How Le Mans sums up racing's major problems

The Le Mans 24 Hours is one of the defining races in motorsport. So it's appropriate that the 2017 running of the twice-round-the-clock endurance classic clearly presented us with the fundamental tensions at the heart of 21st century in microcosm.

Four aspects of the race highlighted the problems that the sport as a whole, not just Le Mans itself or even sportscar racing in the broader sense, is taking on. And each of these aspects is stuck between the proverbial rock and the hard place in terms of what to do.

Firstly, we have what happened right at the front of the race. There were a grand total of six LMP1 cars entered, which is a pitiful number no matter how you spin it.

Of those, there were five manufacturer entries thanks to the withdrawal of Audi at the end of 2016. With the bottom falling out of the LMP1 privateer class, for now at least ahead of what appears a likely revival starting next year, the only non-works effort was the ByKolles CLM. That car managed seven laps in a race it could have won had it run cleanly.

All six cars in the top class hit trouble. The winner was the dramatically-delayed #2 Porsche that spent over an hour in the pits having the front motor replaced. The other finisher was the even-more-heavily delayed #8 Toyota that also had to have a front motor replaced, with the need to replace the battery extending its stay in the garage even further.

So we had the bizarre sight of the only remaining Porsche 919 Hybrid chasing down the leading LMP2 cars. Timo Bernhard only passed the LMP2-winning Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA-Gibson 07, run by Jota Sport, late in the penultimate hour.

The difference between the cost of running an LMP1 and an LMP2 car is dramatic. And while a victory for the ORECA would have been a fantastic story and a hugely popular win, it would have been embarrassing for WEC and for the manufacturer teams. While the #2 Porsche was heavily delayed, it did at least win.

Many of the problems for the works cars were related to the hybrid technology. Toyota suggested it was too early for this kind of technology, which has powered all Le Mans winners from 2012 to date, and it's certainly true that the costs are enormous. You can easily spend something like 100 times more on a works LMP1 project than an LMP2 assault.

So here's where the tension comes in. Motorsport needs to be cost effective and even car companies need to justify their spend. The higher the spend, the bigger the benefit required. So why not simply make LMP1 for manufacturers fielding 'conventional' cars as it was back in the day?

The trouble there is that manufacturers also need to justify their spend in terms of how it fits into their marketing strategy. Being able to say they are developing green road technology is hugely beneficial as this is a key area of development for production cars.

So LMP1's rock is the rather embarrassing and costly reliability problems versus the hard place of the economic reality meaning that it needs to have such technology. There's no easy answer and a balance has to be struck, but finding that balance is not easy.

You could simplify things and that would certainly appeal to manufacturers such as Peugeot. But that's not to say anyone new would actually commit.

This brings us onto our second problem, namely the disqualification of the #13 Rebellion Racing ORECA that Nelson Piquet, David Heinemeier-Hansson and Mathias Beche took third overall (and second in class).

LMP2 is closely controlled in terms of costs. To achieve that, there are four permitted chassis manufacturers - ORECA, Riley, Dallara and Ligier (ignore the 'Alpine' cars run by Signatech, for these are simply rebadged ORECAs) - powered by identical Gibson V8s pumping out in the neighbourhood of 600bhp.

To ensure that these cars are not too expensive, there are two bodywork specs available - the high and low downforce versions. They can be mixed and matched, but the parts are homologated and therefore unchangeable.

Rebellion hit trouble when the starter motor of the car started misbehaving. So it produced what historically would be considered a good bit of lateral thinking.

The first time Rebellion noticed the problem, it took off the bodywork to access the starter motor to give the solenoid a hit to get the car to fire. This led to a penalty for working on the car while the engine was running.

So to avoid facing a similar penalty every time, or go through the time-consuming process of replacing the problem part, Rebellion modified a spare piece of bodywork by cutting a hole in it. This allowed a wrench to do the tapping and some prompt pit exits.

Good thinking, you might say. And rightly so. So the car shouldn't have been disqualified, right?

Well, yes, it should have done. And this is where the nature of LMP2 comes in. The team had deliberately modified the bodywork, so this violated the rules. And while you might say force majeure should be cited, where do you draw the line?

It would be naive to think that teams wouldn't take the precedent of the Rebellion car not being punished and attempt to run it to their advantage. Teams would inevitably start to consider ways to justify making such changes, which might have other advantages.

