Feel Free To Jump On In...

Well, PA Members...

Pilote is temporarily out of (ahem...) worthwhile daily posts.  So feel free to jump on in.  Have said before and will say again that a blog touching on the Dragon needs biker voices.  Hard to believe that RC 51 doesn't have some great Dragon stories...

I also think a biker/cager dialogue would be fun.  It almost never happens.  Everybody who reads this blog regularly has ridden some.

Can set you up as an authorized poster any time.  Just let me know when you're ready by posting a comment in any window.

Am out of even remotely interesting travelogue pix and am not going to put up posts just for the sake of it, no matter  how opinionated I am...   ;-)   Maybe when the "new shoes" for my Civic show up later this month I'll have something worth saying.

The ALMS-Grand Am Merger

When Pilote began making tenative plans to attend the ALMS round at Road America next year, little did he know he'd be attending a wake.  Yesterday Speed.com reported that ALMS will merge with Grand Am in 2014.  Today they reported that "the class structure is to be decided, especially as it relates to the LeMans classes."  And it seems clear enough from the reporting that Don Panoz "is selling what is left of ALMS," as Dave Despain put it, to the France family interests, not merging.  If there is a consolidated 18-race schedule Stateside, it is hard to imagine the teams taking a month off to prepare for Le Mans.  Bye-bye Le Mans GT rules.

This is sad news.  Apparently we'll have a sort of Trans-Am running with Daytona Prototypes.  I'm guessing three classes: small bore and big bore GT's, and Daytona Prototypes.  Farewell BMW and Ferrari, most likely.  The US is Corvette's biggest market, so they're in, even if it takes a new car (which will probably be cheaper and simpler to build anyway).  The next gen Mustang is rumored to have independent rear suspension, so hello Mustang.  Porsche seems to be able to come up with a 911 for any occasion, so they're probably in.

I get antsy when the NASCAR influence gets anywhere near the racing I love.  It's never about technology and courses; it's always about "parity" enforced with a heavy hand and "the show."  It says something about both series that ALMS couldn't get a TV contract and Grand Am couldn't get spectators at its events.  Watching ALMS on ESPN3 has been delightful: really good race and color announcing.  I've never had the slightest desire to watch a Grand Am race in person.

I suppose Grand Am will try to bury Sebring with the 24 Hours of Daytona, and for me personally, Sebring would be no great loss.  (Panoz retains ownership of Sebring and Road Atlanta.  Maybe Sebring will hobble on with the European teams using it as a tune up for Le Mans, as they always have.)  Not that Daytona has ever been a great race: it's just a long one on a mickey-mouse course.  Some suggest that dual bills with IndyCar are possible for the "great" courses like Road America.  (Watkins Glen is a natural fit with its NASCAR connection.)  But IndyCar runs dumb street courses 33% of the time and ovals another 33%.

My fear is that pro sports car racing will lose some great courses, like Lime Rock, Mosport, and Road Atlanta, and gain some turkeys like Belle Isle, Homestead, and New Jersey Motorsports Park.  And that we'll lose the high-tech variety in ALMS, and gain "spec" GT racers.  And, "for the sake of the show" (and the TV contract), races longer than 2 hours will disappear.  The long ALMS races are the best ones.

The merger makes perfect economic sense.  There's no more room in North America for two front-rank pro sports car series than there was for two front-rank open wheel series.  But I'm glad I'll get to see two ALMS races on two of the great courses before it disappears.  

Would you cross the street to see one of these race?  I wouldn't.

That's more like it...  Hail and farewell, ALMS GT

2012 Belgian GP

How appropriate that this year's Grand Prix occurred at the end of my travelogue on Belgium!  And that Speed TV would air a "sidebar" program on Dan Gurney's 1967 win in his Eagle!  Heady stuff for an Ancien.

Dan Gurney demo-ing his 1967 Belgian Grand Prix winner at Spa (exiting Eau Rouge) on the 35th anniversary of his victory.  This segment of the course is way more steeply downhill and uphill than it looks in this photograph.  Pilote was reminded/learned of a couple of things in the Speed TV program about this car.  It was designed by Len Terry (ex-Lotus).  All those rivets on the tub were there because magnesium sheet metal is impossible to weld and hard to bend.  Gurney had so many DNF's in this car because the crankcase of the V-12 was long, which interfered with proper oil scavenging by the dry-sump system, which resulted in oil pressure fluctuation.  For want of a nail...

