Quote:
Originally Posted by the real Stig
Of course the Mazdas have been boosted by IMSA's restrictor break to make up for Mazda's lack of developmet in the chassis and engine. Their engine runs somewhere ~60Hp over the HPD and only just makes them competitive. Unfortunatly for them it bings them that much closer to blowing up and also wrecks their mileage.
The ACO make no such competitive adjustment and now you see the real picture. And you can see also the difference the chassis makes. With RML in the Lola and Straka in the HPD the difference is only the Chassis (with some driver delta).
Well done Straka for the win.
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Absolutely - and thanks for flagging up the IMSA engine issue which I'd completely overlooked.
What strikes me is that what this sows is that Nick Wirth's design and its performance at Ricard is the ideal answer to those carping about his Virgin F1 design - whatever way you cut it he knows how to draft a car.
The other aspect of the race in LMP2 (which was the one thing that kept me popping back to the PC) was that the Pescarolo is surprisingly quick. I know this time out the only reason it was a close race was the long stop Strakka had but with a more pro-like (3 driver?) lineup (the Oak Pescarolos ran pretty much 50:50 in terms of pro-am driver balance) they might have been that bit closer, which adds to the sadness that you've got a potentially race winning chassis in the US doing historics (appreciate this is somewhast OT). I seem to remember JCB ran the LMP2 Pescarolo in a test a couple of years back and it was right on the pace - and it's nice to see it still doing well - especially as an LMS race without a Pescarolo on the grid always feels hollow.