The 2011 Sportscar season review

This will be remembered as a seminal season for sportscar racing. And not because there was some amazing racing between Peugeot and Audi every time they went head to head on the track. It was the year that the discipline got back a proper long-distance world championship for the first time in 20 seasons. It was called the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, and before summer had fully arrived came the news that this world championship in all but name would get the title it always deserved for the 2012.

The first and now only full ILMC (the 2010 series was just three end-of-season races) might get lost in the history books if the new FIA World Endurance Championship is the runaway success that everyone is hoping for and almost as many are predicting. That would be a shame for two reasons: firstly because of its importance in the creation, or rather recreation, of the WEC; and secondly because of the quality of racing up front between the turbodiesel factory squads.

Intercontinental Le Mans Cup

Peugeot machinery won all but one of the ILMC races in 2011 © LAT

The Peugeot versus Audi confrontation had produced some amazing racing over the four seasons prior to 2011, and it stands to reason that the on-track action got even better this year. This was the first season that the two big guns of the LMP1 prototype ranks had built all-new cars at the same time courtesy of regulation changes centred on the engine bay.

They both started with a clean sheet of paper, and despite taking slightly different design routes (most notably in the engine concept), they came out with a pair of cars that were evenly matched. You only have to look at the qualifying times from the Le Mans 24 Hours to understand how close the second-generation 908 and the R18 TDI were. The six factory turbodiesels were separated by a little more than half a second, and on a circuit measuring more than eight miles!

After just over 3000 miles of racing, the margin of victory for Audi at Le Mans was just 13s. That was actually the closest finish of the season, which was strange given that Le Mans is, of course, the longest race and it was the event at which there appeared to be the greatest gap in performance between the R18 and 908 turbodiesels.

The Audi was the quicker car, and significantly so, for much of the 24 Hours. Cool temperatures at Le Mans this year prevented the Peugeot Sport team from hooking up the 908 on its medium-compound Michelin tyre during the hours of daylight. As night and the temperatures fell, the French cars looked atrocious. "They are so slow," offered one Audi driver.

The Audi R18 TDI made its debut at Spa, and won next time out at Le Mans © LAT

Yet as the thermometer dropped further and it was time to swap onto the soft tyre, the balance of the race changed. The Peugeot worked on the softs, while the Audi didn't. Or rather the R18 didn't inspire confidence in its drivers after swapping compounds.

That was the story of the season. 'Switching on the tyres' was the buzz phrase in the paddock in 2011. Peugeot didn't manage to do it consistently through the 24 Hours at Le Mans, and that's ultimately why it lost out on the biggest prize of the year.

Its consolation was winning the ILMC, both the teams' and manufacturers' titles, with a clean sweep of the other six races, though it had to rely on a solid run from the works-backed ORECA team and its previous generation 908 HDi at the season opener at Sebring. That, and the fact that Peugeot scored nearly double the number of points as its rivals in the manufacturers' standings, suggests that it had a clear advantage over the rest of the season, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Audi was in the hunt at every race, or rather at some point at every race. And that included the Sebring 12 Hours when it run the the old R15+ roadster because its new coupe had yet to be tested to its liking. Yet Audi failed to challenge right to the end of one of the regular ILMC races, with the exception of the Spa 6 Hours in May.

Davidson established himself as a sportscar top-liner in 2011 © LAT

Was the 908 the better race car over a range of circuits? Perhaps. Was the it a consistent race car over a full distance? There is evidence to suggest that, but it is for the most part circumstantial.

Audi's problem was most 'un-Audi-like': it failed to get its cars to the finish of races cleanly. Put simply, its drivers got involved in too many incidents. The AUTOSPORT 6 Hours at Silverstone was a case in point. The R18 was right in the mix, but both cars made contact with slower machinery, putting them out of contention. The Petit Le Mans enduro at Road Atlanta was perhaps another race it could have won had not Romain Dumas clipped a backmarker as he was shaping up to pass Franck Montagny's Peugeot.

There were other races where Audi wasn't in game over the distance, though again its cars were in the hunt in the early stages. At Imola, the R18s, running in high-downforce configuration for the first time, were blighted by a braking issue caused by tyre debris blocking the front brake ducts and at the Zhuhai finale in China it couldn't double stint its Michelin tyres with the same effectiveness as Peugeot.

The 2011 ILMC perhaps featured a changing of the guard in terms of drivers, most notably at Audi. Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer, two thirds of the winning line-up at Le Mans, emerged as a stars of the future, who are perhaps ready to succeed the likes of Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen as the stars of the German manufacturer's line-up.

