[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Twisk, the weekend sports cars podcast. And to a special edition, post the 24 hours of Le Mans 2024. That takes your questions from what was a stellar event and a fantastic race to try to unpick some of the background stories of that great race. But before we get into the show itself-- Time to say a big thank you to our show partners on the Marshall Pruitt podcast, starting with VAF Technologies. Build to Print Composites Manufacturing Company. They're specializing in medium to large-scale automotive, motor sports, and military applications. Visit FAFtechnologies.com. It's P-F-A-F-F-- Technologies.com-- to learn more about their services and how they can benefit your business. Next, it's the Justice Brothers-- makers of premium additives, lubricants, and cleaners, and servicing the automotive and motorsports industries for more than 85 years. The victories in all of the biggest North American motor races, including the Indianapolis 500, the 24 hours a day toner, the Justice Brothers products are truly race-proven. Learn about their vast history and range of offerings at justicebrothers.com. If you're fond of awesome motor racing collectibles, including FAF motor sports McLaren, Gear, and Goodies, pay a visit to torontomotor sports.com. And finally, you have a new online merchandise home for the podcast, ThePruittStore.com. All the show stickers, models, racing member Obelium, trying to sell and put towards our fund to buy a house, is now live and rocking. ThePruittStore.com. So I'm Graham Goodwin. No Marshall Pruitt. He's on events at Watkins Glen for the IMSA race this weekend. So once again, I'm joined by my friend, my colleague at teddysportsguard.com, and at Racer, Stephen Kilby. Stephen, you and I were on event, as it were, for what seemed like an awful lot. So I think of 12 days we spent on sites at Le Mans through Pessage, the scrutiny ring, test day, all the lead up, the track sessions, qualifying, all of the media, Jamboree, that goes with it. And then, of course, the great race itself and giving ourselves a bit of a wind down time before we came back Tuesday. Just go. Just a quick sum up. How good a week was it at Le Mans this year? I really enjoyed it. It is a really tough week for those of us who work there. But as a whole, I would say, this was one of the best Le Mans that I've ever been to. And I think it was my 17th. I loved the race. I thought the build up was fantastic. There was some really interesting action throughout the sessions. There was some interesting news. On the Friday, it wasn't so much that you just kind of felt like it was overwhelming and the stuff that important bits got lost. There's just plenty to talk about. And as a whole, the race delivered. And these are the races of our lives right now. We've got to make the most of these. And it's quite nice going into Le Mans in a race on Saturday morning, looking at that grid forming up, looking at the start and going, I need to sit back and enjoy this, because they're going to be years in the future where we're going to look back and wish that we were back to these sort of days. I think you're right. In general, Tertona conversation was the depth in that top class in particular. And to a lesser extent, in LMGT3, the variety there really was a head turner. Head turner for the people who are regular sports car followers, but a particular head turner to people who were, whether or not they're following a particular brand, whether or not it was Valentina Rossi, whether or not it was Ferrari. Whatever it was, people appeared to be impressed. Impressed by the depth, impressed by the quality and impressed by the racing, impressed by the event. I think that's the point. It was an impressive event this year. Again, and after the real high of the Centenary event last year, there was every possibility this could have felt flat at no point to this event feel flat. The race certainly didn't, with the rain that just never really went away. It always sort of lingered from the start to finishing that race and it kept on your toes. There was never an hour that went by, aside from that safety car, which I'm sure we'll get to at some point during the questions that we've got coming. But aside from that period in the middle of the night, when thankfully I was asleep, so I essentially missed nothing. - Stop it. - Aside from that, it was- - It was- - It was- - I was grinding through four hours of TV. - Do you love that? That's your favourite thing? (laughing) - But here's the point. Before we get into questions, there's one other thing I want to pop out there for you. Those that are regular followers of the weekend sports cars and indeed for our efforts on DSC and race as well, will know our editorial take on beer penis is different than some. I don't believe it's news. I believe it's news after the event, not prior to the event. I think what we saw finally was a race that should put to bed the vast majority of the moons and grounds about balance performance. What do you think? - Yeah, I mean, we had four manufacturers that legitimately until about two hours before the end, could have won the race depending on how things fell. It was refreshing to leave the event knowing that had you run that race 10 times, you probably would have got 10 different results. And a lot of it was down to conditions. What I would say is that it is always an equalizer when it rains and you get cars that gain loads of time through strategy as well as performance. But as a whole, after the test day, there was a little bit of moons and groans here and there for some of the teams and usually do the rounds of all the manufacturers and they will tell you that they've got no chance and this was no different. But when it came down to it, I didn't feel like most, the teams that left disappointed with the result were not necessarily disappointed because of the BOP, they were more disappointed because they made some wrong calls and strategy. There were mistakes made by drivers, something like that. And it was nice that we weren't into a massive controversy in rouse and protests or anything like that. It was just an out and out fight. - We're getting into some of these points. The last point before we turned to listen to questions was about the cars that weren't in the fight. Okay, and there were two particular groups of one manufacturers that straddled those groups. There was, I say a group, there was a car that was quick but not reliable, the helping. There were lots of cars that were reliable but not quick, not ultimately quick. We're gonna talk a little bit about the assault of Raskini later on so we're gonna put them to one side, the Peugeot, the Lamborghini at a great show they put on. And the one that sort of straddles across it was BMW where we saw blinding pace, particularly from Dries Van Sur, but they couldn't get those cars to the end of the 20th, the art car not classified at the end. They just seemed to give up on that car, to be honest with you. But for me, there's encouragement there. There's concerns there for each of those manufacturers but the encouragement there is. There's that old saying that you can make a reliable car faster. Making a fast car reliable is somewhat more of a challenge. And LP and I think got some questions to ask themselves about the choices with that car. It looked fantastic. It was in the mix in the earlier hours of the race. But they absolutely did not at any point have confidence that they could maintain that to the end of the race. - Yeah, 100%. I mean, we've said on the past on this show, I think, as well as written it that the jury was out on the engine for the LP and we were very quick to not write it off and there was a lot of cynicism about the fact that it's derived from mecha chrome engine. A lot of people write it off before it even raced at them on. And you know what, some of that was, some of that really did come to fast, didn't it? - But here's the point. There was another point here, by the way, is they failed it. Was it about 12 hours? - Wasn't even that, was it? - I don't know, did either car make sundown? I mean, well, the most they're cheap was 88 laps with the 36. - You could still win a world championship. - You could. - You know, if you have a bad look at them all in. - It's clear, as a French manufacturer, that's not clearly what they want. But you could still win races and world championships by not having, ultimately, an extreme endurance car. - The key is this, you know, there's a lot to talk about development of LMDH and LMH cars at the moment. Manufacturers growing in different directions, campaigning for different changes to their cars. The key here is they will be given a chance if they want it to make significant changes to that engine. It's not frozen in, that's it. They're self-quivit for five years. - It's a ham. - It's a smart restriction on development rather than counted development out. And again, in terms of the rule set, loads of questions on that. We will be getting to them. For them, that, we'll talk about LMBH. We'll come to that. You've then got Lamborghini. It's out of Raskini, Peugeot and BMW somewhere in the middle where I think all of those will have reason to come away, maybe disappointed. Peugeot, I think, in particular disappointed, but encouraged that very few of those cars saw some of the garage. - Yeah, 100%, especially Lamborghini. Lamborghini, for me, was mighty impressive all week. It's still a new program. They did lose a lot of testing time. They came into this fully well aware that they were not going to be in the running for the win. They would have met that to you and they did so before the race started. But what they were keen on doing was showing what the car could do in terms of reliability. And it's no mean feat. Even though we get kind of used to races now, you get WC races with no retirements or no big failures. Or you get to the end of the morning, there's actually only a handful of failures. It's still a really tough thing to get a car like that to the finish. And both of them just ran like clockwork for almost the entire race, didn't they? And they can't last for one now 'cause the pace will come. Six DMFs in hypercar, one not classified. Of those, mechanical failures were the 83 of course a car. What, mechanical or electrical failure for that car? I think electrical fire is what eventually killed that. I thought it was a hybrid problem. The car went dark. So full electrical failure. 36 and 35 Alpeins, both with engine problems. The 15 was the accidents after the clash with the 83. Then we had the four portion. And that had had crashed out in Indianapolis. It did, and the three had the punctured oil tank. It did indeed. So all of those things within the realms of improvement, we know the 83 that failed you on that car. Well, the other two cars didn't fail. And it did won the race. In a wet race like that, you would expect there to be less attrition. But I was surprised that because everyone's going out of hammer and tongs that weren't more major accidents. There really was only a few cars that got eliminated by crashing out. Level of professionals that were high this year. Let's go on to questions. Because you and I, as we often do, could talk about these things for hour after hour after hour. But that would just irritate the listeners. Sorry listeners. So let's crack on. I think the first kind of subset here, Daniel Summerskill, our question component. Thanks again Daniel for your efforts. It's part of the title of overall the one thoughts. Chuck, chuck a couple into the mix here, Stephen. Let's see what comes out. Yeah, so GT Gamer 4.6a and Staphis. - Staphis. - Staphis. - Cocker Racing said that they are asking about the track action. So GT Gamer says, "How would you compare last year's Le Mans "to this year's in terms of track action? "Did LMGT-3 feel like a great successor "to LMGT-E as a platform or not at Le Mans? "What are you looking forward to "in the upcoming rounds at Interlops and Kota? "And how do you feel the current football play out "in both races?" - Can I kick off with this? I'd like to hear your thoughts as well. I thought the hypercar race was a really great race. I thought there were enough twists and turns in it. We had a mixture of strategies coming into play which saw, for instance, the Cadillac cycling back through to the lead. That meant that they were encouraged to push hard. I was really impressed with Alex Boulou. When he got in that car, I expected a guy like Alex with fantastic talent, but not a lot of experience in the car for that car to lose pace. It did not. I thought Alex Lim was highly impressive in that car this week, all week in Alabama. Yeah, a bit of a redemption run from Earl, but it didn't really put much of a foot wrong, didn't he? - There was one moment where we had a little bit of contact with his azata for skiing, he was it, but aside from that, I'm really, really impressed with race from him. - I thought that the race as a whole was of stunningly high quality and it's not easy to deliver that on a track of the length, the challenge of Lamont and with the mixed conditions that we had. And let's face it, with actually probably fewer tire choices than these manufacturers have ever had at this kind of level. So that, I thought was a great race. MMP2 was such a