To add to the above, watching the pre-start stuff I thought of another thing.
No other race in the world makes me feel this way as a spectator. There's something about the drama of it all, the theatre, the band playing, all the cars lined up, the ridiculously well dressed man with a ridiculously ornate gold-lined French flag... I can't believe that the stuff that makes that iconic sequence from McQueen's Le Mans so epic,
actually happens every year, minus Michel Legrand's soundtrack.
Speaking of which. One thing was missing. I think it's the first time in many years they haven't played
Also sprach Zarathustra by Strass at the start. Why? Was this because of extra SC laps?
Quote:
Originally Posted by J Jay
Just for reference, Toyota's first Le Mans back (of this stint) did have them taking it to Audi and leading on pace ... before the complexity of the initial TS020 design made on-site repairs impossible.
Compare and contrast to both Glickenhaus (trouble free all race) and their own efforts this time (managing an on-going issue while maintaining a lead) shows how far both teams have come.
Ignore the naysayers, whoever turns up and takes the flag is the worthy winner.
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Just to put things into perspective, Toyota is among the biggest car manufacturers globally and has its racecars built at their own facility at TMG, which has decades of experience producing Le Mans, WRC and F1 race cars.
Glickenhaus is a tiny operation making boutique super/hyper cars, and a small racing team that just recently partnered with some high level service providers Sauber and Joest.
And yet in race 3 it has performed better than the likes of Ginetta (makes race cars for a living), SMP/BR (pet project of a billionaire and Putin's best buddy, whose name is on the car, we're talking blank cheques here), Aston Martin (with Lola and without), Nissan...
Where I am concerned is that to go from where SCG are now to being properly competitive in varied conditions the car needs a lot of running, at different tracks and in a variety of different conditions. And yet, we've been told it's a limited programme. We've seen that in a perfect scenario the deficit to Toyota is around 1 second per lap at Le Mans maybe a little more. Let's say that can be fixed with BoP. But the rest was due to 007 LMHs not finding the setup sweet spot for the conditions.