Why Le Mans' hidden gem will produce its most unpredictable race

If there’s one oft-repeated cliche about 24-hour racing that bears truth, it’s that absolutely anything can happen.

As Toyota discovered in heart-breaking fashion with a turbo problem in 2016, and its perennially unfortunate #7 crew found thanks to some faulty wiring in 2019, seemingly random problems that have never appeared in testing can strike at any time - and often at the most painful moment.

The inherent jeopardy involved in running cars and drivers to their limits is one of the great appeals of endurance racing, and the intrigue level is only heightened in ‘boom’ periods for sportscar racing where competitive grids make it tough to pick a winner.

But, while it’s natural for the eye of the casual viewer to focus on the battle at the front for outright honours in the new Le Mans Hypercar division that replaces LMP1 this year, it is unfortunate that - at least for now - the all-professional divisions of the Le Mans class pyramid are struggling for the numbers to make a truly unpredictable fight. With improved car reliability usually turning Le Mans into a 24-hour sprint where any unforeseen mechanical delay or repairs immediately kills off any hope of victory, a healthy double-digit entry is needed to make a race that you cannot call.

That’s why the most wide-open class at this year’s race is also the one that receives the least promotion and will invariably receive the smallest column inches: GTE Am. Before asking whether Autosport has taken leave of its senses, consider the entries for each of the classes.

Slim Hypercar field could mean limited racing action for outright honours

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

With 23 cars from Aston Martin (now solely represented in Am having departed the Pro scene), Ferrari and Porsche, GTE Am is one of the strongest numerically – second only to LMP2 – but picking a winner is nigh-on-impossible. Whereas last year, several entries had two amateur Bronzes or lacked a driver with a professional (Platinum/Gold) driver grading, the same can’t be said this time with only newcomer Rinaldi in the former camp and three cars using two or more Silvers (the all-female Iron Lynx team is the only crew without a Bronze, instead running a trio of Silvers).

“I can’t remember any year where there were so many cars in the Am class,” says versatile GT racer Marco Seefried, the 2015 runner-up with Patrick Long and Patrick Dempsey, who will steer the #18 Absolute Racing Porsche entered in partnership with Proton Competition.

“If I would be asked now, ‘who is the top car from my point of view?’, I would have a hard time to tell. Within the class, [the level] has become really high and to be up front you have to do everything right. It’s going to be a big battle.”

Team boss of the 2020 class-winning TF Sport Aston Martin squad, Tom Ferrier, agrees that the category is “the most competitive it’s been for a long time”.

For the ultimate in unpredictable Le Mans racing, we must look to GTE Am, where each entry has one amateur driver racing for fun alongside their regular day jobs in aviation, gaming, car dealing, oil, confectionary or any other business you could care to name

“I think it will be the most unpredictable [class], and the best to be honest,” he says. “It was very good last year, but this year again it’ll be maybe even slightly stronger.”

In contrast, two entries from Toyota and Glickenhaus, along with a grandfathered LMP1 ORECA formerly run by the Rebellion team and rebadged as an Alpine, make up a slim five-car Hypercar field. Even if all can run problem-free and truly make a race of it, the as-yet unbeaten Toyota GR010 remains the overwhelming favourite.

The team is taking nothing for granted after a few scares during the most recent World Endurance Championship round at Monza, but the arrivals of Peugeot (2022), Ferrari (2023) and the swathe of LMDh manufacturers from 2023 onwards (including Audi, Porsche and BMW) can’t come soon enough.

PLUS: How glitches left Toyota 'worried' about losing unbeaten WEC streak

Variation in skill between amateur drivers is an important strategic consideration for teams

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The under-threat GTE Pro class has been hit hard by manufacturer pull-outs since its glorious peak of 17 cars in 2019, with just eight cars (two of which are from privateer Porsche teams) featuring for the second year in a row. If Monza is anything to go by, GTE Pro promises a ding-dong fight between Porsche - looking to rebound after struggling badly in the 24 Hours last year - and Ferrari, with Corvette something of an unknown on the C8.R’s Le Mans debut. Unpredictable it may be, but that could quickly change if attrition takes its toll on the already small class.

In LMP2, the winner will be an ORECA - with 24 of the 25 entrants all running the ORECA 07 that has won the class every year since the current ruleset began in 2017. Of these, 15 can be considered likely class winners, with 10 crews entered in the new LMP2 Pro-Am sub-class for line-ups featuring a Bronze amateur (the lowest driver grading required by the rules is Silver).

Defending winner United Autosports must go down as the favourite after its second victory from three WEC rounds this season at Monza, with Jota Sport the only outfit that has broken the stranglehold. Three more teams have won races in the European Le Mans Series this season, and the increase in weight and power reductions that will make drivers’ lives harder in traffic can only increase the intrigue in a class that was only decided - between United and Jota - by the final pitstop last year.

But for the ultimate in unpredictable Le Mans racing, we must look to the 23-car GTE Am field - where each entry has one amateur driver racing for fun alongside their regular day jobs in aviation, gaming, car dealing, oil, confectionary or any other business you could care to name.

Perhaps because of this fact, the Am class is regularly overlooked. It rarely gets the screen-time of the factory GT cars and will struggle to generate the same headlines. ‘Ferrari wins Le Mans’ naturally resonates more with the casual follower than its customer squad Iron Lynx (a very capable Italian squad that recently dominated the Spa 24 Hours).

But, when it comes to producing a lively race, the Pro-Am GT class is always good value. With a Balance of Performance as in the GTE Pro class to keep the cars close, the biggest denominator tends to be the drivers and team strategists.

