2016 Blancpain GT Series

[Beryl]

Originally Posted by rich07

I hope that there is no participation rule that prevents SVG from sharing the crown as that would be unfair IMHO.

I would assume van Gisbergen lost out on countback, rather than a participation rule. They may be tied on points, but Bell and Ledogar's 30th(?) today trumps van Gisbergen's non-participation, hence they are champions and he is not.

[GTRMagic]

SvG Names Blancpain Champion

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by Beryl

I would assume van Gisbergen lost out on countback, rather than a participation rule. They may be tied on points, but Bell and Ledogar's 30th(?) today trumps van Gisbergen's non-participation, hence they are champions and he is not.

That's usually how it works, I don't understand why not in this case. Not that he doesn't deserve it, it just doesn't make sense.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Miguel

That's usually how it works, I don't understand why not in this case. Not that he doesn't deserve it, it just doesn't make sense.

Because separating drivers on countbacks and other tie-breaker rules is designed to differentiate between 2 different opponents competing for the title, not drivers sharing a car working towards a title. If Bentley and HTP Mercedes each had 3 drivers on 100 points, then a countback/tie breaker is used to separate the 2 sets of drivers. It is not used to separate Bentley drivers from each other.Similarly, there is no countback here because the drivers didn't really tie for a title as they were competing together, rather than against each other. I don't see why SvG should be separated out.

This seemed a bit of a messy title. Bentley were a mess, yet again. HTP had the perfect chance to win, they only had to pass one car and couldn't keep up. McLaren did their best to throw it away completely. Fun race, but a bit of a messy championship overall.

[Miguel]

You're right, I misread. 25.d only talks about rounds in which points are scored. Since no points were scored yesterday, the tie-breaker doesn't come into effect.

[bentley speed 8]

Funny how McLaren ended up winning despite trying their level best to throw it away. I really didn't like the way they dive bombed into two cars, but at least they got penalized for that. Their other car also lasted only four corners...

Good job by the #16 Lamborghini drivers to hold off the #1 Audi, and good to finally see the Nissan on the podium this year. I was also impressed by the black Pro-Am Ferrari holding up all those PRO cars.

[J Jay]

Almost a perfect race from WRT.

Frijns took the lead (from 3rd) and drove away from the field. Once Ide got in the gap more than doubled, and Ide kept it clean and won with ~13 seconds to the sister #1 car which had come up from 18th...

... and will start the main race back down in 13th after it's 30-second time penalty for Laurens Vanthoor punting off Marlon Stockinger for 3rd in the closing laps. That penalty moved the #84 up to 6th, so the #33 "only£ has a 24 point advantage in the Sprint Cup.

But it's looking ominous for HTP - they need to win and for the #33 to only score one point at most (#84 would win on countback). Garage 59 are out of it after a drive-through for the #58 for cutting the track at the start of the race.

[rich07]

That first corner was pretty crazy and nearly everyone got through unscathed. Five wide

Hope to see Ide take the title.

[divxx]

It's surprising that WRT are still consistently better than everyone else in the pits. You'd think the other teams have been studying replays of their stops for years, and maybe catch up by now. But they've managed to maintain that edge.

Congrats to Enzo, I don't think even he could have imagined how well this season would turn out. To win --by such a big points margin, over so many teams made up wholly of factory drivers. The ultimate dream of the customer driver. I'm sure even more people will be applying for a spot at WRT.

[Creep89]

And without stupid regulations introduced to slow or hamper them, they would be even better during pit stops.

[Ephaeton]

I don't think these regulations are stupid, even though in an all-pro squad they are somewhat out of place. What they achieve is that there's a limit on time to be gained so we aren't seeing F1-level exotics of pit equipment. I don't mind that. The good thing about the time limit is that it doesn't really hurt the good teams: they are the ones who will perform their stop and be only over the minimum time allowed by the slightest of margins, whereas worse teams will be a second or more over. There you have it. A second+ gained in the pits when you're a good team. Without absurd levels of investment in equipment or crew beyond what's really necessary. This is (BoP'd) GT racing after all!

[rich07]

Indeed.

I'm all for a team being able to be rewarded for a good pitstop (and it's great to watch such a ballet when done right) but when you have teams looking at computer fluid analysis for refuelling and people using trick air guns to save a second or two in a pitstop then it's a step too far. Especially in Blancpain, this isn't WEC where factory teams can afford to do whatever it takes to cut down pit stop times. The amount of money to go even faster then now is unsustainable by most teams in Blancpain at the moment.

If we go there we will lose teams no doubt about it and they won't be replaced

[gert]

Originally Posted by rich07

Hope to see Ide take the title.

Why do you hope so?

I fail to see why one would root for a driver who mainly relies on the hard work of his "supporting cast" (i.e. the best team, the best pit crew, some of the best co-drivers) instead of his own skills.

Partner him with S. Jimenez (#3 WRT) or M.Meadows (#2 WRT) instead, and let WRT pay as much attention to his car as they did to the #2 and #3 this year; and he would be languishing down in 20th position too.

--

Sad thing Mies had a clash with the ADAC GT series as he did all the hard work and would have deserved the title. Glad he at least won the ADAC title.

