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Originally Posted by chernaudi
... I don't think that the Pug's are all that reliable, certinaly not much more so than the R15 or R10-aside from overheating problems at LM, the only reliabilty issues that the R15 had was a CV joint scare at Sebring during practice-and that was just a scare-and a similar issue with a rear shock/damper at PLM-also during testing.
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The #3 R15 was plagued with all sorts of problems at Le Mans '09 and made many unscheduled pitstops. I think they even had to change out a turbo on the car.
The McNish/Kristensen/Capello Audi R15 at Le Mans '09 suffered from overheating throughout the entire race that called for costly unscheduled pitstops and trips into the garage. The problem was so bad it was costing them power and the car almost lost 3rd to an Aston Martin late in the race
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Originally Posted by chernaudi
Since the R15's debut, one 908 blew a gearbox at Sebring and had cooling fan issues, and one almost didn't make the start due to hydraulic problems. At LM, one car sustained a broken suspension or a wheel bearing while leading, and the cars that finished 1-2 had brake and clutch problems. And it seems that the 908s have a tendancy to crack tubs-which caused scares at Sebring both in '09 and '10. And then there's Oreca's engine failure during testing, which if it's a 2010 engine, might be cause for concern for the factory team unless they know it was a freak deal.
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All 3 factory Peugeots finished the '09 Le Mans 24 hours
Both factory Peugeots finished 5 hours at at Petit Le Mans '09
Both factory Peugeots finished 12 hours of Sebring '10
That's roughly 40 straight hours of racing with all cars finishing the race essentially trouble free. Throw out the silly pitstop problem oreca suffered at Paul Ricard and thats 8 more hours.
Since 2007 7 out of 8 factory Peugeot 908s have finished the Le Mans 24 hours.
Since 2007 6 out of 9 Factory Audis have finished the Le Mans 24 hours.
If I remember correctly Bourdais or Montagny (cant remember which) said that the brake problems at Le Mans '09 turned out to not be a problem at all. He said Peugeot told them to back it down when they were chasing the #9 for the overall lead but later said there was no reason to as the brakes were fine. The engineers misread info or something.
If the #7 Peugeot didn't have the pit incident (which damaged contributed to its later problems) Le Mans '09 would have been a clean 1-2-3 sweep by Peugeot.
Since Peugeot returned to Le Mans in 2007 they have put 5 of 8 cars on the podium compared to Audi putting 3 of 9 on the podium. Audi has entered 3 cars per race since 2007, but only 1 car managed to finish on the podium each year. Peugeot is nearly averaging 2 cars on the podium per year. Peugeot has flat out done a better job then Audi these last few years. And with almost twice as many cars taking podiums I say the reliabiliy of the 908 is just fine.
I would love to dig more into the 8 hours of Paul Ricard but there was no real reason to, too much sandbagging and a team relatively inexperienced with the 908 (ORECA) working with a hand me down car.
Spa will give a much clearer picture, but we really wont know for sure until June 12 when they actually go racing...until then its just educated guesses.
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Originally Posted by chernaudi
but from the onboards from the AMR Lola, I noticed a readout that read numbers in the 320.xxx-325.xxx range-was that km/h?
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Has to be kph, I noticed it too, it seemed to stall out in the 32x.xxx range as it would reach it quite quickly but never seemed to go to 330+. Aston Martin should have the top speed at Le Mans this year.