2012 WEC / 24 Hours of Le Mans

[faksta]

Erm...it was here, but second session is over: http://live.lemans-tv.com/en

[henk4]

eventually the Toyotas came in fourth and fifth, leaving one R18 Ultra behind. Speed differences were not that great. (3.25.9 for McNish and 3.27.2 for the quickest Toyota.)

Some remarks:

To prove what was always said abouth the advantage of diesel power:As soon as a factory team decides to go for petrol, the speed differences will dwindle greatly. (remember that the #8 Toyota drove its very first lap this weekend). So Mr. Pescarolo has been very vocal, but choose to not include the money factor in his reasonings.

The speed difference between the electric and the normal Audis was only marginal. So either their system is not optimal for Le Mans, or they decided not to show their full hand this weekend.

The LMP2 battle will be very close. Funnily the fifth time was set by Sebastian Loeb, who has no entry for Le Mans and hardly drives the car. Hopefully he can continue here after winning the WRC title really becomes boring.

[Kitdy]

The speed difference between the electric and the normal Audis was only marginal. So either their system is not optimal for Le Mans, or they decided not to show their full hand this weekend.

The LMP2 battle will be very close. Funnily the fifth time was set by Sebastian Loeb, who has no entry for Le Mans and hardly drives the car. Hopefully he can continue here after winning the WRC title really becomes boring.

Or the regulations have missed the mark and have not made such a system allowed to be beneficial enough.

As for part 2, I hope Loeb sticks to the WRC until he either decides he has had enough or can no longer win. I want him to grind WRC into the dirt so that his records become untouchable, because I find his dominance hilarious.

Then, he should retire and never race again.

[faksta]

Too bad Loeb won't be racing. He could have put in some competition indeed, and with WRC experience I think that endurance factor would be more on his side than on F1, DTM or GT drivers'.

Personally I can't see an advantage in Audi's hybrid system. They may try to play lower fuel consumption card, but at Spa R18 ultra won despite being a bit more 'hungry'.

By the way, one of the blogs supposed the new R18 e-tron has pullrods in the back - any thoughts?
http://lemansprototypes.over-blog.it...106052059.html

Pay attention to that blog - sometimes it is even more informative than Mulsanne's Corner!

[henk4]

Too bad Loeb won't be racing. He could have put in some competition indeed, and with WRC experience I think that endurance factor would be more on his side than on F1, DTM or GT drivers'.

Personally I can't see an advantage in Audi's hybrid system. They may try to play lower fuel consumption card, but at Spa R18 ultra won despite being a bit more 'hungry'.

By the way, one of the blogs supposed the new R18 e-tron has pullrods in the back - any thoughts?
http://lemansprototypes.over-blog.it...106052059.html

Pay attention to that blog - sometimes it is even more informative than Mulsanne's Corner!

unless someone has seen the open rear side op the e-tron it is quite difficult to establish. I was able to take some pictures of the open front part, showing the location of the electric engine and the relocation of the electric power assisted steering assembly.

[henk4]

Or the regulations have missed the mark and have not made such a system allowed to be beneficial enough.

As for part 2, I hope Loeb sticks to the WRC until he either decides he has had enough or can no longer win. I want him to grind WRC into the dirt so that his records become untouchable, because I find his dominance hilarious.

Then, he should retire and never race again.

I think part two of your comment missses the mark completely. When we drove back yesterday frpm Le Mans we tried to establish how many times Loeb was beaten by his teammate in a similar car. We found one occasion where Ogier beat him while he was still in contention, and all the other victories of teammates were helped by problems that had hit Loeb. His dominance is not hilarious, he is just damn good.
His LMP involvement (Sebastian Loeb Racing), will hopefully take off moere seriously next year, as it would be a waste to no longer see an exceptional driver in action.

[Kitdy]

His dominance is not hilarious, he is just damn good.

Yes. They are one and the same. He is so dominant it is hilarious/stupid. He is way better than anyone in rallying.

I don't want to see him retire from the WRC and go to circuit racing. If he is no longer capable of being a world beater in WRC (which is where he is meant to be) I don't really want to see him driving around Le Mans in an LMP.

I am having trouble trying to put my thoughts to words here. I like to see people retire on the top - to retire champion; undefeated.

To see Michael come back to F1 has been a joke. Watching another Michael (Jordan) playing baseball for the White Sox's minor league team was beyond silly.

These three situations are all different, but my thought on the matter remains the same.

[RacingManiac]

The eTron and Ultra are both pull rod rear end...Audi made a brand new gearbox for the 2012 cars.

I think the current hybrid rule is too restrictive. Not allowing brake and torque vectoring is beyond short sighted on ACO's part...otherwise I doubt Audi would just use a single electric motor through a mechanical diff, and I doubt Toyota would use the electric motor on the rear axle. As it is, the GT3 hybrid is more advanced than these LMPs....

[faksta]

Has anyone written about the new possible rules for LMP1 so far? IIRC, starting from 2014 they want to raise engine displacement back to 5 liters and allow Formula 1 engines for prototypes. Wouldn't it be great? That promises a bigger difference in engines.

[RacingManiac]

They are also going to restrict fuel flow as a mean to balance out different engine type. But no power restriction otherwise.

[Ferrer]

Too bad Loeb won't be racing. He could have put in some competition indeed, and with WRC experience I think that endurance factor would be more on his side than on F1, DTM or GT drivers'.

Nope, rallying doesn't do endurance anymore...

I think part two of your comment missses the mark completely. When we drove back yesterday frpm Le Mans we tried to establish how many times Loeb was beaten by his teammate in a similar car. We found one occasion where Ogier beat him while he was still in contention, and all the other victories of teammates were helped by problems that had hit Loeb. His dominance is not hilarious, he is just damn good.
His LMP involvement (Sebastian Loeb Racing), will hopefully take off moere seriously next year, as it would be a waste to no longer see an exceptional driver in action.

Sordo is plain useless and the other team mate was so fed up with being stopped that he decided to switch teams.

He is good undoubtedly, but he has had mostly little opposition and rallying isn't quite the test of man and machine it used to be.

[henk4]

Sordo is plain useless and the other team mate was so fed up with being stopped that he decided to switch teams.

Hirvonen is no slouch either...

[Ferrer]

Hirvonen is no slouch either...

In Argentina he was clearly stopped by team orders. Don't know about the other rallyes though, I don't follow rallying much anymore.

[faksta]

A special free Le Mans web issue of Racecar Engineering magazine:

Downloadable here, although after filling in a short form.

[faksta]

Also, for those who will be following the race live, I have tried to put every team and driver plus some extra accounts to a Twitter list to make it easy to follow.

Le Mans 24H 2012 Edition

As far as I know, even Twitter account would be not necessary.