24 Hours of Le Mans Test Day More than Song and a Dance to American Hopefuls

• Predicting any car other than Toyota’s GR010 Hybrid to win a sixth Le Mans would also constitute poor judgement.

• After three opening round victories in the World Endurance Championship, it’s the Japanese manufacturer’s race to lose.
  

• Compared to the GT cars, the NASCAR Camaro is not slow—it was fourth among them in the leisurely first session.

The official Test Day at Le Mans is a song and dance. But on this Sunday, it sold a lot of tickets, judging by the many crowded grandstands between the Main Tribune and Tertre Rouge and the heavy foot traffic in the track’s Village.

An if the Ferrari 499P, Peugeot 9X8 and the Team JOTA customer Porsche 963 are leading the speed charts, it’s a sure indication that lap times are far more waltz than quick-step.

Alas, the song of engines, which can be heard for miles around the Circuit of the Sarthe on a clear day, are reason enough to watch the parade of polite passing on the straights, a preliminary to the 100th year of the race. So much for the strategy of the Hendrick Motorsports Camaro drivers working out of Garage 56, one of the many facets of this complicated and very French presentation known as the Centenary.

The Hendrick drivers were hoping to learn more about high-speed traffic. “How our car is getting into corners and into the braking zone compared to the prototypes is what we’re focused on,” said seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who will co-drive with Mike Rockenfeller and Jenson Button. “Just trying to learn how we can coexist and where we need to leave a lane and where we can anticipate passing. This is what Jenson, Rocky and myself are worried about now.”

Too bad the ground-pounding thunder of the NASCAR Camaro does not create sound waves strong enough to give it a supernatural buffer against contact from those wheeling faster prototypes. Compared to the GT cars, the NASCAR Camaro is not slow—it was fourth among them in the leisurely first session.

But Rockenfeller can attest to staying in one’s lane, albeit from the reverse angle. At the flat-out kink between Mulsanne and Indianapolis at Le Mans in 2011, his Audi R18 glanced off the Ferrari Italia of Rob Kauffman, then turned left into the barriers. The Audi went straight through the steel fence and by time safety personnel arrived, Rockenfeller had disappeared in the dense night, crawling out dazed and disoriented after the massive crash but okay. Nobody was ever more thankful for a strong chassis and the HANS Device. Meanwhile, gentleman driver Kauffman was asked to stand down by race officials in favor of Michael Waltrip continuing, which makes about as much sense as anything else at the Circuit de La Sarthe. It was Rockenfeller, as the saying goes, who chose poorly.

The bottom line for the Hendrick Motorsports entry is finishing the race to become only the second Garage 56 entry to finish the race since the experimental category was created in 2012.

Predicting any car other than Toyota’s GR010 Hybrid to win a sixth Le Mans would also constitute poor judgement. After three opening round victories in the World Endurance Championship, it’s the Japanese manufacturer’s race to lose. But hope, older than even the cobblestones in the Plantagenet city in the center of Le Mans, springs eternal.

“We arrive at Le Mans expecting to do our best,” said James Calado, a two-time winner in the Ferrari 488 GTE who will be driving one of the new and splendiferous 499P prototypes. “We know we have a good car with a package that suits the fastest sectors of the Le Mans track. In performance terms, I think we will have the chance to do well in a race in which, of course, we will test the reliability of the 499P to the utmost. The prime goal is making it to the checkered flag while getting on the podium or scoring a victory would be even more of a dream come true.”

In other words, strive to be third and in line for the top step if the Toyota team’s race turns out to be something other than a bonne journée. That’s also the kind of thinking at work in the factory camps of Porsche and Cadillac in addition to Ferrari.

The Test Day and its waltz are reminiscent of a W.C. Fields line. “Hair’s a wig. As for the teeth, I couldn’t say.” By going too fast, teams risk an arbitrary BOP adjustment from the organizers, whose decision-making authority is sacrosanct. You’d have to be nuts to risk their ire, although some might say the nuts, in fact, are in the tower.