Of course I watched practice, qualifying, and the race.  As posted before, I always watch Monaco and Spa-Francorchamps.  Both go back to the 1920's.  And, although the Spa and Monaco courses have changed over the years, their essential character has not.

Antonio Ascari, winner of the first Belgian Grand Prix, in 1925, entering Eau Rouge in his Alfa Romeo P-2.  The dirt roads were paved in the 1930's.  With the exception of one race in the 1960's and a couple when it was closed to GP events in the 1970's, all Belgian Grands Prix have been run at Spa.

Approriately, it poured during Friday's practice.  Spa wouldn't be Spa without rain.  Despite the weather, drivers made made data collection laps.  What useful data can be obtained in 2-3 laps, sliding around at 7/10's?  But I cheer when it rains at Spa (or any road course).  Spa separates the brilliant from the merely great; rain separates them even more.  Lotus's new "passive" drag reduction system is an interesting technical development.  It was surprising to be reminded in qualifying that Fernando Alonso has not won at Spa.  He may not have as much natural talent as Vettel and Hamilton in terms of pure speed, but he has better race craft.  Because of the rain, and because most teams had trick new parts to try, nobody had their set-up dialed in.  The starting grid was as mixed up as most of this season's races have been.

A pile-up at La Source usually signals a bum race at Spa, and that's what we got.  "My" boy Romain Grosjean took took out half a dozen cars, including himself.  Alas, two others were Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.  This is the second time Grosjean has wrecked Hamilton at Spa.  I may have to reconsider my fanship, his aviator sunglasses to the contrary notwithstanding.  The pile-up gave Jensen Button a free-ride, one pit-stop, victory.  Vettel also drove a one-stopper to 2nd place from 12th on the grid, showing some superb car-control when he and Michael Schumacher arrived at pit-entry at the same time and his instruction from Red Bull was "do the opposite of Schumacher."  Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus let him down (not up to pace): he should have come a strong 2nd.  But his outside pass on Schumacher in Eau Rouge will be in the highlight reels for years.

I wish Porsche had not forced John Wyer to fire David Hobbs before the 1970 season.  (Hobbs over-revved his 917 in a winter test, blowing the engine.)  Hobbs understands Spa and drove Old Spa at the sharp end of the 1000 kilometer races there in Wyer's Ford GT 40's.  I would love to know what he could have done with a Porsche 917 there.

Off Topic: Everything Old Is New Again

Off-topic: Mens' Warehouse is running a TV ad that says "There's a new look in men's suits: short jacket, narrow lapels."  They must have missed those old kinescopes of the Beatles and Stones performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Or of Motown's Temptations and Four Tops.

Pilote didn't own a jacket with wide lapels until mirrored disco globes showed up.  He's waiting for a Men's Warehouse ad that says "There's a new look in men's suits: wide lapels, slant-cut pocket flaps, flaired pants legs, fabrics in bold plaids.  And we have a large selection of paisley ties to go with."

Farewell to Belgium and France

If you have been reading recent posts regularly, it may surprise you that we didn't visit Paris or Brussels (or another large city like Antwerp).  We did that on an earlier trip.  I enjoyed Brussels thoroughly.  It is very walkable and intimate for a large city.  I liked Paris, but it is expensive.  And on this trip, we had a checklist of things we wanted to see in the countryside.

Chateau Bouillon on the Semois River.  Geoffrey of Bouillon sold it to the Bishop of Liege (!) in 1082 to finance his share of the cost of the First Crusade.  It was a strong point on the French-Belgian border from the 900's to the late 1600's, when Sebastien Vauban, Louis XIV's great military engineer, installed cannons.  It was garrisoned until the invention of breach-loading artillery.  

La Roche en Ardenne, on the Ourthe River.  Today it is a popular tourist destination for kayaking, canoeing, mountain-biking, and other outdoor sports.  But it goes back to the Neolithic Period, circa 700 B.C.E.  There's a castle here too, used from the 800's to the 1700's,  but I chose to enjoy the pretty little town rather than hike up another steep hill to another ruin.