The older ORECA Peugeot won the Sebring 12 Hours after new cars hit trouble © LAT

Anthony Davidson also confirmed that he has a long sportscar career ahead of him courtesy of an impressive and successful season. Every time he was handed his 908 for qualifying duties, he put it on pole and he won three races, two with Sebastien Bourdais and one at Spa with Le Mans co-drivers Alex Wurz and Marc Gene.

Frenchman Bourdais had a great season that went a long way to removing any doubts about his talents and temperament. He also won three times, including at Silverstone with Simon Pagenaud when Davidson was out injured, and played a central role in Peugeot's pursuit of Audi at Le Mans together with Pagenaud.

The petrol-powered LMP1s were nothing more than bit players in the ILMC, and that would be a charitable description of the Aston Martin AMR-One. The first ground-up Aston prototype in 20 years only graced the ILMC grid at Le Mans, though it also made an appearance at the Le Mans Series opener at Paul Ricard in April.

Fundamental problems with its straight-six turbo powerplant meant the car was neither fast nor reliable. The engine needed a substantial amount of development and the funds to do that were not available to a manufacturer already trying to take on Peugeot and Audi on the cheap.

Aston Martin quietly dropped the AMR-One after the Le Mans 24 Hours © LAT

The car was quietly abandoned after Le Mans (the end of the project has yet to be publicly confirmed), Aston Martin Racing dusted off one of its V12-engined Lola-based coupes for the final races of the season and was rewarded with a podium finish at Petit.

It was the final hurrah for a project that had promised so much. Next year, the Prodrive-run AMR squad will mount a GTE attack, ending its four-year adventure in the prototype ranks. For all team boss David Richards' talk about the team punching above its weight, which it certainly did in 2009, this year proved that money talks.

The Anglo-Swiss Rebellion Racing squad was the best P1 privateer with the solo Lola-Toyota it ran in the ILMC events. The only other P1 regular was OAK Racing, which ran a pair of its own OAK-Pescarolo chassis with Judd V8 motivation.

LMP2 didn't quite take off in the ILMC in 2011, only three teams signing up for the full season and only two of them contesting each of the races. The Signatech Nissan team came out on top in the points ranking, heading the ILMC classification at five of the seven races, yet its ORECA 03 was the first P2 past the chequered flag just once. It was headed home by the top cars from the Le Mans Series and the American Le Mans Series on the other occasions.

AF Corse beat off allcomers to take GT Pro honours for Ferrari © LAT

The combination of AF Corse, the new Ferrari 458 Italia, Gianmaria Bruni and, to a lesser extent, Giancarlo Fisichella was just too good for the opposition in the GTE Pro division. BMW started the season with a victory at Sebring when it was represented by the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing squad, but its V8-powered M3 was not quite such a potent weapon in the hands of the Schnitzer team that ran the bulk of the ILMC. It won at Zhuhai and should have taken victory at Imola, hot days on which its Dunlop tyres showed the same effectiveness as in the US.

The French Larbre Competition team proved yet again that it knows how to win major sportscar titles. Armed with an ex-works Chevrolet Corvette C6.R, it dominated the GTE Am division.

Le Mans Series

It was somehow fitting that Henri Pescarolo's revived team should win the final Le Mans Series LMP1 title given that it was a long-time mainstay of the championship. His squad, formerly Pescarolo Sport and now Pescarolo Team, returned after a year of inactivity to add a third title to the ones it claimed in 2005 and '06.

It was a fairytale story founded on a act of huge generosity. Sportscar legend Pescarolo lost control of his team in the winter of 2008/09, but after it went into administration last year its assets were bought by two benefactors, including OAK Racing boss Jacques Nicolet, and loaned back to their former owner.

Pescarolo LMS Paul Ricard 2011 © LAT

The four-time Le Mans winner put together a budget to run a solo Pescarolo 01 in grandfathered form, with a restricted Judd V10, and put old favourites Emmanuel Collard and Christophe Tinseau in the car together with sportscar up-and-comer Julien Jousse.

The trademark consistency and reliability of the team was the cornerstone of another successful championship assault, though it was a close-run thing with the Rebellion Racing Lola-Toyota of Andrea Belicchi and Pescarolo old-boy Jean-Christophe Boullion. So close, in fact, that Pescarolo chose to miss Tinseau out of the driver rotation at the Estoril LMS finale, which meant the ever-dependable Frenchman didn't take a share of the title.

