The Sportscar and Endurance Thread

[F1000X]

What are the chances we will see the Deltawing appear in competition one more time this year, perhaps at Petit Le Mans?

[dr-baker]

What are the chances we will see the Deltawing appear in competition one more time this year, perhaps at Petit Le Mans?

Oh please make it happen, and keep Nakajima away, even if he were not entirely to blame for what happened!

Plus, an article about staying awake for (the majority) of the 24 Heures du Mans made the front page of the BBC News website - just showing IndyCar the significance of holding a race (second post down) at the same time as one of the two most significant races in Europe. Why couldn't it have waited until after 2 pm BST / 1 pm GMT, just as the Canadian GP often was if held on the same weekend?

[IdeFan]

What are the chances we will see the Deltawing appear in competition one more time this year, perhaps at Petit Le Mans?

The chances are high. Don Panoz (owner of the ALMS) has invested a lot of money into Deltawing and one race isn't enough to recoup his investment, Panoz has always been a shrewd businessman and now that we've seen that the concept works I don't see him abandoning the project any time soon.

The ACO have given the greenlight for the Deltawing (and possibly other "Garage 56" cars) to race in ACO sanctioned series, though they are adamant that there will only be one experimental entry at Le Mans proper, so we won't be seeing the DW there again.

Currently the rumours are for the Deltawing to race at Petit this year, and Panoz has been talking about a production run (built by Elan Motorsport Technologies, a company he owns) to boost the prototype entries in the ALMS, probably performance balanced with LMP2 to give them something to race against.

[nome66]

i have always thought the best Garage 56 entry would be the Porsche 918 with the KERS unit in the passenger seat

[East Londoner]

More news on Audi's win.

[dr-baker]

More news on Audi's win.

DeltaWing => Batmobile =>

[IdeFan]

Yet more news on Lotterer.

[Waris]

Yet more news on Lotterer.

I was going to ask how that car was even street legal, then I saw the site this article was on.

[RealRacingRoots]

Is anyone else watching ALMS at Lime Rock right now?

EDIT: The ELMS is in a bad way, 13 entries at Donnington Park when most GTe and GT3 cars are at Brands Hatch for the International GT Open. So check this out..

[East Londoner]

It goes from bad to worse for the ELMS - the remaining rounds this year have just been cancelled. Goodbye ELMS?

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/101329

[RealRacingRoots]

It goes from bad to worse for the ELMS - the remaining rounds this year have just been cancelled. Goodbye ELMS?

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/101329

There is a market for LMP2 cars in Europe. And the International GT Open and Blancpain Endurance Series are both flourishing with their GTe and GT3 grids (IGTO is GTe and GT3, BES is GT3 and GT4). The ELMS happens to be the odd man out right now alongside GT1 world and GT3 Euro. There is potential for a ELMS in Europe, but the current sports car racing scene in Europe has gotten bloated and needs a major rethink by all parties.

Too many people to blame....

[This]

interesting to watch, there's going to be another 24h race with prototypes this year. The 24 hours of Zolder! Although it's only Norma's, Ligiers, Radicals and that sort of thing, it's interesting to see how they do against the GT3 cars. And we'll see prototypes, GT's, and touring cars in the same race, and that hasn't happened for a while.

It's still unclear if the concept will work, but they understood they had to try at least something.

[Waris]

It goes from bad to worse for the ELMS - the remaining rounds this year have just been cancelled. Goodbye ELMS?

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/101329

Honestly, I could see that miles coming. That's what happens when you split a series into two new ones and all the good teams and drivers stay in one series...

[mario]

It goes from bad to worse for the ELMS - the remaining rounds this year have just been cancelled. Goodbye ELMS?

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/101329

Honestly, I could see that miles coming. That's what happens when you split a series into two new ones and all the good teams and drivers stay in one series...

Seeing how emaciated the field has been since the start of the year, if anything it is a miracle that the ELMS lasted as long as it did. The World Endurance Championship has kind of rendered the ELMS somewhat irrelevant anyway, and a couple of teams were already competing in the ELMS and WEC, almost as if they were hedging their bets in case the ELMS did collapse.

[eurobrun]

Wasn't sure where else to say this.

Am I the only one paying any attention to the Spa 24 Hour race.

[RealRacingRoots]

Wasn't sure where else to say this.

Am I the only one paying any attention to the Spa 24 Hour race.

