Endurance racing 2016

Incredibly impressive job by the crew on the #2 Porsche to take the win, from second to last spot, 10 laps behind the race leaders! :thumbup: A well deserved 19th Le Mans win for Porsche! :cheers:

I heard there was a good amount of disappointment that an LMP2 didn't win, and that Porsche won by "default" or whatever, you'd have to give some serious respect to the crew on the #2 Porsche, both the mechanics who fixed it and the drivers that pushed it all the way, thus contributing to it taking win. Even though it lapped consistently 13s a lap faster than the front runners after Porsche #1 dropped out you still have to have the reliability to get there and stay there until the clock ticks past 15:00 on Sunday. That being said I do have a lot of sympathy for Toyota, their reliability has screwed them so many times: 1994 losing the win to Porsche, 1998 losing the win again to Porsche, 1999 losing the win to BMW, 2014 losing the win to Audi, and 2016 losing the win to Porsche on the last lap. Still: To finish first, first you have to finish...


Last 8 minutes of the race:
 
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Build stronger clutches, especially for endurance races which are prone to provide some necessity to start from a standstill outside the pit lane after a defect, spin or whatever.
End of evaluation.
 
Rebellion LMP2 squad stripped of overall Le Mans podium

The Rebellion LMP2 squad has been stripped of its overall Le Mans 24 Hours podium, after video evidence found the Swiss squad guilty of a bodywork infringement used to restart its engine after pitstops.

Nelson Piquet Jr, David Heinemeier Hansson and Mathias Beche had taken Rebellion's #13 Oreca 07-Gibson to the team's first outright podium finish at La Sarthe last Sunday, taking advantage of only two LMP1 cars finishing the race and none without significant mechanical trouble.

The #13 trio ended up three laps behind the winning Porsche LMP1 in third overall, and two laps down on the winning LMP2 car, the #38 DC Racing Oreca of Oliver Jarvis, Thomas Laurent and Ho-Pin Tung.

However, Rebellion was found to be guilty post-race of "modifying a homologated part and using it partly during the race," and has been disqualified from the results.

The offence relates to a "hole that [had] been fashioned by the competitor in the right-hand side of the engine cover," which had been done to grant the Rebellion crew access to the starter motor ? to tap a malfunctioning solenoid to reset it ? without having to remove the engine cover and rear bodywork.

This in effect meant the #13 car ran the final part of the event with non-homologated bodywork, without any "crash damage or other cause which may be in mitigation".

Stewards were informed of this fact by a video taken by the technical delegate's staff during a pitstop, which was then shown to Rebellion.

The disqualification promotes the second DC Racing LMP2 car, the #37 machine shared by Alex Brundle, Tristan Gommendy and David Cheng, to second in class and third overall.

Signatech Alpine's #35 entry moves up to fourth, while the United Autosports Ligier inherits fifth. Toyota's only finisher, the #8 TS050 Hybrid, is promoted to eighth overall.

Oh... ffs... :rolleyes:
 
Build stronger clutches, especially for endurance races which are prone to provide some necessity to start from a standstill outside the pit lane after a defect, spin or whatever.
End of evaluation.

Seriously, that's pretty damn poor by Toyota.
 
Doesn't seem something which would warrant a disqualification, damn.
As far as I understood, they tried to cover the hole up in parc ferm?, which is a clear disqualification.
 
Doesn't seem something which would warrant a disqualification, damn.

that's open for debate, but i think it is

the regulation stipulate that after a stop and go penalty or sth, the driver must be able to start the car unaided
modifying homologated parts to achieve this, is a no go in my book...

good thing they didn't 'by accident' drill a bit too deep, making an extra hole in the airbox!!
 
What bothers me is this so-called "prototype" LMP2 class is basically a spec-class. All the cars have to be the same. Why? To keep the racing as close and even as possible, to improve the show for the fans. So they have rules against the teams being able to modify bodywork, because that would go against the spirit of a spec-racing class.

But the Rebellion car had a failing starter motor, which put them at a disadvantage to everyone else. Their car was no longer "the same" and they were going to have to make emergency repairs if they had any hope of keeping up. So in desperate times they had to get creative. And they did. They were able to find a band-aid solution that minimized their cars fatal flaw and keep them in the race, without putting themselves at too much of a disadvantage.