[rich07]

Originally Posted by gert

Why do you hope so?

I fail to see why one would root for a driver who mainly relies on the hard work of his "supporting cast" (i.e. the best team, the best pit crew, some of the best co-drivers) instead of his own skills.

Partner him with S. Jimenez (#3 WRT) or M.Meadows (#2 WRT) instead, and let WRT pay as much attention to his car as they did to the #2 and #3 this year; and he would be languishing down in 20th position too.

--

Sad thing Mies had a clash with the ADAC GT series as he did all the hard work and would have deserved the title. Glad he at least won the ADAC title.

Enzo drove well this year and despite having a awesome co driver in Mies he has had to pull his weight too. I was highly surprised when he managed to fend off Rob Bell for the win at the Nurburgrinng. I haven't been his biggest fan in previous years but he has driven well this year and has not wasted Mies efforts.

He is a worthy champion.

To compare Jimenez and Meadows to Mies is not the best comparison. Mies is a better driver then Jimenez and those two are in another league compared to Meadows.

I think the real thing to be aggravated about is that Mies missed out on sharing the title with Ide. Reminds me of 2005 FIA GT when Pedro Lamy despite some absolutely brilliant drives missed out on the drivers title with Gabriel Gardel because he did Silverstone and Spa with Aston Martin.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by gert

I fail to see why one would root for a driver who mainly relies on the hard work of his "supporting cast" (i.e. the best team, the best pit crew, some of the best co-drivers) instead of his own skills.

Partner him with S. Jimenez (#3 WRT) or M.Meadows (#2 WRT) instead, and let WRT pay as much attention to his car as they did to the #2 and #3 this year; and he would be languishing down in 20th position too.

Because he's improved a lot since his days in GT Open. He is close to being as good as a non-pro driver can be, and for him to win the title in an all-pro class means that he had to show his pace and nous, even if it was typically from the lead with a big gap. Nobody will deny that he has WRT and Mies/Frijns to thank, but no driver can win a sportscar race without a good team and good teammates.

Originally Posted by gert

Sad thing Mies had a clash with the ADAC GT series as he did all the hard work and would have deserved the title. Glad he at least won the ADAC title.

Maybe Mies/Audi preferred that he win ADAC GT rather than BSS? It's possible that they didn't want to parachute Frijns (or anyone else with not much ADAC experience) into the VLN race, but I think Mies missing out on Blancpain shows where the priorities lie.

[Akrapovic]

http://sportscar365.com/blancpain/sr...pit-stop-time/

The WRT play worked. Already looking at improving pit stops for the pro teams.

Have to say that the minimum pit stop time during normal races never bothered me. It was the extremely complex Spa 24 pit stop minimum/maximum/threshold times that threw me.

[Rodger Davies]

Sounds ideal, hope to see that come about

[J Jay]

Wasn't the min/max pit stop time in regular BES races as well? I seem to remember WRT managing to circumvent it by a matter of tenths at Silverstone or Paul Ricard.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by J Jay

Wasn't the min/max pit stop time in regular BES races as well? I seem to remember WRT managing to circumvent it by a matter of tenths at Silverstone or Paul Ricard.

Might well have bee, but wasn't Paul Ricard a longer race too?

Minimum time I get. Easy way of equalising stop times across cars. Maximum time...wat.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Might well have bee, but wasn't Paul Ricard a longer race too?

Yeah, it must have been Paul Ricard. If memory serves, they didn't try it again in that race, probably because words were spoken behind the garages.

[Rodger Davies]

Interesting and significant note in the Sportscar 365 article on Ferrari's WEC BoP, saying a two-car GT Pro effort with factory drivers is likely to be announced for Blancpain GT.

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/f...ht-bop-change/


(might be handy if someone can change the thread topic to remove the '2016' part, cheers)

[J Jay]

Perhaps someone thought that with WRT possibly moving to the ELMS, sending AF Corse the other way would restore the ever-uneasy ACO-SRO balance...

[Rodger Davies]

Well, didn't get announced as far as I'm aware, so maybe not.

[Marcel ten Caat]

Time for a new thread, now that the 2017 calendar has been finalised.

2017 Blancpain GT Series Calendar

13th-14th March Official Blancpain GT Series Test Day Paul Ricard
01st-02nd April Misano (ITA) – Sprint
22nd-23rd April Monza (ITA) – Endurance 3 hours
06th-07th May Brands Hatch (GBR) – Sprint
13th-14th May Silverstone (GBR) – Endurance 3 hours
02nd -04th June Zolder (BEL) - Sprint
23rd-24th June Circuit Paul Ricard (FRA) – Endurance 1000kms
04th July Official Test Day Total 24 Hours of Spa (BEL)
27th-30th July Total 24 Hours of Spa (BEL) – Endurance 24 hours
25th-27th August Budapest (HUN) - Sprint
15th-17th September Nürburgring (DEU) – Sprint
30th Sept-01st October Barcelona (ESP) - Endurance 3 hours

[Akrapovic]

I still think scheduling an endurance race in France, in June, is a bad idea if you're not the ACO. But I also think using Paul Ricard for it is a bad idea.

No Nurburgring for Endurance? But Barcelona? That's a bit sad.