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15 Sep 2011, 23:01 (Ref:2956150) | #1251 | |
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I think I heard in one of the Le Mans (2008, 2009?) that the French government lent Peugeot $3 billion in order to win Le Mans.
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15 Sep 2011, 23:02 (Ref:2956151) | #1252 | |
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AGD, I completely agree with you on every point you just made!
[edit] gregtummer... first of all we can be sure Peugeot didn't use or need 3 billion dollars, that's just an insane amount of money, and either the marginal benefit of it above the budget already in place would decline very rapidly, making it a big waste of money, or the car would've run laps in the 2 minutes zone. Secondly, if the French government gave a loan like this I'm sure it'd be in the books somewhere and it would've been published about, especially since the money wouldn't be paid back and it would therefore be a gift (see next point) Thirdly, I'm pretty sure borrowing money to go racing does not a sound business case make, since the only way of recouping it is by selling more road cars, and a Le Mans win isn't worth 3 billion in road car sales Last edited by gucom; 15 Sep 2011 at 23:11. |
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15 Sep 2011, 23:12 (Ref:2956155) | #1253 | ||
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And in 2009, the diesels were given a 10% restrictor cut and 6% less turbocharger boost compared to '08. The result? If anything, the diesels went faster! A 2.5% restrictor cut and 6% turbo boost cut was made in '10, and it didn't slow the diesels down, either.
A 40 bhp cut (about 6-8%) probably won't make much difference now, as Audi and Peugeot are clearly outspending everyone, and there's no solid factory effort in LMP1 aside from them now, unless one wants to count the ARX-03 customer cars and the fact that Rebellion buy their engines from Toyota/TRD/TMG. And I don't think that Peugeot was lent $3 billion by the French government just to run at LM that year. They were probably loaned the money in '09 because PSA was on the verge of bankruptcy, but I doubt, considering that Audi and Peugeot reported in '10 spent $75-150 million on their programs that year (much of that money going into Le Mans), that Peugeot needs $3 billion to win LM. Either that, or it was 3 billion Fr, but under the exchange rates then or now, I don't think it equals anything near $3 billion just to win LM. |
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16 Sep 2011, 01:23 (Ref:2956180) | #1254 | ||
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16 Sep 2011, 01:48 (Ref:2956184) | #1255 | ||
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We'll have to see if the ARX-03 will hush some of the other team owners at least a little. I doubt it will be a diesel slayer, but it could be faster than the other petrol cars given that the HPD will have factory car ancestry. Of course, if it is not beating the diesels, there will always be complaining. Maybe the volume of the complaining will be less though. Porsche and others joining in 2014 might be the real moment where teams will have to stop playing politics and actually work to get to the front of the pack. |
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16 Sep 2011, 01:58 (Ref:2956185) | #1256 | ||
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Since this has become a Petrol vs Diesel argument, I thought I'd drop this in.
Would the McNish LM accident have occurred if he was racing a Petrol powered R18? I have my opinion which I will withhold for now. dh |
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16 Sep 2011, 02:27 (Ref:2956191) | #1257 | ||
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Err....if the R18 was petrol would it be as fast as it is now? Likely. So yes, swap diesel for petrol and it'd have still occurred (driver error not powertrain...).
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16 Sep 2011, 03:30 (Ref:2956206) | #1258 | |
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depending on the way you think about it there could be many answers. Because technically we could see it as the R18 was a petrol, then the R15 was a petrol then the R10 was a petrol and peugeot never entered with a diesel becasue no one else did it and then Audi wouldnt be under so much pressure and mcnish wouldnt have made that crazy move. Or the ACO wouldnt have slowed the cars down so much and therefore Timo would have been able to pass that GT car before the apex of that turn on power alone and mcnish wouldnt have had a chance to divebomb. see where I'm going. Its a big can of worms lol.