The Anglo-Swiss Rebellion squad had the faster package, courtesy of a Toyota V8 that will form the basis of the hybrid powerplant in the Japanese manufacturers' 2012 Le Mans contender and bespoke aerodynamics commissioned from Lola by the team. That was particularly the case whenever Neel Jani was in the car, but technical issues blighted the Swiss driver's championship challenge with his co-driver Nicolas Prost.

Greaves Motorsport was the revelation of the season in LMP2. The outfit that previously ran as Team Bruichladdich continued with the well-used Zytek owned by the Ojjeh family, now fitted with the Nissan's new P2 V8 and updated to cost-capped Z11SN specification. It wasn't the fastest package, particularly at the start of the season, but it was fast enough and more than reliable enough to win four of the five LMS races and take P2 honours at Le Mans.

Greaves Motorsport took LMP2 title with its Zytek-Nissan © LAT

Tom Kimber-Smith, making a comeback after two years away, reminded everyone of talents that have long been overlooked and claimed the title together with Karim Ojjeh. Olivier Lombard joined the line-up ahead of Le Mans and was impressive at every turn.

AF Corse claimed the GTE Pro title with Bruni and Fisichella ahead of the British JMW Ferrari squad's pairing of Rob Bell and James Walker. The Porsche 911 GT3-RSR was simply too long in the tooth to present anything like a consistent challenge, even in the hands of factory drives Marc Lieb and Richard Lietz in the lead Felbermayr-Proton entry.

The Porsche was good enough in GTE Am, or rather the line-up of Nicolas Armindo and Raymond Narac was. The Imsa Performance line-up dominated the class.

American Le Mans Series

The American Le Mans Series was a shadow of its late-noughties self, at least as far the quantity and quality at the sharp end of the grid went. The days of Audi and Porsche battling for supremacy, with Acura trying to upset the applecart, now seem like a distant memory, though the two regulars in LMP1 at least put on a show.

Series stalwart Dyson Racing ran one and then two of its upgraded LMP2 Lola-Mazda coupes (running P2-sized wheels and tyres, but at a lower weight limit to compensate) and went up against the Muscle Milk team's Lola-Aston Martin coupe. ALMS sanctioning body IMSA clearly got its sums right in balancing the two cars - witness the closest ALMS finish when the Lola-Aston in Klaus Graf's hands beat Dyson's Guy Smith across the line at Road America by 0.112s.

Dyson Lola duo (16) just beat Muscle Milk Aston pair to LMP1 crown © LAT

Smith and his team boss Chris Dyson ended up taking the title, but not before a run of four wins from five races from Muscle Milk duo Graf and Lucas Luhr had looked set to get their championship challenge back on track after a DNF at the Sebring opener. Brake issues and then fuel-pump failure for the Lola-Aston at Baltimore and Laguna Seca allowed Smith and Dyson to wrap up the title with a round to spare.

The expected influx of LMP2 machinery in the ALMS never happened, or was at least delayed by a year. Scott Tucker's Level 5 Motorsports squad was the only full-season entrant, running a flotilla of cars that included both open and closed Lolas and, at the end of the season, two cost-capped HPDs.

The GT class was again the strongest division in the ALMS, with factory representation from Chevrolet, BMW (Rahal), Ferrari (Risi Competizione) and Porsche (Flying Lizard Motorsports). The four manufacturers shared out the victory laurels, though the latest version of the BMW was the fastest car over the full season. A run of three straight victories for Dirk Muller and Joey Hand at the start of the year anchored their successful assault on the championship.

Any other business...

Interest in the WEC is booming, and across all the classes. That's not to say that its creation out of the ILMC will be a bed of roses for sportscar racing around the globe. It will inevitably have a knock-on effect on the other series running to Le Mans rules. In fact, it already has.

Had there been no ILMC this year, there was every chance that Audi would have mounted a full campaign in the ALMS. The lack of LMP1 prototypes in the LMS in Europe, already a problem in 2010, wasn't helped by the ILMC, so much so that championship boss Patrick Peter floated the idea of doing away with them entirely and then carried through on that idea.

When the LMS re-emerges in 2012 as the Europe Le Mans Series, with no shared dates with the WEC, it will be LMP2 machinery that is battling for outright honours.

That sounds like a big incentive for professional race teams and amateur drivers alike, yet for the moment the majority of LMP2 teams, both existing and wannabe, are shooting for the WEC. The ELMS without a strong grid of P2s (and Peter is aiming for 12) could be on a road to oblivion.

That would be a pity, because this author suspects that Le Mans-style sportscar racing needs a strong European feeder series.