[WEC Race] 6 Hours of Spa

[RL17]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

I think yesterdays Ferrari crash typifies my issue with Eurosport coverage. You have one of the leading cars crashing out of the race and Eurosport are showing some fluff piece to camera about the weather report. Granted they couldn’t have predicted the Ferrari was going to crash at that moment but when it did they should have scrubbed that great bit of journalism and cut back to the main feed, not have the action play out in silence via the split screen.

Agreed - did the same for Hypercar pitstops at last round which were predictable.

The weather thing was least interesting thing in control room and the tyres but was LMP2 tyres I thought and not explained (just one slick compound mentioned)

[RL17]

Great race on the whole and watched reply right through to 4am . Thought the LMP2 not that great. Drive around did spice up GTE AM

Some great F1 style race tactics from Ferrari!

Shame for No 3 Caddy and surprised the No 2 dropped off so much at end from the Porsche.

safety cars helped Toyota too here.

Surely a few solar panels on the OEM team trucks or motor homes could power all the tyre warmers for the event sustainably.

Driver safety severely compromised especially with the drive around rule too.

[GT3_Fan]

Corvette team held back to not get balance of performance punishment prior to le Mans.

Will be cheering for them for sure to win the last GTE race there. They were dominant during the GT1 era. GTE not so much. Had much more bad luck with crashes and blown tires and such over the years at the 24. I think they are in a good spot for 2023 though.

[Adam43]

All (well most) of this seasons BoP posts have been move to the BoP thread.

The repetitive and domineering nature of the posting was disrupting the race threads.

Hopefully having its own thread means the topic can evolve a little. Hopefully!

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Now: back to the race.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by RL17

Agreed - did the same for Hypercar pitstops at last round which were predictable.

The weather thing was least interesting thing in control room and the tyres but was LMP2 tyres I thought and not explained (just one slick compound mentioned)

It was mad. They needed to cut away. We could always go back. That feature would have been better earlier in the race too.

I get annoyed with the cutting to the pits to see the team of the Greta battle happening out on track too! But that isn’t going to change as similar things are in all sports!

Not sure we are ever going to have the improvement here. And I presume it isn’t actually Eurosport as they just carry the WEC feed.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by joeb

Success ballast for this round:

https://www.endurance-info.com/auto/...last-du-gte-am

Corvette is up a whopping 45kg!

Originally Posted by GT3_Fan

Corvette team held back to not get balance of performance punishment prior to le Mans.

Will be cheering for them for sure to win the last GTE race there. They were dominant during the GT1 era. GTE not so much. Had much more bad luck with crashes and blown tires and such over the years at the 24. I think they are in a good spot for 2023 though.

Corvette coped pretty well with their ballast at Spa!

A full factory effort against good privateer teams (although the lines are muddy)?

[kdr]

I'm a bit of a boring pragmatist, i actually agreed with Ferrari's call to start on wets with the notion they're not going to learn much for LM if they're in a wall somewhere at Spa. I'm definitely enjoying all the other teams learning and gaining on Toyota, i recall when i first started going to LM in 98 the mantra always seemed to be, year one make your mistakes, year two begin to challenge, year three aim for the win...a la Bentley in 2001/2002/2003...now we seem to expect new teams to be challenging in race three, not year three. As for Eurosport, i too wondered what was going on, that piece with the weather man was surely an item for race build up, its almost like someone up high can't believe people are interested in watching a race for six hours, i really enjoyed that one, roll on LM.

[Adam43]

I hadn’t thought about the learning bit, but I also thought that the wets was the right call at the time. Playing is safe was OK, and a few laps of losing 5-10s a lap on slicks on a wet track meant you could have a free stop.

However that all fell apart with the SC and the inability to turn their tyres on after they changed.

[cg7aa]

Any Brits on here make it to Spa yesterday? I did and really enjoyed myself. It's been a few years since I last went. The place has changed so much! I was amazed, all for the best I think.