Harsh, certainly. But necessary. It's a crying shame for a team that did an outstanding job. The bigger concern is perhaps the limbo the team was stuck in with its problem, which could have led to constant penalties had it taken the bodywork off to fire the car before putting it back on then rejoining!

So this second rock is the need to keep costs under control, with the hard place being the desire to allow teams to use clever solutions to keep their cars in the hunt in the best spirit of the Le Mans 24 Hours.

The third problem is also exemplified by LMP2, which is a Pro-Am category. The regulations demand that you must have at least one silver or bronze-rated driver in your car. The rationale for this is that many of the cars are funded by the drivers bringing money and often it's the 'gentleman' drivers that bring a large part of the funding.

So to have a serious chance of winning the class, you need a strong silver. There are multiple crews in the class that effectively ape the all-pro line-ups thanks to the strength of their silver drivers.

Take Thomas Laurent in the winning car. The 19-year-old is seriously quick, and a 'professional' driver in the early stages of his career. He is certainly far from the genuine amateur that silvers are intended to be.

That's not to take anything away from the winning Jota Sport team. He meets the rules for a silver, is a silver, so there's nothing wrong with that. And it's far from the only team to have what might be colloquially be called a 'fake' silver.

Then we look at other examples. Ex-Formula 1 racer Jean-Eric Vergne was a star turn in one of the Manor team's ORECAs, with Vitaly Petrov also showing well in the other car. But both cars had weaker silvers in the cars in the form of Tor Graves and Roberto Gonzalez. In fairness, their second drivers weren't of the same calibre as the leading LMP2 drivers either, but even so to make that team work commercially that's what they needed to do.

And that's what it comes down to. In order to make LMP2 work, you need these drivers who really do put the 'am' in Pro-Am. But with LMP1 having chased off privateers, there are also teams working on a slightly different commercial basis that can pick and choose their drivers with a little more freedom.

So the rock is the need to keep the amateur drivers interested, the hard place is the potency of the silver/bronze drivers as performance differentiators.

With 25 cars entered, you could argue for LMP2 to be split along the lines of the GTE class, with a Pro and an Am class. But that would also dilute a single strong class in two and make it harder to follow for fans. It's not an easy one to solve, although if the hoped-for LMP1 privateer revival comes off, with Ginetta, BR and Perrinn all due to come in, that could ease the pressure.

Mention of GTE brings us onto point four: performance balancing. This is a hugely emotive subject and has generated plenty of discussion, with the complaining always peaking around Le Mans time.

There are five manufacturers in GTE, who are all signed up to Balance of Performance. For the regular rounds, this is an automated process, but the unique nature of Le Mans means there is the need for there to be a little bit of a 'fudge factor' to make it work.

Last year, the BoP didn't go well at Le Mans. Only Ferrari and Ford were in the fight (amid talk of Ford walking it, it's often forgotten that the AF Corse cars hit trouble and the Risi Competizione entry was in the hunt), with Chevrolet, Aston Martin and Porsche out of contention.

This year, BoP was far better and all five manufacturers were in the mix. But there were complaints from Ford that its BoP was too harsh.

The rock here is that BoP is needed to get the manufacturers to commit because they know they should be competitive and for the costs to be kept under control. The hard place is the fact that we want to see manufacturers able to develop their cars and not being pegged back.

Actually, BoP has been largely a success. In endurance racing, we've had big-name brands having outstanding races consistently in recent years - and GT3 has also been a huge success - so sacrificing a little of the teams' abilities to develop cars and gain an advantage is the price that's paid for what is a thriving form of racing.

The perfect rules set for any motorsport series is a complex venn diagram and you are shooting for a very small sweet spot. We want costs to be under control, for drivers to have a big part to play in things, for there to be a level playing field, for the cleverest teams to reap the rewards of what they do, for the cars to be distinctive. That list goes on endlessly.

None of this is to say the rules governing LMP1, LMP2 and GTE are fundamentally wrong. All exist for rational reasons and, easy as it is to do so, none of these scenarios should be condemned.

But it is a reminder that, with motorsport trying to secure an ongoing place in a fast-changing world, it's profoundly difficult to balance up all of these often contradictory challenges.

Actually, you'd argue sportscar racing is doing a pretty good job of it. After all, look back 25 years and Le Mans attracted only 30 cars. Today, it's 60 and others who wanted to compete did not gain an entry.

But that doesn't mean it's easy and the conundrums of how to incorporate emerging technologies, keep costs under control, ensuring good close racing and ensure motorsport is financially viable were brilliantly encapsulated by the talking points of this year's race.