Over 60 teams from around the world are currently gearing up to compete in one of the most iconic endurance races to ever exist, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The green flag for the 91st running of the race drops at 4:00 p.m. local time (10:00 a.m. Eastern) on June 10. Then it’s a competition of survival until the checkered flag …
At first, I was really confused about how Le Mans is celebrating its centenary when this is only the 91st running of the race.
And then I remembered there was that little thing called WWII that interrupted the race for a few years.
At some point they're going to admit they should've used a wing.
In reply to j_tso :
Jenson Button said as much in a video interview with Marshal Preuett.
Garage 56 Jenson Button on the First Outing at Le Mans in the NASCAR Chevy Camaro ZL1 Cup Car
He says the car is quick but hits a wall on the straight and the other GT cars go past.
Last I checked the NASCAR machine was more than 5 seconds faster than the fastest GTE car. Honestly I expected it to do well, given the big power and considerable diet, but I'm not sure I expected a non-tunnel car to outrun heavily-aeroed cars by quite that much. Pretty impressive how fast you can throw a brick.
JG Pasterjak said:Last I checked the NASCAR machine was more than 5 seconds faster than the fastest GTE car. Honestly I expected it to do well, given the big power and considerable diet, but I'm not sure I expected a non-tunnel car to outrun heavily-aeroed cars by quite that much. Pretty impressive how fast you can throw a brick.
I don't think of La Sarthe as being a track with a lot of high speed corners (at least not as a percentage of the total track length), which is where high downforce cars really shine.
It makes 750 hp vs, what, 500 in a GTE car? I'm not surprised it's faster. :)
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
Button did mention that the car really needs more brakes. I would expect as the race progresses it will start to fall behind the GTE cars.
I think they are having a Parade lap of old LeMans cars from the last 100 years ,
Any idea when that will be ?
Edit , seems the Vintage parade laps are in a couple weeks at LeMans Classic and not this weekend.
Edit #2. There is a " museum" type display set-up for the past winners , hopefully someone will do a YouTube video on that display.
Anyone watching Hyperpole? Wow.
It's a shame that this isn't being televised on any of the 100s of stations that I already pay for every month. I expected that NBC would offer some coverage since they do IMSA with the rest showing up on Peacock but I guess not. Would love to watch some of it but I'm not going to subscribe to another service just for this race. I used to stay up watching this on Speedvision (aka Speed, aka FS1) back in the day.
CrashDummy said:It's a shame that this isn't being televised on any of the 100s of stations that I already pay for every month. I expected that NBC would offer some coverage since they do IMSA with the rest showing up on Peacock but I guess not. Would love to watch some of it but I'm not going to subscribe to another service just for this race. I used to stay up watching this on Speedvision (aka Speed, aka FS1) back in the day.
It's on the Motortrend channel, and they usually have a 7-day free trial deal, so maybe look into that. Then cancel after the race. There are usually some European feeds to Youtube.
In reply to grafmiata :
once they canceled dirt every day, there was no need for Motortrend in this house anymore...
Poor CGR, the Cadillac LMDh caught fire during the Hyperpole.
Sebastien Bourdais encountered fuel pressure problems prior to the No. 3 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R coming to a stop on the Mulsanne Straight and catching fire. “I just lost fuel pressure, but from the engine side because it kept clearly just injecting fuel somewhere,” he told Sportscar365. “It flooded the car with fuel and it just blew up.”
Bourdais added that the fire likely inflicted significant damage to the car: “It’s burnt bad, because you can’t get in the engine. You can’t put out the fire because you need to take the rear cell [off] to be able to take the engine deck off. You can’t get the fire out. It slowly burns the car.”
Will they be able to repair the CGR car?
I sure hope so. He was third fastest when it happened and lost the fast lap for causing a red flag.
"minimal damage" according to CGR
A fuel hose burst.
Thanks to everyone for all of the reporting and links to videos and articles.
oh no :(
I hope MotorTrend TV'S coverage gets better, i've seen more commercials than anything else so far. That "grid walk" was painful to watch. Nobody does that better than Brundle.
06HHR (Forum Supporter) said:I hope MotorTrend TV'S coverage gets better, i've seen more commercials than anything else so far. That "grid walk" was painful to watch. Nobody does that better than Brundle.
Painful is an understatement. Is there booth commentary that isn't coming across maybe to fill in those awkward voids?
Yeah, off to a rough start.. Ad-fest... Hope it gets better once the race is underway
Yeah worst grid walk I've seen, but I'm confident that the race coverage will be different. I'm glad Motor Trend is providing the full 24 hours, though.
What happened to the action express car? It looked like he just dove right into the wall
I gave motor trend the boot when they changed the app so that I had to use my phone to watch it on my TV. I've always found their live even coverage to be lacking. and making me wait months to see world RX races is criminal.
Anyone found a sneaky way to watch this or am I just gonna have to avoid spoilers and wait for the re-live upload in a couple weeks?
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