331 replies to this topic

[JHS18]

Nice preview clip by the ACO ahead of this year's race:

[HandyNZL]

Seems a little silly to slow it down...even though the points expressed are somewhat valid...but then some plonker in a Ferrari could also stuff up Toyota or Audi...personally I'd rather see them have no limit, then they run as good as they can, and if that smacks the snot out of the others, well then it just makes the whole project worth every cent and they'll go down in history as the car that changed motorsport for ever (until the next car...which I'm picking will be some sort of magnetic hover car)

[The Shadow]

HandyNZL, on 08 June 2012 - 06:49 AM, said:

Seems a little silly to slow it down...even though the points expressed are somewhat valid...but then some plonker in a Ferrari could also stuff up Toyota or Audi...personally I'd rather see them have no limit, then they run as good as they can, and if that smacks the snot out of the others, well then it just makes the whole project worth every cent and they'll go down in history as the car that changed motorsport for ever (until the next car...which I'm picking will be some sort of magnetic hover car)

Agreed except for the magnetic hover car thing. Cornering will be a challenge without moveable aero

[HandyNZL]

Oh  no.... you have moveable magnets...they'll swivel and because the polarity moves you'll get different effects in the "attractiveness" of the magnetic field.  It'll no longer be about aero...it'll be all about being attractive

[JHS18]

HandyNZL, on 08 June 2012 - 06:49 AM, said:

but then some plonker in a Ferrari could also stuff up Toyota or Audi...

They did, last year




Anyway, some news - Montagny will replace Moreau at Oak.

http://www.autosport...t.php/id/100182

Think that is the Peugeot relocation programme complete then. Gene at Audi, Wurz, Davidson and Sarrazin at Toyota, Montagny at Oak, Minassian and Bourdais at Pescarolo, Pagenaud racing Indycar.

Edited by JHS18, 08 June 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[JHS18]

My excitement is building from this race now. I'll admit, I was concerned when the news broke that Peugeot were pulling out. My first thought was that Audi would dominate the year and that the 24 hours would be very...dramaless (not boring because Le Mans is never boring).

But now, after reading what I've read and hearing what I've heard, I think Toyota will have a shot. Apparently both Toyotas ran faultlessly on test day, whereas Audi had a few technical problems resulting in two cars stopping on circuit. Yes, better that happen on test day rather than race day...but Toyota COULD do it. What a story it'd be if they did too, winning their first Le Mans against the might of Audi.  Be a kick in the teeth to Peugeot as well if they did it on their first year back.

It'll be mighty, mighty difficult for them. But I do think that it'll be a lot closer than a lot of fans have imagined it'd be.

[JHS18]

Also, it is this time of year I start to get very excited about the future. Wouldn't be Le Mans week if there weren't some good rumours going around:

Quote

Nissan is dropping heavy hints that it, Renault or Infiniti could take a close look at Le Mans, Renault having just launched a new Alpine sports car at the Monaco Grand Prix. Porsche is committed, as is Audi. Toyota is too busy working on this year to think about 2014 for the time being but if another manufacturer stepped up, the LMP1 grid could be interesting.

http://www.racecar-e...mes-at-le-mans/

Audi, Toyota, Porsche, Nissan/Renault/Infiniti and maybe even Peugeot returning in a couple of years? Wow. My only hope is privateers don't get priced out of competing at the very top.

[Massa]

Yeah, and Volvo/Kia are in BTCC next year, take it to the bank kiddo.

Seriously, though, isn't there a Jaguar LMP1 for 2013/2014?

[JHS18]

Haha but but but they might be!

That was rumoured, but they've rather dismissed that talk. Would be cool to see it happen, but there's not much evidence to suggest it will.

[JHS18]

The legend that is Andy Blackmore has released his annual Le Mans 24 hours spotter's guide. Great resource for knowing who is driving what and in which colours.

http://www.spottergu...012_LM_V1_H.pdf

[Massa]

I always declare my favorites when the spotter's guide comes out...so...

