2017 General WEC/ELMS/AsLMS Discussion ThreadSports Cars

[IforceV8]

Porsche 1-2 due to Lopez being Lopez. Toyota 3rd with four hours to go.

Toyota's pace has dropped off during the 2nd stint on these tires, lack of down force would be my guess.

 

[IforceV8]

Nick Tandy making contact with a GT car, shocker.

 

[DesertPenguin09]

Fox puts the last hour on their app, and the feed has the French announcers in the background. C'mon guys this isn't high school AV Club...

 

[sumbrownkid]

GTE Pro was where the most fun was at.

The Auto BOP really doing wonders. 👍

 

[catamount39]

Porsche is close to making the new 911 GTE available for customer teams.

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/porsche-closing-in-on-customer-gte-program/

 

[PASM]

I was sitting right across from that final pit stop for the #1 and #2 Porsches... I was thinking, what the hell is taking so long with the #1! They only need fuel for 15 ish minutes?!?

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/07/16/1-2-for-porsche-in-6h-nurburgring.html (the article has the numbers mixed up)

The #2 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Brendon Hartley, Timo Bernhard and Earl Bamber were victorious in the 2017 6 Hours of Nürburgring, the championship leaders leading a 1-2 ahead of #1 car of Andre Lotterer Nick Tandy and Neel Jani. The winning margin, in what was the first 1-2 finish for the team since Shanghai 2015, was just 1.6 seconds.

Both cars tussled throughout the race, but the winning move was made at the round final stops, with the #1 losing the lead to the #2 crew with just a handful of minutes to go, the Porsche team managing the positions by putting 20 seconds more fuel into the #1, allowing the #2 – better placed in the championship – to take the lead.

Ferrari tactics have reached sports car racing. I am disappointed.

 

[DesertPenguin09]

What? When you have two bullets in the gun and one is more powerful than the other, you're gonna use the weaker one? Weird analogy but yea one car is doing well in the points so you keep it going. Trying to bring the other one up will just take away from both.

 

[05XR8]

http://www.speedcafe.com/2017/07/19/coulthard-hoping-penske-daytona-24h-call/

 

[Tired Tyres]

I was sitting right across from that final pit stop for the #1 and #2 Porsches... I was thinking, what the hell is taking so long with the #1! They only need fuel for 15 ish minutes?!?

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/07/16/1-2-for-porsche-in-6h-nurburgring.html (the article has the numbers mixed up)


Ferrari tactics have reached sports car racing. I am disappointed.

Sports car racing is about the cars not the drivers. Always has been. F1 is the other way round. It's all about the drivers. If Ferrari did in Sports Cars what they do in F1 no one would be bothered. In fact they would be praised for doing the right thing for the brand.

If Porsche favour one car over the other to maximise their chances then they are doing their job properly. If Toyota did the same they would be doing their job properly.

 

[PASM]

What? When you have two bullets in the gun and one is more powerful than the other, you're gonna use the weaker one? Weird analogy but yea one car is doing well in the points so you keep it going. Trying to bring the other one up will just take away from both.

I'm not saying it is not the smart thing to do, I quite well understand the reasoning . Just that in the past few years I've never seen this in the WEC being done in this manner. Furthermore, it is early in the season to start adopting this tactic, isn't it?

Sports car racing is about the cars not the drivers. Always has been. F1 is the other way round. It's all about the drivers.

Sports car racing is about the Manufacturer, the drivers' championship comes second. The manufacturer points haul didn't change for Porsche. So from this point, why bother with the swap at all?

Let's not get into the F1 vs Sports cars debate, just that I assume that it is common knowledge around here how Ferrari handle their championships in F1.

If Ferrari did in Sports Cars what they do in F1 no one would be bothered. In fact they would be praised for doing the right thing for the brand.

If Porsche favour one car over the other to maximise their chances then they are doing their job properly. If Toyota did the same they would be doing their job properly.

Would they be praised? I think that is a bit of an assumption.

 

[thestig1030]

BMW M8 GTE Test:

 

[sumbrownkid]

Looks better than the M6 GT3\GTLM

 

[CodeRedR51]

Looks huge.

And:

 

[catamount39]

The M8 is hot!

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/bmw-m8-gte-revealed/

 

[Tired Tyres]

Radio Le Mans. Porsche to announce leaving the WEC this Friday after an interview with a highly respectable German journalist. That's not confirmed but from a very good source.

 

[catamount39]

Radio Le Mans. Porsche to announce leaving the WEC this Friday after an interview with a highly respectable German journalist. That's not confirmed but from a very good source.

Not surprising, remember the news from the week of Le Mans. Unfortunate but I guess it was inevitable.

 

[RACECAR]

Radio Le Mans. Porsche to announce leaving the WEC this Friday after an interview with a highly respectable German journalist. That's not confirmed but from a very good source.

To be honest, I was already under the impression it was gonna happen not only after the supposed customer program, but also after the announcement with Joest and Mazda (where Reinhold Joest himself in an interview Said something similar).

I'm about confident now that Toyota will soon join in departing. As much as a easy win would be to get now with simply priviteers who have no chance instead of a full fledged Manufacterer, it would be too hollow a victory nd wouldn't really be a accomplishment in anyway.