Funniest thing all weekend (to me at least) was probably the cheers which went up in the new grandstand at the top of hill whenever a track sweeper went by! Even the driver was joining in. I guess that's what passes for entertainment when you're freezing in the morning chill waiting for the race to start.

Christian Reid's multiple spins in the Proton Porsche was also well received in the grandstands especially when he made it around the first time without spinning. Huge cheers, brilliant atmosphere.

The only low point of the weekend was when it was time to leave; I think they really need to apply the same sort of effort they given to the circuit remodeling to how they control traffic in the local area. It was pretty poor. Over an hour to cover a handful of kilometres just to join the motorway; they really should route traffic from the different car parks so they join the motorway at different points. Instead they just seem to funnel everyone to the same point. Not smart.

I noticed all the small touches the WEC are introducing around the spectator areas too. The little things really do make a difference. I don't think I've ever seen that many people all around the circuit for a LMS/ILMC/WEC race.

[RL17]

Spa appeals for a trip next year - do most people head home after the race or do a lot of campers make a Saturday night of it?

[RL17]

Mike Conway mentioned downhill section after Dunlop as a concern on cold tyres but going straight into Dunlop chicane out of pits on cold tyres isn’t going to be easy especially with faster cars up main start/finish straight behind them and it’s a pretty high/exposed/colder bit of track there.

[cg7aa]

Originally Posted by RL17

Spa appeals for a trip next year - do most people head home after the race or do a lot of campers make a Saturday night of it?

We've always headed straight for home after the race so I can't really say anything about the camping experience.

[Adam43]

Glad you had a good time. Spa is a fantastic place.

[Adam43]

We know why Ferrari couldn't take it to Toyota. They lost out on strategy at the beginning and suffered massively with cold tyres. If they hadn't had that problem would they have been able to challenge?

The lap times suggest yes. Toyota had the fastest lap, but generally Ferrari was faster - its top 80 are nearly all faster than Toyota's top 80! The slower laps we much slower though!

And they spent more time in the pits.

Charts are the same, except the scale.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Simmi

I didn't catch this on the broadcast but a JOTA mechanic was clipped in the pits. Speedy recovery.

https://twitter.com/JotaSport/status...76690541166601

Out of hospital. Bruising.

https://twitter.com/jotasport/status...yWILSZ0DMY7C-g

[KlBD]

Originally Posted by Adam43

We know why Ferrari couldn't take it to Toyota. They lost out on strategy at the beginning and suffered massively with cold tyres. If they hadn't had that problem would they have been able to challenge?

The lap times suggest yes. Toyota had the fastest lap, but generally Ferrari was faster - its top 80 are nearly all faster than Toyota's top 80! The slower laps we much slower though!

And they spent more time in the pits.

Charts are the same, except the scale.

2 unrelated questions:


1. Do you have data on hand about whether the 499Ps had any difficulty heating up their tires at Sebring? That is, did their times after pit stops get back up to normal pace more quickly than they did at Spa? I wonder if this may affect them at Le Mans, although Le Mans is in a different season and climate than Spa.


2. A question not specifically addressed to anyone, but does anyone know what were those silver disks taped to the Cadillac's central headrest bar in the cockpit? Ballast?

[dwh43scale]

Copied and updated from the Grandstand post.
The huge crowd meant that we queued for 90 minutes and 5km+ from the autoroute. P14 / 15 full and sent to a car park on the left of the road down to the P1/2 parking entrance (we were up there for 24 Hours a while back). Easy walk down to STER entrance, hard walk back after the race having walked the track (or am I just getting old ?).
New grandstand has impressive views but lacks the emotion of the old one where you sat pretty much over the track. However, there or on the open terrace there are good views back to La Source right the way through to Radillon. The three grandstands now provide excellent viewing if you don't fancy lots of walking. Big screens opposite all of them for WEC.
Getting out, we were directed up a road that "cut the corner" to the autoroute. Merged twice with other traffic with some seriously impressive zipper action (alternate cars from each queue) kept things moving reasonably well. Understand that ticket sales double last year (perhaps not surprising) - heard 70,000 there over three days.
Make a weekend of it - not for the first time when we have been to Spa, there has been a Belgian Rally Championship event not far away. We stayed near Namur (local gites are reasonable) and got to see three stages of the Rally de Wallonie. Entry a little depleted by Sunday, but the sun was out and there was easy access to the stages (buy a programme for €5 - it has full maps including where local organisations are serving drinks, etc).
Would we do WEC at Spa again ? Yes we would. Good value weekend on a superb track with plenty of photography spots.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by KlBD

