LeMans 2018

racerdave600 said:

Tom_Spangler said:

racerdave600 said:

There is no difference at all between someone not showing up and teams that cannot build a competitive car. 

That makes no sense. The difference is that, in the first case, all you have to do is show up and finish, in the second case, you have to show up, finish, and beat someone. It's much harder.

I don't buy the Mercedes F1 analogy, either. Merc may have designed a better mousetrap these last few years, but they weren't competing with privateers with a fraction of their budget. Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren all have similar budgets, experienced designers, and world-class drivers at their disposal, just like Merc. Merc just did it better. That's racing, and not at all like Toyota running in a class of one this year at LeMans. 

How is what you are saying any different?  People act like they didn't have any cars in their class, they did.  They built the better mouse trap per the rules and showed up.  Just because another factory backed car didn't show up didn't mean they didn't have anyone to race against and couldn't lose.  Of course they were much faster and this will not go down as the greatest race ever, but they had to build the car, show up, perform at all levels, and not make mistakes.  I've been on both ends of races like this and a win is a win.  As I said before, you race the race you are given, not a fantasy race that you can't win because someone said you did not have enough competition.  I'm sure Toyota would have preferred to have Porsche, Audi or another factory team there, but they weren't.  

I still stand by previous comments,you race against whatever the competition brings, and if you have the better car, you win.  In this case, Toyota had a much better can than the others, just as Mercedes and others before them have had.  

Toyota absolutely did not have any other cars in their class.  They were in p1 HY.  There were zero other cars in P1 HY.  That would be like taking an f1 car from before the hybrid rulesets and trying to say that because it is an f1 car it's the same as the current generation cars.

The rules differences between P1 and P1 HY are HUGE!

I’m way late to this as I don’t spend as much time here as I used too.  Some comments on what I’ve read.

First.  I don’t begrudge Toyota the win, but there will always be an asterix too it.  Toyota stayed in the series when Audi, Porsche, Nissan etc. all bailed.  They’ve come oh so heartbreaking close so many times.  I do have a massive issue with the ACO for rigging it such that anything but a disaster for them in the race they were guaranteed a victory.  The hybrid cars may have been faster, but the degree they were faster was silly.  Four seconds a lap average is already a crazy margin to begin with, but then the ACO further limited their fuel capacity so they had to stop more frequently AND have them a lower re-fuleing rate so each pit stop was guaranteed to take at least five seconds longer than the Toyota’s.  Now, in the race the pit stops were on average seven seconds longer just because the Toyota team were more professional and better organized so I give Toyota much credit for two seconds per stop advantage, but seven was gerrymandering by the ACO.  To those making the Shadow comparison in Can Am.  One, say what you like, but people simply don’t care as much about them winning as McLaren or Porsche as they had very little competition.  They earned it, but it’s not credited as being a series of awesome wins as there wasn’t the competition.  Also the SCCA didn’t artificially slow down the competition just so they were guaranteed a win (see ACO and less fuel and slower stops).  Toyota may have made a better mouse trip, but the ACO then compounded the situation by taking away the chees from the other mouse traps.

Second, back in the mid 80’s yes it was a 956/962 show, but private teams had access to the same cars and equipment and played on a level playing field and at times beat the works cars. In 1984 and 85 Joest won over all beating the works cars.  Also back then, inflation adjusted a 962 cost about the same as a top line GT3 car does today, so it was comparatively cheap to enter.  Heck in 1985 Paul Newman famously came 2nd in a customer 935 and in 1984 Nick Mason (having already been the3re several times in a 935and a Dome Group C car) bought a new 956 just for Lemans, raced it then retired it.  That was possible back then.

Third.  Wow, we are pissing and moaning about Mario Andretti’s racing record.  Really?  The dude is a total legend and I’d say it would be hard to argue that.  It’s hard to compare drivers across 100 years of racing, but let’s look at him.  He won in sports cars, stock cars, on dirt, on asphalt, Midgets, Indy cars (Front engine offy’s right through to the CART monsters of the 80’s and 90’s) and of course F1.  Hell, even when he was 42 years old in the horrible 1982 season Ferrari drafted him back into F1 after the loss of both Villeneuve (fatally) and Pironi (career ending injuries) and he managed to pit it on the podium at Monza with no testing.  Arguing against him being compared to Alonso is like arguing Roma wasn’t much of an empire as they didn’t have Nukes or ever beat America!