there;d have to be some kind of reason that the R18 suddenly became a petrol. that could be becasue the R15/r10 where petrols Or it was a sudden change of heart by audi. even then we can't say that the R18 would be as fast in petrol config as in diesel config. Theyres no petrol to confirm that. I think all of the pressure is imparted by Diesel itself. Audi vs. Peugeot is a marketing ploy. Both companies want to show up the other with their Diesel tech( a new relatively unexplored marketing area with diesel-lots of room to get loyal customers) on the race track. This pressure to be the best diesel trickles to the the race track and causes the incidents. i feel almost as if if the R18 was petrol. Last edited by Audi Racer; 16 Sep 2011 at 03:38. |
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16 Sep 2011, 07:39 (Ref:2956291) | #1259 | ||
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This is a copy of what I just posted in the ALMS thread as it is more relavent here:
"I really don't think the diesels should be pegged back further. If anything the petrol cars should have a restrictor break. We saw at Silverstone that the Diesels are barely faster than a 25 year old group C car running in historic racing. You can also see that the lack of speed differentials on the straight is leading to more manoeuvres in the braking zones. Having said that I dont think that a private team running on old grandfathered car should expect to be competitive with a full works state of the art car. But maybe they should 1 or 2 seconds off the pace rather than 3 or 4 which would mean they would be ready to pounce if the Diesels hit trouble. The comparison should really be made with a fully modern petrol car like the ARX P1 which alas we haven't seen since Sebring, but was competitive there. ...and I still laugh at Dave Richard blaming the rules for wasting $25 million on the AMR One. That argument would have some weight if his car was competitive with the other petrol cars ... hell it was hardly even competitive with P2 cars." |
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16 Sep 2011, 15:58 (Ref:2956459) | #1260 | ||
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Look at any formula, ultimate one lap/stage pace isn't a great deal quicker than twenty years back but consistancy and efficiency are in a different league. Decision makers also need to factor in the greater rate of development in modern racing, i.e this years smaller engined P1's lapping as quickly as previous seasons Last edited by JAG; 16 Sep 2011 at 16:10. |
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16 Sep 2011, 17:56 (Ref:2956511) | #1261 | |
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Why do the Group C cars run 1 47's at Silverstone while the Rebellion's hit the same mark once? Tires? I thought the Group C cars were ancient history, wouldn't be competitive? Seems they're not so far off what modern Petrol cars are. This screams out lack of budget. Oak, Pescarolo, Rebellion and Aston Martin just don't have the funds or equipment necessary to keep pace. I sure hope Honda Nissan and Toyota realise this. I'm positive with they're talent and budget they can find 2 seconds with a works Petrol car.
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16 Sep 2011, 18:13 (Ref:2956517) | #1262 | |||
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16 Sep 2011, 18:29 (Ref:2956522) | #1263 | |
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Really? What kind of speeds were they seeing on the straights compared to the diesels? I think that's only one part. The tires today are surely better.
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16 Sep 2011, 18:43 (Ref:2956526) | #1264 | ||
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Take a look at this qualifying lap from 1990
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ECE...eature=related The car was supposed to have 1100 bhp in this guise |
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16 Sep 2011, 19:05 (Ref:2956532) | #1265 | |||
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16 Sep 2011, 19:13 (Ref:2956534) | #1266 | ||
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Right on!
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16 Sep 2011, 19:20 (Ref:2956535) | #1267 | ||
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1. An ANCIENT decrepit Judd V8. 2. A Toyota super gt engine which wasnt even designed for Lemans style top speed(whichin my opinion is a devious plot by toyota to get the diesels slowed). Those sgt cars dont reach nearly the top end of the lmp cars. And the sgt petrols dont have nearly the amount of torque. 3. An outdated Zytek engine (outdated Unfit engines and unfit Chassis) = Petrols (multimillion dollar state of the art engine and multimillion dollar state of the art chassis) = Diesels Thats why the diesels are crushing the competition. Last edited by Audi Racer; 16 Sep 2011 at 19:47. |
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16 Sep 2011, 19:27 (Ref:2956538) | #1268 | ||
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I think the edge that some of the diesel teams have is not just that they have more outright speed, but they also have better reliability. That comes with lots of testing and development obviously. That allows them to push their equipment harder than the petrol teams probably and they can get away with it. Also, there is just more to learn about diesel racing engines and so they can make big jumps that the petrol teams can't really, but that takes a lot of money and expertise to exploit and the diesel giants have it. How do you want to counteract that with the rules? Performance balance before every race? That's not what I consider to be effective rules. |
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16 Sep 2011, 19:57 (Ref:2956548) | #1269 | ||||
