2011 Endurance Racing Thread

I am in the opposite boat, customer engines sold/gifted to RBR technologies would be of benefit to both parties. RBR is going to make your lump look good and it will greatly reduce the investment in building/running your own factory machine. Anyways the RBR LMP machine is just pure speculation, but dam I am pretty sure they would crash some parties at Le Mans..... PS all AN needs to work on is reliability, as much as he his a hero to me his cars barely make the distance of a F1 race let alone 24 hours.
 
Terrible3 said:
I am in the opposite boat, customer engines sold/gifted to RBR technologies would be of benefit to both parties. RBR is going to make your lump look good and it will greatly reduce the investment in building/running your own factory machine. Anyways the RBR LMP machine is just pure speculation, but dam I am pretty sure they would crash some parties at Le Mans..... PS all AN needs to work on is reliability, as much as he his a hero to me his cars barely make the distance of a F1 race let alone 24 hours.
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If i remember correctly adrian newey has already made a imsa gtp contender in his early career. So to say he has no experience with designing endurance racers is not totaly fair to him.

Looked it up and he was with the march imsa gtp team and his car won the titel 2 times.
 
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Nelis said:
If i remember correctly adrian newey has already made a imsa gtp contender in his early career. So to say he has no experience with designing endurance racers is not totaly fair to him.

Looked it up and he was with the march imsa gtp team and his car won the titel 2 times.
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IMSA GTP wasn't endurance racing though, the cars were built for sprint racing. Sebring 12h and Daytona 24h were the only endurance rounds. Also, I don't think IMSA GTP was that competitive when Newey's car was racing, there weren't any factory teams running for instance. The series really got going after the customer 962s, Nissan, Jaguar and Toyota entered.
Sportscar protos have evolved so much over the years that designing modern F1 cars is probably closer than the old school prototypes.
 
In other news, the ALMS races this season are all going to be streamed live online, on ESPN3.com for Americans (and highlights packages on ESPN or ABC) and apparently also on americanlemans.com for everyone else who wants to watch. Races will be available both online and on-demand. No mention of any fees... so hopefully the feeds should be free if sponsors are found for them. After all, Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio last year were streamed live for free online.
 
Nelis said:
If i remember correctly adrian newey has already made a imsa gtp contender in his early career. So to say he has no experience with designing endurance racers is not totaly fair to him.

Looked it up and he was with the march imsa gtp team and his car won the titel 2 times.
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Sorry but where exactly did I say that? Please do not put words in my mouth. I just mentioned that his cars tend to be fragile as he designs on the bare limit. I simply made a joke about how his creations tend to expire before they can complete one GP.
 
Porsche 918 RSR - The future of GT2 / LMGTE?

Porsche 918 RSR - The future of GT2 / LMGTE?

With an output of ~550 bhp and a hybrid-/KERSystem, might the 918 RSR represent the future of GT2 / LMGTE racing?
 
Not really, Porsche won't want to kill the market for a racing version of the 911. The promo video explicitly says that the 918 RSR is simply a technological test bed, and the power and engine size give off impressions of plans for a potential return to LMP1. This program can also be used by Porsche as an excuse to keep developing the engine formerly used by the RS Spyder.

EDIT: Although the target is for a Le Mans entry in 2012... but I'm pretty sure that that entry would be as the special unclassified experimental 56th entrant.
 
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In fact the 918 RSR is something like the evolution of the 911 GT3 R Hybrid. An explanation could be, that the expensive hybride-/KERS - technology does not really fit to the GT3 class. Therefore Porsche might orientate one class upwards to establish this kind of technology. Maybe it is the end of the era where the 911 is Porsche's top model for GT-racing because the potential of the good old 911 (GT3 RSR) is exhausted compared to cars like the brand new, midengined F458 GT, for example!?
 
Not sure. In any case, this car will be made in limited numbers, probably far from enough for GT2 homologation.


And also I'm pretty sure there's a lot of untapped potential in the 911 yet, and it's drivers like Porsche's crop of factory drivers who can unlock it. (Particularly a fan of Marc Lieb and Patrick Long)
 
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Homolgation - I just forgot to think about that. Good point!
 
I would be willing to speculate that ALMS would be more than happy to have this car run alongside that other 911 hybrid just for the technology spectacle. They would not allow the two to compete in the normal classes but just image the news hype when the 911 starts beating the GT2 cars? I think it would be a no brainier for both Porsche and ALMS to have the cars run as it would be benefit both parties. This would not be the first time they allowed a random car to run just for the sake of featuring an exotic piece of equipment.
 
Random question... which race would be better to attend? The 6-hour ILMC race at Imola or the 24 Hours of Spa? I'm thinking of going to an endurance race this year and my choice is rather limited between those two in terms of scheduling.

