Less Than Ten Minutes

He takes it easy on some of the hairpins, but that's probably to give the engine a short rest, for reasons explained below.

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb took place over the weekend, along with the European Grand Prix and the Nürburgring 24 Hours. Not as many people know about this race compared to the other two, as it only happens once a year at Pikes Peak in Colorado. The task is simple: it's a rally-style Hillclimb event, in which the driver has no co-driver and there are many classes to suit different budgets and upbringings. The fastest time in each class wins. The fastest class is called the Unlimited Class, and oh boy do they mean unlimited. Anything goes (one of the 'Unlimited' cars was packing 1350bhp for crying out loud)! The spoilers are the size of picnic tables, and the turbochargers involved could cause a black hole they're so big.

These are, without doubt, the most awesome racing cars in the world. In no other sport are they allowed to simply make everything as big as possible and just make the fastest car they can. But there is more to the huge wings and power than just "well we can, because anything goes". The 12.42-mile run (featuring 156 corners) climbs from 9390ft above sea level to 14,110ft, and as they climb ever higher, the air gets thinner, making aerodynamics less and less effective as you go up. Also, because all internal combustion engines run on an air-fuel mixture, they make less power as the air gets thinner. All this means that if you plan on setting any records, you'd better go large and make the absolute most of what air there is in the closing stages, where you'll still want to be going just as fast. The really cool thing about this race though is that it's a rally race. Some of these guy have to handle over 1000bhp on dirt, with varying levels of grip. Some of them have got 4WD to help them, but some don't. Some of them are in road-based cars, some are in open-wheel buggies and formula-style cars. Some of the drivers are in trucks! I'm not slagging off American muscle cars, either - there's genuinely a class for lorry cabs with AWD and humongous rear spoilers. It just looks so... wrong, and yet so, so very right indeed. In fact, there are classes for just about everything. From vintage muscle cars to Imprezas and Evos to Porsche 911s to motorbikes (with or without sidecars) to purpose-built buggies (some of them are effectively just tubular frames with wheels, wings and a huge engine attached) to the wild Unlimited stuff like Tajima's SX4 or Rhys Millen's Hyundai, which looked like a squashed Le Mans prototype. There was even a Dacia with a Nissan GT-R engine tuned to produce 850bhp!

Click To Enlarge

So that's Pikes Peak in a nutshell, but the amazing thing about this year - the last running of the race before the route becomes 100% tarmac next year - is that records have been broken all over the place, including the big one: For the first time ever in Pikes Peak's 95-year history, someone has finished the race in under 10 minutes. That someone was the current king of the hill, Nobuhiro Tajima, or "Monster" for short. He's done this race for years now, always in a Suzuki (including the Escudo familiar to Gran Turismo players), and has now won it 6 times in a row. In 2007, he came close to breaking the fabled 10-minute barrier with a 10:01.408, beating the long-standing record of 10:04.06 set by former legend Rod Millen (father of Rhys, who also competes in the Unlimited class now) in a yellow Toyota Tacoma in 1994. The year that followed didn't work out, but Monster kept coming back. The video atop this article shows him smashing the all-time Pikes Peak record by setting a 9:51.278.

Now, there are a couple of things about this that make it even more awesome than it already is. The first thing is that Monster Tajima is now 61 years old. How many 61-year-olds, nay, how many people over 50 would even dream of hurling a 1000bhp rally car up a mountain? I suspect there is only one. The second thing is that after just 2 miles or so, the car started overheating, so he had to not only avoid sheer drops, adoring fans, metal barriers that came and went and rocks, all of which are mere inches or feet away, he also had to look after an overheating car, at race pace, for 10 miles, and he STILL set a record time! Jalopnik commenter 'Drunken Messiah' puts it like so:

"The most amazing thing about this run? Tajima DESTROYED the car!

Seriously; when it got to the top of the hill fluid was gushing from the radiators. The motor and turbos where cooked, ruined. Tajima said that the car started overheating two miles into the 12 mile run. 9:51 is pretty much the fastest time that car could possibly have gone. It was physically incapable of giving up any additional performance. The Monster was totally in the zone, driving 11/10s the whole way up. He was so far beyond the limit it was just mesmerizing to witness first-hand. He went around the three corners that make up The Sump as if it was one continuous bend. From start to finish he was on it the whole time. I heard from people at the starting point that it was the hardest launch any of them had ever witnessed; he exploded off the line and did not slow up for a nanosecond. By the time he was a couple hundred yards into the race he was already four seconds ahead of Rhys Millen [in second place].

Fucking unbelievable. I felt so privileged to see it; and on my very first experience as an in-the-flesh PPIHC spectator to boot. Just too cool!"

I've heard commentators claiming that someone's "driving the wheels off that thing", but to literally drive the car to death is something else! Congratulations, Tajima-san, you glorious mentalist! I hope you celebrated your 61st in similar style earlier today!