Forth.  People keep talking about hypercars coming back to LeMans.  That’s not the case.  The cars will be LMP1 cars with bodywork that kinda sorta looks like something from the same manufacturer.  This wont be like the 90’s where the ultra wealthy can go and buy a 911 GT1, McLaren F1 LT, Nissan R390, Mercedes CLR to drive to cars and coffee for bragging rites.  These will be pure race cars, nothing more.  Also after a year of saying ‘we’re playing nice with IMSA and want a global series’ they’ve totally screwed North America as well.  Even with these new cheaper regs they are talking about budgets in the $25-40 million mark.  That’s way more than even Cadillac or Acura are spending on their IMSA prototypes and way beyond the available budgets for NA, so we can forget a global series.

Finally.  It wasn’t just LMP1 that rules gerrymandering screwed up.  Both GTE am and especially GTE Pro had the BoP such that Porsche were all but guaranteed a win in both classes for their 70th anniversary.  BoP is always contentious, but it seems this year people were particularly incensed.  Having said that the way the race fell I think they would have won both categories regardless.  Side note.  Why I love the Ford GT’s, I really like the look of the mid engine 911 RSR’s.  While they make a bit of a mockery for a production based series I love love love the super wide body look, especially from behind.  It almost looks like the width of the two rear fenders are wider than the greenhouse.  Amazing.

Dem Hips.  Ooohh aahhh

The mid engined 911 make me LOL. It is like Porsche after all the years of being in denial finally admitted that a rear engined car is something less than ideal.

I wonder if they will next create rear engined Caymans to race in some series?

How much of any of the GTE cars come off an assembly line though?

In reply to T.J. :

The funny thing is, the closest car to production in GTE is the Ford GT.  Funny as (particularly Ferrari) fans of other teams were calling foul and saying it's not a real street car.  The level of dumbing down compared to the road car is amazing.  Supposedly the GTE cars have less than 500 hp.  The Ferrari's use bit's of the production tub, the 911 RSRT has the engine in a different place etc.  If it wasn't for BoP the Ford would have cleaned up by many laps every year until the 911 RSR arrived.  After that I think the Ford would still have had a big frontal area advantage, but the rest of the 911 may have been a match.  There's certianly no way the BMW or Aston would have been in the same ZIP code.

P.S. massive congrats to Patrick Dempsey for finally getting his LeMans win, even if it was from behind the pit wall.

Porsche has used the mid engine layout many times before in the 911. Learn your history!

markwemple said:

Porsche has used the mid engine layout many times before in the 911. Learn your history!

Nope.  The only official mid engined 911's I can recall are the 911 GT1 and the new 911 RSR.  The big difference between the GT1 and the RSR is that the GT1 was a homologated road car with the same layout.  The RSR is for racing only and the car it's homologated on is the rear engined road car.  It's a case of Porsche driving a bus through a loophole in the regulation.  That's not a slam against Porsche, I praise them for doing it.  One more thing, it's not the weight or balance that pushed them into the mid engine format, it's aerodynamics.  With the engine in the rear they couldn't fit a proper diffuser.  With the engine forward of the axle line they massivly clean up the underbody aero.  That's the reason they went mid engined.

P.S.  There were some mid engined 935 GTP cars, but they were created by private teams not Porsche.  

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

Interesting on the diffuser. That makes sense.

The Ferraris and the Fords look the closest to the actual road cars they are based on to my eye. I loved seeing how much lower the Ford was when it was tucked up on the rear of one of the 911s.

I understand the desire to have some sort of BOP system in place, otherwise things just get too crazy and the costs spiral up until most everybody is driven out of the sport. The problem is that it leads to sandbagging during practice and qualli to try to game the system and that it hard to get things properly balanced. I figure every year there will be a car that has a BOP advantage and the other cars are just competing for 2nd place or hoping for a mistake from the chosen one.

For that matter, throw an asterisk on almost anything Roush did in T/A and GTO in much of the 80’s.

Back when Rahal was running the M3 and the Z4 both of those cars had V8s in them, you could not get them that way from BMW.

The 1978-1980 935 (silouette era) ran a forward position engine and upside down trans. Weight shifted forward. Unless you are meaning only engine in front of trans, then this, along with the GT1 are mid-engined 911s. Engine not a the back of the car.  BTW, how would you classify an engine above trans, as Ferrari and Lambo have both done this at the rear of the car.

If the engine is above the trans, I guess you could look at the crank centerline relative to the wheel centerline? And if it's longitudinal, you just give up.

Looks like there was no Garage 56 entry this year. The ACO said it was because the manufacturer that takes the spot "needs to commit to racing LMP1 [in the World Endurance Championship in the future] and for a privateer it is difficult to finance". That's a pretty serious hurdle.

I loved the way the Ford GTs were lit at night with lights under the flying buttresses, it made them look even more like spaceships than they already do.

I don't think Fernando needs an asterisk because he definitely won LMP1.

Keith Tanner said:

If the engine is above the trans, I guess you could look at the crank centerline relative to the wheel centerline? And if it's longitudinal, you just give up.