Overall: Highcroft Racing because it's the DeltaWing!  And they're local-ish!  And Dan Gurney!  And Chip Ganassi!  And Ben Bowlby!  Woo!
LMP1: Anyone but Audi and Rebellion (sorry, can't get behind anything with Lotus branding on it).  I guess Toyota #7 for a realistic one, and Pescarolo #17 for Bourdais and the Dyson-like liveries of both the 7 and the 17.  I love the ARX-03a so I sort of have to like the #21 and #22 but I don't want to.
LMP2: I guess I'm a neutral party there this year. Anyone but Level 5 and Lotus, I guess.
GTE-Pro: Corvette #74.  Then Corvette #73.
GTE-Am: Luxury #58 for Gunnar and Frank, Lizards #79 for being something I recognize.

I will probably forget who I was supporting by the time the race happens.

[JHS18]

Yeah, I get what you mean about Rebellion. I'm a fan of theirs, but I dislike that they've been hit by the Lotus rebranding exercise. They were cool enough before that. Still, I'll support them, and I hope the Toyotas do well too. Pescarolo for a feel good story knowing the problems they've had in recent years as well.

Signatech is probably my favourite in P2, but I love the livery on the Boutsen Energy car for some reason. And Pecom is pretty cool too.

GT - Easy. Anyone who drives a Ferrari. AF Corse and Luxury...it is hard to choose between them. Leaning towards Luxury on the basis they have Fred Macko who quite a few people are saying is the best GT driver on the planet at the moment. Wins in nearly everything he drives.

A lot of good guys on the grid, so it is hard for me to be too critical.

[JHS18]

Plus, I love Le Mans for the videos that follow. I particularly like this kind of thing - fan footage from Mulsanne straight at night. Just the noise of the engines and nothing else...

[JHS18]

Latest on the weather (haven't heard anything official yet, just going on what I've found) - looks like there's a small chance of rain on Tuesday, with an increased chance on Wednesday. At this stage, it looks as if it may be cloudy at times for the race, but no threat of rain at this stage.

I'll try and keep up with what the guys at the track (Radio Le Mans etc) are saying on the weather front. They're normally good at keeping fans informed.

[Massa]

Some ALMS drivers talking about Le Mans.

http://www.alms.com/...-heures-du-mans

Is Patrick Dempsey running this year?  I may have missed him on the entry list.  I always support him and his teams.  Good guys even if they aren't the most talented racing drivers or anything.

Of course, a lot of people in sports car racing or good guys so to them too.  You don't get to Le Mans if you aren't a real racer because you just don't understand Le Mans if you aren't a real racer, at least that's the impression I get.  I'm sure a few dorks have made it here, but I always felt that even if you are delusional about your own driving abilities, anyone who made it to Le Mans (or Indy, where we've had plenty of dorks ) was just really a racer in spirit at least.

As an insignificant footnote, Patrick Long declaring Le Mans the world's oldest race doesn't seem factually correct.  The Monte Carlo Rally was first run on January 21, 1911 and has been held 80 times.  The first Indianapolis 500 tok place on May 30, 1911, contested for the 96^th time last month.  That said, it does not diminish the importance, history, or greatness of Le Mans that it isn't the oldest.  Being the oldest is entirely meaningless because all three of those races, and many others, have a lot of history and take a lot of everything to win.  I just like my facts to be factual and it was fun for me to learn that Indy isn't the oldest, either, as I had thought for my entire life until today.   (The oldest racing track in the world still used today is, by the way, the Milwaukee Mile, which opened in 1903.  It first hosted an American Championship car race, which is the umbrella term for things like IndyCar/IRL/Champ Car/CART/USAC Gold Crown/the billions of other names, in 1937.  It wasn't paved until 1954.  The more you know...).

I hope to see Le Mans in daylight this year.  I've only ever seen it at night which is really awesome and takes a tremendous amount of bravery for the drivers, but simultaneously, it's really hard to figure out what's going on from TV.

[JHS18]

Doesn't Dempsey even have his own team know? Caught a bit of ALMS at Laguna and it seemed like he did. Could be certain I'd heard talk of him wanting to get an entry for next year.

Yeah, a lot of people who go to Le Mans really respect the place. I think that comes from the fact that you just can't turn up and race in the sense of a lot of other races in the world. The ACO have to accept your entrance and invite you to race. I always do look forward to even seeing the entry list to see who has been given a spot, who has missed out...you've done a good job even being there really.

I kind of agree. Night racing does have something very cool to it. Le Mans in the light is a bit enough challenge, but in the dark, I can't even imagine what it is like. But yeah, I get what you mean. Sometimes it is hard to really know what's going on just because of the glare from the car's headlights.