In other news, Rod Millen returned to Pikes Peak this year and promptly set another record, with his 11:04.912 in a Hyundai Genesis Coupé being the fastest time for a Two-Wheel-Drive car. In fact, six different records were set/broken this year. Some will say that's in part down to the course being around 50% tarmac (a lot more than previous years). Next year it will be entirely road, taking one element of uncertainty out of the equation, and taking a little away from the viewing spectacle. Still, it's satisfying to know that 10 minutes could be broken while the mountain was still dirty. If Monster had waited until next year to set the record, people would probably have said that it was down to the extra grip provided by tarmac (and possibly slick tyres). This way, we can put that idea to bed, which his where I'm heading now. .

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The New "'Mini'" Coupé Even LOOKS Like A Douche

What happens when you microwave a diecast Mini model with a plastic roof

I already loath and detest strongly dislike the BMW 0-Series. I don't like that they want us to think it's like the original BMC Mini, a car that set the template for all small cars that followed after it was released in 1959 and gained popularity in the 1960s, which it held on to until (and even beyond) the bitter end in 1999 when Rover stopped making it (and arguably Rover went downhill from there until their own bitter end a few years ago). I don't like that they even used the Mini name and gave it a dinner-plate-sized speedo to emulate the '60s Mini's central dials in one of a few attempts to make it so blindingly retro.

I didn't like that they called the estate model the Clubman instead of the Traveller, and even though there's now a rally version, I really don't like the Mini C(o)unt(ryman) non-off-roading SUV that has absolutely no heritage whatsoever and is an unwelcome arrival to the current range as well, essentially striking me as a dolled-up BMW X1 with only 4 seats and a 2WD option. They should've called it the Maxi rather than a Mini. And on that rally version, surely using the smaller hatchback version would make it a lot more agile than using something bigger than a 5-door Golf? Are we to believe that the (on)road version has just as much mud-slinging capability as a heavily modified rally version? I don't. Not even slightly.

Clearly though, BMW have decided that, after previewing a smaller model with the excellent Rocketman Concept, they needed to compensate for the fact that they actually did something right for a change, and have now forced upon us a new Coupé version, which is meant to appeal to young men, or "dudes", as Mini seem to think we still call ourselves...

While the VW New Beetle was instantly considered a girl's car, the BMW Mini was initially very much non-gender-specific. It was the car to have, in fact. But now that the Fiat 500 has come out, and loads of estate agents have bought Minis, it's become slightly old-hat as a fashion item (its main selling point, for sure), and is also now bought primarily by women. Clearly BMW wanted to get men on their side, so they decided to make something "new hat". I think they maybe took that idea a little far though, as the Coupé's strange and unpleasant roof was actually designed like that on purpose. No, really. It's designed... to look like a baseball cap. Worn backwards. Seriously.

Apparently you, as a man, want you car to look like this guy

After wondering if the French-market version would look like it was wearing a Beret (which I decided would just look silly), it struck me that, combined with the Mini JCW bodykit and the resulting big smiley face the front of the car has, the roof makes it look like a person, and because people who still wear a baseball cap backwards in this day and age (i.e. not the 1990s) is classed as being a douchebag, the BMW 0-Series Coupé also looks like a douchebag. I don't know about you, but I want to look like a douche driving a douche about as much as I want to be seen blasting out Justin Bieber noises (she wants us to think it's "music") in that pink Nissan Micra C+C, or about as much as I want to be seen strapping explosives to a baby by armed police in a pissy mood. This level of 'trendy styling' marketing bullshit makes my blood boil...

As with the BMW X1, X3 and X6, there's a problem with hating this car. It's based on the 0-Series "Mini Cooper", and there's a JCW version with 208bhp and the usual sports tuning that entails, so it will probably drive really well, which, combined with the fancy badge on the front, means it will sell. A lot. If Hyundai had revealed a car just like this (without this one existing), they'd be laughed out the room, even though they're not exactly a walking joke anymore. BMW have an irritating habit of coming up with daft ideas for cars and then engineering them well enough to be convincing to people who don't really know what they're talking about, but want a nice car. Their only miss so far is the 5-Series GT, and I suspect that's because on the outside it's a bit like an X6 (with a 5er's face, of course), but one that doesn't appeal to the growing 'prestige SUV' crowd. What this means is that I'll inevitably see a few 0-Series Coupés around, and then I'll get all annoyed that someone's stupid enough to have bought a mutilated hatchback that looks like it should be on Jersey Shore*, then I'll start ranting in my head about it, and before long I'll be annoyed at myself for getting so uptight about a car driving past, and that'll just put a dent in my day...

1966 Broadspeed GT 1275 S (an unofficial Mini Coupé of the past)

Now hang on Mike, all this hatred over a roof? Well there is a little more to hate than that. One of the reasons fans and owners of the original Mini don't like the new one is because it doesn't live up to the real Mini's heritage as a car. I won't go on about cheap utilitarian motoring for the masses (although the 0-Series does miss this part of the Mini's appeal by miles), but this 2-seater has no place in Mini history. Even the custom-made coupé version of the original, built by British racing company Broadspeed and pictured to your right, had 4 seats, otherwise they couldn't very well call it a GT, now could they?

