the GTE-Pro class, Ferrari and Ford appeared helpless on the stopwatch.
Podium finishers 12 months ago, the best Ferrari's 488 GTE could manage was 1.1 seconds behind the test-leading Corvette C7.R. Among the Fords, which owned the 2016 event from start to finish with the GT model, the gap to Corvette was 2.8 seconds. Should the chasm separating the Ferraris and Ford be attributed to BoP alone, or are there other factors ? artful lap time manipulation to exaggerate the effects of the BoP penalties, possibly, that should be considered?
"I think if you ask anybody in the paddock or anybody intelligent, they'd say that a Ford and Ferrari and maybe even the Porsche probably have a little bit more in them," Corvette's Tommy Milner told RACER.
"When you look at all the sector data and things like that, and you look at top speeds, we certainly had an advantage on top speed, but that seemed to be the case on the Test Day last year, and we thought that advantage would be there come race time. But it wasn't the case."
Milner, who went fastest at the recent test day in the No. 64 Corvette with teammates Oliver Gavin and Marcel Fassler, says his team's pace came from honest effort, and any concerns about sandbagging were silenced by their leading the test.
"Things would indicate again this year that we don't play the same games that those guys do, so it's tough for us a little bit, because we're only here for the one race," he said.
"There are, obviously, lots of smart people that analyze all these situations to try to figure out what's the right way of going about it is."
Defending GTE-Pro class winner Joey Hand and teammate Dirk Muller were 12th fastest among the 13 cars at the test. The addition of ballast to the Ford GT and a reduction in boost for its twin-turbo V6 engine to slow the car through BoP clearly had an impact.
"It's no secret the BoP is different from what we raced last year to this year is definitely different for us," Hand said. "So, our main goal from was to try and build that [driving] comfort level and that can allow you to do it for the long run without any mistakes. Because if you're not the quickest car, the one thing that you can do is be mistake-free, and do it better than everybody else in the long run."
Risi Competizione race engineer Rick Mayer (pictured), whose Ferrari 488 team fought with Ford for the win last year before ultimately settling for second, is confident that the Ford GTs and Porsche 911 RSRs lengthened their lap times during the test by intentionally avoiding the faster route through some corners.
"The Fords and the Porsches were not using the curbs in the chicane, and they are doing funny lines around the track to pad their times, to try to show that they're slower," he alleged. "So, they definitely did a good job with that. It's difficult to pick that up in the data. You have to look at the GPS, you have to actually compare physical lines you do on the track. That's a hard-sandbagging ploy to take up, but we'll see. I mean, ACO tends to be pretty stubborn a lot of times on this stuff."
Although it isn't a BoP item, Mayer says another influencer on the Test Day times came from the American teams getting their first taste of Michelin's European tires. While Corvette obviously got ahead of the learning curve, the Risi Ferrari and Ford Chip Ganassi Racing teams could also have some valuable tire takeaways to implement once practice begins.
"The tires are all different than the tires we use in the States," Mayer said. "I think all the [IMSA] drivers will tell you that the stability is a bit it's a lot less than the Stateside tires. They move around on the contact patch a lot more. Our drivers struggled, so there's some getting used to the tires and the tires are a bit of an unknown for us. I don't know if can triple, but you can try."
Will the Ferraris and Fords have a better showing in the race than they did on the test day? Can Corvette hold onto its front-running pace? Will Aston Martin be a factor with its V8 Vantages? And has Porsche played the BoP game best of all by running second to the C7.R?
The answers won't necessarily come in practice and qualifying. Not after last year's post-qualifying BoP adjustment that landed within 24 hours of the race. For those holding a little bit of GTE-Pro speed in reserve, it will need to be kept private until the great race gets underway.
"The Corvettes really were just missing power last year, and they got that and more back, so they should be competitive," Mayer said. "The Astons, who knows; it's a weird deal since they're on Dunlops [tires]. I can't tell, but I think they're going to do alright. The current prediction about Ferrari is, it will have competitive cars. Who can say what Ford or Porsche will show? But we'll see. Everybody knows the ACO; they can change the BoP rules right up to the race, just like they did last year."