[Massa]

Correct.  Dempsey has owned a Grand-Am Mazda RX-8 team for years.  This year, they are fielding an LMPC car full-time in ALMS and an LMP2 in various races.  Dempsey drives the P2; he can't race the PC due to his insurance not allowing him to run open-cockpit cars.

They do want to go to Le Mans, but they are waiting to have a Mazda engine.  That either means going to P1 or Mazda giving them a P2 engine.  Not sure what the plans are fully.  One rumor had them doing WEC next year.

[Massa]

Should DeltaWing go the distance without significant problems, it is projected to do so with half the pit stops of the other runners.  I think it's cool stuff.  People forget that Le Mans is billed as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency, and that Group C was regulated by fuel consumption rather than engine capacity (leading to the urban legend that the C stood for consumption, which it did not).  I'm not saying racing should be fuel mileage (though I love fuel mileage races, and everyone always whines about them, but I think they are so much more dramatic than everyone having fuel to the end and the positions not changing at all...drivers on different strategies, that makes for exciting on-track racing to me), but this is a cool project and it's very much in the spirit of sports car racing and racing as a whole.  I'm sure the first F1 cars with wings looked weird to people and the first sidepods were weird and all that.  Change is cool, especially when change is taking racing back to the old school for a little while.  I truly hope to see DeltaWing yield promising results for the future racecars.

And it's getting media attention in the U.S.  Le Mans doesn't even register here, but science/tech magazines are featuring DeltaWing, car magazines are featuring DeltaWing, places like CNN and Yahoo have given it some attention...it's the most visible Le Mans car in the U.S. and it stole all the headlines the 2012 IndyCar could have made.

I think that's cool.

[Massa]

U.S. TV coverage of Le Mans...I'm putting this here mostly for my own reference so I don't forget...but maybe some of the guests reading are Americans and will find it useful...probably not...so we'll just call it a vanity post on my part:

8:30 AM - 1:00 PM
2:30 PM - 7:00 PM
7:30 PM - ???
12:00 AM - 9:30 AM

That's actually a lot more than I was expecting.

For the masses:

SPEED's Le Mans section; it usually has great galleries and videos and articles.  SPEED's a very underrated racing website. http://auto-racing.s...com/lemans-alms

And then there's this: http://stream.speedtv.com/corvette

I'm not sure what it is...but it looks like a stream...just what will be streamed there is beyond me.

[JHS18]

Massa, on 11 June 2012 - 01:57 AM, said:

Should DeltaWing go the distance without significant problems, it is projected to do so with half the pit stops of the other runners.  I think it's cool stuff.  People forget that Le Mans is billed as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency, and that Group C was regulated by fuel consumption rather than engine capacity (leading to the urban legend that the C stood for consumption, which it did not).  I'm not saying racing should be fuel mileage (though I love fuel mileage races, and everyone always whines about them, but I think they are so much more dramatic than everyone having fuel to the end and the positions not changing at all...drivers on different strategies, that makes for exciting on-track racing to me), but this is a cool project and it's very much in the spirit of sports car racing and racing as a whole.  I'm sure the first F1 cars with wings looked weird to people and the first sidepods were weird and all that.  Change is cool, especially when change is taking racing back to the old school for a little while.  I truly hope to see DeltaWing yield promising results for the future racecars.

And it's getting media attention in the U.S.  Le Mans doesn't even register here, but science/tech magazines are featuring DeltaWing, car magazines are featuring DeltaWing, places like CNN and Yahoo have given it some attention...it's the most visible Le Mans car in the U.S. and it stole all the headlines the 2012 IndyCar could have made.

I think that's cool.

It's good to hear that. It's a cool project, and I think the ACO really need to be thanked for coming up with an initiative that will allow cars like this to race. Even if it is a failure and doesn't make it past 12 hours, in a way it doesn't really matter because it is about future technologies - and as we know, future technologies don't always work straight away. Considering that this was quite a late project and it hasn't had as much track time as a Audi or a Toyota, they've done a good job so far.

I think in future years, it'd be cool to have a few more cars racing under Garage 56 regulations, but I know that probably won't happen. Anyway, GreenGT - next year's 56 car does actually exist. I didn't realise that it had even been built yet.



Question for you - what do you think Deltawing's realistic future after Le Mans is? I've read somewhere that this could be its one and only race, but I'd find it strange if they've gone to all this effort only to race it once.