This new one's no smaller than the hatchback Mini on the outside, but that short and hideous roof makes the interior small enough to eliminate the back seats, so it's even less of a Mini despite still being much bigger. And what use is a pop-up spoiler on a Front-Wheel-Drive car?! In fact, what's the point of the Mini Coupé at all? It's just the Cooper/Cooper S hatchback with a shit roof and no back seats.

Rest assured, I won't be requesting a brochure.

*If you've never watched Jersey Shore before, first of all well done, but you might not fully understand the reference. I've only seen ads for it before, but I've heard people talk about it as well, and it's another one of those garbage shows where douchetacular silver-spoon-swallowing morons in their early 20s hang out on the Jersey shore and have beach parties and get spray-tanned and drink themselves stupid (if it's even possible for them to become less intelligent) so they get into relationship problems because they have no idea what love actually is and think they keep finding it. Everyone's shirtless (apart from women covering up their sillicone-filled knockers), everyone's got spiky hair, apart from those wearing a baseball cap backwards - my bet is that BMW couldn't design a spiky-haired roof very well, but they wanted to - and everyone on that show and all others like it make me think there should be a cull on people like these air-headed too-rich-for-their-own-good insults to humanity (I'm not alone in this). Their leftover fortunes would be collected up and used to get poorer people on their feet. My only hope is that people watch it in an ironic sense rather than taking it seriously - laughing at them, not with them.

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Formula 1 - European Grand Prix 2011

In 2009 the Euro GP at Valencia had just one overtake on-track. Last year, it was only interesting when Mark Webber hit Heikki Kovalainen in a braking zone and did a back flip. This year? Normally I take ages to write a report on an F1 race. This is partly because of the way I construct sentences (they can be quite long), but it's also because the short-life Pirelli tyres, KERS and DRS have really helped spice things up a bit, letting the drivers overtake properly and giving everyone a lot more to watch/talk about. This weekend, however, continued Valencia's reputation for being really boring, especially compared to the rest of the season, and in particular after how the Canadian GP went down two weeks ago.

Basically, the Ferraris got fast starts, getting past both the McLarens. Nico Rosberg split the two McLarens for the first few laps, but Jenson Button got past him in one of the DRS zones (although it took longer than expected to pull the move off, due to the extra traction the Mercedes GP car had coming out of the previous corner). Vettel ran away from teammate Mark Webber in 2nd place and won the race. Alonso and Webber ended up racing eachother for 2nd place, swapping around during the pit stops, and Alonso ended up beating him. Michael Schumacher looked like he could mix it up with the McLarens, but after exiting the pits, Nick Heidfeld cut him up into turn 2 and broke his front wing, sending him straight back in the pits. He finished a dismal 17th place. Jenson Button's KERS stopped working, losing him around half a second a lap and allowing Lewis Hamilton past him, although Hamilton wouldn't make it much further, as he had to conserve tyres. He finished 4th.

There was some jostling for position further down, and some stubborn backmarkers, but that was basically it. One interesting fact is that this is only the third time in Formula 1 history that every single car which started the race has finished it. Here's a results/points table. Click to enlarge.

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Le Mans Crash Analysis

Crash 1 - Allan McNish
Towards the end of the first hour of this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, Scotsman Allan McNish in the #3 Audi Sport North America Audi R18 TDI was overtaking a fellow Audi R18 when he suddenly realised why the #1 car was going slowly - there was a Ferrari GT car just ahead of him. The result was spectacular, and a demonstration of modern racing car safety. But did it need to be so severe?

You only really need to see the first 3 1/2 minutes of this vid

The general consensus is that it was a lack of visibility. As that turn goes left downhill and then right, the #59 Luxury Racing Ferrari 458GT was hidden from McNish's view by the #1 Audi R18, meaning he didn't see him until it was too late. Of course, Le Mans Prototype (LMP) cars are much faster than the GT cars, so they can in theory just drive straight past. Alas, the rules state that they must find a way past the GTs, whose instruction is to stay on the racing line when an LMP approaches. This is so that the LMPs know what the slower cars will do and thus where they can pass. So McNish didn't spot the Ferrari in time, and the Ferrari was just following the rules, but later in the race a EuroSport commentator reckoned that rear visibility was the problem, and the GT car didn't know he was coming either and thus didn't get out of the way of the faster car. Is that a fair argument?

Well, no. Not really. It is true that rearward visibility is an issue in motorsport - F1 recently banned wide-set mirrors because they were so far away from the drivers' line of sight (in order to act as aerodynamic devices), that they ended up turning in on someone in a 1st-corner scrap or some such like and causing/not avoiding an accident - and LMPs don't have rear windows. The GT cars' view out the rear window is usually full of spoiler or engine as well, but at the end of the day, GT cars are supposed to stay on the racing line in this situation, so that everyone's on the same page. Weather McNish's fellow Audi had been there or not, and weather the #59 Ferrari had seen McNish or not, he was always going to take that line through the corner. As it stands, there wasn't really anything either driver could do about it, and it is in fact simply a racing incident, however severe it was.