I want to, but the Audi Livestream and the Youtube livestream don't like working.

[dr-baker]

Wasn't sure where else to say this.

Am I the only one paying any attention to the Spa 24 Hour race.

Are there many F1 Rejects taking part? This is the race that Eric van der Poele dominated for several years isn't it?

[eurobrun]

AUDIWINSLOL

[RealRacingRoots]

The Marc VDS and Vita4One BMWs were in it until the very end, it was a cracking race.

Now it's time to move forward to this weekend with the ALMS at Mid-Ohio. The Viper makes it's debut with Tommy -freaking- Kendall returning to drive the car!

I can't wait.

[IdeFan]

Just like to give this thread a much needed bump and point out that the WEC resumes this weekend at Silverstone (after a break of two months, very poor scheduling IMO).

Notes/News:
- Audi scale back to two cars (as expected) but the surprise being they are "downgrading" Kristensen and McNish to the Ultra. After a 1-2 for the e-tron at LM you would have expected Audi to go with the hybrid, are there still lingering doubts over the reliability of the system?

- Dindo Capello has retired, this was expected to be his last year but I am slightly surprised he isn't seeing out the season, TK and 'Nish will race out the season as a pair.

- Toyota scale back to one car (again, as expected). Like the Audi situation I am struggling to see the logic in this, Toyota proved surprisingly competitive at LM and could be in with a chance of victory in the shorter 6 hour format. They've already built the second car and they're not testing for the rest of the season, why not run two cars?

- Toyota have produced a "wheelarch" that just happens to be shaped like a rear wing extension for their high downforce setup. Nobody quite knows how its considered legal but the ACO/FIA are allowing it.



- Pescarolo have run out of money (again) and aren't racing at Silverstone, but there are strong rumours that they will race the Dome at Fuji and maybe some of the other WEC rounds.

- Martin Brundle is (still) back, and his son Alex stuck it on pole! Another bumper entry for LMP2 (15 entries), the cost capped formula really seems to be working well.

- In GT there's been a spate of incidents with the LMP1s in traffic, all of them involving Ferrari's, does the 458 have an LMP shaped blind spot in its mirrors?

- Aside from the crashes, its pretty quiet on the GT front, the ALMS seems to have a much more interesting GT entry.

[RealRacingRoots]

Perhaps bigger news than all that (I rather like the Toyota Rear Wing Solution) is the fact that cars built to the Autobacs Super GT GT300 regulations (like the Subaru BRZ, Toyota Prius, Honda CRZ) will be able to race in the Asian Le Mans Series in the GTC class. The GTC class will comprise of GT3 class cars, Porsche Cup Cars, other various cup cars, and now one of the best kept secrets in GT Racing as well. (which is the whole of Super GT, best national racing series in the world) Now, the only problem is that whoever wins in GTC at the Asian Le Mans Series will get an entry in an GTe class, which means they will have to buy a car to race at Le Mans.

I mean, look at this Honda CRZ. I want this at Le Mans like now. Too bad there's been a mass invasion of GT3 cars in GT300.

[mario]

Just like to give this thread a much needed bump and point out that the WEC resumes this weekend at Silverstone (after a break of two months, very poor scheduling IMO).

Notes/News:
- Audi scale back to two cars (as expected) but the surprise being they are "downgrading" Kristensen and McNish to the Ultra. After a 1-2 for the e-tron at LM you would have expected Audi to go with the hybrid, are there still lingering doubts over the reliability of the system?

- Dindo Capello has retired, this was expected to be his last year but I am slightly surprised he isn't seeing out the season, TK and 'Nish will race out the season as a pair.

- Toyota scale back to one car (again, as expected). Like the Audi situation I am struggling to see the logic in this, Toyota proved surprisingly competitive at LM and could be in with a chance of victory in the shorter 6 hour format. They've already built the second car and they're not testing for the rest of the season, why not run two cars?

- Toyota have produced a "wheelarch" that just happens to be shaped like a rear wing extension for their high downforce setup. Nobody quite knows how its considered legal but the ACO/FIA are allowing it.



- Pescarolo have run out of money (again) and aren't racing at Silverstone, but there are strong rumours that they will race the Dome at Fuji and maybe some of the other WEC rounds.

- Martin Brundle is (still) back, and his son Alex stuck it on pole! Another bumper entry for LMP2 (15 entries), the cost capped formula really seems to be working well.