Imola should have Peugeot vs. Audi vs. Aston Martin in P1 and all the action associated with it, with the LMS field added to boot, which would be a mini-Le Mans-type experience. But I'm also considering Spa even though it will only be GT3 and GT4 cars, because it would be my first real 24h race experience as a spectator.
 
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ask vikirad! he will sure be able to answer

oh wait...


my experience with visiting races is that it's impossible to follow what's happening all around the track, and after an hour, you're not even trying to keep up...
so my advise would be to go see the cars you're most interested in, unregarded if it's a 1 hour race or a 24 hour race...

i enjoy walking around the paddock the most, and i guess there is realy little action there during a 24 hour race. if the 6 hour race has some supportaction, there should be something to see in the paddock all the time...
 
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I'd probably go to 24 hours of Spa, the night time racing is always awesome. Sure, I have trouble keeping track of what is happening when I'm at N?rburgring 24 hours, but I'd go to Spa for the track itself :)
 
Are you planning on going alone or with likeminded people? Do the plans for Spa include camping? Planning to head anywhere else as well?

I was in Spa two years ago. I wasn't camping which meant I could only catch the first 90 minutes of the race before catching the last bus to Verviers. By that stage I was completely lost on how the race was going despite sitting in a grandstand opposite to the old pits with a video screen right across the track and near speakers. And apart from trying to follow the race and watch the cars there's not really much to do. If you plan on traveling alone it might get boring after a while, no matter how big of a sportscar nut you are. I know I would have. But with good company and maybe some beers I could see it being a whole lot more pleasant pastime.

Don't get me wrong, being there for a few support races before the race, walking in the grid and the pit lane before the start and then seeing the whole field roaring down the hill towards Eau Rouge as they took the start was well worth the trip. I'm just reasonably happy I decided to only catch the start and not the whole race, although I would have loved to see the cars race to the night.

Anyway, I personally would pick Imola. The machinery is more interesting, you can watch the whole race without that much effort and head to a hotel for good night's sleep afterwards, Radio Le Mans will probably be available on FM and I would imagine getting to Imola and out of there is easier than getting to and from Spa (at least unless you plan on renting a car). Also, if you can extend your stay Maranello is reasonably close by and I would hazard a guess there are other interesting places for a car nut to visit near Modena as well...
 
Go for the 6h ALMS race at Imola! I watched many races of the BF Goodrich endurance mastership at the N?rburgring, which includes many GT3 cars in the SP9 class. That is high value racing, for sure but it is not nearly as spectacular as it was to wach the LMP1 and LMP2 class cars at Le Mans back in 2009. Even if it is "only" the 6h at Imola and not the 24h of Le Mans the LMS should be a little bit more worthwhile to watch.
 
vikiradTG2007 said:
In other news, the ALMS races this season are all going to be streamed live online, on ESPN3.com for Americans (and highlights packages on ESPN or ABC) and apparently also on americanlemans.com for everyone else who wants to watch. Races will be available both online and on-demand. No mention of any fees... so hopefully the feeds should be free if sponsors are found for them. After all, Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio last year were streamed live for free online.
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I just hope, hope, hope, they have a download option in addition to streaming. (I've never been to ESPN3.com, is that something that they do?)
Sometimes I get the impression that the powers to be at all content providers think that everyone has access to fast enough connections to stream even at the lowest resolution.
I have trouble streaming even a 360p YouTube video without buf....ferring and that's after getting my internet increased from 0.5 to 1.5MBit. Last year streaming wasn't even an option at all.
Not that I have any way of knowing, but I wouldn't be surprised that a large portion of people (in the US at least) don't have a decent enough connection to watch a live stream.

Last year I had to use a streaming video recorder on the "on demand" streams of the Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio races to be able to view it.
Because evidently they do some sort of switching during streaming, I constantly had to reconnect and resume the recording, which meant it took hours and hours of monitoring the recording in order to get it.

Last year I was able to watch most ALMS races in their entirety in HD.
Now I have a choice between seeing a HD highlight show or putting in a lot of effort to see the full race in SD. Yay! :mad:
 
Some European Honda/HPD-related news... Pegasus Racing will use a HPD V6 engine in their Courage LMP2 car this year, and RML will run the LMS and at Le Mans with the HPD ARX-01d, expected drivers Tommy Erdos, Mike Newton and the worst enemy of Top Gear fans in recent months a.k.a. Ben Collins.


And thanks for the advice on which of the two events to attend, but my mind is probably going to be made up by the attitude towards Romanians of the country in which the race takes place. And Italy HATES Romanians. So it's probably going to be the Spa 24h in the end, I guess...
 
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