difficult one to read. And ultimately it came down to who didn't hit trouble, who had a car underneath them that could retain that pace, hats off, by the way, to Oli Jarvis. I think Oli Jarvis won that race for United. Great stuff from Northern Segal. I mean, really impressed by Beagle Garg by far his best race for United so far. But for me, I think you look back at the averages and not just the averages in a global sense, but the averages at the times when he was in the car, which is critical, when you're talking about a race with such rich conditions, I think United Audisports will be patting Oli Jarvis on the back and saying he is still a driver of absolutely world-class. LMGT3, it's coming. It's not yet where it needs to be, but it's coming. And again, we did see different cars in the mix. I do have some concerns that the sheer quality of the driver line-ups in the two pourshes is beginning to look as if that's dominant. And that, you know, on sheer pace, ultimate pace, they can be matched. But when you bring into account the silver and the problems drivers have bought those two cars, it's a really steep hill to climb for the rest of them. Yeah, the trouble is they're getting better and better. I'm more assuring, I thought, was absolutely awesome, it was in that race. He's so young. But the thing is, if you look at the championship standings, it's not necessarily reflective of just out-of-the-art dominance in Porsche now, because the pure racing car hit trouble. You need to slow down the order. We've got a title race now. Oh, we did. And the 31 WRT car is genuinely capable of winning this championship, and I think they will be so encouraged. So it didn't win the race, but it's got a bucket load of points, and they will be content. And Chocolat will be loading more and more and more about the GT code. Darryn Leung just looks more and more confident every time, and it's motivated. That's all great. We're seeing spells of sustained pace from some of the other chasing cars, delighted, by the way, to see the improvement of form from the Lexus cars. Yes. Again, massive change. Can't move away from one of GT3 though, without mentioning the transformation in form from the Mustangs, third and fourth of all. Amazing. But that, you know, you broke the story about the changes they made to add resilience into that car. They passed that test, didn't they? They just, didn't they? Amazing. The fix has worked perfectly. It has. You know, I think we may well see that coming into play a couple of the races later in the season. I think a lot more to come from LMG-T3, a lot more to come from LMG-T3. It is beginning to find its feet. There's no doubt in my mind, I think we're going to see a pretty big reshuffle in drivers after this season. I think you're going to find people would have looked to see are the rewards from LMG-T3 equal to the massive uplift in budget that's going to be required for Silver and Bronze drivers to move towards the ACO code from what SRO doing. And I think there'll be a fair number that will be encouraged to do that. So I think we'll see big changes in LMG-T3 in terms of the driver market after this season. And I think we'll see a fair number of people that are going to have their gradings looked at very carefully. I think that's going to be a theme going forward with LMG-T3. I think it's going to attract the world's best bronzes and the bronzes of clearly, you know, people have got the most money to invest in a program. And you are going to find at the end of these seasons, if a driver or a team stands out, they're going to have to change their lineup because you might see one of the other guys in the car. - Adeligible next year. - I didn't see anything this year at the moment that persuaded me they could look again at the Pro-Pro-Am mix. I think that's not even been a conversation this year. I think they're going to need time to see how the marketplace defines that. Pro-Am most certainly provides us with the variety because there's no doubt in my mind that if they switch to a full Pro class somewhere, some of those manufacturers are not going to step up without a shutter down. But the variety was there. The cars looked different. They sounded different. There was some great-looking cars at them on this year. There's some emerging talents that we need to keep an eye on. And some of the established players, Ritchie Leaked, I'm looking at you, that just continue to show just how much class they've got. - Yeah, 100%. And what shouldn't we miss just the fact that we've had years and years and years of races at the moment where the GT class has been a bucket load of porches or a bucket load of Ferraris or both and a couple of others sprinkled in. I mean, I just cannot remember them on where there was just so much variety up and down the order. It's just two by two of manufacturers in different types of cars. So fans, track side, just treated, just seeing so many, hearing so many different engine notes. - It's 100 and 80 mile an hour, can't you? - It really was. It's just so, you kind of get Blase about it 'cause we're kind of used to seeing it a few times already before Le'm on in WC just how much variety is. And it's always been like that in terms of a GTD. But it shouldn't be a mess that, you know, when I first started going to Le'm on, the GT2 field was just like 10 or 12 porches, one spike at one panels job done. - Yeah. - Now it's like there's only two porches in the field. And, you know, you wouldn't have noticed that there was, like, something like that. - If you're a fan of in certain name of brand, the fact that your car is racing at Le'm on. I mean, we had the first ever Lamborghini finishers at Le'mon, classified finishers at Le'mon this year. And I think I'm right, was it three of the four? - All four? - Yeah, all four. - All four finished. So again, another step forward for that brand, the return of McLaren to Le'mon. And we've come to them a little wee while. There's still work to do there, but, you know, they were lucky they had pace. But if you walk through the car park getting into the circuit, you just look at each car and go, they've got, that manufacturer's got cars in the race, that manufacturer's got cars in the race, that guy there with his McLaren 720S in the car park, he's got cars he can cheer for in the race, the guy in a Ford Fiesta like me, he can cheer cars on the race. Guy's bought his Ferrari, he can purge her, that guy with the five double away estate car, he's got a car that he can route for, it's amazing. - Yeah, that's, that's it. It's like the Hado Super Touring in these two cars, which, which absolutely was a race on Sunday, Southern Monday formula. Let's move forward though. I mean, you know, for me, yes, a race of highest quality, an event of really high quality, they maintain the momentum from a very high bar in 2023. - I just don't think that the last thing I want to say on this before we move on is hypercar. Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's recency bias or something, but I wrote on racer after Sunday that this was one for the ages. It really was an all-time race. I truly believe that we will look back on this year's Le Mans, like we do, well, like we all about the centenary, and go, wow. And I just haven't heard quite as much enthusiasm for how good the hypercar race was. Nine cars finished on the lead lap, you had a Titanic battle with Toyota Ferrari Cadillac and Porsche all in the mix. - It's a high drama at the end of the race. It was awesome. There were so many years going to this race, it might have been two cars in the mix. - So are you saying that unusually we were right and that Toyota isn't the mix? - Oh yeah, sorry, I thought there was, 'cause they told us, - No, let's not get there, let's not get there. (laughing) - But it was, I would like to get just your last thoughts before we move on to the next topic. Nicklaus Nielsen, I think there's no, there's not a single question. We've got probably 150 questions here on about 10 different pages. We've had to whittle them down. Not a single person has asked about Nicklaus Nielsen. For me, that was a absolutely astonishing performance. - He's co-changed. - He broke the challenge of Toyota at the end of the race. They realized there is no point in trying to put this kind of pressure. By the way, quite an extraordinary radio message from Toyota, which was effectively given up we need to point to the championship. That is Toyota making a conscious decision to pursue the F.I. World Insurance Championship over the potential for an Amon win. They want more than words can say. That's an astonishing moment for the WEC. - Yeah. - An astonishing moment for the WEC. But one of the major points behind that is it was that drive to the end from Nicklaus Nielsen. And we talk all the time about standout races, E-pop making races for some of these, astonishing young men and women. And that right there was the one for Nick Nelson. You're gonna see a very different drive in moving forward. That was his superstar coming out part. - Yeah, that was Andre Lotto in 2011. That was Maxine Martin at the Nürburgring 24 hours in 2013. - It was Marcel Fett's part. - Tom Christensen overnight in 2008. It was just, we will look back. When you look back at that race, you're gonna remember him slamming the door, the panic, him coming in for that extra stop. And then just the sheer emotion towards the end of that race, when we thought, is it gonna run out of fuel? Watching the percentage of virtual energy take down, it was just-- - You're awesome. - You and I had time to spend with Nick at Marnello a few weeks before Milan. - What a wonderful human being. - Lovely guy, passionate, engaged, intelligent, clearly very, very talented indeed. And again, he's gonna be a massive asset, not just that Ferrari program, but to sports car racing. 'Cause what you're looking for is people with youth, which he most certainly has, who can fill a, I don't wanna say an ambassadorial role, because that implies someone with more miles on the clock, more experience, but an advocacy role. This is why this is cool. This is why this race and this sport is amazing. For me, one of the drivers of the race, I wanna say a quick word as well, by the way, would a congratulations to Jose Maria Lopez. Coming in-- - Yeah, he was really good. - Coming in in the most difficult circumstance, he's did he make a mistake? Yes, he did. Did it ultimately cost towards the race? No, no, look, the other day, he did enough in terms of the hard yards to say that he kept them in the race. He'll have had next to no time in that car this year. They put him in the car at the end, that shows you how well he was doing. There you go. So ultimately, a truly great form. And if you disagree, that is absolutely your prerogative, but you're wrong. I can't struggle to see how it's gonna get much better than that. But here's the thing, it can and it might. Yeah, I think we've still got many, many more storylines to come. The cars, some of the cars that struggled will get better. That's the key here. So against the rule set as it currently stands, the rule set triumphed at Le Mans. Triumphed. And if the rule set's intention carries forward, the depth of competition in that top class on pace should only get deeper. And that can happen quickly. We're not talking about a massive cannon in terms of pace for some of those cars. We're talking about a second, two seconds, and all of a sudden they're in the mix, and they're on that lead lap, deeper into the race. So I think it can and should get better and deeper. Let's kick off. So the next sort of general topic is about the N.R.P. impression, which you touched on a little bit. We've got some specific questions and correspondence. So Daniel Samerskyl asked about the 20-art car. Why didn't they fix it? Was it like a spare parts? No, I'll say straight away, I don't know if you do. I don't know. It was just one of those story lines that was so much happening. We didn't have the bandwidth to follow up on. Yeah, it was interesting so early in the race and then polishing it up, and it was like, oh, they're clearly just gonna wait for the end and just do what. And it was very old school, really. It used to be a regular occurrence. You'd get a car that'd spend 16 hours in the garage, and they'd just give it a parade lap at the end just to kind of get it across the line. I don't think they'd have done it if it hadn't been the art car. No, I don't either. I think that was it. It was a photo-finished thing. Not classified at the end. Came out, I think it did four laps at the end of the race. I didn't even notice it. Me neither again. I have to say, and I was commenting on the finish. I didn't notice it. I was too busy smashing out and copy going, "What's going on? Who's gonna win?" "Ah!" But, you know, hats off to them. Car went back out and, you know, then I got the shot and that's fine. I have no objection to that whatsoever. It's always been part of the tradition of the race. Daniel also sort of asked about the program in a wider sense. He says, "Inium's are in WC, it feels like it's slipping "with errors from the drivers and the team. "Inium's are in WEC. "What do you think about the program in general "for WRT and RLL now?" OK. We're going to come to a couple of bits about BMW, I'm sure, to do with the exit with $15 off the