what a suprise

[vette70]

Is it just me or is anyone else getting bored of audi winning almost evry year i think its time for some rule changes regarding diesel racing .

[Steve Smith]

No. Pug threw it away this year the ball was firmly in their court. They also knew the weakness of their cars. i enjoyed it very much this year just gutted about the loss of the LMP1 aston so late on and also the Mansell car so early on.

[xllifts]

Last two years has been peugeot so not nearly every year and the rules are changing.
But have to say this year was probably the best year I have seen for a long time for competitive racing.

[Red Firecracker]

xllifts said:

Last two years has been peugeot...

Really?

xllifts said:

But have to say this year was probably the best year I have seen for a long time for competitive racing.

Agreed, fantastic race almost all the way through.

The new rules are going to be very interesting, it'll be interesting to see who annouces that they'll be building cars once the regs are agreed.

[Gun]

I'm expecting the hybrids to take over from the diesels in the next couple of seasons. The diesels do need to have their performance advantage removed though, the Peugeots running at the weekend had 1500NM of torque whereas the Aston had to make to with 700NM.

[Red Firecracker]

I wouldn't be surprised if the hybrid regs are changed somewhat before they are finalised. Neither Audi or Aston are particularly interested in hybrid, not so sure on Peugeot or Nissan (if the rumours are true).

At the moment it seems you will have to go hybrid to stand any chance of overall victory under the proposed regs.

[williamp]

Here's what I would do:

Ditch the diesls as they currently are
Bring back the petrol cars to the front,
Introduce a new sort of "index of performance" which mates lap time to fuel consumption- hybrids and diesels can go here. This wont be for outright victory, but a sort of evolving fuel effeciency v speed v reliability competition. Where the winner has the fastest car with the minimum fuel use.

The winner of this would get prestige, and I would hope those manufacturers who want to sell fuel effecient cars would want to win this trophy.

[Maruchino]

williamp said:

Here's what I would do:

Ditch the diesls as they currently are
Bring back the petrol cars to the front,
Introduce a new sort of "index of performance" which mates lap time to fuel consumption- hybrids and diesels can go here. This wont be for outright victory, but a sort of evolving fuel effeciency v speed v reliability competition. Where the winner has the fastest car with the minimum fuel use.

The winner of this would get prestige, and I would hope those manufacturers who want to sell fuel effecient cars would want to win this trophy.

Yawn... isn't this what the Michelin Green X challenge is for?

It's a race and should be about who can go fastest for longest. If you really want to push fuel efficiency then make the refuelling much much slower to almost act as a deterrent for having to refuel as often.

[//j17]

vette70 said:

Is it just me or is anyone else getting bored of audi winning almost evry year i think its time for some rule changes regarding diesel racing .

Audi turn up to a race where their cars are at best 5th on the grid, 4 seconds off the poll time and where development of the car vs. regulation changes mean they are no faster than last year. They race against a 4-car Peugeot team who won the previous year and have come back to defend their title with a car 3 seconds a lap faster than last year - and win a 1-2-3.

This is your idea of boring, right?

[vette70]

it is boring you almost certainly know that either peugeot or audi have a decent chance of winning before the race has even started thiss year being an exception of course with more than 50% dnfs it was a strange race i couldent beleive my eyes when i saw how many cars actualy finished. its just not a fair race anymore peugeot having almost double the torques that aston had how do you even expect them to have a chance at having a good result if the race dident turn out like it did .

[Red Firecracker]

vette70 said:

it is boring you almost certainly know that either peugeot or audi have a decent chance of winning before the race has even started thiss year being an exception of course with more than 50% dnfs it was a strange race i couldent beleive my eyes when i saw how many cars actualy finished. its just not a fair race anymore peugeot having almost double the torques that aston had how do you even expect them to have a chance at having a good result if the race dident turn out like it did .

It has to be said though that there is/was nothing stopping Aston from spending a heap load of money to be more competitive. Nothing except sense and the fact that everyone knew that there were new regs for 2011, of course. They went into that race, taking up their invites, with the full knowledge that it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances for them to a: get on the podium and b: challenge for overall victory. They were not forced (contractual obligations aside that we can have no knowledge of).

I personally found it one of the most engaging races for many a year.

[Nick M]

The two big manufacturer teams I'm sure would welcome some competition from others, but nobody has turned up with the budget or serious approach needed to do that.

Aston's budget it very small by comparison and while you could tweak the rules to make a petrol powered car 'competitive', is that really what is needed ? Would it be right for a smaller operation to win just because the rules were tweaked in their favour ?

That is, after all, the only way the Bentley got to win Le Mans, when the rules were adjusted to favour closed cockpit cars, which has bigger tyres and fuel tanks as I recall, compared to the Audi R8s.