 

[Tired Tyres]

To be honest, I was already under the impression it was gonna happen not only after the supposed customer program, but also after the announcement with Joest and Mazda (where Reinhold Joest himself in an interview Said something similar).

I'm about confident now that Toyota will soon join in departing. As much as a easy win would be to get now with simply priviteers who have no chance instead of a full fledged Manufacterer, it would be too hollow a victory nd wouldn't really be a accomplishment in anyway.

They even cock that up. They wouldn't have won this year if Porsche hadn't taken part.....

 

[thestig1030]

Porsche is leaving WEC and the 24h Le Mans! Several german newspapers report on it.

 

[Tired Tyres]

Welcome to yesterday.

 

[SlimCharles]

It's the end of the world championship of endurance... again. Group C, LMPGT, LMP1H... next step in 10 years will be LMPE (for electric) or LMPH (hydrogen).

 

[Tired Tyres]

It's the end of the world championship of endurance... again. Group C, LMPGT, LMP1H... next step in 10 years will be LMPE (for electric) or LMPH (hydrogen).

More likely to be 2020.

 

[Snaeper]

I think with the continued push towards Electric powertrains, the ACO should just throw out the rulebook for the top class and let Garage 56 type cars run. Manufacturers are flocking to Formula E, so the only way you can appear more innovative than that is to just let them do whatever they want.

I think we're going to see DPi's at Le Mans at this rate, but I don't know if there will even be a WEC for them to participate in. Thankfully the Asian Le Mans series is growing well and there's plenty of opportunities to grant entries between them, the ELMS, IMSA and the various support categories like the Michelin GT Challenge. Not to mention winners of notable races like the Daytona 24 Hours, the Sebring 12 Hours and the NAEC (from IMSA anyways).

I wonder if we'll be hearing from Peugeot soon, and if there will be any future LMP1 regulation changes before or shortly after...

 

[SlimCharles]

The withdraw of Porsche is much more important than Audi's one. But they both are sending a message to ACO: DON'T base you rules on the interest of the manufacturers. As soon as their interests are gone, the manufacturers leave the championship.

 

[doblocruiser]

The budget needs to come down a lot before Peugeot even decides to come back.

Pescarolo mentioned in a interview that Le Mans was too expensive and going into the wrong direction. Budgets going through the roof for saving a couple litres of fuel wasn't really his idea of progress and wasn't realistic. He mentioned Porsche having a budget of 340 million this year while 10 years ago Audi had a budget of 60 million. There was 1 private team left in LMP1 where we used to have a lot more. I hope this is a huge wakeup call for ACO!

 

[ApexDrift123]

It's the end of the world championship of endurance... again. Group C, LMPGT, LMP1H... next step in 10 years will be LMPE (for electric) or LMPH (hydrogen).

In that case il stop following Motorsport altogether maybe apart from GT3.

 

[fortbo]

It's the end of the world championship of endurance... again. Group C, LMPGT, LMP1H... next step in 10 years will be LMPE (for electric) or LMPH (hydrogen).

Yeah...not true, the WEC is not ending it is just changing. There will be a large influx of privateer LMP1 teams next year which will be great to have as the top class. What they could do is even let DPI cars be unrestricted so they can compete too.

 

[SlimCharles]

Yeah...not true, the WEC is not ending it is just changing. There will be a large influx of privateer LMP1 teams next year which will be great to have as the top class. What they could do is even let DPI cars be unrestricted so they can compete too.

The WEC has always been there since the 60. It's the end for the WEC as we know it.

Although we wont see again those ridiculous differences of speed between classes, the WEC will still be fun for sure and there are some bright oportunities like you say. But it wont be the pinnacle of automotive technology anymore or offer those incredible overtakes.

The end of an era for sure. And it only last 5 years.

 

[fortbo]

The WEC has always been there since the 60. It's the end for the WEC as we know it.

Although we wont see again those ridiculous differences of speed between classes, the WEC will still be fun for sure and there are some bright oportunities like you say. But it wont be the pinnacle of automotive technology anymore or offer those incredible overtakes.

The end of an era for sure. And it only last 5 years.

They should allow the privateers to be unrestricted though and let them reach the hybrid speeds. That would be cool to see.

 

[catamount39]

Yeah...not true, the WEC is not ending it is just changing. There will be a large influx of privateer LMP1 teams next year which will be great to have as the top class. What they could do is even let DPI cars be unrestricted so they can compete too.

But who are these unnamed LMP1 privateers that we keep hearing about? Not saying they're not real, but who has openly spoken about a program next year? Rebellion aren't, they are observing the situation and then may or may not enter LMP1 in 2019. There hasn't been any news of the supposed Ginetta either since the initial article about it. Oreca is going to produce one, but that one isn't coming until 2019 potentially as they observe interest.

At any rate, the fact that LMP1H is dying just means that it's the end of the WEC's hybrid era yes. GTE is still a world championship with BMW entering next year and potentially another the year after that. LMP2 is also rather healthy globally despite being spec Oreca ().


If worst comes to worst, they could just have GTE get a shot at overall victory.