race. Car's got pace. Very clearly. Top, qualifying. With 3's fun, too. Yeah, it was quick. It has real potential. WRT will have noticed that, BMW have noticed that. As with every program, there's got to be justification moving forward. BMW have, on occasion, been pretty flaky about their commitment. Lot been said about Persia. We'll come on to that a little later, with what might be quite a controversial take on the longevity of that program. But it's no less accurate for being controversial. If you'd ask me in terms of their commitment to the program, the one I'd always worry about would be on W. And that's I'm afraid, if you're listening to us from BMW, you've got form. You know, for this. But I think there was potential in that car that's got pace. It's got the potential to be to have that pace and reliability. There is work to do. And as we've said, repeatedly about a number of programs in the past, back in the L&P 1 days. If you're looking to develop those cars, you have to put them in the hands of excellence. And there are a few more excellent than WRT. If there's pace to be found in that car, then you've got it with the right group right there. R&L, I've got less to say about. They are a team I know less about than I do about WRT. But I see no reason why the same shouldn't be true in that regard as well. The key thing here is they need to be given the opportunities to test and develop. And they need to be given the bandwidth to have serious conversations without fear of consequence. That means by both the rule makers and by the factory. That car can be a contender. I have zeroed out that car can be a contender. It's simply a matter of how that is now managed in the next six, eight, 12 months. Well, I sat down with Andreas Ruse as a head of BMW and a merch book during the week. And it came just after the car I took qualifying before hyperpole. And what stood out to me from that conversation was that he was pretty adamant that at the moment, they aren't really looking at upgrading that car, making any changes to it. I wonder if that's changed now? Because that was at a point where they were on the highest to highest and just top qualifying. And they were like, wow, OK, maybe we've got a shot. Maybe we're a surprise package. And maybe that flash of what's to come followed up by what was a pretty awful race for them and not entirely of their making with the clash with the 83. But I would say, because I wonder if they'll leave Le Mans going, OK, maybe if we get an extra 10%, it would make a massive difference. 5%. I mean, for me, there's some reliability concerns about that car. There are a few concerns about the sustainability of its pace. But it's not a gaping chasm. For me, they're frustrating one of the group in that you can sort of see what they need to do. I'm not a technical genius. They've got technical geniuses. They'll be able to see what they need to do. Are they going to do it? That's the key for that program. I want them to do it. I've said it before. I actually think that's one of the best looking LMDH cars. I really do. I think in terms of the brand specificity of the car, that's what this formula is supposed to be about. No doubt whatsoever that's BMW. And I want to see that car succeed. And I want to see what they're going to do to make it succeed. Let's move on. Tom Bacon, love your name, as always. After what felt like a break for you, I do love bacon. After what felt like a breakthrough for Peugeot Le Mans last year, have there been answers as to why they were so far off the pace this year? It was so peculiar, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, but it is a fundamentally different concept now. And they've not had a massive amount of testing with that package. And they certainly first have the Cine at Le Mans other than the simulator. The best news, the car was Stonecar reliable. Yeah. OK. So what they've got now is to find something like three seconds of pace per lap. Now, that's quite a steep mountain to climb. But my guess would be if we went back in two weeks time, that have found a second and a half of that straight away, because they don't understand the car at the moment better. They've had that mileage. I have been told, and it's not going to be for this podcast, where one of the key problems is with that car. And it's a really easy one to fix. It will need a joker, but it's a really easy one to fix. It's an area of development that is pretty simple to fix an engineering terms. OK. It's not we need to bin off this concept in any way. But there was a point where it came, I think I'd managed it on air, where I can't believe it. I think it might have been Nicker Muller putting the fastest lap for the his car. And his fastest lap was 3.2 seconds slower for that car than the leak on the race at that point. And that was 16 hours into the race. That is a concern, but they've got a reliable platform now. You can't underestimate it. The frustration is that you left looking at last performance in the changeable conditions in the first half of the race into nightfall when it led. And you think, god, this whole race was like that this time. What on earth could they have done? I think it moves us on, by the way, because we've got two more questions. One from Jones 3.11, and the other one from Clement Rose down. Both asking, basically, the same question. James says, is it possible we'd see the last Le Mans for Peugeot? The result was here as lackluster. Come on, they'll be thinking they're going to struggle to wait until it's worth funding. And Clement asks, is the Peugeot program in danger? I have a frustration here. You wrote a piece that you published in the-- wrote up to Le Mans. Do go back and have a look on DSC at that piece. That piece was written on the back of, and we thank them for it, the transcript of a round table briefing with senior management at Peugeot that was attended only by French language colleagues. So my understanding is that every story you've read anybody out there on whatever outlets in the English language media about the future of that program that came after spa-- spa briefing, wasn't it? It was not. Came from the release of that transcript. And here's the remarkable thing about it. You were the only one that I saw that wrote a different story to the rest. The rest of them were basically saying, we've got to have results now or it's all over. Am I right? Yeah. Oh, it's a fair assessment. Is that what it said? No. What did it say, Steven? Essentially, they've committed the program to the end of the 2026 season as it stands now. And then when they get to that point, they'll then think again, so ever they continue new platform, especially now, there's an extension of the role set in play. Do they bring a new car? Do they park it? Do they continue to develop the car and car with the extra jokers? But the key is 2026. It's not going away any time now. And there's something radically changes in the background and somebody somewhere loses their rag in a ballroom meeting off this previous weekend's result. That's not the way they're thinking right now. Linda Jackson, who was leading the conversation and John Martfino as well, made it very clear that they see a lot of value in racing in WC in terms of car sales. They made it very clear that being a part of the current pack is really important to them. I mean, Linda was also clear that results need to come. But of course they do. It's a program at a factory level. But she doesn't-- she's not said there's an ultimatum. You've got three months of sort this out or it's over. Essentially said, yeah, we need to see results at some point, not necessarily right now, because the car's pretty new in its current form. They're going to give this a chance. They wouldn't have invested all that money in redeveloping the 9X8 for them to suddenly just bin it all off. What am I saying here, Steve? I'm still after a couple of months. What am I saying-- I'm saying this pretty clearly from what I read. And I read the transcript that you wrote your piece from. If there's a deadline, you're going to apply to this. It certainly wasn't this Le Mans. And it certainly wasn't Spa. You know, it's Le Mans next year. If there's no progress in a year's time with that car, then at that point, of course, you'd be asking it. But I do think it was the wrong message to give publicly. But I saw the same words that you saw or other colleagues saw. She did say there was a quote that said, you know, we've got the new car. We've got the new car. It's time to win now. You know, I get that. But she's also-- She qualified. Going into more detail, talked about that they're committed to this through to the end of 2026, as was originally the plan when they first signed off the program. Nothing has changed. It's just-- and this is the frustration that we've talked about in the past. This is you've got to manage the disappointment. If you're going to have them on like this, where things don't go your way, you're not on the pace, you're not in contention for the win. And you leave with very little that you can say in a press release about how good it was. You need to find a way to move on with that. I genuinely think in the next couple of years, before that deadline of the end of 2026 comes, I'm sure they'll get a couple more standard results somewhere. Whether it's on the one win, whether it's a couple of Doris who wins, whether it's having a car in the title race, through to a halfway through a season or something like that, I'm sure they'll find their fee. They've got too many good people in that program. They've got too many good drivers for it not to work at some point. And it is a balance of performance formula. If they can exploit what they get given in the BOP values and things go their way, and they strategically work their way through races properly, there's no reason why they can't get results. And that's the same for everybody in this field. - I'll say my position clearly here is I'm over. Every single time that there is an opportunity is given to have a conversation with someone who has got the higher fire stop go power with a major motorsport program, that many of my colleagues seem to be obsessed with getting them to say they're in trouble. You know, we have an opportunity here in motorsport, blindingly clearly this is a successful formula. And I just don't get why getting a click is more important than giving a boost. I don't get it. I don't understand why we've got this consistent outlook from it's not one person on one outlet but a number of people and a number of outlets that just seem to be hungry for the controversy. We've got enough of that bullshit in a whole range of other areas of our lives. Politics stand up and be counted on that one. Let's celebrate what we've got. You don't have to do that in unquestioning fashion. We've just said that that program needs to provide results but against a sensible timeframe. And that's what Linda said. She gave in the context of the headlines that she received an unfortunate one liner, but qualified it. And what was missing was the qualification. - Well, the worry I've got with Peugeot after the Lamon week this year is that, you know, in a field that deep, getting to the end of the race with two reliable cars is not as easy to celebrate as it used to be. - The biggest problem they had was that last year, while it didn't go to plan terms of the race results, they had a few hours in that race where they were leading and everyone was like, "Wow, okay, here's Peugeot. The car works on the circuit." And there was a bit of enthusiasm around it. The biggest problem was they were invisible in that race. - No, I get that. - You barely saw it. - I get to tell it. - But that's the biggest problem that can be solved. - It can be solved. And I think that's what they need to come up fighting with is we understand the problem and we're now going to deal with it. That's what needs to be said next. I want to see that car at testing. I want to see that happening. I want to hear positivity from not just the management but the drivers about the drive that is behind that. Same with Lamborghini, okay? It's exactly the same issue with Lamborghinis. In you a car, well, honestly enough, it's actually not a new car, is it? It's exactly the same in terms of its racing programs with the exception of a couple of emcere races on Ritz wheels. But I want to be hearing from them what is it they're going to do to close the gap? It's about closing the gap. And there's no hiding place behind BOP for this that just isn't, it's not a BOP issue. It's a car issue. It's the development issue. It's a testing issue. It's a team issue. Let's see them getting on with it and let's get, give more people more opportunities to be more positive about the prospects for that to get quicker, as well as being reliable, and to start getting some results. - Yeah, last question on this segment, Daniel Nickham talks about Alpine's engine struggles at Lamarn. Do you think they're regretting their decision to use a much more line macro in the back of the A424? Do you seem to switch to 2025 to something more reliable? - I'd say them putting the people responsible for the engines under pressure to do better with what they've got to start with, it's a matter of whether or not they see that as being possible at this stage. - Carl looked