Another key factor in this crash is the barrier. Just on the right of this picture (visible at 1:30 in the video), part of it is sticking out, presumably to act as a point of entry/exit for service vehicles and retired cars being removed from the circuit. This is actually, I believe, the reason McNish ended up rolling over. If you look at 2:20 or so in the above video, during a slo-mo replay, he actually hits the extruded part first, which get him a little airborne. If the car hadn't hit that, or if the wall was all even, the side of the car would've just slammed against the tyres and bounced off (like the Ferrari did, only harder). Yes, this would still send a serious force through the driver, and the car would still have lost a lot of bodywork and maybe a wheel, but the mixture of the energy absorbing tyre wall, the crash structure in the car and the Head And Neck Safety (HANS) device the drivers wear around their neck nowadays, he would've just wobbled around in the car, dusted himself off and got out feeling disappointed that he'd binned it 1 hour into a 24 hour race. Instead, the top half of the car that didn't touch the tyres tried to keep going (Newton's 1st Law), and as a result the car flipped over and disintegrated as a lot more of the body than usual hit the wall hard and broke off. In fact, photographers had to run and cower in fear of being bludgeoned by a wheel or impaled by a shard of carbon fibre.

You can also see in the picture - where the beige line of gravel sweeps from below the red arrow to the damaged metal wall - and looking again at 2:22 onwards in the vid, that he approaches at quite a shallow angle, going just as much backwards as sideways. As a result, again because of Newton's First Law, as the back suddenly stopped the front end came round. All this adds up to what you see. Unfortunately, I can't back this up with any harder evidence than what you can see in the video, but it seems logical enough. It would be nice to see McNish's on-board camera footage to get a better idea. Speaking of Mr. McNish, he was taken to hospital for check-ups and was deemed to be OK, with no serious injuries. The only effect it may have is causing him to be a little gingerly when overtaking someone at that corner next year...

Crash 2 - Mike Rockenfeller
At around 22:40 local time, the leading Audi, driven by Mike Rockenfeller, attempted to pass a different Ferrari 458 GT, this time the #71 car of Robert Kaufman, at the second right-hand kink heading towards the Indianapolis corner - one of the fastest parts of the circuit - and ran out of road... before making contact and running out of grass at around 190mph.

German commentary. Wreckage at first, then replays at 4:44, full-speed on-board at 7:48

Again, I hesitated to blame the Ferrari driver in this incident. He appears to stay on-line as instructed, and he is racing his own race. Herr Rockenfeller is also racing his own race, and wanted to get past the GT car as fast as possible, so as not to lose time against the rival Peugeot cars. Two tried to go into one, which is of course impossible. At ~200mph, it really doesn't feel like there is much room in these corners (even lapping it in a decent video game will tell you that), and if the Ferrari had gone off-line and stayed on the outside, he could easily have run wide and hit the very close barrier on the left at well over 180mph. Similarly, if Rockenfeller (or 'Rocky' for short) had tried steaming round the outside, he would've run wide at an even higher speed and still had a serious accident, although not as serious as it would've been almost side-on, rather than head-on with locked-up brakes.

As it turned out, Rocky was so determined to get down the inside he even took to the grass a little when he saw the #71 Ferrari inevitably turn in, before clipping the left-rear corner of the #1 R18 TDI and sending him sliding at 90° into a metal barrier at around 186mph (300km/h), at which point Rocky's car also disintegrated. According to some - it's a little hard to say for sure watching the video - the car actually split in half and the cockpit went over the opposite wall with the driver still inside it. Unfortunately for us, on-board cameras don't have a carbon fibre safety cell, so the footage cuts out on impact. Kaufman's on-board would only have shown us a bump and then an Audi going from right to left. The CCTV camera used to show us the carnage surely caught the whole crash, so why TV broadcasters weren't allowed to use it for replay footage, I really don't know...

Full-speed exterior replay at 0:52

It looked like another serious racing incident, one with no blame to place. Mike Rockenfeller, after going through an even worse crash than Allan McNish, landed the right way up this time and managed to get himself out of the car before any medical staff had arrived. They couldn't find him at the scene of the incident because he had started walking towards the nearest medical post! Truly a man of steel, and someone who has his priorities right. He was also feeling a little shaken up, as you can imagine, but the only physical injury was a small flesh wound to his right arm. Somehow. Maybe a bit of car came off and hit it. The Ferrari driver, like the other one involved earlier, continued on to finish somewhere in the middle of his class, however, he was later disqualified for causing this incident. Really? Did the organisers just want to be seen to be doing something?

Something I didn't know until I started writing this article is that there are warning lights all along the track. The reason for this is that, even with the differentiation in colour between each class's headlights (white for Prototypes, yellow for GTs), it's actually very hard to tell who's behind you and how far away they are, because the headlights obviously need to be bright enough to light a pitch black Mulsanne straight all through the night - coincidentally, the Audis' white LED headlights are particularly bright compared to even other prototypes - and this makes them blindingly bright in your mirror. So, if a GT car needs to be wary, a warning light flashes on the side fence, telling them to watch out and maybe back off a little or leave a gap for the LMPs in the name of safety. The driver of the #71 Ferrari 458 went through ten of these warning lights and still failed to yield, so despite initial appearances, it actually was an avoidable accident and it was caused by Robert Kaufman not giving a much faster Mike Rockenfeller any leeway for getting past. Unless for whatever reason he just didn't happen to see the warning lights (Rocky's on-board shows no other cars ahead of them, so he can't have assumed the approaching LMP had already passed), he surely must have realised it was futile to try and fend off a car with at least 60 more horsepower and weighing around 200kg less? Maybe it was fatigue, I don't know...

