RacingNation.com
Home / Sportscar / The Long Sprint

The Long Sprint

Audi set the standard for endurance racing the past decade. [Jack Webster Photo]

Audi set the standard for endurance racing the past decade. [Jack Webster Photo]

By Jack Webster & Eddie LePine

There is no such thing any longer as endurance sports car racing. All races, regardless of length, are flat out sprint contests. Cars and drivers are always on the razor’s edge and are expected to give 100% at all times, from the drop of the green flag to the finish.

It used to be that a multi car team would send one car out front as the “hare” in an attempt to get some of the other cars to chase him and hopefully break in the process, while the teammate car would run a predetermined pace to preserve the machinery for a chance to race for the victory at the end of the contest.

No longer.

The cars are so bullet proof, the drivers so good that there is no longer any need to have a “tortoise” and “hare” strategy. You have to run flat out all the time. As evidence of this evolution in endurance sports car racing all one has to do is take a look at the margins of victory in quite a few of the endurance races held worldwide in the past decade or so. Margins have shrunk from multiple laps to minutes and in some cases down to seconds. One might attribute some of this to full course yellow caution periods (in IMSA races in particular), but we have seen the margin of victory at classic events like Le Mans drop drastically as well.

It is all part of a modern package, perhaps in most recent history perfected by Audi Motorsport beginning in 2000 with their outstanding string of victories at Sebring, Le Mans and Petit Le Mans. Their cars were top notch, their crews were second to none, their strategy was always the best and their driving teams were the best. They literally perfected the right “package” for endurance racing.

All one had to do was watch Audi practicing pit stops and driver changes prior to any race. They practiced over and over, planned for any contingency and once the race arrived, virtually every possible scenario had already been anticipated and prepared for.

The other big change in endurance racing has been the number of drivers assigned to a car for a race. Long gone are the days of two drivers sharing a car for a twelve or twenty four hour race. Now the norm is at least three and many times four drivers sharing a car in these races.

Why would that be? For the factory teams competing at the top level of the sport, such as factory teams from Audi, Porsche and Toyota it is to always have a fresh and 100% ready driver either in the car or available to get into the car. The concentration required to drive these modern cars is so intense and the competition so fierce, you cannot afford to have anyone in the car who is not capable of giving 100% the entire time they are in the car, whether on their first stint or their fourth.

For smaller and independent teams, having additional drivers meets another vital need in modern endurance racing – money. Funded drivers for independent teams are an absolute necessity in the modern era, as the cost of competition has gotten so high. If it weren’t for having a third or fourth driver in these cars, many of these teams would not even be on the grid.

So, like it or not, endurance racing has evolved and continues to evolve. The speed and reliability of the cars is at historic highs, as is the talent of the drivers piloting those cars.

As evidenced by the increased worldwide interest in endurance sports car racing, race fans are embracing this evolution.

Share Button