[WEC Race] 2012 Six Hours of Shanghai

[TrueBlueFlyer]

Originally Posted by Simmi

He has a Superstars Series race on Sunday. He is 10 points off winning the title so you can't blame him, even though it's not really on the same level.

http://www.eurosuperstars.com/Supers...ST-Series.aspx

whoa... Chrysler 300C SRT8 racing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnmZ1jgU2Kc

[Pandamasque]

^The whole series is madness on wheels, makes both DTM and AusV8SC pale in comparison.

[kaivo]

stream is über laggy

[TF110]

Pole for Toyota in P1 Lola Lotus is P2 and Aston Martin in GTE. Mighty close for overall pole, Wurz said he messed up sector 3 on both his hot laps, so he had time in hand.

[Pandamasque]

Originally Posted by kaivo

stream is über laggy

Same here. I muted it and listened to RLM. But it's also a couple of minutes behind. Seems the Chinese authorities are putting it through censorship in real time

[TF110]

I think the audio was just off, that happened at an earlier round.

[gwyllion]

Judging from his best sector times, Wurz could have gone a bit faster. His ideal lap time was 1:47.809, compared to 1:48.357 for McNish and 1:48.582 for Lotterer.

Audi can hardly match Toyota over a single lap. In race pace the situation will probably be a lot worse. If Toyota can stay clear of trouble, they will have an easy win.

[gwyllion]

Originally Posted by gwyllion

Judging from his best sector times, Wurz could have gone a bit faster. His ideal lap time was 1:47.809, compared to 1:48.357 for McNish and 1:48.582 for Lotterer.

Wurz explains that he made a mistake during his pole lap:

Wurz, who shares the solo Toyota TS030 HYBRID with Nicolas Lapierre, said: "I must say that the car was better today than the driver: I screwed up the last sector on my pole lap and lost a couple of tenths."

source: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/103769

[MJones94]

Yes! Another Toyota pole, and Aston Martin on pole too!

Hopefully, as I say time and time again that the Astons have competitive fuel consumption to match the competitive pace!

[Flo aus N]

and 10 Liter more fuel tank size (95 vs. 85 Liter) than the F458 ;-)

[tux]

Am i right in thinking the Aston doesn't have Direct Injection?

[gwyllion]

Only Ferrari has direct injection.

[gwyllion]

Vasselon predicts that tyre degradation will be an issue.

It will be an extremely interesting race because tyre degradation is a bit more of a factor than usual on this track and there is the potential for different strategies. We can expect another tough fight with Audi so we have to aim for another perfect race like in Fuji to finish the season on a high note.

source: http://www.toyotahybridracing.com/sh...toyota-racing/

That suggests that Audi will probably need to do single stints. So the big question is whether Toyota will be able to double stint the tyres during the race.

[chernaudi]

Double stinting cost Toyota time at Fuji--the gained time by having shorter stops, but they gave it all back when the Audis had fresher tires on them.

And it's strange that tire wear is such a big issue, considering that Audi didn't have issues with triple stinting tires at LM and Toyota could triple or quadruple stint tires at LM, too, but it seems that both are having issues with double stinting during the sprint races, to the point where Audi don't even bother and Toyota is finding that it's not gaining them very much at all. Is that just the nature of the sprint race tires, or are both the R18 and the TS030 harder on their tires than expected for the sprint races, because even Toyota have had some problems with double stinting (the time lost in the second stint when the tires go off).

I'm wondering if the downforce that the "sprint" spec cars are carrying is an issue, or that the LM spec tires are just that much more hard wearing. Either way, Toyota's best hope is a near perfect race and that their edge in speed holds true for the race proper (the #1 Audi on average was marginally faster than the Toyota at Fuji), and it also doesn't help that both R18s are on more equal footing than at Fuji, too, where as the #2 wasn't much of a threat at Fuji.

[gwyllion]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

Double stinting cost Toyota time at Fuji--the gained time by having shorter stops, but they gave it all back when the Audis had fresher tires on them.

I did not see the race, but the timing data suggests that Toyota had no problem with double stinting their tyres in Fuji.

