[LM24 Race] 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans

[Paradise City]

Yes, when one of the commentators, Cole or Shaw, announced they were going to a break they'd always get cut off mid sentence. I'd always imagine a kind of impatient, uppity, overenthusiastic French producer saying "too slow you old goat".

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Paradise City

Yes, when one of the commentators, Cole or Shaw, announced they were going to a break they'd always get cut off mid sentence. I'd always imagine a kind of impatient, uppity, overenthusiastic French producer saying "too slow you old goat".

Trop lent, vous vieille chèvre

Just as well there's such a thing as Radio Le Mans, they do an excellent job.

[Aysedasi]

Great Le Mans week.

Great race.

I've now been to the last 30 of them and for my money that ranks well up in the top 5. Huge congrats to Porsche who thoroughly deserved the win and to Audi for making them really work for it. Wonderful win for Corvette and the most dominant of all for KCMG. Shame about the Aston - so near yet so far.

Loved seeing the Nissans. Yes, they were pretty miserable, but like ByKolles they didn't give up. Saddened by Toyotas massive fall from power - although interesting to see that one of them did manage a 3:20 in the race....

I've had a really great time over here with some good mates and bumped into many Tenthers too. I guess the realisation will dawn about Wednesday that I have to wait a whole year to do it again......

[Wild Dog]

So happy to see Hülkenberg win the LM24! Proves what a great driver he is, and that active F1 drivers are capable of winning an endurance race.

Such a shame for Aston #95 Dane Train. Thiim is a beast! Sørensen and Nygaard did well too. Would've won GT Pro if not for mechanical problems. Hmpf!

[Sodemo]

Great to see someone finally topple Audi at LeMans. Happy for Porsche and the drivers. Bit of a shame the rain at the end didn't come down a bit harder and a bit earlier, I love a bit of rain to throw into the mix.

Overall I thought it was a very good race, lots of interest throughout. For me its a shame there is no BMW involvement in any class.

Felt sorry for Toyota, they have dropped back a lot since last year. I guess the days of normally aspirated engines are numbered, part of me thinks though that some of that is just BOP related. A turbo engine of similar performance on paper will nearly always perform better, unless there is some kind of rules skew towards the NA engine.

Not too sure what to make of the Nissan project. My alarm bells were ringing when they said they would skip Silverstone and Spa. I didn't expect them to challenge for the win, however I expected a better showing than what they did. I guess one positive is that they ran for longer than people expected. I just have massive reservations about the entire concept, maybe they can make it work, not sure.

[Richard C]

As a Porsche fan I love it that they managed the 1-2 Win! Congratulations to the other class winners. And thanks to the TT posters in this thread. I watched as much of the race as I could, but I used this thread to catch up on what was going on during the parts I missed.

Richard

[FIRE]

Great race!

[Adam43]

Top race, top weekend.

[Trebor123]

The Nissan LMP1 thread is still closed to any new comments, post-race.

[airbusA346]

Just looking at the results...

#4 CLM has been excluded and #22 Nissan wasn't classified.

[Ferrari333SP]

[Armco Bender]

Kiwi 1-2 at Le Mans,
New Zealand driver Earl Bamber has won the the 24 Hours Le Mans.

God bless the local newspaper.....

[Articus]

Well, gutted for Audi, even though they had the streak, every year is a new challenge so it doesn't matter to me that they keep winning (when they do). Porsche really strong armed the race away from Audi during the night. By the same token I am pleased that Audi understand why they could not keep up with the Porsche's which was their pace in the cooler temperatures. unlike Toyota. I'm optimistic for a return to form by Toyota next year however.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Articus

Well, gutted for Audi, even though they had the streak, every year is a new challenge so it doesn't matter to me that they keep winning (when they do). Porsche really strong armed the race away from Audi during the night. By the same token I am pleased that Audi understand why they could not keep up with the Porsche's which was their pace in the cooler temperatures. unlike Toyota. I'm optimistic for a return to form by Toyota next year however.

We may have been watching different races, but I thought that the major reason that Audi didn't win was because of the frailty of their cars. I believe that all three of them suffered from an identical hitch, and in addition other problems afflicted the cars such as the rear bodywork detatching itself on the Fassler car.

Still, it doesn't really matter. Regardless of which of the two makes crossed the line first, it was Volkswagen that won!

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Articus

Well, gutted for Audi, even though they had the streak, every year is a new challenge so it doesn't matter to me that they keep winning (when they do). Porsche really strong armed the race away from Audi during the night. By the same token I am pleased that Audi understand why they could not keep up with the Porsche's which was their pace in the cooler temperatures. unlike Toyota. I'm optimistic for a return to form by Toyota next year however.

Audi had the faster car but Porsche had the edge over them with quicker pitstops and they were able to leap frog Audi a number of times and this was before the race entered the night time phase.

[Dani Filth]

One sentence should cover this year's race..
Audi got Audi'ed by Porsche.

Shame Toyota couldn't compete ..
shame for #51 .. It was their race to win again

[Articus]

Originally Posted by Dani Filth

One sentence should cover this year's race..
Audi got Audi'ed by Porsche.