2 unrelated questions:


1. Do you have data on hand about whether the 499Ps had any difficulty heating up their tires at Sebring? That is, did their times after pit stops get back up to normal pace more quickly than they did at Spa? I wonder if this may affect them at Le Mans, although Le Mans is in a different season and climate than Spa.

That would be a good thing to look at. Could do that.

I’m off to Chicago for a few days and won’t have chance, but in the lead up to the big race I will have a look.

I also want to do the comparison of team mates. Top x laps of them, that kind of thing.

[Simmi]

If people aren't already subscribed to Bpillar I'd recommend that for the driver comparison stuff. Ferrari drivers had 3 of the top 4 best lap averages at Spa, with Calado top of the tree.

[Adam43]

Ooo, thanks I will check that out. We used to have a user who posted some nice graphics on it. Rather than my amateur stuff.

Do you have a link?

[E.B]

Originally Posted by Adam43

Ooo, thanks I will check that out. We used to have a user who posted some nice graphics on it. Rather than my amateur stuff.

Do you have a link?

This is their twitter account. https://twitter.com/thebpillar

A little worrying is the opening 'tweet on the page....

The B Pillar
@thebpillar
·
19 Nov 2022
We had been planning to revamp our social media offering in 2023 but, given the uncertainty of this site's stability following its recent acquisition, this is now under review for the time being.

Edit: Found a website. Strangely enough https://thebpillar.com/

There are links therein. I have not progressed (yet) to the sign up / registering for their "traditional analysis of each race in the series selected....."

[Adam43]

Thank you.

[RL17]

Originally Posted by KlBD

2 unrelated questions:


1. Do you have data on hand about whether the 499Ps had any difficulty heating up their tires at Sebring? That is, did their times after pit stops get back up to normal pace more quickly than they did at Spa? I wonder if this may affect them at Le Mans, although Le Mans is in a different season and climate than Spa.


2. A question not specifically addressed to anyone, but does anyone know what were those silver disks taped to the Cadillac's central headrest bar in the cockpit? Ballast?

On 1 the WEC data/timer provider site does have detail on pit stops and all lap times. Visually Ferrari never suffered in Sebring like Spa (much colder) plus hard to tell slick compounds used due to lack of tyre wall colours etc. Plus presume Ferrari went hard slicks at first and then changed on later tyre changes as don’t remember such bad long spells later.

[RL17]

Originally Posted by Adam43

We know why Ferrari couldn't take it to Toyota. They lost out on strategy at the beginning and suffered massively with cold tyres. If they hadn't had that problem would they have been able to challenge?

The lap times suggest yes. Toyota had the fastest lap, but generally Ferrari was faster - its top 80 are nearly all faster than Toyota's top 80! The slower laps we much slower though!

And they spent more time in the pits.

Charts are the same, except the scale.

Were Toyota taking it a lot easier than usual (with less racing between 7 & 8)?

Made sense to manage tyres to minimise changes and need to warm up new tyres. They did speed up a lot bear when gap cane down under a lap. 148 lap race so early Ferrari failings did give them a long period with no pressure from them

[Mike E]

The #8 also lost a set of tyres when Hartley went off in qualifying (flat spotted) so they only had 3 and a half sets for the race rather than 4 and a half. Must have been a bit of extra management involved there