- In GT there's been a spate of incidents with the LMP1s in traffic, all of them involving Ferrari's, does the 458 have an LMP shaped blind spot in its mirrors?

- Aside from the crashes, its pretty quiet on the GT front, the ALMS seems to have a much more interesting GT entry.

The decision by Audi to change from the E-Tron to Ultra specification isn't that surprising and is most likely reliability related - there were a few rumours that Audi had to deactivate the hybrid system on both cars during Le Mans and spent most of the race without it (perhaps partially explaining why they didn't have such an advantage over Toyota in the race).
For the record, Audi denied that they deactivated their KERS but do admit that they spent most of the race in a "reduced power" mode - so it is quite possible that they have decided to play it safe and stick with the conventional Ultra car. As things stand, KERS is not effective around Silverstone because the high speed nature of the circuit means that the drivers spend very little time on the brakes, so the potential time that you can gain is quite small compared to other circuits.

As for Toyota scaling back their effort, that is expected - Toyota had only entered one car for the WEC this season (the second car was mainly built for testing and to be a spare car in case the current car is written off, as occasionally happens), but the ACO negotiated with Toyota and persuaded them to run that second car for Le Mans as a one off. This is, after all, technically a learning year for Toyota - even if they are more competitive than expected, their focus is mainly towards next year and 2014 (when the ACO opens up the regulations), so their main focus is on data gathering rather than going for outright glory.
Speaking of them, they must have come up with a very creative interpretation of the regulations on rear wheelarches to get away with that - they are winglets in all but name, and the cynic in me wonders if the ACO let that through so for Toyota would be more competitive against Audi.

On another note, I'm sorry to hear that things aren't going too well at Pescarolo but, on the other hand, I am not surprised that they are considering running the Dome later in the year if they have the funds. With Lola out of business a Lola chassis is out of the question (it is already becoming hard to source spare parts, which is why Rebellion are considering switching to the Dome chassis too) and with the converted AMR-One seeming to be less competitive, the only real choice left is Dome, I guess.

[AndreaModa]

I think I'm going to make the trip tomorrow, tickets are £35, a bit steep but it's 6 hours of racing, plus the paddock is completely open and there's an autograph session in the morning! Being 15 minutes away is really quite handy sometimes! I'll be gutted when I move down to Bristol!

[dr-baker]

I think I'm going to make the trip tomorrow, tickets are £35, a bit steep but it's 6 hours of racing, plus the paddock is completely open and there's an autograph session in the morning! Being 15 minutes away is really quite handy sometimes! I'll be gutted when I move down to Bristol!

I managed to win tickets there from Autosport a year or two ago, and had a great time. Enjoy!

[IdeFan]

3 and a half hours in, and its surprisingly close between Audi and Toyota. At the time of writing the #1 Audi E-Tron leads by 33s over the Toyota, with the #2 Audi Ultra a lap down (having suffered a slow puncture). Toyota have just lost the lead in the pits but their fuel consumption is slightly worse than the Audi and they're expected to have to make one fuel stop more than Audi. Their pace is generally better than Audi which is very surprising, it should be close!

[IdeFan]

Rejectwatch: 5 and a half hours into the race and Jean-Denis Deletraz driven Gulf Racing car has yet to break down or crash. What is Deletraz (not) doing?

[AndreaModa]

Well, I report back from what was an excellent day! Lovely weather, and lots of action. The good thing about endurance racing with the different classes is there's always passes being made and cars spread all over the circuit. The #1 Audi held on in the end for the victory, helped by a late safety car and stopping once less than the #7 Toyota which finished second, with the #2 Audi not far behind.

The other great thing was the open paddock that everyone could walk around, I saw loads of drivers milling about both before and during the race, managed to nick a couple of autographs during the official session in the pit lane, one from Tom Kristensen and another from worthy reject Gianmaria Bruni! If I'd been on the ball in the paddock I could have also had Nakajima's and Anthony Davidson's but there we go! Got a few Toyota freebies so I'm happy with that!

Almost filled a 4GB memory card with photos as well so I'll get some up either tonight or tomorrow!

[mario]

Sounds like you've got your money's worth from that trip then, especially if you managed to pick up a few freebies along the way.