great. Carl's pace was fantastic. They were in the mix. They were in the fight with particularly the 35 car, the only parts of that race. But did I think they ever showed the confidence that continued, could continue, no, no, I didn't. And in that instance, there's got to be an answer to the question, what next? That's the key. That's the next question to a Bruno family. He won't like it, but it's not a reason for us not to ask the question. Bruno, we saw where the big weak point was in this car. What is the solution? What is the program moving forward to deal with the fact you can't win them on? You can't win them on, okay? They clearly knew exactly what the issue was, the way in which effectively 35 failed, 36 was brought in and was retired from the carriage. They knew the same issue was there. So that was a known known. What next, I'll pick. - Yep, don't get there. - I'm sure they won't. - They can't sit around and just ignore the problem. - They have a problem, they will sort the problem. - Let's get on with it, yeah. - Next segment, ACO announcements and rule changes. We'll start with Stephen Gate, who says, "Let's talk about an extension to the current rule set. "Is it a positive or a negative, what say you?" I mean, it's- - Massive, massive, right, yeah. - That won't- - Of this is, yeah. - I don't know how you can spin it, negative. - No, no, no, no, no. Put aside an H for a moment. For a moment. For the LMDH rule set. Massive, massive, positive. Why? Because those manufacturers, plural, that have been sitting on the fence. Some we know about, some we yet don't or can't be sure about. It gives them more of a reason to say yes. We've talked about McLaren through Le Mans. You sat in the same brief regard dude with Zach Brown to talk about McLaren. Yes, the cynicism because, you know, Zach was saying some of the same old things, but actually there's more to that than there's ever has been before. What he was saying was, we're now in a position where the multiple side of McLaren is a business that is thriving. They are close and they ever have been to turning the Formula One team around. They're getting good results. Same with the IndyCar side of things. They're electric racing side, with formulary and extremely, is turning a corner as well. I'm more confident now than I have been for probably two years that we will see McLaren in hyperco and GTP. Oh, 100%. For me, it's, you know, well, Zach Brown said it himself. He hopes it's not an if it's a when. I think they're coming. I genuinely cannot see it. I'm boarded now. Yeah. The way they've spoken that briefing and the way that Zach responded to some of those questions, he wasn't dismissing, he wasn't trying to, you know, tip to our rounded answer. He was actually pretty clear. They like the ruleset companies in a good position. They're getting good results elsewhere. They've further got the capacity to do it. They want to do it. They're celebrating the big anniversary next year. Michael Litus was there. He'll have been blown away by what he saw at Le Mans and the energy from McLaren's customer base from seeing them cast there. Engagement, the potential engagement. Well, there you go. And, you know, showing real pace and, you know, pole four, it's what a lap that was. What a lap from Brendan and Reeve. He would have been absolutely buoyed up by that. But there's never going to be a better platform to announce that programme than Le Mans makes you. Yeah. 30th anniversary of their overall win. You can sort of see the stars aligning. So yeah, but then I recommend, if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't seen the IMSER YouTube video with our mate, Marcia Pruitt, walking through the campsites with John Dunan, the president of IMSER. That's a fantastic 15 minutes. It is. Really good. And John talking about prospects moving forward. Listen, there's more to come. That extension, I think, will be seen as being almost as significant as the real sets coming together in the first place. Because what it gives us is a bit more resiliency. It gives the opportunity for teams to come in at a sensible level in a way that LNP1 Hybrid never did. Only one manufacturer managed to join successfully and that was Porsche. And boy, did they throw all the effort behind that programme. We saw what happens when you set the bar that high with Nissan. In this instance, they've got a clear performance target they have to hit. And a clear time scale against which they can achieve that. And I think that will be attractive. You couldn't be a manufacturer with the kind of price point that we're talking about here and not be impressed by what's happened at Lebond and Daytona and Sebring and Imola and Spa in terms of the numbers, the exposure and most particularly of all the growth of all those numbers. That's the key here. At a time when it is spectacularly difficult to get the right sort of attention. All of a sudden, the clouds are parted and we've got something very special, potentially commercially as well. And that's what we're hearing when we talk to more and less all of these manufacturers is the level of engagement they're getting for their customers. Car sales, okay? They're most important customers. The very high-end people that are investing in the road and track cars from these brands are turning towards this as well as some of the other activities. Yeah, they're still interested in Formula One. We're not actually in competition with Formula One. We're just not, you know? There are various ways in which perhaps there are some parallels that need to be kind of explored and understood and squared off. But as a product, it's a product in its own right. It doesn't have to make excuses about itself when you've got the racing with the depth and the quality that we've got now. It's making fewer excuses for itself and that you are going to see play out. I expect for the first time in about a year, 18 months, we're going to start to have surprise, very pleasant surprise announcements coming in the next year or so. Yeah, if I'm the ACO President, PFEON, or the CO, the WC and Elam S, Fred Licki out, almost not, the job is done for the next few years. They can sit back and enjoy the ride and manage the calendar and manage the odd spat here and there and make sure everybody's happy. They've now extended the rules up to the end of 2029. They're smart people. They will already be thinking about 2029. What do we do at the end of that? For me, I don't necessarily think that's the end of the extension to this ruleset. I think we might see some tweaks here and there to what you can bring along to the party in terms of car and technology and philosophy. To this ruleset, I can see this going into the next decade because what they need, what they want is to get enough manufacturers here that keep coming back year after year that it becomes a given that you're in the WC. Like we've seen in other championships, like DTM back in the day or like WRC or NASCAR, where it doesn't matter what they do, there's going to be two or three manufacturers that will say, "Well, we're going to be here anyway." And WRC it's the same. There are always at least two or three manufacturers there and that's what they need. They need to get to a point where manufacturers just kind of keep coming back to the point where it becomes part of their yearly cycle that we're in WRC this year, what we're doing, rather than chopping in and out. They need to sustain it. And I think they can. - Two, three, four year programs. - Yeah, and actually I've got a hiring bone arrangement where we know at some point, some manufacturers are going to say, "We're done with this. "We've spent the budget we have for this. "We've got to go off and do something else. "We're going to go and sponsor a championship league team "or we're going to go and put our money into fashion "or we're going to throw yet another useless million "that bunch of influencers." - Hi guys. - But if you got to a point where you could get Ferraris, they're looking like they are like a Porsche and a Toyota is a minimum bought into the level where they just keep coming. It doesn't matter. They want to be here. This is their program. This is their heritage. They want to build on results from the past. - They'll be able to step up. - Yeah, they'll be able to step up and there'll be teams that want to come just so they can race against them. - Let's need that. Let's that group. - Let's drag on into this. Jake and Mummy says, "With the announcement "the hard-for-all manufacturers, "I'm going to run two cars in WCDic season. "Cool, we see the third Ferrari going to M6 lecture here. "Are you aware of any of the LMH brands "looking to expand on M6 in the next couple of years? "There was another one on a similar quick look. "It was David Harris, who says terrific podcast, "get much thank you very much, David. "Outside of Aston Martin, any additional LMTHTT "because of the horizon for MSAR. "Also, it's a two car mandate going to impact "any type of interest before Lamborghini in 2025." Answer the one about Lamborghini first 'cause you were in that conversation. - Yeah, so, yeah. They committed to the two cars for work, which is fantastic news. They'd kind of trailed it to us back at MLO when Patchini told me from Andrew Appetini, from Ironlink's, told me that they were ready to go if the rule came into place. The rule for two cars is in place now and the CEO of Lamborghini came out and said, "Before the Martin for hours, they're going to be there." The key is they're working on behind the scenes on what they're going to do about IMSA, how they're going to manage it logistically. And the quote from Riven Moore, the technical director who's currently acting as head of Lamborghini motorsport, is that actually scaling up to two cars for work and having the second car is easy. It's the other stuff around it that's difficult. It's logistics. It's making sure that you've got the right team on site to manage the programs. And it's just, it's making sure that everything works with the capacity that they've got. And because of that, they're still having to work the finer details on what they're going to do in IMSA. At the moment, they are committed to IMSA. The quote was, it's one of the pillars of the program from when they first announced it. They want to keep racing in IMSA GGP. The bigger question mark is what does it look like? Do we see them just continuing the endurance cup? Or do we see them expand full season like they'd originally planned? If I was a betting man from what we heard in that briefing, I would say there'll probably still be one car in IMSA next year. I think it might just be the endurance cup grounds, but I'd like to see more. They certainly did trail the fact they might be two at Daytona, which would be fantastic. - What did Joe see? - The other quick question was about the third Ferrari. No doubt at all about it. Really conclusive. We spoke to Antonello Koletta at Maronello before Lamont. That 83 car, the current plan is, comes back to the WC with the same driver line up next year, is our understanding that's pretty clear from what Antonello said to us at that point. As for other teams, whether or not it be GTP, Dr. Alan D.H. on IMH, making statements about IMSA. Ferrari definitely not next year without a shadow of a doubt. So no Ferrari committed to IMSA for next year. - I think it could happen. - I think it will happen in the future. I think it will happen in the future. I think right now they're basically just trying to build their program, build their capability. You've got to say they're doing a pretty good job of that so far, but they are building in for the future, not least with the driver talent, that 83 car, made very clear these are the two young guys here, Faye, and a rubber shortsman that we expect to be the next generation into the factory cars, okay? But that's not to say they couldn't be doing other stuff as well. Again, on the future prospects for IMSA, take a look and a listen to what John Doonan says in that conversation with Marshall Pruitt. There's a link to that video in a story posted on Saturday morning on DSC. - Or it's on the IMSA YouTube channel. - It's on the YouTube channel. I could say nothing other than rampant positivity there. And the most exciting thing about that is I don't actually know what he's talking about yet. - Yeah, and the best thing is knowing John Doonan like we do and he is a man of integrity. He's not gonna be running around screaming and shouting that they got loads of all manufacturers coming if he knows they aren't. - Yeah. - He would be keen to fan the flames on it or you'll push back on it if that wasn't the case. - Some respects adds another layer into this one, Stephen, we're talking about privateers, H&M on series and the conversations have been going on there. Let's talk about that. So a couple of story strands there. One is where is the space? Well, keep an eye on just exactly what will be going on in the customer marketplace. I can tell you that I know of active discussions, active discussions around another manufacturer bringing customer cars into play here. And I know of active discussions to and from different teams that are looking to have conversations with those manufacturers. There are definitely gonna be changes in the privateer ranks. There is changes may or may not include other