Still, Audi got their own back. After suffering two horrendous crashes that would've killed the drivers even as recently as the Group C era of the late '80s/early '90s, the lone #2 R18 TDI pounded on against the three-strong factory Peugeots (who tried some dastardly defending tactics to hold them back) to win the 2011 24-Heures du Mans. Audi have won this race 9 times in recent years, making them more successful here than Ferrari, but this win will arguably be their most satisfying. While the three of them crossing the line in formation last year was a moment of huge pride, I'm sure, winning under these circumstances after an emotional rollercoaster as turbulent as that is something else.

At 2:36 you can see Lotterer go through the corner Rockenfeller crashed at. Flat out.

Feel free to skip about 5 minutes into the above video if you don't want to hear the commentators rambling on.

A Quick Look - GT Pro Crash

There's more than one happening here, of course. While the prototypes battle for outright victory (unless they're in LMP2, which is sort of like a stepping-stone class for low-budget teams or car makers testing engines for next year), the LM GTE cars - divided into Pro and Am classes to suit different experience levels and budgets - are battling the Battle Of The Supercars. There are also Lotus Evoras racing in this class. A story similar to Audi's started to unfold with around 7 1/2 hours to go, when the #74 Corvette crashed hard out of the class lead going through a flat-out high speed corner, brutally taking a Porsche 911 GT3 with it.

Replay at 3:18. Marshals not waiting for Safety Car before then

This is pretty straightforward, as Le Mans crashes go. Jan Magnussen in the leading Corvette tried it on up the inside and lost the back end, swerving him into the #68 Porsche driven by Horst Felbermayr. In an attempt to straighten up, he ends up making contact with Felbermayr again and squashing him up against a concrete wall, before spinning round 180° and smashing hard into the opposite concrete wall. Determined to soldier on, he still tried to bring it into the Pit Lane mere metres away, but in the end had to beach it on the entry road.

The description in one video (with German commentary) states that Felbermayr in the blue Porsche suffered a "broken pelvis, a lung contusion and lots of bruises". Yikes! Aside from, of course, the two heavy impacts from the Corvette followed by a HUGE impact with an immovable concrete wall, the extent of his injuries could partly be down to the way GT cars are built compared to the LMPs, where both drivers effectively dusted themselves off after much worse-looking incidents. Because they are based on road cars, they don't have a carbon fibre tub and safety cell like the purpose-built Prototypes. Instead they have whatever the road car has in terms of structural driver protection, minus the airbag to save weight (and because drivers are held in by 5-point harnesses and thus don't move around as much in their seat), but with the addition of a large "Rollcage" made of strong metal tubes. They're not dangerous, by any means. Not any more dangerous than the inherent risks in motorsport make them, but they aren't quite as rigid as LMPs.

Bonus Video - Thank You For Flying Air Ferrari

To reward you for reading this much, here's a clip from the support race featuring Ferrari 458 Italias, in which one car gets a left-rear puncture heading down towards Indianapolis (just after where Rockenfeller crashed) and spears off into the wall. Clearly Ferrari never put the 458 in the wind tunnel sideways to see what would happen!

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Race Weekend of the Year?

This weekend was unbelievably awesome for motor racing fans, with two high-profile races that will surely go down in history as all-time classics: One of the closest 24-Heures du Mans of recent times, followed by a Canadian Grand Prix that had absolutely everything in it.

Summary - Le Mans 24H
Audi out-qualified Peugeot for the first time since the French manufacturer returned to Le Mans in 2006. It would prove to be no walkover though, with Audi suffering heavily - both emotionally and in terms of the race - with two horrendous crashes involving Ferraris in the slower LM GTE classes knocking them down to one car and leaving two of Audi's nine drivers undergoing checks in hospital. After the Safety Cars had done their bit (with one of them even running low on fuel after staying out for an hour while crash barriers were repaired), the #2 Audi R18 TDI of Marcel Fässler, Benoit Treluyer and Andre Lotterer became locked in a thirteen-hour fight for the lead of the race with team Peugeot, who still had all three cars at their disposal, which proved handy when former F1 driver Alex Wurz let fatigue get to him mid-morning and put the #7 Peugeot 908 in the gravel at Indianapolis corner, dropping him back a couple of laps. The #9 car of Sebastien Bourdais, Simon Pageneaud and Pedro Lamy became the main challenger, swapping the lead with the Audi at seemingly every pitstop. Alas, Audi Sport Team Joest were so much faster in the pitlane that they soon had more pitstops under their belt than Peugeot. By doing comparatively short stints quickly and then being fast in the pitlane, the Germans had a building advantage over the French, who even tried some dastardly defending tactics with their lapped cars to try holding up the sole remaining Audi. It wouldn't be enough, however, and after 24 hours of racing as fast as they could, the final lap had to be run at full speed rather than cruising across the line to wave at the crowd, as a race that's normally won by 2 or 3 whole laps was won by just under 14 seconds by a triumphant and tearful Andre Lotterer in the #2 Audi Sport Team Joest R18 TDI (13.854 seconds, to be exact).