World War Two Memorial in La Roche en Ardenne (above and below).  This picture shows what lousy tank country the Ardennes are.  This Sherman didn't make it.  Although it was fitted with the "new" (1944) 76 m.m. high-velocity cannon, Shermans were still outgunned by the 88 m.m. cannons on German Tigers and King Tigers.  This one took an 88 round through the glacis.  La Roche en Ardenne was heavily bombed by American tactical air in December, 1944.  116 civilians were killed.  Nevertheless, as the plaque shows, Belgians remain grateful for liberation by the Allies generations later.  Europe reminds me of the William Faulkner quote: "The past isn't history-- it isn't even past."

The Butte de Lion Memorial at Waterloo.  As battlefields go, Waterloo is dead flat.  So we can guess from the size of this man-made hill that Napoleon's opponents were relieved to send him off to exile on St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Not all medieval structures in France and Belgium have been in continuous use, or restored.  This is the ruin of the church at the Abbaye de Villers in Belgium (near the Waterloo battlefield).  The Abbey was started by Cistercian Monks in 1146.  The church was completed around 1300.  At its height, the Abbey controlled a considerable amount of farm land and was the economic engine that drove a large regional economy.  But as Europe modernized and urbanized, it fell on hard times.  it was abandoned in 1796 after the French Revolution.  Since the 1970's, it has been gradually restored as a tourist attraction.

Another example: the unrestored ruins of the Cathedral of Soissons (France).  This picture shows how Europeans don't go to a park to visit their history.  They live next door to it.  In the main traffic circle in the center of town is yet another memorial, to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.  Its base is pock-marked where bullets and cannon shells hit it in World War Two.  One way to look at the postwar European Union is as an attempt to put 2000 years of warfare behind.  As Kurt Vonnegut put it: "World War One and World War Two: Western Civilization trying to commit suicide.  Twice."

Our Renault Modus in La Roche en Ardenne.  A short essay on renting cars in Europe follows.

When we landed at Charles de Gaulle, I asked about renting a Honda Civic Type R, the European equivalent to the Si in the States.  The guy at the EuropCar counter laughed and laughed.  On our previous trip, we'd asked about a performance upgrade and were offered a Peugeot V-6 convertible at an outrageous price.  If you want to rent a hot car, make your arrangements before you leave the States.  And expect to pay through the nose.

The standard rental is a 1.5 liter diesel four-door.  It's Europe's basic transportation, equivalent to a mid-sized American car in their minds.  Think "VW Golf diesel."  A Jetta is an upgrade.  These cars are perfectly OK, especially with fuel cost at $7.00 per gallon.  They easily handle two large suitcases and the rest of your "stuff."  If you drive them foot-to-floor you will pass sensible Europeans; they cruise comfortably at 120 k.p.h. (75 m.p.h.).  We cruised one Autoroute at 85.  Driven hard this way, they get about 30 m.p.g.  Fuel is sold by the liter, which is about 25% of a gallon.  So the price at the pump looks familiar and reasonable until you remember you're pumping 4 times as many units.

And they are fun enough. They have plenty of torque up to 3000-4000 r.p.m.  Then it's time to shift up and bury the throttle again.  They are quiet, and smoke and hassle-free: not your father's Oldsmobile diesel.  Five-speed boxes; an automatic rental costs extra.  On a previous trip, we exchanged a diesel for a 1.8 liter gasoline Peugeot.  I would not do it again: the fuel consumption increased far more steeply than the fun factor.

Our Citroen was broken into in the public underground parking garage in Charleroi.  It was a smash-and-grab and, fortunately, anything worth grabbing was already in our hotel.  In retrospect, we could have seen it coming: a Paris Metro plate on a car left unused for two overnights in a Belgian city.  Petty thieves in larger towns "case" public parking spaces and strike in the wee hours of the morning.  But the experience was painless.  We phoned EuropCar at the Charleroi airport and they said "bring it out and we'll exchange it."  Their insurance paid for the glass.

In The Tracks Of Joachim Peiper

The German offensive that became The Battle Of The Bulge jumped off on an 80-mile front on December 16, 1944, in the Ardennes Forest on the German-Belgian border.  Hitler's idea was to seize the port of Antwerp and split the Allied armies in half (British to the north, Americans to the south).  The Wehrmacht generals considered this a fantasy, but they were hopeful they could reach the Meuse River on a line that ran from Huy to Liege.  This might create enough mischief to delay or derail the Allied spring offensive.