Shame Toyota couldn't compete ..
shame for #51 .. It was their race to win again

That about sums in unfortunately.

[Lagunaseca_4life]

It's something we've seen before from audi in the Peugeot days,when some other team shows up with a faster car and some reliability thrown in.audi is forced to go all out,and they throw everything but the kitchen sink!everytime it shows they are beatable and not absolutly bullet proof.

it was a great job by porsche,I'm not a real big porsche fan my self,but they did a smashing job,im more dissapointed in toyota being lost way out in left field,and audi losing their audi ness in the final hours when it counted the most.great race.


I think the real heros of the race are all the mechanics up and down pit lane,especially the rebellion,nissan,kolles,and audi mechanics there at the end that kept the cars going all day.

[Bob Baldwin]

Was there a Race this week-end ?

[MGDavid]

Originally Posted by Bob Baldwin

Was there a Race this week-end ?

nah - but apparently Porsche ran a reliability test ;-)

Good on Porsche I say, for me they are the rightful kings of Le Mans and no way did they want to be usurped in total wins by Audi just turning up and being boring year after year. I last went to the race in 2000 - it may be time for a return !

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by Lagunaseca_4life

It's something we've seen before from audi in the Peugeot days,when some other team shows up with a faster car and some reliability thrown in.audi is forced to go all out,and they throw everything but the kitchen sink!everytime it shows they are beatable and not absolutly bullet proof.

Its usually a big reason the works squads run multiple cars, sometimes on very different strategies. If there are 3 cars in the shed, you can have a hare and a pair of tortoises. If the hare goes flat strap, and drags the other brands' cars along with them, and stresses them to break or make mistakes, then the tortoises can keep ticking along and fight for the win

I would have thought Nissan would do something like that, figure out the 3 quickest blokes, put them into one car, and turn up the wick loudly to get some noise on track, as well as in the media.

The thing about being Porsche out-Audi-ing Audi... the Audi stops were slower than the Porsche ones from all accounts. Mr Webber made mention of it as one of the reasons the #19 could skip away.. Wonder what went wrong for Audi's stops?

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

Its usually a big reason the works squads run multiple cars, sometimes on very different strategies. If there are 3 cars in the shed, you can have a hare and a pair of tortoises. If the hare goes flat strap, and drags the other brands' cars along with them, and stresses them to break or make mistakes, then the tortoises can keep ticking along and fight for the win

I would have thought Nissan would do something like that, figure out the 3 quickest blokes, put them into one car, and turn up the wick loudly to get some noise on track, as well as in the media.

The thing about being Porsche out-Audi-ing Audi... the Audi stops were slower than the Porsche ones from all accounts. Mr Webber made mention of it as one of the reasons the #19 could skip away.. Wonder what went wrong for Audi's stops?

IIRC, what they were saying at the time on Radio Le Mans was Porsche were able to refuel their cars quicker than Audi, knocking a good 5 seconds of their stops. This either enabled Porsche to retain the lead and or sometimes undercut Audi.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by Lagunaseca_4life

It's something we've seen before from audi in the Peugeot days,when some other team shows up with a faster car and some reliability thrown in.audi is forced to go all out,and they throw everything but the kitchen sink!everytime it shows they are beatable and not absolutly bullet proof.

I'm not totally sure that had anything to do with it. I don't exactly see how what you've stated matches up with the events that occured. The incidents that cost Audi a chance to stay close where the Duval accident, puncture for lotterer, then the bodywork, and the the suspension in the 9 car. Not to mention the breaks the 19 car got from slow zones and safety cars. Then they were just not matching the Porsche's during the night time. It's not like they made any bad strategy calls or where pressured into mistakes. Porsche just had the faster car for more of the race and faster pit stops.

On the other hand what we can look to is the fact that Porsche's were probably 3:14 laptime capable. And were just doing laps in a detuned state which meant 3:18-3:20's. We have seen at Spa and Silverstone that the Porsche ERS system is still fragile does not really like having to work at the limit. Porsche didn't have to push to take Le Mans this year and it's why the cars were pretty reliable.

Even yet, we still saw with the braking issues which is basically the ERS malfunctioning and not retarding the axle like the driver expected. Of course when the system doesn't have to work that hard, this doesn't happen.

[Salamus]

Yup, those 5 seconds were what allowed Porsche to retain the lead after every pit cycle. Then once the night came, Porsche took away Audi's biggest advantage by quadruple stinting tires. Porsche's management of the race was nearly perfect and the lack of technical issues was icing on top.

Did Audi ever give a reason why they didn't try a quintuple stint during the night? All RLM said was that maybe Audi were afraid the drop off in pace would be too drastic.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by Salamus

Did Audi ever give a reason why they didn't try a quintuple stint during the night? All RLM said was that maybe Audi were afraid the drop off in pace would be too drastic.

from what I gathered, despite how thorough we know Audi to be, there was a bit of tyre testing they did not get to. During the night they were slower because they were running the daytime tire which they knew they could quadruple stint. RLM said they had no idea if the softer tires Michelin supplied for colder temperatures could be quadruple stinted. However given what we know of Audi, I would think the reality is they knew they could not quadruple stint a softer tire.