The standard of the professional drivers in the Am division is on a par with GTE Pro – indeed at Spa, Alessio Rovera’s #83 Am class Ferrari (pictured below) set the second-fastest GT lap of the whole race, behind only Kevin Estre’s Porsche. The Am grid at Le Mans boasts factory GT drivers aplenty, including reigning GTE Pro champion Nicki Thiim, the recent winner of the Spa 24 Hours Nicklas Nielsen and 2022 Peugeot hypercar signing Mikkel Jensen (non-Danish professionals are available too).

GTE Am class cars are capable of lapping just as quickly as GTE Pro cars in the right hands

Photo by: Ferrari

But, with little to choose between the top professionals, it’s the relative performance of the amateur driver in each car – and how teams decide to deploy them – where the biggest differences can be found. All must complete a minimum of six hours – “which in green running works out as seven stints, because you can’t do an hour on fuel,” says Ferrier – and the varying approaches ensure the leaderboard is in a semi-permanent state of flux.

Do you use a segment of the Bronze driver time up early and risk getting caught behind the next safety car queue if an incident occurs? Do you wait until later when the track starts to cool and visibility worsens, where costly mistakes can start to creep in? Or do you leave the bulk of it until sun-up on the Sunday, where the distraction of imminent glory can (as in the case of Paul Dalla Lana in 2015) prove all too much?

It throws a random element into the mix that hasn’t really been a part of the increasingly professional LMP2 line-ups of recent times, and which only heightens the drama that Le Mans is all about.

This year, TF Sport has one of the gold-standard amateurs in Texan car dealer Ben Keating, who in recent years has frequently taken the start himself. For Ferrier, having one of the benchmark Bronzes alongside 2016 Brazilian Stock Car champion Felipe Fraga and last year’s Porsche Supercup runner-up Dylan Pereira means “you have more flexibility” on strategy.

"You have a strategy, but it’s always a flexible one until we get into the race and we see where we are. I’m sure you’ll see a lot of different ideas coming out during the first six hours of the race" Tom Ferrier

“For sure there’s advantages of trying to get your Bronze guy out of the way as fast as you can, then finishing as strongly as you can – but, as wonderful as it is to say that, for the two Pros just doing the night is a big task for them,” says Ferrier. “So to be able to use an Am to be able to split them up a little bit does help with their rest.

“There’s also the other option of trying to stretch a lead out as much as possible, get through the night and have them do as much as they can later in the second half of the race. There is a theory that if you are leading, sometimes you get on the safety car that’s ahead of anyone else on the next safety car and that actually gains you quite a lot of time. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

“It also depends on how long the safety car is out for, because if it’s out for an hour, you can lose an hour’s worth of your Bronze driver time just under safety car.”

Safety cars present windows of opportunity to use up Bronze driver time

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Using up the Bronze driver’s time under a safety car was a tactic that the Proton team used to great effect with Dempsey in 2015, as Seefried recalls.

“It does make it harder for the Pros on the car, but what we’ve done in ’15, which was leading to us getting up to the podium, also other teams have seen and analysed,” he says. “We weren’t the first one doing it that way, but it has become almost normal that you go with this strategy.

“When we are facing a long-time full course yellow again, the others will do it as well and you have to be smart. But since it’s a long track, if you are at the wrong place at the wrong time you can’t use that advantage, so at some stage you need a bit of luck to be there.”

But that’s not the only consideration teams have to factor in.

“The weather plays a big part in it as well, last year it was rain forecast constantly through the race that never actually came,” says Ferrier. “There’s so many different scenarios that play into it. You go into every race having a clear idea of what you want to achieve and normally at the end of all of our team briefings, we say ‘but that could all change’.

“You have a strategy, but it’s always a flexible one until we get into the race and we see where we are. I’m sure you’ll see a lot of different ideas coming out during the first six hours of the race.”

Le Mans has a different BoP than the rest of the WEC calendar, so the previous races can only be considered a rough guide. While Ferrari has won all three WEC races so far, the #56 Project 1 Porsche was only six seconds behind the Cetilar 488 at Portimao.

Ferrari has had a run of wins in GTE Am this year, but a different BoP at Le Mans may turn the tide in Porsche's direction

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“I think there is a good chance that we have again a new picture for this big one, but I have a hard time to tell you which direction it will go,” says Seefried, who is paired with promising Belgian Alessio Picariello and Le Mans newcomer Andrew Haryanto. “We will try to do our best, try to not do any mistakes or penalties, stay out of that and when we are 20 hours into the race, we can see what is possible.”

TF Sport was left to lament Keating being embroiled in a tangle between two LMP2 cars at Spa and a puncture on his in-lap at Monza – ironically, the team had asked him to stretch his fuel by one more lap – causing extensive damage that required a lengthy pit visit.

“We know that the Aston is good at Le Mans, Ben is undoubtedly one of the fastest [Bronzes] if not the fastest, and the other two guys in the car are pretty awesome too so I’m confident that we have a very good package,” says Ferrier.

"Since it’s a long track, if you are at the wrong place at the wrong time you can’t use that advantage, so at some stage you need a bit of luck to be there" Marco Seefried

“But it is Le Mans, so anyone can win it really… You never know, especially with a bit of weather. I would say there’s 10 cars that can definitely win it on outright pace.”

Le Mans 2021 will be brilliant, with a limited number of fans back in the stands set to return the event to a more ‘normal’ atmosphere. But they can’t expect every year to be a 2008 or 2011 classic to the finish - and nor should we judge Hypercar too harshly in its first year, when it will only get better.

As much as we all relish added manufacturer interest, it’s the enthusiastic amateurs drawn by the lure of Le Mans that are its bedrock through the rough and the smooth. And if you do your homework on GTE Am, you won’t regret following Le Mans’ hidden gem.

#33 TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage AMR: Ben Keating, Dylan Pereira, Felipe Fraga

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images