Now if they were simply too slow and did something like that to give them an aerodynamic advantage, then I would agree with a disqualification all day long, since that would go against the spirit of the LMP2 class. But they didn't. What they did was actually IN THE SPIRIT of that classes racing philosophy, imo.

It was a clever and innovative solution and it's a damn shame that it's being punished so harshly. If the ACO really felt it was against the spirit of racing, for some bizarre reason, then they should have issued a reprimand. But for that team to come back from that massive disadvantage and get not just a class podium, but an overall podium, is an amazing story. The sort of story that speaks to the fortitude that is necessary to succeed at Le Mans.
 
What bothers me is this so-called "prototype" LMP2 class is basically a spec-class. All the cars have to be the same. Why? To keep the racing as close and even as possible, to improve the show for the fans. So they have rules against the teams being able to modify bodywork, because that would go against the spirit of a spec-racing class.

But the Rebellion car had a failing starter motor, which put them at a disadvantage to everyone else. Their car was no longer "the same" and they were going to have to make emergency repairs if they had any hope of keeping up. So in desperate times they had to get creative. And they did. They were able to find a band-aid solution that minimized their cars fatal flaw and keep them in the race, without putting themselves at too much of a disadvantage.

Now if they were simply too slow and did something like that to give them an aerodynamic advantage, then I would agree with a disqualification all day long, since that would go against the spirit of the LMP2 class. But they didn't. What they did was actually IN THE SPIRIT of that classes racing philosophy, imo.

It was a clever and innovative solution and it's a damn shame that it's being punished so harshly. If the ACO really felt it was against the spirit of racing, for some bizarre reason, then they should have issued a reprimand. But for that team to come back from that massive disadvantage and get not just a class podium, but an overall podium, is an amazing story. The sort of story that speaks to the fortitude that is necessary to succeed at Le Mans.

QFT
 
Porsche's high downforce package 919 was glimpsed...

919HD.jpg
 
German news paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is now officially saying Porsche is a goner in WEC. Well, FUCK.

Now this pretty much means the FIA loses the P1 world championship, so it's now only a GTE world championship...? FIA already said when Audi pulls out, this is is just an exception that something can call itself a world championship with only two manufacturer.

Also, Toyota might now be going aswell since they said their involvement in WEC is only happening if there's at least one other manufacturer. I doubt they'll race for themselves in the 24h of Le Mong 2018 and win it (well, it being Toyota, they'd probably fuck that up, too, just like this year), just to be the second japanese manufacturer to do so. This isn't the japanese way of doing it.

fucki di fuck fuck, bye bye P1 and WEC, it has been some good years lol. This is the recession in P1 I have feard for for years.
 
It was fun while it lasted. Really sucks for the WEC series.

I wonder if this will cause the ACO to reconsider letting IMSA's DPi cars enter the 24 hours of Le Mans though. It would be awesome, especially considering Joest joining up with the Mazda DPi squad starting next year in IMSA. It could very well be an opportunity for Joest to win another victory at Le Mans and bring a Japanese manufacturer with them.
 
I doubt it. LMP2 (and DPi) will never be the fastest class on the cirucit and will allways be seen as a privateer venture, so manufacturers, half-factory entries are probably not even wanted.

Imho they will change the rules for privateer LMP1, making it cheaper and try to tease richer LMP2 teams to race in LMP1. Even if Toyota stays we all know Toyota isn't what Audi/Bentley were in 2000-2005, so an overall victory is possible for a privateer entry.
 
The thing is, had the ACO allowed the DPi cars to race this year at Le Mans, uncorked, a Cadillac probably would have taken the overall victory. IMSA has had to penalize those cars several times to slow them down to LMP2 standards. And this is the first year for the new class in IMSA, so you would expect teething issues. Next year Joest will be helping Mazda and Penske/Acura will be joining the series. It's going to get very competitive and result in some very fast cars/teams.

The ACO clearly doesn't like the DPi formula, considering it beneath them apparently, but it's already proving itself far more successful than LMP1...
 
The ACO is french and the FIA is mostly french so of course it has something to do with pride. :lol: oooh ACO ... you're such a special snowflake and no one's better than you. :rolleyes:
 
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