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When was the last time we saw an air restricted engine have a significant advantage when they play from sensible balanced regulations? Such an engine can lose races if it's not reliable, win races if it's efficient, but it never accounts for more than 5-10 kph at the end of a straight. And the HPD was incredibly lucky with safety cars at Sebring because it would have ended up numerous laps behind as usual, "in contention" with the diesel cars that crashed early in the race. Quote:
But all they're "in contention" for is a spot behind the untroubled diesels. And even then, if the DP1s who had problems lost less than 10-15 minutes (!!!) they'll come back before the end of a 6 hour race. You don't believe me? Watch the Silverstone coverage again, pay attention to the speed gaps between DP1-P1-P2 and look at how close the crashing diesels were from beating the P1s with a flawless run. |
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16 Sep 2011, 20:18 (Ref:2956559) | #1270 | ||
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16 Sep 2011, 20:27 (Ref:2956563) | #1271 | |||
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Your logic doesn't make any sense. In no way should a restricted race engine have to be ultra-recent to compete at the front. Jaguar won with an antic V12, Porsche won way too many times with their ultra-traditional H6 design, BMW won with a big V12 that was getting old. And they were all road-car derived. Audi even kept winning with an engine that was 7 years old at the end! That's older than the Judd, Zytek and Toyota V8 designs are (check your facts!)! How much do you seriously think you can gain from a bleeding edge engine? How big was the performance advantage provided by Porsche's DFI or Peugeot's aggressive engine development strategy from the last few years? Can the performance benefits we've seen from committed manufacturers over an average engine really bridge the current gap between the two P1 classes? Run the numbers, what non-diesel engines need to compete is not anywhere near being possibly available with the current restrictors. Do you really want rules that deny privateers a competing chance unless they find engines that are much better than what is achievable within the rules? |
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16 Sep 2011, 20:33 (Ref:2956565) | #1272 | ||
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I know some here say the gap between the diesels and petrols is too much for the rules to be legitimate, but I don't necessarily buy that. There was a 7 second difference between the pole sitting Audi and the top petrol runner (Rebellion) at Le Mans in qualifying. Ok, that is a lot, but in 2010, there was a 7.5 second difference between Strakka and the fastest non-HPD powered LMP2 car (Quifel-ASM Zytek). The difference was 8.3 seconds to the fastest Judd powered car (OAK Pescarolo). Keep in mind that all of these engines are the current LMP1 engines plus the TMG Toyota. How do you explain those massive gaps? The cars were running to the same rules. There's no "unfair" diesel advantage at play here. Maybe Strakka is better than OAK and Amaral's team, but I don't think that is true by a huge amount. It's simply that the engines and the chassis those teams are running are inferior. They are inferior to the ex-factory HPDs and RS Spyders and they are definitely inferior to the diesel giants. Frankly, it almost seems as if the gaps should be even bigger than they are! |
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16 Sep 2011, 20:47 (Ref:2956573) | #1273 | ||
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And may I throw this in--the Audi R8 had as big of an advantage under the LMP900 rules as the R18 and 908 have under the new rules. One reason? The R8 was developed by a factory team with huge resource reserves. Second reason? Audi was about the only LMP900 effort that gambled on a turbocharged engine. The Panoz used an aluminum block, fuel injected version of the old Ford NASCAR V8, which was based on the Windsor V8 that Ford designed in the 1950s and was the last true "stock block" NASCAR engine to be retired (in 2010). And the BMWs ran a 6.0 V12 like what the McLaren F1 used (in fact, they were the same engine aside from being destroked to fit the LMP900 6.0 capacity limit). And then there were teams who opted for the unreliable Judd 4.0 V10, and then the 5.0 and 5.5 engines, which were soon obsolescent, or would have been if Audi developed another gasoline turbo engine.
So could we say that Audi with the R8 had the "unfair" advantage with a turbo engine that was if anything favored by the air restrictor rules that favored torque and fuel economy over brute power? I'm not sure that the diesels have an advantage on the power front, but the diesel engines still make more torque and are fitted to cars designed around those engines by big factories. And because of that latter fact, I don't think that taking 40bhp away from the diesels or giving the petrol runners 40bhp is gonna make much of a difference. The ACO tried to take away 10 and 4% power in '09 and '10, and it didn't close the gap because of the development the factory teams did. |
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16 Sep 2011, 21:14 (Ref:2956579) | #1274 | ||||
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The bumper car problem is not that the factory cars do it, it's that they're so fast that they can still finish in front of untroubled cars. Quote:
I was completely disappointed by the lack of serious entries for my first time at Le Mans this year. It seems everyone has moved way past competing for winning the race and either lets sons of millionaires drive their cars, is content with half-measures and getting paid to merely show up. When someone talks about winning... it's the petrol class. Maybe it's just because I idealized that whole thing as an actual sport. |
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16 Sep 2011, 21:28 (Ref:2956588) | #1275 | |||
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