Quote:
Originally Posted by Speed-King
I'd add to that: despite being slower, things weren't completely hopeless for the Ferraris, Spykers, Panozes and TVRs. By running a steady race, they had a chance to score podiums and sometimes even wins a la LNT with the Panoz at Le Mans in 2006. Without BoP, the Porsches had to run at the ragged edge of driver skills and reliability as well and some of them did not see the checkered flag after 1000km or 24h. This also helped amateur-drivers like Leo Hindery or Tracy Krohn (!) who both scored podiums at Le Mans without running in a dedicated amateur class.
Today, series brag about a 100% finishing rate when they really should be embarassed by that, as it just shows that drivers and cars are not running at the maximum of their potential performance.
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Yessss excellent points. And especially the bit about Tracy is something I always want to go back to when people start going on about the 'need' for privateers to have a 'chance' of winning something when factories are at play.
The organizers - and even more so the specialist media - also tend to brag on and on about how everyone is at the limit all the time, you know because everything is dead equal thanks to maximum handicapping and other lame rules like free-laps-back after cautions. Yet what you just said proves it can't be exactly right either. If the drivers
really were at the edge of their seats all the time, they would be making more and more mistakes and the cars wouldn't be able to take all the heat. Furthermore one wouldn't be able to continuously sandbag for more advantageous BoP - which most of them obviously are outside of one day in June - because there wouldn't be such luxury if you were pushing 100% day and night for the results. These drivers are no more heroes than they were 10-20 years ago, even if in the end they are the last factor in the car that's not spec'd or performance balanced by the organizers. They may make most of the direct performance difference today, if we discount the political lawyers in the backroom that is, but supermen they are not.