Quote:
Originally Posted by henk4
Mea (maxima) Culpa
I glanced through the communique in Spa and reread it just now at home. The RML appeal was actually rejected, whereas I thought it had been accepted. So a lot of the confusion caused above is entirely my doing. Sorry for that.
They made the same decision for the 35 car (Oak Racing) and the Nr 28 (Ibanez), based on the fact that 4 turbo engined cars finished the race in Barcelona and one even won the Green X Challenge. Apparently some turbo engines work better with the currently supplied fuel. I have a feeling though that the last word on this matter has not been said yet.
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Thanks for clearing that up. I recognise your point about the other turbo-engined cars, but it's also worth looking at the overall LMP2 results from Barcelona and Spa - setting aside disqualifications for a moment - and noting that the best finishes are dominated by cars with normally-aspirated engines (Judd, Zytek and Porsche), while the turbo cars have (on the whole) tended to be also-rans and retirements. Obviously a bit of a generalisation, but may be valid.
As seems to have been the case in 2008, any team running a turbo-engined car has to play a game of compromise between performance on the one hand, and reliability on the other. It is possible to make the engines last, but only by de-tuning them to such a degree that the car is no longer competitive. Some teams may be content with just finishing a race, but most want to win - they wouldn't be there otherwise. As things currently stand, turbo-engined cars aren't about to win without a huge amount of luck.