manufacturers coming into the ring either in '25 or '26. Put that aside, that's all WC. The Asian Le Mans series thing. Now, we didn't break it. No one broke it other than Pierre Féral himself in a multi-platform interview he did for French media about a month ago. Matt Fernandez, our roving Frenchman, picked up on that, handed the baton to us. We published that just before Le Mans. That's then been picked up by a number of our colleagues at Le Mans who've asked Pierre Féral on the same question during race week. I'd catch up with Pierre face-to-face at Scrutinier. He confirmed that indeed the intention is to evaluate hypercar for the Asian Le Mans series, not the European Le Mans series. And there's a simple reason for that, which is they're not content with just taking principally European Le Mans series players with a few of the MSA teams to Asia for a winter holiday. That's not what this should be. This is about building a marketplace. It always was about building a marketplace back into a tasteful island's days, of building that up and trying to find, as they did, Asian-based teams with LMP2 and NP3 cars. COVID pretty much killed that dead. What they're finding in trying to rebuild that is little or no enthusiasm for LMP2 and LMP3 in its current or future forms. And more enthusiasm, potentially, in the bigger brands that feature in hypercar. And that's what they want to evaluate. Is there an active plan to do it? No. Is there an active plan to evaluate whether or not doing it would be a good thing? A hundred percent yes, okay? But here's the thing. It's not gonna be a matter of whether or not you can get hub auto or AI or tripling or absolute to come and commit. You need a sustainable number, okay? You've then got to make a determination as to whether or not that's pro or pro am because at the moment, hypercar is not pro am anywhere. And you then need to determine how you make the space for that at Le Mans because offering one space to those teams at Le Mans, from a two, three, four car grid, isn't gonna cut it with the kind of numbers you're talking about to invest in those platforms? And it's not big enough calendar for you yet. But if they continued with this kind of format they've got now with like two separate chunks straddle by the year change, I think it's struggled to put those sums together and say, oh, let's do all this for four races or five races or six races. It is absolutely a conversation that you'll be having, absolutely, completely correct they should be having it. It was made abundantly clear, by the way. And before I'd even asked the question of Piafion, he said, not Elon S. They're not gonna mess with the success story that is the European Among Series and their ladder. That's provided not just the supporting cast for the 24 hours of Le Mans, but just take a look at the hypercar grid, take a look at the teams in that hypercar grid and look where they came from. Okay, the fact that you've got WRC, the fact that you've got the potential to build on, things like the links effort. All of that came through the opportunities to expand into prototypes, a proving program, if you like, from the European Among Series. They are not gonna mess with that at all. - They've got other things to deal with, P2. P2 and it's worth diving into that, because that's a big part of the picture that it's been sort of looked over. But, you know, the, how long, I don't know how long we've been working together now, more than a decade, on and off. I'll tell you right now, there are two pieces you've written. I'm really proud of you four. One was your piece about the cost of racing and GT3, those three pieces that were written some years ago. But the job you did, with the future of Ellen P2, was a superb bit of writing. And here's the irony, three weeks later, it's in ashes. - I did say, I did trail in that piece, so anyone who read it that was on the table, they were gonna scrap this rule set and they went and did it. - They scraped the whole long. (laughing) - That's gonna be said with something of a shock. We didn't expect that to be the announcement. It was the announcement. So just run our listeners through what they're now saying, Stephen. - Yeah, they've extended the current rule sets by two years to 2028. I'll free the end of the 2028 season. So we will see the current oracles live on, not just in the LMS, Asian law monsters, but also in IMSA. IMSA is still committed to LFP2 and I spoke to John doing all that specifically. And then beyond that, we kind of don't know now. They have totally scrapped the rule book, supposedly. They will work on it from scratch. Hybrid power, as we mentioned to me a couple of times, is being back in the mix, by the time we get to the end of 2028 and into 2029, is being something that they want to introduce. Another key snippet is that they will now not need to be based on LMDH spines, which was a key part of the original rule set was that it was the four LMDH manufacturers using the spines they developed for the top class programs and using them as the basis for the P2 car. That's now not going to be the case. It doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see any different manufacturers come into play. I don't think we will, but they can design P2 cars from scratch now rather than having to use existing solutions for LMDH cars. So yeah, Gibson as well, almost certainly going to still be the engine supplier, but with a change in velocity in terms of weight and the size of the engine, it's not going to be the tweaked version of their current P2 engine that we'd originally expected from the first tender. - I think it's expected from the first tender. - Yeah, it's all essentially up in the air now, crucially they have got time to sort it out. And part of me does think on reflection, having thought about this for a few days now, that it is the right move, because there was a sense from talking to all these manufacturers that none of them wholly satisfied with where they was going. Is there a spending a lot of money developing cars and fighting for, even if it was equal share of the pie in terms of the customer place, you're fighting for six or seven cars. This enables everybody a chance to step away, take a breather and go right, what do we want the future of LMDH to be? And thankfully, it feels like the teams have been listened to, which I know that the LMDH teams as a whole will be thrilled by is that they've had their concerns about cost listened to, and they will surely be around the table for what comes next in P2. It's been made clear to me so many times that they really do value the LMS grid in particular, but also the guys are nims in it, and the guys are committational. I'm on series, they value there and put in this, and they will be part of the new rule set and its direction. So fingers crossed, it goes the right way, because by the time we get to that point, by the time we get to 29, we'll be at the end of the current extension to hypercar, and it's going to be crucial, they nail this, because if hydrogen doesn't take off and they don't extend this and we're down to only a couple of factory teams, they're going to need those privateer prototypes. So it's really imperative they get this right. - Let's talk through a couple of the other bits and pieces here in our 80 announcements and rule changes section at Daniel's. Some of the skills put together for us. Oscar, with expansion of 40 cars, an XU and additional commands, it's sort of a skinny Lamborghini Cadillac, and two cars master Martin, where is that space? Could we see a brutal decision made? Even though two spaces will come, he says from Joe to merging with Caddy, well, let's wait and let anybody make their own announcements on those fronts. What's this space? There's no way that decision would have been made with that absolute confidence of where they were. And I can tell you from the very first moment that we spoke in background to senior management at the WC, they've been very confident about their numbers, very confident about their numbers, 40 cars. It's now more or less confirmed as the grid. There's no doubt in my mind that less massive drama happens, 40 cars is what we're gonna see for the full season. Sam Piper says with Mr. D stations to Joshua, to Shino retiring and heart of racing taking on two on the matches next year, is another team gonna be taking on Aston's duty threes? - I did have a conversation about this with Hugh Tasker from AMR at Spa and asked him this kind of question almost directly that with heart racing stepping up into LMH, are we gonna see different customer teams bidding or in the ring for LMGT free entries and LMGT free going forward in WEC? And the answer I was given was essentially the moment it looks like there's gonna be stability, not necessarily any surprises. - Whether that's changed since we've now had confirmation of heart racing, we're gonna run two cars in hypercar and now D stations plans may have changed because of Satoshi's decision to move away from racing at Le Mans. But you don't know, it's only Le Mans. - But exactly, Satoshi has said he's moving away at Le Mans but he's only racing at Le Mans this year. It's not actually in the full season. - The team is still gonna function. - Bigger, so personally as we stand, I don't think we're gonna see a change there for Aston Martin. - Could change. Things can change very quickly in this game as we've seen in so many areas. - I think I've raced and were quite liked to have representation in both classes. - Yeah, yeah. - And they've got a driver squad that suits it. - Yeah, they're becoming a real big player in international sports car racing. They're becoming a WRT, they're becoming a Manti and sense of just how much involvement they've got at the factory level. - Mark Eakin says, "No of these get excited by talks "so McLaren two couple teams, "but should questions raise us "to have the all fit McGrid, "would a manufacturer and two cars, "if they're gonna have to pre-qualify potentially?" No, but then again, McLaren aren't talking about anything before 2027 at the earliest and there's a lot of ground gonna be covered. Do I expect all of the current players to be at in that top class by 2027? I don't because that's just not the way that manufacturer programs work. Two do I think is the most likely to slip. I could probably give you a short list of those but no point in doing that right now. That's not right history before it happens. Nobody's telling us they're going to pull out. - Yeah, and what shouldn't be missed is that the priorities can be given to teams that are entering hypercar, manufacturers entering hypercar. You're putting all that investment in to building a car from scratch just for this rule set. It's gonna be the GT free grid that takes the hit here. And I'm sure they're gonna start looking at the brands where we've got the older cars in the field, or they're gonna look at brands that don't have hypercar representation, you're first on the chopping block. They will accommodate as many hypercars as they can, 'cause why wouldn't they? - Yeah. And by the way, they always have the opportunity in future years to look at expanding that grid even further. There's nothing to stop them from doing that. Nothing's whatsoever to stop them from doing that. I mean, we've already seen that Imola to get the deal they've got or having to build extra carriages. - The biggest area this I think is gonna suffer is privateer marketplace. I think if you go privateer and you wanna run in hypercar, I think you've gotta look at MZ and GTB. I just don't see them in the space going forward, at least for the next couple of years. - Well, maybe that's where you get the sustainability of your program. It's Asia Le Mans series. - Animza. - Animza. - As a double. - But to do that, my view would be that the ACO are gonna have to be more generous with the number of cars that are coming from North America. - Mm. Yep. - And actually that answers Damien Peachman's was 2024 on the last extra inter-entries to compete. If you're in WC is full, Le Mans doesn't have enough pits spaces. No, that is very clearly a strategic alliance that works for both parties. There's no doubt in my mind that will continue. I would see, as is the case with an awful lot of things, probably we're at the point where everybody needs to take a step back and decide whether or not the current framework is fit for purpose. There is prospect in the future, in the near future for more garages at Le Mans. Probably not for the next couple of years or so, but no doubt whatsoever that the ACO are looking at the prospects for maintaining that, you know, the growth moving forward. That does include a deeper grid at Le Mans. We've already got more cars than have ever started Le Mans. Already got that. We tend to forget Gary's 56 is core. Gary's 56 for a reason. That's because it was the 56 that it wasn't that long ago. We now at a steady 62 with a reserve list. And it can go further. And frankly, even if the marketplace for the top class took a dip in the future, they still wouldn't struggle to fill it. - The next topic is one, you are going to love it, go ahead. - Love it. - You are going to absolutely, you're going to be rubbing your knees at this, qualifying slow zones and safety cars. And we've got a lot of questions in place. - We do, so before we do