Massa, on 11 June 2012 - 02:01 AM, said:

U.S. TV coverage of Le Mans...I'm putting this here mostly for my own reference so I don't forget...but maybe some of the guests reading are Americans and will find it useful...probably not...so we'll just call it a vanity post on my part:

8:30 AM - 1:00 PM
2:30 PM - 7:00 PM
7:30 PM - ???
12:00 AM - 9:30 AM

That's actually a lot more than I was expecting.

For the masses:

SPEED's Le Mans section; it usually has great galleries and videos and articles.  SPEED's a very underrated racing website. http://auto-racing.s...com/lemans-alms

And then there's this: http://stream.speedtv.com/corvette

Isn't that a camera from within Corvette's garage? Can recall that being the case in years gone by. May also be an option to ride onboard with the Corvette cars.

Thanks for the information by the way.

As I mentioned some posts ago - scrutineering is taking place now. Yesterday was the first day of scrutineering and there's a nice gallery of what was going on - including team photos - here:

http://www.endurance...?page=1034&np=0

Another gallery here:
http://www.facebook....63622911&type=3


I like seeing the team photos every year. I also think it is really cool that members of the public, fans, can just get so close to the action. You wouldn't see that during scrutineering at a Formula One race for instance.

Edited by JHS18, 12 June 2012 - 11:01 AM.

[JHS18]

Hearing some more on the weather too.

60% chance of rain on Saturday, but it is likely to disappear by Sunday. A downpour to what was seen in the early stages of Le Mans 2001 could not be out of the question then:



With how big the circuit is, rain can then play chaos. Some places the track will be completely dry, other places very wet. Hopefully if it does rain, it doesn't rain too heavily that it means the Safety Car has to be brought out.

[Massa]

DeltaWing's realistic future: Dr. Don Panoz wants a class of DeltaWings in ALMS next year.  It isn't clear if it will be spec cars or not (since DeltaWing was supposed to be open source for variability).  My only concern is that you'd have way too many classes.  I wonder if you could give LMP2 teams the option to either merge into LMP1 (as they did a few years ago) or take the cheaper option and merge into LMPC (which is not impossible).  Then you have LMP and LMP and can add in DeltaWing from there...

So I have no idea how it's going to work, but ALMS wants to continue with it.  If you had enough of them, I honestly am not against phasing out LMP1 and leaving that to WEC and making DeltaWing the top class of ALMS...

[JHS18]

That could work. As you mentioned earlier, LMS (or ELMS as it is now) phased out LMP1 to be different to the WEC - but they're already struggling to get a big enough grid to complete the season with a mixture of P2, PC, GTE and GTC cars. So you could say that it hasn't worked.

Mind you, WEC very nearly didn't work this year either. Fun fact: WEC was Peugeot's idea. Audi was indifferent to it. Toyota didn't care. Peugeot told the ACO and FIA that they'd compete only if there was a "World Championship". Then guess what happened? Peugeot pulls out only a few weeks before the thing's supposed to start. FIA dictate that for a series to earn the "FIA World Championship" title that there has to be two or more manufacturers competing a full season. Toyota never intended to compete in a full season this year - but after a bit of persuasion by the ACO, they said they would. Basically, Toyota saved WEC from being a none event this year.

I hope Deltawing finds a home post Le Mans and isn't just retired to some rich person's collection like a lot of cars often are. But it is difficult with sportscars championships as they are now to see where it'd fit in.

Edited by JHS18, 11 June 2012 - 03:03 PM.

[Massa]

Toyota didn't run the full season...they weren't at Sebring...the WEC is a lie.

It would be hard to get enough cars for an ALMS DeltaWing class to be relevant, while not so many that they're over-crowding places like Lime Rock and Long Beach.  You also run into the same issue the ACO had...how fast do you let it go?  The car will need half the pit stops of the LMPs, so if you let it go to its full potential, its likely winning every ALMS race overall.  Are they comfortable with that?  Are Dyson and Pickett comfortable with that?

If they merge the nine P1s and P2s back into LMP like the old days, keep LMPC, GT, and GTC, and add DeltaWing, they have a good series.  Just what they let DeltaWing do is beyond me...do you let it run as a classified LMP, recognizing it is slower but more efficient?  I think so, for ALMS' purposes, but at the same time, ALMS like to keep everything equalized and balanced and all so I don't know what they want to do.