Similar tension was felt in the Grand Tourisme Endurance (GTE) classes - split into Pro and Am - with Corvette Racing snatching victory from a privately run Ferrari 458 after their other car also crashed out from the class lead in spectacular fashion. In Chevrolet's centenary year, a Corvette won both GTE classes at Le Mans, which is surely very satisfying for them. Equally satisfying for us were the onboard shots of the 'Vettes, as we could listen to their thunderous V8s howling down the Mulsanne straight.

Summary - Formula 1
Four hours after the end of Le Mans, the Formula 1 started its engines in Canada, and at first it didn't look like we would find out weather or not the double-DRS zones were a good idea, as Montréal was soaking wet for much of the race. The race started - slightly controversially - under Safety Car conditions, as the drivers got a feel for the slippery road under their "Extreme Wet" tyres. The AMG SLS, driven expertly as always by Bernd Mayländer, peeled off on lap 4 when the rain stopped to get the race under way properly, and Fernando Alonso immediately challenged pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel in the first corner, but nothing would come of it as they could take no real chances in such wet conditions, as proven by Lewis Hamilton trying to get past Mark Webber at the same corner and tapping the Australian's rear wheel, despite being given plenty of space to pass, spinning Webber round and dropping him way down the order. A couple of laps later, after being squeezed out by Michael Schumacher at the tight Casino Hairpin and dropping behind Jenson Button, Hamilton got a better run out of the last corner than his McLaren team mate and tried to pass him, but misjudged it and got pushed into the wall by Button, who didn't see him, thanks in part to all the spray off the rear tyres, I suspect. Hamilton ground to a halt a few corners later with rear suspension damage and a loose rear wheel, thus bringing out the Safety Car again.

As the track dried out, Button and a few others pitted in for Intermediate tyres just before the Safety Car came out. He also got a drive-thru penalty for speeding under the SC and a damaged front wing from meeting Hamilton. These factors slowly dropped him far down the field, while Kamui Kobayashi climbed 7 places to 6th as everyone dashed into the pits. Then, on lap 19, the heavens opened again and opened wide. All but one of the drivers dove into the pits for wet tyres, allowing Kobayashi to climb even further up to 2nd on the grid before the race was Red Flagged for being too damn wet and the cars lined up on the grid to wait out the storm for what turned out to be over two hours...

In some ways, the Safety Car driver was the real star in this race.

When the race eventually resumed, long after the fans thought they would be home and dry(ing), the Safety Car had prevaricated long enough that everyone needed do change to Intermediate tyres. Jenson Button was the first in, marking his fourth time in the pits (including the penalty). Alonso lost time queuing behind his team mate Felipe Massa for tyres, leaving him in Button's path as he left the pits, and the two came together when Button got the inside line in the first part of the right-left chicane at turn 3/4 and Alonso refused to yield. This put the Ferrari driver in the wall as team mate Massa kept pressure on Kobayashi in 3rd. Button's contact with Alonso gave him a puncture and forced him to pit yet again. Vettel, meanwhile, sat in the lead the entire time, even after pitting. Michael Schumacher capitalised on the restart and overtook a recovering Mark Webber to take 6th position before bring gifted 5th when Force India rookie Paul Di Resta damaged his front wing and pitted for a new one. Then, Kobayashi ran wide at the chicane just before Casino Hairpin and slowed down Massa behind as the Brazilian tried to find a way past the flailing Sauber. This gave Schumacher the opportunity to sneak past the pair of them on the exit as they sorted themselves out, meaning he was now in 2nd place, looking at a podium for the first time since his return last year.

Lotus-Renault GP driver Nick Heidfeld utilised his "Blown Diffuser" system as usual, giving him notably improved traction out of corners in a similar way to Red Bull Racing, but this sent him straight into the back of Kobayashi - whose Sauber does not possess such a system - and caused his front wing to break off at high speed and shoot under the car, picking it up briefly and sending "Quick Nick" flying down the escape road. The resulting debris brought the Safety Car out for what must be a record 5th time in the race. By this point, the drivers had confidently decided to use Super Soft slick tyres, despite water still being on the track (off the racing line), making daring overtaking moves and late braking a slippery risk in the wrong place...

