LMS Round 2: Monza, April 25-27, 2008

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Interesting though, looking at the (ACO's?) official timing and scoring of the 1000km of Monza this year, the Peugeots, that everybody expected to be the quickest in a straight line (even the televisions had telemetry on the Peugeots and on the Pescarolo - the second as to notice the great difference between the diesels and the petrol cars I suppose) actually had slightly lower top speed than the Audi R10s in every single session, including the race. So the highest trap speed at Monza this year was a fabulous one: 323 km/h by the Audi R10 TDi in the race. I guess the previous years didn't have too much in common with this kind of numbers at Monza.
Will it be the same for Le Mans? I'm thinking, well, if Monza has a couple of very slow and nasty chicanes that the superior downforce of the Peugeot 908 could take advantage from as compared to the R10, Le Mans hasn't got any. Even the Mulsanne corner and the Arnage corner aren't corners that mean too much in terms of time in the economy of a lap at La Sarthe. Last year, Audi were consistently doing 338-339 km/h on the Mulsanne, while Peugeot did 339 km/h once, and than only 335 km/h and slower. If Audi continues to be faster in a straight line this year too, the difference we see in LMS between the R10 and the 908 might be very much diminished at Le Mans.