that, we're already at 68 minutes into this pub. - Fantastic. - It's going to be a bump up and answer one because we've made a decision to answer as many of these questions as we possibly can. So now might be the points, press the pause button, go and get yourself an adult beverage if it's that time of the evening or maybe a hot milky drink if it's that time of the morning, afternoon or evening. - Like your favorite scented candle. You know, make yourself ritual. - Grab the cat. Whether he or she likes it. Do those things. Settle in, strap yourself in because we're going qualifying slow zones and safety cars. Hit me with it. - Yeah. - It's your summer skill. - Him? - Yes. - Hyper pole has been a great addition to Lamont but is a rethink needed for the one hour qualifying session. Is it pure luck as to which cars to get through. Hyper pole, for me personally, all practices except for FB4 should be qualifying. There is less chance of incidents and traffic. I think you and me just agree on this slightly. - We do a bit. Do you want to give this your position which I can tell you before you. - It's wrong. - It's wrong. You're faulty. - I really like it as it is right now and I wouldn't change it for the world. - I really like it. It's simple, it's an hour. If you miss out, you miss out. It's bad luck. We then get into hyper pole. - Evidence once again that you can't fix stupid. But so what do I think? It's a similar take as you've just heard me say with looking at the overall picture. I think quite often everything, every system evolves. And when you evolve and take a bold step as they did with hyper pole, I was not a fan of the hyper pole concept. I was wrong, okay? It is actually really good for-- - That's awesome. - Listen to the commentary from me and the boys commentating on hyper pole and the dramas. That's what it is. It's standing up and screaming at the end of it. That's what it should be. And is it relevant to Joe's racing? No, it isn't, but by God, it's fun. But I do agree. I think one aspect of it that does need two steps away, take a look at what we got. Does it make sense? Can be tweaked, and I think can be tweaked pretty simply. What I'm about to suggest is not necessarily the only way to do it, but I think it's a fairer way to do it, which is two hour session. First 45 minutes GT cars only. Then we get everybody together. Last 45 minutes, other P2s and hyper cars only. For me, that gives more of an opportunity for all those teams to get a fairer shot at getting more relevant time, by the way, and a better shot at finding the space to have a clear lap, which is what qualifying really should be about. I get it, I do understand, I don't. I'm being glib, I don't entirely disagree with you, okay? That kind of lottery effect does have its appeal. I did throw up a surprise result here, but for me, it's qualifying. Qualifying should be giving us space to actually find the space and give us the ultimate performance of those cars. An hour is not a long time to achieve that with 62 cars on track. - The thing is, I'd disagree with so much. I would make it half an hour. Just go out there, get a couple of chances, job done. It's qualifying for the Lamont me Frows. It really doesn't matter, and the way it used to be with multiple sessions, with combined times on a time and screen was so dull, because you never knew when the actual pole time was going to be set until it happened, and even then, most of the time, you wouldn't know that that was the actual pole time until the very end. - It's difficult to come away from it. - And then rain would turn up, and then it would ruin everything, and it's just-- - Get it done. - By the way, other two favorite sports are ball fighting, a gladiatorial combat. But I get it, but that's what hyperpole is. - Exactly, so make it just quick, get to hyperpole as quickly as possible. - No, you're wrong. - Let's have hyperpole, job done. - Right, so still kill me to my phone, a piece be broken now for the rest of the show, but so-- (laughing) But it is a good example, isn't it, of how the same question can have two dramatically different answers. The wrong answer is to the case in Stephen's opinion, or the right answer is in the case of my opinion. So, there you go. Take your choice, we move on forward. Chris Hartley says, "What a brilliant week of racing. "Took my son for his first Le Mans. "He's never watched sports go racing before, "and he has the bug now. "Should they change qualifying for my hyperpole? "It's brilliant, call it for cyberpole should be longer, "could be longer, or across all practice sessions. "First thing's first, well done, Chris. "It's always been my thing. "If you're gonna go racing, take somebody with you, "because they're gonna love it." Exactly how I got into this. It was my son driving us into it. - That's how I got into it. - There you go, and look at what damage has been done. (laughing) Slow zone procedure, so status from cocker racing, needs to be really careful in the future. In the morning, we saw the six getting an advantage of one minute because the slow zone was deployed late. One lot later, it lost 35 seconds because of another slow zone from the total. We're lucky because safety correct didn't affect the result. I know safety by all, it's a bit random. Giving advantage of one minute was pretty bad luck. Slow zone was because of the fours crash, all I'm asking is not affecting the lead battles by that much. We'll come to that in a moment because we've then got two or three questions, including another one from status, about the safety car procedure at the moment. The big change this year, Stephen, was getting rid of the drop back. That was the class separation behind the first single safety car. Connor Kay says he doesn't believe that the change seemed like it saved much time over last year. Most of the time was spent in stage when cleaning up the incidents. Yes, I didn't get quite the four class battles in the 2023 wave round. And then crippled potato, great name. I suspect that may be his given name, indeed. I don't think that's-- - Yeah, that is definitely a bad name. - Yeah, yeah. I've no problem with the current safety car setup. I thought it worked fine in practice. Should the rules be tweaked on our car's to switch to wet size while the police each is running before going green? When conditions deteriorate seem very questionable, watching the wave rampack crawl their way up to the safety car, releasing the entire field with stone cold slicks and I went very straight to the green flag. Yeah, Goldberg, the final question on this, was I surprised or were we surprised by the ACO's decision to have them on the safety car rather than red flag it? No, the Le Mans 24 hours famously has never been red flagged. It does give the opportunity to at least clear some of the water behind the safety car train. So there is that. So just a quick answer to Goldberg's one, no. As for the rest of it, I struggled to disagree with not knowing there's a change to wet. If the reason you're beyond the safety car is because of weather conditions, I struggle to disagree with that premise. I'd say again, I disagree with the change they made for this year. I don't think it's safe at any time at all. I think they bowed to the wrong sort of pressure. I think they bowed to, you know, griping media and social media comment. And I don't think it took that long. You know, did it take a little longer? Yes, might have been one more lap. Yes, it's 24 hour race. If actually what you get at the end of the day is a better race and better safety, that's surely what that process is supposed to be about. And by the way, fairer, which is the other thing it's supposed to be about, we changed the rules. Remember, after Porsche getting a mighty lift from a safety car, was it 18? Yes, so the year with the pink, pink, pink car, isn't it? We changed the rules for that. We then changed them back this year. And I don't agree with the decision that was taken. I don't think it caused very many problems this year. It generally makes sense. It's a long-winded process, but it makes sense. But it's a unique track. And what you're trying to do is to retain as much of the class battle and fairness as you possibly can. Are their winners and losers? Yes, they most certainly are. But the principal reason for doing this, as a couple of you have been good enough to recognize in your questions, is safety. Decision is taken by race control as to what the most appropriate intervention is. You can agree with them, you can disagree with them, but I will never second-guess them. They are the ones with some very tough decisions to make, and their principal concerns are always going to be safety of the driver. Safety of the intervention crews, the marshals, safety of the public. I'm not going to play games with that. We can all say that could have been better, that could have been worse after the event, but we're not the people there with the big red buttons in front of us that have to make that call. I will not do that, okay? Do I think the processes were perfect and perfectly observed? No and no, but they were close enough that it wasn't a defining factor of this race, with the exception of the long, long safety car overnight. Do I believe that that was executed correctly? For the most part, yes, I do. I woke up to come on from my two and a half hours of sleep with the rain battering down in waves in my caravan. I got drenched on the way to my bed during the race. I basically sat there trying to decide the correct time to go and not get drenched, and it was somewhere about the waves of heavy rain coming through about every 10 minutes, a little bit less or a little bit more, seven minutes, 12, 13 minutes. I made it with about two minutes walk trot to the TV booth before the next band hit us, and I got absolutely drenched, walked in, and clearly it's a funny sight when some walks in completely drenched. So I don't disagree with the correct move. We can always have a debate about whether or not you could go a little earlier back to racing. They clearly wanted to take it back into daylight. I think that was the correct move as well. So you can see where any standing water might be. You get half a chance to learn the way through. And the visibility in these hypercars is not great at all. You've seen it from some of the onboards. If you're sitting in the grandstand, you can look and say, "Oh, it doesn't look that bad," but in the cockpit of a hypercar, you can't see anything. Particularly behind a Ferrari with it here. And I think, by the way, that's a question that needs to be asked, what caused that? It cannot be allowed to happen again. And in those circumstances-- - The oil this is here. - Yeah. If there was oil coming from back in that car, the one decision I think that could have been taken there was the might one have been a case to beat ball flag that car. Okay, and that ultimately, I believe, was the winning car. So I do think that there might have been questions asked. We'd all, two or three of the following hypercars, they couldn't see. That's not safe. Safety is a multi-layered thing. If a problem with the car is causing problems, the car is following it. For me, that should have been a decision that should have been investigated and taken. Was it clearly that car losing oil? We didn't see it, but we heard from multiple teams that they could. That's a decision I would have agreed with they should have been brought in to deal with that issue. That's the only thing I think I saw that I fundamentally disagreed with in terms of decisions made by race control. Other than that, we'll come to a couple of others that are debatable, but in terms of the big calls, the interventions, generally speaking, the choice between slow zone and safety car, I think was correct, full course, et cetera. There's a myriad of different options left open and quite often we suffer, and the interpretation of an incident suffers because we don't get full information. We don't know what other clean up is going on because you can't have cameras at every single point where a chunk of bodywork or a bit of this car, a bit of that car, the aftermath of another incident may not be obvious to us. It can take a while for the to be sufficient space for Marshall to make that glory dash to go and pick up a bit of oracle. And again, not gonna second guess that. I'm not the guy I have to make the choice about instructing them to do it or advising them when to do it. And I'm certainly not the person, you know, dressed in protective gear, orange overalls of gloves that's having to get from behind the safety of a barrier and rush out into the road where, around a blind turn, a car may be appearing at 80 kilometers an hour, we hope. That's not my call either. Generally speaking, I think a very good management of that race. - It's so difficult this race to manage. It just kept throwing Weber changes at you the whole way through. Never let up, did it? - No, and the final thing to actually say, by the way, is that no, I think the decision to have three safety cars still is very relevant as long as you come up with a way to manage it. If this was a two hour, 40 minute race, I'd have problems with it. It isn't, it's a 24 hour race. And I think sometimes we just need to get over our souls a bit. We all want action all the time, but not to