On the final restart, Vettel held off Schumacher - who in his wisdom had kept much closer than Kobayashi did in the previous restart after Vettel launched - and close behind, Webber and Button, who had had an astonishing run thanks to the double DRS zones being activated (meaning he could overtake car after car, lap after lap, as he scythed through the field of slower teams) were looking to improve further. Webber and Schumacher diced for position a few times, with Webber getting the last chicane all wrong on lap 63 and allowing Button to narrowly avoid a fishtailing Red Bull and snatch third, after pitting in a 6th time for dry tyres earlier on and becoming stone dead last. He now had is eyes on Michael Schumacher for 2nd place. He passed him a lap later and started hunting down the remaining German at a hell of a rate. Vettel, who had been relatively conservative on dry tyres - perhaps worrying about going off-line and hitting one of the many close barriers - was caught at a rate of around 2 seconds a lap as Button was setting fastest time after fastest time, at one point beating his own previous lap time by a whole second. With less than 5 laps to go he was on the Red Bull's tail, pressuring him further and further, hoping that the Race Clock (which only allows 2 hours of racing, not including Red Flag periods) would stretch far enough for the whole 70 laps to be completed at this late hour, and so it did. On lap 70 out of 70 he was right on the race leader, looking for a way past, perhaps preparing to lunge at him one last time in the final corner using his DRS and KERS, all the time trying to pressure the unflappable Vettel into a mistake... and then the unflappable Vettel flapped! With less than half a lap to go in the Grand Prix, he missed his braking point, slithered off-line and put the car into a slide when he panicked and stabbed the throttle. Doing well not to spin, it wasn't enough as Button went straight past him and on to victory, even though he had done twice as many pit stops, even though he'd had a penalty and had to fight through from 21st and last position, Jenson Button scored his 10th career victory with pure ecstasy on his face. There was an even closer finish slightly further down the order, as 7th place Felipe Massa used everything he had left to out-drag Kamui Kobayashi on the pit straight to clinch 6th position by just 0.045 seconds!

It took a good long while to get started properly, in fact overall it was the longest F1 race in the sport's history, but then it's like what those Guinness adverts used to say: Good things come to those who wait. Those last 10 laps or so made me feel like an excited little kid again (which is saying something considering I'm still only 19). It was absolutely fantastic! We'll look back on this one like past generations look back on Senna at Monaco or something like that.

There will be further analysis of both these races soon. For now, here are the respective results/points tables:

The 79th 24 Heures Du Mans

Formula 1 - Canadian Grand Prix 2011 (Click to Enlarge)

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The Everyday Supercar

Early '90s version

It was developed with help from none other than Ayrton Senna. It was a favourite of Gordon Murray, designer of the all-conquering McLaren F1, who actually used it as a benchmark for his ultimate driver's supercar. It had an illustrious career as a SUPER GT racer, and won its class at Le Mans in 1995. It remains a favourite among Gran Turismo addicts and Honda fans alike (so I really like it). It was the everyday supercar that never had the sales success it deserves. It's the Honda NSX.

Honda HP-X (1984)

The NSX first came out in 1990. It evolved from an '80s Pininfarina design study called the HP-X (Honda Pininfarina eXperimental) after Honda decided it wanted to make a supercar that showcased its latest technologies and featured F1-style engineering. The target was also to match or beat Ferrari with a car that cost significantly less. Thankfully, the evolution included a very different body design, as the HP-X looks incredibly dated...

Other changes from the HP-X included adding another 1000cc to the V6 engine mounted amidships, making it 3.0 litres. Mounted sideways to create a useable rear boot (if you take the spare wheel out of the front storage area, there is a small second boot as well), it was the first road car engine to feature conrods made of strong, lightweight Titanium to allow it to rev highly on a regular basis without blowing up, which is nice. It was also the first DOHC engine to feature Honda's VTEC valve timing system that improved efficiency as well as power output and delivery, and the first Honda to have Electronic Throttle Control, smoothing the application of the loud pedal. These innovations meant that the naturally aspirated V6 produced 270bhp and soared up to an 8000rpm redline, and yet it was just as reliable as Granny's Honda Civic 1.4, with some NSXs topping 100,000 miles without any serious mechanical failures, not to mention the complete lack of any vehicle recalls. Thus, it is arguably the most reliable supercar ever.

1997 update (with US market Acura badging)

According to a vintage Top Gear review, the "Everyday Supercar" is even fairly ordinary to drive under normal circumstances, in that unlike a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, it's not hideously difficult to use. It's like being in a low-slung saloon with a slightly harder ride. When you want it to wake up, however, you simply go somewhere appropriate (track or countryside, generally), add lead to your right foot and get the VTEC to kick in, yo. Then it transforms into a racing car with its Senna-honed chassis and suspension giving pin-sharp handling and that C30A engine providing a truly sensational soundtrack unlike most or any other V6s. Once it's on the more aggressive cam profile it becomes a screamer of an engine. Then, when you've stopped, caught your breath and had a cup of tea while the brakes cool down, it goes back to being a normal, docile car. It seems like the second half of accelerator travel was a hidden sport mode.

In fact, the handling capabilities were so great that when Gordon Murray was designing his driver-focussed "Ultimate Supercar", the mighty McLaren F1, he was using cars such as the Ferrari 348, Porsche 911 and Lamborghini Diablo... right up until he drove an NSX. As he put it: "The moment I drove the NSX, all the benchmark cars I had been using as references in the development of my car vanished from my mind... the NSX's ride quality and handling would become our new design target". This is coming from the designer of some of the fastest and most successful Formula 1 cars of all time, as well as the father of the greatest supercar of a generation (or two). He loved it so much that not only was it his new benchmark, he actually owned one for seven years, so he would tell you just how much cheaper it is than any of its performance rivals to buy and run. Other famous owners include Rowan Atkinson (who, interestingly, also has a McLaren F1).