At the end of the day, American sports car racing is just in a sad place.  I wish ALMS and Grand-Am could start working together.  There is no reason other than political ones that in the future you couldn't have a series with restricted LMP2s racing against sped up DPs and LMPCs (none of them are that far from each other) in one class, a class of LMGT, and a class of Daytona GT merged with GTC (same specification already).  P1 and DeltaWing could fit in there if enough cars were floating around (right now, three P1s isn't enough, and it's only two at the endurance races, and the third one is technically illegal under ACO rules because it's Dyson's old car).

[Massa]

Anyway, American sports car racing has nothing to do with Le Mans...

What's GreenGT's selling point?  I'm can guess, based on the name, but I don't know anything about it and I think the 56 program is one of the coolest things there is.

[JHS18]

Haha I don't think Toyota ever considered doing Sebring anyway - I believe their original plan for this year was to test, run Le Mans with one or two cars, and then test some more for the rest of the season before a proper attack with two or three cars next year. But then Peugeot quit, and that sort of changed. I don't think anyone really knows what they're doing after Le Mans in terms of the other WEC races. They're possibly doing Silverstone, but that's as much as I've heard.

As for GreenGT - their aim is to be the first prototype electric/hydrogen powered race car - basically a 100% green, zero emissions racer. It is an interesting project, like Deltawing. I just find it funny they use the "GT" tag when it actually looks more like a prototype than anything else. But they have a website dedicate to the latest information on what they're working on. Hopefully they get it to be a success next year seeing as it is pretty likely that electric/hydrogen cars are the future of road cars, nevermind racing cars.

http://www.greengt.c.../greengt-h2.php

[Massa]

WEC footnote: I don't expect Sebring on the calendar next year.  My understanding is that ALMS didn't really enjoy losing in their own race accommodating you guys.

I'll be using gasoline ("petrol") to the very, very, very end until the U.S. government declares my car illegal and offers to buy it from me.  It's cheaper and it's proven.

Thanks for the info on GreenGT, James.  Interesting project.  It's good to see this stuff getting exposure at Le Mans.  There are a lot of races in America that are very, very, very small and not talked about much that are really great with this kind of technology.  We've run all-electric oval races, races where you get a seriously tiny amount of fuel and have to complete a certain distance, solar-powered racing cars, all sorts of racing car projects at our college campuses that then compete, etc.  But none of that is talked about or covered or anything.  This is getting off-topic, all my posts do, I'm sorry, but here's an example of some stuff that was way before its time and never went anywhere:



It's good for Le Mans and the ACO to be giving these projects a place to be and a place to generate legitimate attention.

So this race counts for WEC points, right?  Is that a first, for Le Mans to be a championship event?  I'm assuming it is scaled for a lot more in the championship (I know ALMS has a scale...races over 6 hours pay 30 to win, 4-6 hours pay 25, and under 4 hours pay 20).

[JHS18]

Funnily enough, there's a Grand Prix Electrique that has run at Pau (big F3 street race - kind of like Macau) for the past couple of years. But it didn't start brilliantly in 2011:



My only complaint about hybrids, or electric powered cars, or whatever? There's no engine noise. Engine noise is an important in motorsport.

As for your question - yes, points are awarded at Le Mans, and yes, I believe it is the first time that's been the case. It is awarding double points as well. Points are identical to F1:

25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 and then half a point beyond 11th.

[JHS18]

In case you're interested, the standings for teams/drivers can be found here:

http://www.fiawec.co...sification.html

[JHS18]

Also, whilst this is not strictly relevant to this year's Le Mans (or even next) I thought I'd mention this.

There's speculation what team could run Porsche's car when they return in 2014. Audi's is run by Joest, Toyota's is run by Oreca.

The obvious candidate would be Penske. I remember hearing a comment Roger Penske made when running the RS Spyders in ALMS that they'd only do Le Mans if they had a chance of outright victory. With a brand new Porsche LMP1 car, that'd be possible. The other team being mentioned is Rebellion. With Lola's current financial problems and no indication that they'll be able to produce new Le Mans cars in the future - Lola teams could be forced to look elsewhere. Rebellion, the leading Lola team, could be a candidate to run the Porsches. They're financially secure and available. Or will one of Porsche's GT teams like Flying Lizard step up?

Something to keep an eye on.

Edited by JHS18, 11 June 2012 - 04:54 PM.