compromise it. - In case you say that, you can use a breather sometimes, especially in a race that I was so frantic. - Yeah, there's also a long time on the safety car. No doubt at all, it's a long time on the safety car. And it's quite interesting, we saw and heard vastly different opinions on board from some of their hyper car drivers. Let's really go now, really go now, and others are going, definitely not, definitely not. You know, you've got to allow those with the responsibility to make those decisions on their behalf to make those decisions and you just respect it. That for me is the mark of a functional sport is you respect the decisions of those responsible for them. And make no mistake, had things gone wrong, it would have been those same people taking responsibility for the consequences. - Yeah, not the drivers. - Let's move on from that to, it's sort of a skinny. - Yes, cocko racing status says, it's sort of a skinny finish to the race after an impressive display. So what's next for them? It's clear they need to improve and show real pace. Is there place in the WC in danger? I thought it was a really good run for that. Quiet all the way to the finish. Didn't really get in the way of anybody. Just got on with the job, finished above the NMP2 cars. Can't expect much more than that. - By the way, finished, because the guesting cars and the privateer cars are invisible for manufacturer's points, finished one place out of getting two manufacturer points, get double points of course. I know they were buzzed about it in a really good way. That will not have hurt them in any way so far the drive to move forward. They do need to find pace. They do need to find a commercial solution for next year. - They need to find a second car. - They do. Do I know where they are with that? I have a few ideas. Do I think where they are now with that program is appropriate for the driver squad they've got? No. I think we're now at that stage where they need to make a difficult decision and they need to decide whether or not they're gonna invest in getting a structure around that that starts to close the performance gap. What we didn't necessarily see is we have, they were somewhat off the pace, but did finish the race. Finish 14th by the way, there was it's eventually nine laps down. We're five laps down for a long, long time. I think they had a late problem if I remember rightly, but got the car back out. I'd like to see another driver with real developmental experience involved in that program. Whether or not they're a race driver or whether or not there's a test program, don't really care, but I want to see them starting to make some steps forward. They've proven they've got a reliable car now. They've proven the car has got some pace. They need to find a way now to close the performance gap, to be closer to the performance window they should be in. Remember, that's the point here. It's not that it's a slow, potentially a slower car. It's a car that's not exploiting the performance window that it should be within. And that's down to the team as a whole, not the drivers necessarily, the whole team. - Let's talk penalties. Stephen Gay, cross main. Lassale's 22 of all last questions about penalties during the race. The first one from Stephen Gay is about Robert Cabitzer and the clash with Dries Vantour in the 15 BMW. So in your opinion was the 30 second penalty for Robert Cabitzer, enough. Hashtagning personally, it wasn't. - Okay, what do you think? I'd like to know whether or not race control has access to Robert's radio message that we heard on broadcast, that expressed his frustration with Dries Vantour. It's a really difficult one, that incident. - Well, here's the point. - It's a really difficult one. - The principle is this. The principle is this. That you should not be punishing the consequence, you should be punishing the act, okay? - Yes. - So that, first and foremost, rather evens the kind of the debate a little, okay? Same principle that it operates in law, actually. You should be punishing the act and not the consequence, although there is always an aspect of that. It was pretty damn bad, is the straight answer. And pretty clearly, Robert was frustrated with the actions of Dries Vantour. So by the way, Conan Dries' point of view on this one, they're on the limit podcast, over the limit podcast, with his brother, which we listened to on the way home from Vermont was quite an eye in terms of his take on it. The other quick thing to say by the way is, if you do have an opinion on this, a lot of people do, express it politely, express it with respect. Don't go onto social media and be a dick about it, because ultimately, it's not you. You're not the people making those decisions, whether or not you're at, you know, 300 kilometers an hour down the moles and straights or in race control. Get over yourselves and let this be a sport. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for hurling abuse whether or not it's at Robert Kabitza for the act, whether it's at Dries Vantour for what you perceive he did or didn't do, and certainly not afterwards. Stop it. Just keep it to yourself. Why are you compiling in like some people do? I get it. It's instant reactions on social media. It's not instant reactions. People like the attention of throwing stuff at the way. It's not an instant reaction. Quite often. This was days later. Get over yourselves. Here's the thing. Ultimately, we're here on a podcast offering your opinion. Ultimately, our opinion doesn't matter. No. And if you're there sitting there watching the 24 hours of Le Mans, you know, whether or not that's you there, suited and booted with a group of like-minded friends or whether or not that's there. You're there sitting in your pant seat in Doritos. Your opinion doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Certainly your opinion is not going to be enhanced by throwing vile abuse at anybody involved in this. Stop it. It's childish is what it is. It's one of the worst things about what should be the really good thing about social media. It is that access to the opportunity to amplify, the opportunity to share is what it should be. Not just this opportunity to bully. It's a hateful part of the sport. Put it aside. From what I saw, with that, it looked like a driver trying to give a lesson to a driver that thought had done him bad. There's places for that. 200 miles an hour, the Mansand Street is not one of them. No. The strangest thing about it is I've spoken to Robert plenty of times. I've seen him race plenty of times at this point. It just seems about a character from him. Yeah. You know, and there's plenty of accusations out there that it was intentional and there's, you know, there is the radio message that we heard and the on board from the Porsche that they were passing and from the BMW is not kind to him in terms of the way it looked. I will say that the on board from the Ferrari painted a slightly different picture for me. It isn't like a, when you see the on board on the Ferrari, it isn't like a quick swerve. It is very drifting across the circuit, but it does look different from different angles. But it just, it was different from Robert Kavitz. I just don't expect that to him. Was it because he had a legitimate shot away in that race and that 83 was having such a good run that he just saw Red Mist? But you'd have liked to have thought that, assuming what Dries Rantors said is true and then, you know, there's no reason to not believe Dries is, his reputation speaks for itself in terms of what he's like as a person. The fact that Robert hasn't reached out for him, at least at the point of the recording of that podcast and it wasn't. That's just an alternative. Really surprised me. I don't understand. That is disappointing. I'd like to hear Robert's side of this. Yeah, I mean, it just feels. He might have been told not to engage. He might have been told that, but it's disappointed. It's disappointed. For me, the second guess, what difference would it have made? Well, it should, Robert Kavitz, who have had a 60-second stop should have been removed from the race. You know, we've seen that happen in the past. Again, not my call. By the way, I've not got the facility that they do have. To give you an idea of the kind of things they do have the facility to do in the stewards room at the moment. They have a GPS system that can show them precisely what a car did, precisely what a car did. What do I mean by that? They've not just got our in-car cameras in both cars or the TV from trackside. They've got systems within those cars that they can basically say, "Well, here's what you did. Here's what happened." So that question, and it is not open to debate about the accuracy or otherwise of that system. So they would have had the opportunity to look at that. Then they've had all sorts of prior examples of what happened, blah, blah, blah. It's really easy to say they put a car out of the race with damage and with potential harm to that driver by what you or I may have deemed to be either accidental or a deliberate act. Again, we are not the rule makers. With the benefit of hindsight, did 30 seconds stop and hold look like the right punishment for that incident? It wasn't a good look, but I don't have access to all of the facts. Now that you, the only people that do, race control the stewards Robert Kapitsa because he would have been part of that process. Yeah, that's it. So the second question concerns Ferrari as well. Was race control too lenient on penalties for Ferrari for the instance such as the unsafe release in pit lane or the wasn't deemed as an unsafe release. The hit on the non-braked road at most on corner and the door being ajar on the 15? No, yes, no. And here's the thing. The unsafe release on reflection for me is the car started out of his box. Yes. And had it had a clean run out of its pit box on for the fast lane it would have been fine. Yeah. The door ajar case of the defence was exactly what happened to Proton. At Spa they were called in, managed to fix it in the meantime eventually. But yeah, I don't think there was a massive delay for the 50? Well, in the pit. The door. It wasn't a massive delay, but they did have to come in when they wouldn't necessarily want to. Yeah. But I think the answer with all of those is they were all judgment calls. None of them ultimately determined the race other than you could argue that the hit with the Ferrari and the A car. That was the one that didn't quite sit right with me. It was a five second time penalty. Yeah. I don't think that punishment quite fit the crime with that one because the A could lose a lot of time. I tend to have the race and it was a car that was in the intention of the win and it was, you know, throughout the race the stronger of the two Toyota's. Yeah. Here's the thing. Ultimately, yeah, tend to agree. Maybe it could have been 10, maybe it could have been 20, maybe it could have been 30. But I don't think that was, but when you're looking at the difference between like the commits penalty and it was pugridi, wasn't it, in the car, with Hartley and the Toyota. The difference is that Robert could be so I think you could argue it was a little bit more of a road rage style. Incident. Whereas pugridi, I don't think there was malicious intent in that. I don't think he came piling in just to take out the Ferrari. Yeah. Take out the Toyota. Sorry. It was, it was difficult conditions. He died at the inside. It was a missed time challenge. Let's crack it on with a few more and we're now over 90 minutes and we need to crack it. Yeah. So let's go to the other one topic section and we'll start again with Daniel Samaskill. He says, what do you think we'll see the bronze Jesus Ben Keating back at Le Mans next season? It was a really tough one for him, wasn't it? It was, but don't ever take a forward view based on a driver's emotional response after a bad race. And he did have a very bad race. Pretty clear. He doesn't like the P2 car in its form that it competed at Le Mans. It's not unusual in that. It is a fundamentally more tricky prospect. But do I think we'll see Ben? I hope so, because he's such a huge personality. But don't take a view long term in the immediate aftermath of disappointment. Lucas Lacas says, do you think LMP2 can be justified as a class with it not being updated and many more LMG3 cars and larger cars that could join the grid at Le Mans instead? I just thought it wasn't a very fun class to follow. It's the bedrock of the Pro Am formula. And what do I mean by that? It gives drivers, Pro Am dam, teams and partners the opportunity to be at the biggest race in the world. It was an odd race this time, but it has provided fantastic racing. You can't ignore how important that formula is for the ladder. European Le Mans series, EMSER, and the Asia Le Mans series. It's a bedrock for bringing people through that in a whole variety of ways make a contribution to the health of the sport at every single level. We've been through this time and time again, but there's a few examples. You look at T.S. sport's growth and links his growth. WRT's growth, United Auto Sports growth, would not be possible without that formula. And LMP3 as well in the background for very many of those teams as well. And more besides, cool racing and other one emerging as being another one of the