If someone wants to step up to the plate and race Peugeot and Audi on equal terms, then it's not just about their choice of engine and whether the regs favour diesels, but whether they're prepared to do it seriously and show that the only reason they couldn't win was because of the engine regs. For that, they would need to field a team of three cars which were well designed, tested, raced as often as possible and with a team of mechanics and engineers who were a match for Joest of Peugeot. Until a Japanese manufacturer steps back into the fray, I can't see anyone else being in a position to do that.

[andycskis]

I'd hardly call it boring, audi are just the best team, they put in a lot of hard work and money which pays off, as always tends to be the case in high level motorsport.

[//j17]

vette70 said:

it is boring you almost certainly know that either peugeot or audi have a decent chance of winning before the race has even started thiss year being an exception of course with more than 50% dnfs it was a strange race i couldent beleive my eyes when i saw how many cars actualy finished. its just not a fair race anymore peugeot having almost double the torques that aston had how do you even expect them to have a chance at having a good result if the race dident turn out like it did .

Do you also believe that something should be done to reduce the power of the Astons - they are only the fastest petrol cars because they get capacity/restrictor breaks for using a road-car derived engine vs the pure race engines from AIM, Zytek, Judd, Rebellion and AER...

[Engineer1]

Nick M said:

That is, after all, the only way the Bentley got to win Le Mans, when the rules were adjusted to favour closed cockpit cars, which has bigger tyres and fuel tanks as I recall, compared to the Audi R8s.

Don't forget who owns Bentley, I wouldn't be surprised if Bentley had help from their owners at least at development stage. VAG has the opportunity to badge engineer within the rules set out, hell they could put Skoda, Seat and VW into the race as well, oh yeah and lets not forget Bugatti.

[Nick M]

Engineer1 said:

Nick M said:

That is, after all, the only way the Bentley got to win Le Mans, when the rules were adjusted to favour closed cockpit cars, which has bigger tyres and fuel tanks as I recall, compared to the Audi R8s.

Don't forget who owns Bentley, I wouldn't be surprised if Bentley had help from their owners at least at development stage. VAG has the opportunity to badge engineer within the rules set out, hell they could put Skoda, Seat and VW into the race as well, oh yeah and lets not forget Bugatti.

Well indeed, but my point was largely that the rules were adjusted to favour one particular type of car (the closed prototypes) compared to the open-top cars. There wasn't a lot of competition for the overall win outside of the 3 semi-works Audis.

Bentley wouldn't have been there without the change in ownership to bring it into the VAG group, but the ACO did their best to accommodate them and improve their chances of success, because it was as as good for Le Mans as it was for Bentley at the time.

[jbcalvin]

If I remember correctly, the Bentley was basically an R8 with a closed body, especially as Audi didn't compete at all that year, not even customer cars like 2004 with UK, US and Japanese teams, remember when Audi first went in 1999, they raced both an open and a closed car, then went down the open road following that race with the R8... so they had done all the development work already...

[Chris71]

jbcalvin said:

If I remember correctly, the Bentley was basically an R8 with a closed body.

The Audi boys are still very proud of the 'other' win that rounded off their 10. To be fair there were other non-Audi people involved, but the powertrain and the core design came from Ingolstadt.

I don't think the open/closed car thing is such a big issue these days. Pit stop times are no longer dependant on the driver change and the weight penalty is offset by the improved aerodynamics.

I think we'll see some big changes next year. There are set to be a few surprises in the powertrains I think, and not just the introduction of hybrids. I just hope the ACO doesn't bias it towards hybrids (particularly with a French team heavily involved with them) in the way that they initially did to get diesels into the race. Coincidentally the consensus from teams like Oreca seems to be the gap between diesel and petrol has actually grown this year (certainly relative to a healthy 908).

[Nick M]

jbcalvin said:

If I remember correctly, the Bentley was basically an R8 with a closed body, especially as Audi didn't compete at all that year, not even customer cars like 2004 with UK, US and Japanese teams, remember when Audi first went in 1999, they raced both an open and a closed car, then went down the open road following that race with the R8... so they had done all the development work already...

The winning '03 Bentley was very much not just an R8 with enclosed bodywork. It was an entirely different chassis and had fundamentally different aero to the R8. But it had an Audi derived engine. But different gearbox (Xtrac vs. Ricardo).

And Audi were competing in 2003 with 3 R8s run by various satellite operations, such as Champion Racing and Audi Team GB, but while they weren't full factory efforts they were still very much there to race as Audi.

Check out :

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/bentleylmgtp03.html

and

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/audir8-01.html

(and for good measure)

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/audir8c.html

Edited by Nick M on Tuesday 15th June 16:46

[The Leaper]

Surely the biggest surprise was the Saleeen winning the, admittedly small, GT1 class, especially considering its a 10 year old design and maybe shouldn't have had a chance. British designed and built too, in Wellingborough.

R.