The sharp part of the German spear was Task Force (Joachim) Peiper, on the north end of the line.  He had the heaviest concentration of armor and truck-mounted infantry, built around his own SS Division. Peiper was to bypass fighting and make for the Meuse as fast as he could.  Units to his south would try to encircle Allied units while also pushing on to support his left.  Appallingly cold, overcast, wet weather hampered both sides.  Allied tactical air could not fly for the first few days.  Narrow and muddy secondary roads and farm lanes slowed the Germans, especially Peiper's tanks.

Battle of the Bulge: this map shows the deepest penetration of German units, although the bulk of them did not get much past Bastogne on the south and Trois Ponts (Peiper's Task Force) on the north.

Joachim Peiper was a committed Nazi with a superb combat record on the Eastern Front, where "civilized warfare" was not practiced--least of all by S.S. Divisions like the one he commanded and brought west to form the nucleus of his task force.

Ridge at the hamlet of Lanzerath.  A small U.S. Army unit held this ridge for 12 hours against German units who were to punch a hole for Peiper's armored column.  He had to run the GI's off the ridge himself, and was already behind schedule before he got going.  Even having read a biography of Peiper before following his route, with detailed maps, I got lost several times.  Some of the roads he took were farm lanes.  Crazy routing for armored columns, but the topography of the Ardennes dictated much of it.    

Crossroads of Bullingen.  Peiper had to turn west here (in the direction the picture was taken) to avoid heavy fighting in the twin villages of Rocherath-Krinkelt just to the north.  The Allies contested these villages for two days before reforming a defensive line on Elsenborn Ridge.  This gave Peiper a narrower road network and less maneuvering room on his right flank than the plan called for.  Also, these roads were not ideal for his heavy King Tiger tanks.  He refueled in Bullingen from a captured Allied dump.  The Germans could not get their meager supplies of fuel forward fast enough, so the plan called for refueling from captured supplies.  But, even though Peiper "leapfrogged" his units, refueling downtime and inadequate supply further slowed his advance.

The main drag in the village of Stavelot.  Peiper's troops had already committed the Malmedy Massacre of over 100 GI's who surrendered, a few miles south of Malmedy, by the time they reached here.  For good measure, they massacred about 50 Belgian civilians in Stavelot.  Peiper was now fully two days behind schedule.  No satisfactory explanation for the Malmedy Massacre was ever made.  One theory is that it was "more efficient" to shoot the prisoners than to further slow the advance by getting them to the rear over farm lanes needed for Peiper's tanks and trucks.  Yes,  that Stavelot and that Malmedy--from the corners of the same names on the "Old" Spa-Francorchamps road racing course.

Trois Ponts: the beginning of the end for Peiper.  Stavelot is about 3 miles to the right (east), via the road under the railroad overpass.  Peiper's preferred route was to turn left (toward the photographer) and cross the Ambleve and Salm Rivers, which are just out of frame, on a main highway with good bridges.  Allied engineers had blown them.  So he had to turn right (north, and then west), on a smaller road, still looking for a place to cross, to get back to his best line of advance.

For good measure, Peiper's troops gratuitously executed a few more Belgian civilians in Trois Ponts.

Village of La Gleize: end of the line for Peiper.  This is a few miles west of Trois Ponts.  His tanks were almost out of fuel.  A pick-up American armored force blocked his way west, at the village of Stoumont, where there was a significant fire-fight.  American infantry had re-occupied Stavelot behind him.  Peiper's men blew up their remaining tanks and trucks and tried to infiltrate back to German lines.  A surprising number of them made it, including Peiper.  After the war he was tried for the Malmeday Massacre and spent some time in prison, but it was not proved that he ordered or knew about it.

This is one of the few surviving King Tigers in the world.  It is La Gleize's War Memorial, and it has a funny back-story.  The wife of the inn-keeper in La Gleize thought the town needed a memorial.  She saw an American armor recovery team working on this King Tiger.  "I'd like that for La Gleize," she said.  "No way," they replied.  "Give you a bottle of cognac for it."  "It's yours, lady."