Based on the logic of 'front-mid' engine proponents, the entirety of an engine must sit between the axle centerlines for it to earn the 'mid' engine moniker. .So it would follow that if any part of the engine crosses behind the rear axle centerline, then it would become 'rear' engined. 

Good point! Who knew that figuring out where your engine is would be so difficult.

In reply to red_stapler :

Interesting graph. If I am reading that right, Alonso looks to have done a lot of laps that were about a second faster than the other 5 drivers, but his fastest 15 or so laps were not as fast as some of the other driver's fastest 15 laps. In short, it looks like he makes a very good endurance racer. Not the quickest overall, but the quickest over an whole stint.

Agreed. Quick and consistent is what you're looking for.

He probably passed more cars last weekend than in his entire F1 career.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

LOL. That is probably not an exaggeration.

There is no asterix against Alonso's driving or Toyota's effort.  My beef is that after Spa they reduced the refuling fuel flow and capacity of the non hybrid LMP1 cars such that the theoretical perfect pit stop by all teams would see the non hybrid cars spend 5 seconds longer in the pit AND only be able to take on enough fuel for one lap less than the hybrids (Toyotas).  That wasn't the case in previous years and was designed specifically to give Toyota an advantage.  On top of that they even stated (no, this is not a joke) that cars that ran faster than they thought they should would be brought into the pit and made to sit and wait to negate the advantage.  Now, they never had to do that as the no hybrid cars were circa 4 seconds a lap slower than the hybrid cars, but the deck really was stacked in Toyota's favor.

The delta between fastest race laps was 'only' 2.4 seconds (Buemi to Jani), but that's cherry picking the best  race laps.  In Quali the gap was 4.07 seconds.  Back to the pit stops.  The winning #8 Toyota made 37 pit stos for a total elapsed time of 46m 10.637 secs.  The third place #3 Rebellion made 39 stops with a total elapsed time of 1h 09 mins 8.093 seconds.  So effectivly lost 7 laps in the pits.  The winner  was only 12 laps ahead and the second car was 10 laps ahead of them.   While that was still only good for 3rd place, it may have been close enough to put more pressure on at least one of the Toyotas and we know they've failed under pressure before.

Again, nothing against Alonso or Toyota, my beef with the race is with the ACO and WEC, they are the ones who have put an asterix against Toyota's win.

P.S. Interesting aside.  The top two highest trap speeds in the event were both the far less powereful LMP2 cars at 343.4 and 342.3 km/h ( 213.38 and 212.69 mph) That shows that they have far less downforce than either the hybrid or non hybrid LMP1 cars.  The fastest Toyota was also a 324.3 km/h (212.69mph) but that was in free practice not the race.

I think only 1 other poster has noted that the other P1s did not make a good showing.  Both Rebellion cars had to go into the garages for several minutes and after that they were holding back to make it to the finish.  Everyone else was crashing out or didn't have it together.  Check out the overall results: 1st-4th is Toyota and Rebellion then the next P1 is down in 43rd.

Since this super season is ending back at Le Mans, if Toyota gets two consecutive 24 wins with an asterisk will that count as one "real" win?

So what are the chances they're going to slow down the RSR cars? They were clearly very good. 

j_tso said:

I think only 1 other poster has noted that the other P1s did not make a good showing.  Both Rebellion cars had to go into the garages for several minutes and after that they were holding back to make it to the finish.  Everyone else was crashing out or didn't have it together.  Check out the overall results: 1st-4th is Toyota and Rebellion then the next P1 is down in 43rd.

Since this super season is ending back at Le Mans, if Toyota gets two consecutive 24 wins with an asterisk will that count as one "real" win?

Only if they win with the same car like Gulf did the last time there were two races in the same year :)

Keith Tanner said:

Only if they win with the same car like Gulf did the last time there were two races in the same year :)

Please explain, I'm confused.  I'm not aware of LeMAns ever having been held twice in the same year and this is the first time it's appeared twice in one 'super season'  BAck when Gulf were sponsoring cars in the late 60's early 70's the race was part of the International Championships for Makes (and variations of that name) but they never had a season that was more than one calender year.

Thx.

September 28-29, 1968 and 14-15 June 1969. GT40 chassis 1075  won both races, and 1969 was a much better story than the 1966/67 races because the car was an underdog. I think JWA only had two cars.

Sure, they may not be part of the same racing season, but they were only 9 months apart so I'm going to say they're in the same year.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

CHEAT....but I'll give it too you.  The best thing about the 68-69 race victories was that they were with the earlier Mk I cars with the 4.9L engines as the rules had made obsolete their replacements the 'improved' 7.0L Mk II and Mk IV cars.