so-called super teams. So the answer is yes, I believe it should have a place at Le Mans. I believe it deserves the guarantee of the 15 at least places 16 this year. And I think that should continue for the foreseeable future. I think it's just as important of a class now as it was when we needed 20+ cars. If we'll have better, if like everywhere else it will have. Because for the future it needs to be there. Yeah, it'll have a good and bad races. Yep, 100%. Adam Kopski, apologies. Graham, awesome job on the booth again this year after another exciting 24 hour race. My question is during the overnight red flag and safety car period when the skies dump buckets and buckets of water on the track, giving the number of stories that can be discussed about any number of cars, how do you and the other commentators decide what to talk about to fill in the time while you wait for the racing to resume? So it's a really interesting question and thank you for that Adam. I love what I do and I love working with the people I get to work with some stellar people this year on our broadcast team and all of the others that filled out the TV compound. There's a partial answer which is I do a lot of work with TV across all the products that I commentate on the usual one series European and one series work and WC are providing the briefing notes for not just our commentary teams but all of the commentary teams now. So that is a prospect we started more formally for this season because it's getting to be more complicated and there's a lot of people involved in commentary that don't necessarily have the opportunity to commentate on and to view as much as I do and we do. As to how we make that determination in the moment it's a conversation. At that stage, particularly on a safety car, it's a conversation. It's generally driven by one of two of the three commentators in the booth. The lead commentator who on this occasion for our team was either Martin Haven, the voice of WC, David Addison, great to add us back or myself or the third commentator who for the most part this year was me as well. So I'm there with all the notes in front of me. I've got the opportunity to be a bit more detached from the actual action and to determine some of the storylines that are emerging and just pointed in that direction. So generally speaking, it is me drawing in, or Martin drawing in, Anthony Davidson, Peter Dunbreck and Rob Bell, who is with us as well. Great job. He did his first time at the moment to just dig a little bit deeper into some of the stories that we've been talking about in this podcast so far. So generally speaking, it's experienced commentators trying to tease out something that will give us three, five, ten, 15 minutes with a conversation. Last couple of questions now. Let's go with Rich Zagartis as I guys. I just finished watching the documentary about sports journalism by Stephen A Smith. Please drop me a DM about this, Rich, because I want to know which documentary that is. It covered the past, present and future sports journalism. Where do you two see the sports journalism as an industry going in the future? But you're the young girl. You're the guy who's been through that formal training in sports. I was formally trained as a journalist three years ago. 42 years ago now. That's ridiculous. But I was formally trained as a journalist 42 years ago. I came into sports journalism much later from about 2000 to 2001. You, however, after you and I had worked together for a little bit while, I took the opportunity to go to university and took a degree in sports journalism. I came out of that with a magnificent result, and you should correctly be proud of yourself for that. I certainly am. What's happened since? It has changed a little bit since even I was at university, which was about ten years ago now. Good, Rich. There's certainly a lot more multimedia, and I think that is going to be a theme going forward. Can you do more podcast material? Can you do more on the video side? Can you be a bit more creative for people who want quality content quickly and on a variety of different platforms such as phones, tablets and laptops? I don't think that kind of theme is going anywhere. I think we're going to see more and more video content and audio content in particular emerge as we go forward. What I would say, though, when we kind of had this conversation, didn't we, Graham, with one of the lovely members of the race team, John Chambers, during the Mon Week, about future and planning and where does the business go when it comes to motorsport journalism in particular. I tend to agree with John that I think longer-form quality journalism in the written medium is going to always be there, and I think it's going to down the line come back in a similar way to vinyl. Where we're going to get to the point where people go, you know what? Actually, I'm bored of these 10-second, 15-second clips and silly dances and YouTube videos. I actually want something with some substance because I want to learn more. And in the sport, like motor sport, sports car racing in particular, where it is really complex and there is so much going on all the time. You can't always break it down into 20, 30-second snippets of stuff. And actually, if people were really interested in something, they want more of it. We know this a lot. - Every 42 minutes for a podcast. - Yeah, exactly. If you're still listeners now, you are the target demographic for this, which is, you want more all the time. And it's not just, I want something five seconds on it. I want to really know what's going on. You're not going to get that from a lot of these different platforms that you're seeing, like a TikTok and a Twitter and a YouTube. I think I hope you're right. I hope there's always- I think the problem is, I think the interest is going to be there. I know that people are going to take more of an interest in it than they have, you know, maybe the last five or six years where we've had this sort of tsunami of other different ways to consume sports. The question is, can you monetize it? - Yes. - That's the big problem. - Absolutely right. So, here's my answer. It's not dramatically different. It's why DSC exists. It's why Delhi sport screw exists. It's why racer exists. It's why auto sport exists. It's why all those things exist. It's because people want more. I will admit to being frustrated about the dominance or the increased dominance in recent years of unsubstantiated opinion in the marketplace. I don't think social media has served sport in general. Well, I think it's been a melting pot for discontent. I think some people have noticed that negativity that breeds is a commercial opportunity. I find that abhorrent. I'll be honest with you. I find that in every sport there are those commercial outlets that will always accentuate the negative. That's not why sport exists. Sport for me has always been a bit like music. It's been a force for good. It's been something that draws people together. Those that have known me a long time will know that I'm a big fan of the Olympic ideal. And it is an ideal. It's not always fulfilled. But there's something good there. That's why I love sports car racing. I love sports car racing because of the people and because of the way that the people, for the most part, come together with this. And it is a kind of family and it's a team and it's all those great things. Quality journalism should always survive. Monetizing it as someone who's responsible for doing that for DSE has been one of the hardest things I've done in this sport. It remains a hard thing to achieve in this sport. While it's not compromising your independence and integrity. It's terrifically difficult. But I think ultimately we're going to come at some point in society to a red line. And I think some of the bad things have been happening with the wider media world, social media in particular. We're going to have to get this sorted because as a society we're not doing well with it. And I think that will have a knock on effect, I hope a positive effect, on media at all levels. Politicians that tell people not to trust the media just as a general rule of thumb get stuffed. It's a straight answer. There's a word for people like that and I'm not going to use it because it's entirely impolite and based on the 1930s. No, it's worse than that. It's not that. There are good and bad journalists. The determination about who those people are and what, how you value that should be in the eyes of the consumer. And it shouldn't be overly influenced by amplification. Whether that's on social media or from aligned, but it's often termed client media. While I have any say in the tone with which we communicate, we will accentuate the constructively critical. The positive because it's a positive thing. And with an attempt, the thing that was often written about the BBC, an organisation which I adore, is the mission to explain. There is a mission to explain this because it needs explaining because it's complicated. I'm delighted with the people that have come through our doors and gone on to bigger and better things. I'm delighted that you're with us and back with us now and I hope that's for the long term and that you get the opportunity as well to express your views and to give your take to racer.com's audience and, in fact, the magazine audience as well. And I hope that others choose that same path. I think we've got some exceptional journalistic talent in the press room. I don't want to see them wasting their time on nonsense. I want to see them fulfilling their passion with that mission to bring more people to understand more about the sport in a constructive way. I don't mind people being critical. I don't mind that at all. I do mind when you're choosing the negative because it gets you those clicks. I mind that a lot. I find that ridiculous. I find that self-indulgent, and I find that destructive. And that's why, frankly, we've had six months and been dominated within our sport, not by how good the racing's been or how great that event was, but whether not someone's been hit with five kilos. It's a nonsense. And I think I hope that as we finish this edition of the weekend sports cars and emerge from the moment where, frankly, B.O.P. in its widest sense was not the issue. I hope that can now be seen as being the nonsense that it was, and that we all move forward and stop being obsessed by the tiny man you shy, that is the value changes to equal top speed. This work still needs to be done there to equal that time. There's work that probably still needs to be done there, but it's not big work. The system works. It's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be perfect. Last question. Two last questions. Steve Fall, going back to the TV, but what do you and the team do to stay awake? Do you take any shifts, unlike me, it might as well drop in the safety car overnight? Talk about the DSC team. You managed them this year? Yep. We had essentially a rotor of four of us around the table, three principles on DSC, me doing the race and stuff, and we just did shifts. We did two people staying on, two people going to sleep for four hours and then vice versa. I picked the four hours where nothing happened and it rained and I got drenched. I'll get to that in a minute. By the way, a massive thanks to Richard Dean and all of his team, to Ashley, to Scarlett and everybody who's involved in the catering. It makes a huge massive difference and we always do ask for the indulgence of teams, particularly among, and they looked after all of the DSC team this year and that makes an absolutely massive difference for the TV team. We have two rolling teams. Two teams are three. The regular WC team, this is for the booth, by the way. Two pitley reporters will do Beckett back with us this year, alongside Bruce Joani was our full season pitley reporter. Martin Haven, myself and Davidson, and then joining this year for the World Feed and for the app and for fair amount of what was the discovery and duress book coverage this year. And David Addison, a piece of Brett and Rob Bell, and between several of us, we put together a meaningful rotor that means that each of us gets the opportunity to probably know more than three hours sleep. And that's broadly speaking, what you need without that is difficult to function, but hats off once again to Martin Haven because he does the heavy lifting on the organization in front of that. And it's most certainly the team leader for that team. And I'm delighted to call him a friend and a colleague without that organizational now, so I've done it for decades. It is difficult to get to the stage where you can focus on what is often fast moving action. I think that's a good way to finish it. Thanks so much for your time on what is a Saturday afternoon now, Stephen Kilby. Thanks as well to Marshall Pruitt for his continued indulgence with Twiskas, but the Marshall Pruitt podcast. Thanks again to Daniel Summers going to turn around the questions so very excellently. And thanks, of course, as always to our partners and our backers, sponsors for the weekend sports concert, Marshall Pruitt podcast. I've been Graham Goodwin. He has been Stephen Kilby. This has been nearly two hours of looking back at a superb 2024 24 hours of Le Mans. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
