Le Mans is never quite what you expect, from the Sunday morning antiques/junk market in Place du Jacobins to the beautiful old town, something new always grabs you. This year it was an exceptional acoustic performance by Sarah Rakotomalala (check her out) but actually the biggest surprise for me was the action taken by the WEC and the ACO about garage visibility. Porsche was hit with a ?5000 fine and a suspended one minute stop and go penalty.
Regular visitors to this page will know that at Racecar Engineering we believe that the engineering of the cars in all motor racing series should be on display at all time. This comes as no shock to anyone. At Le Mans in 2016 all three manufacturers went to great lengths to keep their cars covered, it reached the farcical point of the Audi human wall. That was wrong. Porsche and Toyota also took action to prevent people getting too good a look at their cars. Some teams posting mug shots of ‘spies’ inside the garage to make it clear who must be blocked, I was insulted not to be one of those mug shots! As a result of the level of stupidity this reached in 2016 the ACO took strong action, fines were levied and it was made very clear indeed that cars should be seen by all. People attend motor races to see the cars, not over paid-ego machines called drivers (yes on this page we are biased) so it is wrong for the cars to be covered up or hidden. For years Formula 1 has banned the practice of covering cars on race weekend and...