The other part of the War Memorial in La Gleize.  'Nuff said.

Rouen Les Essarts

Pilote tries to keep the names of the great old tracks alive (not that I'm the only one, or that you can't find out plenty about them with a Google search).  The dozens of airport courses that went under in the States in the late 1950's don't require mourning.  Or some of the purpose-built ones, like Bridgehampton and Marlboro Raceway.  Or, for that matter, some of the boring ones in Europe like Reims.  But the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, Old Spa, and the Nurburgring (to name four), deserve to live in memory.  So does Riverside, in California.

Rouen-Les-Essarts is another course that bit the dust, after Jo Schessler's fatal crash in the Six Freres in 1968 French Grand Prix.  Like Spa and the Nurburgring, Rouen continued to be used by slower cars for a few years until it was closed for good in 1973.  It is a few miles southwest of the city, and immediately southwest of the town of Les Essarts.  The Automobile Club of Normandy managed to wrest control of the French Grand Prix from Reims a few times in the 1950's and 1960's.  Rouen was much more challenging than Reims, although not as fast.

After Rouen, the race moved to several other locations (Clermont-Ferrand was one).  For many years now, there hasn't been a French Grand Prix.  No course measures up to current F-1 safety and amenities standards.  Also, I suspect, the French got tired of Bernie Ecclestone holding them up for the outrageous sanctioning fee.  France is not as car-nutty as the UK, Italy, Germany, and the States.  And France has Le Mans.  Who needs "just another Grand Prix" when you have the most famous sports car race in the world?

Rouen was 4.1 miles long and,  basically, a fast downhill run toward the Seine River and then another fast uphill run.  The blue segment that connected the downhill and uphill runs was flat, fast, and straight.

The "fast" course (red and blue) was used for Grands Prix.  The red-only course was used for a few years after the freeway (A-13 Autoroute) went through.  The green segment was used 1951-54, before big time racing came to Rouen.

Jacky Ickx (Ferrari 312) leads Pedro Rodriguez (BRM) into Six Freres, 1968 French Grand Prix.  Ickx won.  The start-finish line is about where the Esso sign is.  No, Pilote doesn't know why Six Freres is only four bends.

Starting into Six Freres today.  This is the equivalent of a State Highway.  (As you can see, the Dragon's "stay in your own lane" problem has been solved.)  The uphill leg is the equivalent of a County Road.  Trees and scrub have overtaken Rouen.  The old pits were bulldozed and are now a lumber yard where harvested trees await their trip to a sawmill.  There are no historical markers telling you that a great road circuit was once here.  You have to know where the course is to find it.  Fortunately I understood this before leaving the States.  There is one small directional sign in the town pointing toward "Rouen Les Essarts."  Your next clue is when you realize that you are in Six Freres.

Stewart Lewis-Evans, Vanwall, first lefthander in the Six Freres, 1957 French Grand Prix.  The embankment finished Rouen as a Formula 1 course: if a car went up it, big trouble, with the potential for more if it came back down into the course.  Which was exactly what happened in the 1968 Grand Prix.

Juan Fangio, Maserati 250-F, in Nouveau Monde, which transitioned from asphalt to cobblestones and back.  French Grand Prix, 1957.  Note that you begin braking before you enter the last of the Six Freres, without being able to see Noveau Monde.  So you're (initially) accelerating, then braking for an unseen apex, in a right-left-right transition.   Bring your A-game.

Dan Gurney in Nouveau Monde, 1962.  He gave Porsche its only GP victory.  The Type 718, based on the 4-cylinder Spyder, was too slow.  This car, the Type 771 8-cylinder, was faster, but not as fast as the revolutionary monocoque Lotus 25.

Our rental Citroen, exactly where Gurney's Porsche was 48 years before.  The hillside was a natural grandstand.

Nouveau Monde, showing a bit of both the downhill and uphill runs.  This picture shows a sedan race run the "wrong" way.

Same view (slightly lower vantage point) 50+ years later.

If you want to see more of Rouen-Les-Essarts, here's a link to the first of two videos of the 1962 Grand Prix (Gurney's win).  It runs 15 minutes and covers the first part of the race.  The video showing second half of the race (also 15 minutes) can be selected on the YouTube page after this one finishes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VVkQiDL_ao