This past week in motorsport represented a juxtaposition of the old and the new. When Peugeot announced last year that it would be entering the 2015 Dakar Rally with its
2008DKR
, signing up Carlos Sainz and poaching Stephane Peterhansel from MINI, you wouldn't have bet against the Lion pulling off another victory of Pikes Peak proportions: turning up with a car the class of the field, the best driver for the job and nuking everything else out of the water.
However, this time Peugeot wasn't quite so successful.
The dream team didn't quite deliver
Sainz crashed out on stage five and Peterhansel was denied another win, limping home outside the top 10 as the only 2008 DKR to finish the gruelling run from Buenos Aires to Iquique and back.
Unlike its Pikes Peak effort, Pug wasn't quite so prepared, with Peugeot Sport director Bruno Famin deeming the event "not really satisfactory." The car was "rough" and not fast enough due to a lack of prep and testing time, but with a year of data under its belt, Peugeot will no doubt be back again in 2016 with a further developed, more competitive car.
As it was, MINI triumphed with its ALL4 Racing, taking its fourth overall Dakar win with Nasser Al-Attiyah at the wheel and Matthieu Baumel co-driving. No doubt MINI has been developing its car too; the ALL4 is a proven package with a strong Dakar track record.
How many days til Le Mans again?
On the subject of development, Porsche last week revealed details of its new 919. Underneath is a new monocoque, while the bodywork has been re-profiled - and how much better does it look for it? That square-nosed gawky face is gone.
Now the front bodywork is lower, maybe because Porsche has managed to squeeze the size of the front axle's electric motor. We'd be willing to bet a more comprehensive solution to the driveshaft failure problem that afflicted the 919 last year will have been part of the front end upgrades too, superseding the hurried changes that were rushed through last year to improve reliability.
The sleeker profile will no doubt help reduce its frontal area and therefore its drag coefficient, improving efficiency. It could be enough for Porsche to eke out a touch more efficiency from its already economical powertrain on its 14-lap stint at Le Mans (there's no doubt it's the big one it wants to win), meaning the 919 could potentially extract even more performance from a fixed quantity of fuel.
As has been discussed recently, endurance racing really is the current hot topic of world motorsport, with plenty of different solutions to the rulebook. Watching how they'll develop and play out (Toyota has also recently confirmed the 2015 TS040 successfully completed its first test and you can guarantee Audi isn't idle) will be fascinating entertainment this year.
Nissan's LMP1 car is in there somewhere
Talking of innovative solutions, we got our first glimpse (that being the operative word) of the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO
at the weekend
. Take what you can from the grainy spy shot, but for all Nissan's marketing guff over the last four or five years it seems to be genuinely breaking with convention for a proper, points scoring contender with the culmination of its slightly underwhelming DeltaWing and ZEOD projects.
It looks front-engined, with a cab-backward layout. If your eyes are better than mine, you might just be able to pick out the faint outline of a rear wing from the shot of the car captured testing at the Circuit of the Americas.
A primetime Super Bowl ad for the big reveal is rumoured. Well, when you've chucked that much money at the project, what's a few million more?
Can the F2 glory days be reimagined?
From a new car to a totally new formula, last week the FIA turned the cranking handle on the rumour mill as it gave a big hint that Formula 2 might be given a new lease of life.
With the new F1 super licence points system taking hold, this future F2 championship would offer a bigger available tally than any other F1 feeder series, which would surely give it a commanding position on the single-seater ladder.
For me, a new F2 should be like LMP2 in open wheel format. Around 450-500hp with enough downforce so the best drivers can make the most of it - skill and bravery - with a limit so that following in dirty air doesn't preclude an overtake. A proper feeder series where drivers can refine and distil the skills they've learnt so far in racing, not in saving fuel and conserving tyres.
New F2 could be a great help into F1. Could
Talking of rubber, it'd need to have one soft tyre and one hard tyre - multiple stints flat out, or fewer with a limit to lap time because of compound, with race distances engineered so that the last five laps would be a cracking showdown whatever tyres you were down to finish on, soft or hard.
A future F2 revival (again) would need to be careful of stepping on the toes of GP2 and Formula Renault 3.5, not least to ensure a grid of skilled drivers, but I think there's a gap there for a championship that puts the emphasis on the pilot to create close racing between individuals. Bring the human interest back of the man commanding the machine.
Because as fans that's what we watch motorsport for after all. Close racing is great racing.
[Nissan GT-R LM NISMO pictures © @TeamTART, via Jalopnik]