Incidentally, a few people were wondering how Toyota managed to convince the ACO that their additional winglets were legal, and it is something that seems to be puzzling the authors of the Mulsanne Corner website. The trick seems to be that those winglets, which Toyota has defined as an extension of the rear wheel arch, are not technically what we would recognise as a conventional wing - they have a parallel profile rather than an aerofoil section, although there is a significant amount of camber to their surface that helps then generate downforce.
Still, the author of that website is wondering why the ACO haven't banned those winglets as, under the current regulations, there is a clause that should ban those devices:

Article 3.6.2 governs what is and is not considered an aerodynamic elements (elements capable of generating aerodynamic effect, i.e., downforce). It states, "No aerodynamic element can be added on the bodywork, being an integral part or not of it, apart from:"

3.6.2 then state that diveplanes, front diffuser strakes, the rear wing, and a single bodywork trailing edge gurney are the approved set of aerodynamic elements.

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/newsjuly12.html

Now, you would have to argue that those winglets break those rules - Vasselon himself admits they have a significant aero benefit (he is quoted as saying that "probably 25-30% of the package’s additional downforce [over the Le Mans package] is thanks to the winglets"), and it does seem to be hard to argue that those winglets are not added to the current bodywork given that they are bolted onto the rear wing endplates. All in all, it does seem odd that the ACO have pretty much turned a blind eye to what Toyota are doing - then again, the ACO have form in permitting bodywork additions that seem to clearly break the rules go through (there was a similar argument about the bodywork on the LMP2 Porsche RS Spyder back in 2010).

[AndreaModa]

Mario, I presume all this talk is basically about the extra bits on either side of the rear wing? They look fairly unsubstantial to me, I'm not clued up on downforce generation but I doubt they'd add that much to the performance of the car, especially considering that Silverstone and it's high speed nature would surely be considered a fairly low downforce setup.

Something else I noticed that I forgot to mention, was the use of electronic pit boards by most of the teams. Rather than have a mechanic hold a board out like normal, these are LED displays that slide in and out of the pit wall, and must be operated remotely, or are automatic, I couldn't quite tell. I'd never seen these before, but are they common in endurance racing?

[RealRacingRoots]

Something else I noticed that I forgot to mention, was the use of electronic pit boards by most of the teams. Rather than have a mechanic hold a board out like normal, these are LED displays that slide in and out of the pit wall, and must be operated remotely, or are automatic, I couldn't quite tell. I'd never seen these before, but are they common in endurance racing?

Some slide out, some turn to face the drivers. I've seen them at work when I went to Laguna Seca for the ALMS race in 2009, and they were used back in the early 2000s as well based on a simple Google search. They are operated remotely from the pitwall. It's a nice innovation.

[This]

Something else I noticed that I forgot to mention, was the use of electronic pit boards by most of the teams. Rather than have a mechanic hold a board out like normal, these are LED displays that slide in and out of the pit wall, and must be operated remotely, or are automatic, I couldn't quite tell. I'd never seen these before, but are they common in endurance racing?

Must be an evolution of the hand-holded led-boards that i've occasionally been seeing in Zolder 24h over the years. So probably they've been used in other endurance events too, wherever rules permit it.
The ones i'm familiar with are similar to the led boarding that officials in football use, but the ones you've seen are probably more advanced.

[mario]

Mario, I presume all this talk is basically about the extra bits on either side of the rear wing? They look fairly unsubstantial to me, I'm not clued up on downforce generation but I doubt they'd add that much to the performance of the car, especially considering that Silverstone and it's high speed nature would surely be considered a fairly low downforce setup.

Something else I noticed that I forgot to mention, was the use of electronic pit boards by most of the teams. Rather than have a mechanic hold a board out like normal, these are LED displays that slide in and out of the pit wall, and must be operated remotely, or are automatic, I couldn't quite tell. I'd never seen these before, but are they common in endurance racing?

I am indeed referring to those extensions either side of the rear wing, and although they do not look all that substantial Vasselon is quoted as saying that those little extensions increased their downforce by at least 25%, a pretty substantial increase if true.

As to the circuit itself, Silverstone has traditionally been thought of as a fairly high downforce circuit because of the large number of high speed turns (think of the Maggots-Beckets-Chapel complex, for example). The fact that the entry speeds for most of the corners around the circuit are so high, combined with the relative lack of slow corners and short braking zones, means that the cars need to be optimised around high speed cornering performance - which is why the Silverstone is considered to be a good test of high speed aero efficiency (i.e. being able to generate that downforce with the lowest possible levels of drag).
It is not quite as extreme as Hungary or Monaco, for example, where the teams aim to generate the most downforce possible and sacrifice aero efficiency, but the downforce requirements are higher than you might think because, rather than despite, the high speed nature of the circuit.