• Wurz
  • stint 1: 31 laps, 1:30.100 average (new tyres)
  • stint 2: 32 laps, 1:30.556 average
• Lapierre
  • stint 1: 31 laps, 1:30.211 average (new tyres)
  • stint 2: 32 laps, 1:30.242 average
• Nakajima
  • stint 1: 32 laps, 1:29.580 average (new tyres)
  • stint 2: 31 laps, 1:29.955 average
  • stint 3: 31 laps, 1:29.903 average (new tyres)
  • stint 4: 13 laps, 1:29.856 average

The TS030 is still gentle on its tyres. Toyota only single stinted in Bahrain, but that also had to do driver fatigue in the extreme hot conditions.

[chernaudi]

In each of the times that the Toyota double stinted, the #1 R18 gained back time.

In the first double stint, the #1 was 7 seconds back of the Toyota when it pitted, by the time that the #7 ended that double stint, the #1 closed to within 6 seconds. And the second double stint run was more of the same. That time, by the end of that double stint, the #1 Audi closed to within a couple of seconds and took the lead in traffic a few laps later. That was from watching the T&S during that stage of the race.

I think that the Toyota's issue wasn't so much times on a clear track, but of handling and maneuverability in traffic, because that seemed to be what cost them the most time. When the grip isn't there, it's harder to pass slower traffic because of the car lacking that "feel" it had on newer rubber.

Also, Toyota tried to double stint most of the time in Bahrain, but they lost time there when they tried because of handling problems and it got so bad during one of Nico's stints that his second stint on tires lasted only 19 laps (several laps short of a normal stop) because of a lack of grip, and that wasn't too long before his collision with the #21 HPD.

I don't think that in sprint trim that the Toyota is as forgiving to its tires as at LM, but the same can be said of the R18. So is it tire compounds/constructions for the shorter races, the higher downforce levels, or both?

[gwyllion]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

Also, Toyota tried to double stint most of the time in Bahrain, but they lost time there when they tried because of handling problems and it got so bad during one of Nico's stints that his second stint on tires lasted only 19 laps (several laps short of a normal stop) because of a lack of grip, and that wasn't too long before his collision with the #21 HPD.

In Bahrain all stints of Toyota except one were single stints: Wurz -> Lapierre -> Wurz -> Lapierre -> Lapierre -> Wurz -> Lapierre
See http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com/Res...Stops_Race.PDF

BTW Lotterer tried two consecutive single stints. And he barely was able to finish his second stint because of fatigue.

[Purist]

Downforce at the other tracks may play a part, but the other piece of that is simply that the overall lap at Le Mans is easier on tires, with so much of the lap taken up by long straights (less time spent cornering). Also, with so much of the lap at Le Mans composed of public roads, I should think that they could get away with a softer compound and still go the same distance. F1, for instance, runs the softest compounds on the temporary circuits.

I'll have to double check, but I thought one of the Toyota drivers just wasn't as quick as the other two at Fuji, and that's where a lot of the time went. If the Toyota had to make an additional stop over the Audis, then clearly, Nakajima did gain something during his full double stint.

[CTD]

10-Tenths Chatroom

Remembert to visit the Chat
(Link in the red text and here: http://tiny.cc/tenthschat)

[TF110]

You're right, it was Lapierre who got into some trouble with traffic and that's how Audi caught him. Nakajima triple stinted in his time in the car to bring it home for the win, he double stinted his tires once (2nd and 3rd stint) and still pulled a gap at the end to the Audi. The track in Shanghai is dusty and isn't used often, they're complaining about tire marbles building offline. So lapping traffic may put the cars offline in those marbles and hinder tire life. That's the whole reason behind Vasselon's statement. If it's going to be bad for Toyota it'll be even worse for Audi, so I think it'll be an interesting race. The track is wide enough and has big straights that traffic shouldn't be a huge issue so I hope we don't see incidents like at Fuji in the braking zone before the chicane.

[Simmi]

Fog has put pay to the morning warm-up.

Going to attempt to watch the race live. Might be easier said than done.

[TrueBlueFlyer]

is it me or is the live feed thru WEC/Dailymotion doesn't work at all?

---------------

funny as I posted this, the race came on

[TF110]

It's laggy, but Audi's stream seems good. http://tv.audi.com

[gregtummer]

Toyota has a 2.5 sec lead after 1 lap.

And now 4 sec after 2 laps.

[gwyllion]

Like I fear, Toyota is much quicker than Audi. Lapierre pulls a gap of 4 seconds in only 2 laps

The lap time was 1:49.071 for Toyota and 1:50.609 for Audi.