#100 Raybrig NSX ('07) and #16 Castrol Mugen NSX ('00)

To prove this brilliance to the world, Honda entered the NSX in the GT2 class at Le Mans in 1994-6. While the first effort was disappointing, it won its class in 1995, finishing 8th overall, and came 3rd in class the following year. Not bad going, considering it took Ford a damn sight more time than that to get the GT40 right. Its real on-track success was domestic though, as it competed in the All-Japan GT Championship (JGTC) - later known a SUPER GT - from 1996 to the end of 2009, it achieved 36 wins and 47 pole positions in seasons that are only 8 or 9 races long, which isn't half bad. In fact, both are record statistics. It took part in exactly 100 races, the last of which was a win at Honda's home circuit, Twin Ring Motegi. The car that won that race (#8 Team ARTA NSX) came 2nd in the championship that year. In 2010 Honda started fielding the "HSV-010 GT", a front-engined racer based on the proposed replacement for the NSX road car that was canned near the end of development due to the credit crunch, featuring a Formula Nippon 3.4-litre V8. It carried on the NSX's trend for success, with an HSV-010 winning the championship in its debut year.

Over the 15 years that it existed - a very long time for a supercar - Honda would keep updating the NSX to keep it fresh. In 1992 there was the first lightened, track-honed Type-R version. In 1997 they revised the suspension, added a close-ratio 6-speed manual transmission and bigger brakes, and replaced the 'C30A' with a new and improved 'C32B' engine, featuring thinner Fibre-Reinforced Metal cylinder liners, an extra 200cc - making it 3.2 litres - and an extra 20bhp and 15lb/ft (the mix of extra grunt and shorter gears dropped the 0-60 from 5.2 to 4.5 seconds). They added a targa top version called the NSX-T and made various limited editions in different markets. As the styling started to look dated, they tweaked that too, in 2001, changing the pop-up headlights for snake eyes, refining the tail lights and changing the bumpers. In the same year, they also updated the suspension again and widened the rear tyres... and then came the final Type-R version.

Ten years after the first NSX-R, the second one came along, featuring a carbon fibre bonnet, boot lid and rear wing, as well as a huge 100kg weight loss compared to the regular 2002 NSX (1270kg compared to 1370kg). This was achieved in the usual ways - no stereo, no air conditioning, little or no sound-proofing, thinner glass - as well as bespoke carbon-kevlar bucket seats made by Recaro, lightweight alloy wheels, a single-pane partition between cabin and engine and even getting rid of the power steering. The engine was also handmade like a race engine, and with incredibly minute precision to make sure it was absolutely perfect. Honda say that it still produced 290bhp, but very few people are prepared to believe that. It's probably more like 300-305bhp in reality. However much it was though, it was enough. In capable hands, an '02 NSX-R can lap the Nürburgring in just 7:56, the same time that a Ferrari F360 Challenge Stradale can do even though that has a much higher 420bhp and only weighs an extra 20kg over the Honda.

When you think about all this, the Honda NSX truly is a remarkable car, and surely a supercar great in a slightly odd way, because it had supercar performance for Honda money, and with legendary Honda reliability. For a relatively reasonable price, you could buy a car that could keep up with a track-focussed Ferrari. This raises a question with a depressing answer: why did almost nobody buy one?

I mean, what's not to like? It still looks good today, it was a hell of a lot cheaper than something like a Porsche or a Ferrari and just as fast (or even faster), it has racing heritage, it sounds excellent, drives better than nearly everything and has almost none of the traditional supercar drawbacks. It's bulletproof and had a 3-year warranty, yet global sales had dropped into the hundreds by the turn of the century, and in Europe they were even lower than that. What's the deal breaker? Annoyingly, it was the badge. A lot of people who had supercars didn't want to be seen spending £60,000+ on a Honda. Even their Acura luxury badge they used in the US wasn't enough to save it from having an image deficiency. It also lived in a time when people in Europe and the US generally struggled to take any Japanese car that wasn't an econobox seriously, although it likely helped to change that a little by the time it was finally deemed too expensive to build and put to rest in 2005. It's a terrible shame, really. If it said Ferrari on it, it would have lived a few less years before being replaced, but sold in the thousands annually...

The upside of this is that buying one isn't just a good idea, it'll also prove to be an investment, as its rarity and future-classic status should see value rise over time. Still, if there were more of them around, more Honda fans could get their hands on them. As it stands, I guess £20-30k isn't bad. I don't have that much, but I would absolutely love to own one. I can only imagine what it's like to drive. Because it's not as high-maintenance as an Italian (which reminds me of a great Tatsuru Ichishima quote), I could drive it in the rain, or when it's cold, or even in snow with the right tyres/snow chains, and even if poseurs in 911 Turbos and F430s may scoff, I would know what I had, and what I would have is the best supercar you've never heard of. Unless you've got a Play Station.

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