[AndreaModa]

Haha well that shows how much I actually know about things like that!

It is interesting though, because they really are such small additions when you consider the size of the rear wing, but perhaps that may go some way to explaining the competitiveness of the Toyota against the Audis? Your explanation tallies with something that the Radio Le Mans commentators were saying during the race Mario. They were explaining how the additional drag, whilst making the car faster, would also have a negative impact on fuel consumption, so as well as perhaps improving their pace, the Toyota team were penalised sufficiently with their additional aero parts by having to make the extra stop for fuel. Maybe that's why the FIA and ACO have been happy to allow Toyota to keep the upgrade, because overall, whilst it does bring some benefit, the negative aspects are enough to balance it out somewhat.

Anyway, GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! I've set up a new Flickr account for motorsport-related stuff, and first to be uploaded are some of the better pictures from yesterday, 17 from over 500 taken originally! I think it's time I get a better camera!

The full album is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/85916410@N03/sets/72157631270222756/

Here's a few of my favourites:

#30 Lola-Judd (LMP2) by AndreaModa, on Flickr


#2 Audi R18 Ultra (LMP1) by AndreaModa, on Flickr


#26 Oreca-Nissan (LMP2) by AndreaModa, on Flickr

[mario]

Haha well that shows how much I actually know about things like that!

It is interesting though, because they really are such small additions when you consider the size of the rear wing, but perhaps that may go some way to explaining the competitiveness of the Toyota against the Audis? Your explanation tallies with something that the Radio Le Mans commentators were saying during the race Mario. They were explaining how the additional drag, whilst making the car faster, would also have a negative impact on fuel consumption, so as well as perhaps improving their pace, the Toyota team were penalised sufficiently with their additional aero parts by having to make the extra stop for fuel. Maybe that's why the FIA and ACO have been happy to allow Toyota to keep the upgrade, because overall, whilst it does bring some benefit, the negative aspects are enough to balance it out somewhat.

Well, in some ways it does seem like a slightly counter intuitive situation, although there is a logic to it once you think it through.

As to the effectiveness, well, I would assume that to a certain extent Vasellon was referring to just the rear wing when mentioning the percentage in downforce - I would assume that the other advantage is the fact that, since those little winglets don't technically count as wings, they are not subject to as many dimensional constraints at the main rear wing itself.
As to the question of drag, it is true that running with those additional winglets would have raised the drag levels of the car and potentially hurt their fuel consumption; however, I would have thought that Toyota's larger problem would be the fact that, not only are petrol engines inherently slightly less efficient than diesel engines, the current engine in the R18 has at least one years additional development time over the TS030's engine. It is true that they were close to Audi at Le Mans, but Audi did seem to have a slight advantage at Le Mans in terms of fuel consumption, something that has carried over to Silverstone.

[IdeFan]

We mustn't forget strategy here, at the beginning of the race it seemed like Toyota had a clear pace advantage, but towards the end it seemed like the Audis were much closer. This suggests to me that Toyota ran the entire race flat out while Audi initially ran in economy mode, then turned the engine up once they'd saved enough fuel for one less stop.

[East Londoner]

Make of this what you will.

I can't think of a reason why Le Mans next year needs to be held a week later than it was originally proposed. The Monaco GP and Indy 500 always occur before Le Mans, so it can't be for those.

[nome66]

I SO DEFINITELY CALLED IT YOU GUYS SAID NO WAY BUT READ IT AND WEEP
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... ng-merger/
AFTER 19 LONG YEARS, FINALLY YES.
autosport was beaten to the punch for once
more or less i got excited.

[RealRacingRoots]

I SO DEFINITELY CALLED IT YOU GUYS SAID NO WAY BUT READ IT AND WEEP
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... ng-merger/
AFTER 19 LONG YEARS, FINALLY YES.
autosport was beaten to the punch for once
more or less i got excited.

This will either go really well, or really horribly wrong.

But it's about damn time.

Also, your avatar is hilarious nome.

[nome66]

da matta shouting "i kick ass!" after winning a CART race in 2000

[nome66]

watching baltimore on espn3.com live stream and it is getting good! i notice the chicane is smoother, but still slightly annoying. they clocked higher speeds passing the start finish line than last year, so something is working.