Friday, March 29

PERSPECTIVE: The art and science of handling traffic Rolex 24


Traffic management is key to any multi-class drag race; that’s a fact. What makes this year’s Rolex 24 At Daytona different is that the number of cars has increased dramatically and the type of cars has changed. It has taken the traffic equation to another level.

IMSA added LMP3 to some rounds of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, including Daytona, last year. That added an extra element and another level of speed for other drivers to manage. This year, instead of a handful of GTLM cars and 19 GTD cars, there are 35 GTD cars. Those cars are divided into two classes, but those classes are defined by the pace of the drivers, not the ability of the cars.

There are 61 cars scheduled to start the race. The drivers are going to be very, very busy, and getting into a rhythm where the laps just go by will be difficult, maybe impossible. Quiet periods when DPi and LMP2 drivers aren’t passing a car or trying to figure out how they’re going to pass the car ahead will be brief and infrequent. For some drivers that will be a blessing; others will find it frustrating. And it will definitely make a difference in winners and losers in some classes, if not all.

“I was waiting for the traffic, because I think at the end of the day, this is what makes this race so interesting,” said Filipe Albuquerque after he and Ricky Taylor won last week’s qualifying race in the No. 10 from Wayne Taylor Racing. “It’s exactly the traffic because it gives us opportunities to overtake. That was what had happened to me. I mean, I managed to get up to P2 just by managing the traffic. Simply I loved it.”

Tristan Vautier, whose No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac finished second in qualifying, with co-driver Richard Westbrook harassing Taylor in the closing laps, had a different view of traffic.

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“The luck factor is going to be a little more involved than usual,” he said. “I was surprised in the qualifying race; there were a lot of very unpredictable situations due to the difference in experience levels of the drivers in GTD, LMP2 and LMP3. With the number of cars, it has not been as easy as other years. Before, practically at every corner, you knew which way to pass the GTD or which way to pass the LMP3 and so on. This year, just because I think there are a lot more drivers and different levels of experience, it’s been a lot less smooth. There were many more situations where things were a bit confusing and you weren’t sure which side to take. So I think there will be a bit more luck involved, and you will have to be very good at judging situations as a driver and finding the right level of attack and conservation.

Vautier and Taylor and their counterparts in DPi and LMP2 have the advantage of plenty of power and higher corner exit speeds to help them overtake the GTD cars. The equation changes radically when the DPi cars meet LMP2 traffic, or when the LMP3 cars pass GTD competitors. Lap times don’t tell the whole story… different combinations of power, weight, mechanical grip and downforce mean that cars producing seemingly comparable lap times produce those times in very different ways. As shown in the chart below of the maximum and minimum speeds of cars in different classes at some key points on the track, aggregated from the teams and IMSA data collectors, where one car catching another can make a big difference. A DPi who catches a car at the entrance to Turn 3, the International Horseshoe, will suffer much less than the same situation at the bus stop, or Le Mans Chicane, as it has been renamed.

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“The hardest thing is the bus stop for us, because we are so much faster,” says Mikkel Jensen, driver of the No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen ORECA LMP2 car. “And you can say it’s easier if you caught a GTLM before a GTD now, because you lose a second and a half, two seconds if you get to them right under braking. We just have a lot more speed in the middle of the corner, the bus stop is a killer when you catch them there.

For some passer-passenger combinations, due to different car abilities, where a faster car catches a slower car can really cause a domino effect and kill a lap. The LMP3 and GTD cars aren’t far behind in lap time, but they make that time in different ways. That can make it very difficult to overtake, says Jarett Andretti, driver of the No. 36 Andretti Autosport Ligier that took the class pole. And they often have to manage their own overtaking while being overtaken by a DPi or LMP2 car. That created some very sketchy moments in the qualifying race.

“The GTDs and us do speed very differently. They have ABS, they have more power, although we are quicker on the bench,” explains Andretti. “So it’s about catching them in the right place. I think playing that strategy game is very, very difficult. It’s about not wasting an extra second or two in traffic, every once in a while. In the qualifying race, at least, the P2 cars and DPi cars were pretty respectful; They may not be like that in the actual race, but I think they were pretty cool. It’s just about letting them go as long as it doesn’t cost you time.

That speaks to the fact that there is an art to both getting approved and getting approved. Passing in the wrong place can cost time: the graph of the lap time range during the qualifying race (in the photo below), Provided by Ken Lin of P1 Software, it illustrates how lap times for cars will vary as they face traffic. Or passing in certain spots can ruin a driver’s battle with the car ahead or behind, giving the opponent an advantage the driver obviously didn’t want them to have.

Click on the chart to view it in PDF format

“I just try to be predictable,” says Frankie Montecalvo, driver of the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3. “The easiest way to be read is to stay in line and be predictable. But every once in a while, if it’s going to be a super late pass and it’s going to blow my lap or something, obviously I’ll stop at the left hander and just say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to wait until later because you’re going to blow me up. the lap. Or prepare me for the GTD car I’m fighting in class to get past if you pass me here.’”

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In the end, winning the Rolex 24 At Daytona this year will require patience and care when dealing with traffic, no matter which end of the overtaking equation the driver is on. It is almost guaranteed that at least one contender will withdraw from the race with an impatient and ill-timed move. Those who survive to fight for victory will have had both patience and luck on their side.

“Sometimes lifting 20 percent will save you from lifting and braking 100 percent into the next corner and missing a dive plane or splitter,” says Andretti. “As a racer, you just want to go flat anywhere, but sometimes you just have to say, ‘Okay, I’ll give up here and live to fight the next day.’ I think it’s just about being smart and understanding where you can give and where you can take.”


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