Thanks for the photos, vyselegend!
vyselegend wrote:While the European way of not letting race direction interferes with the show probably is more fair, it certainly contributes to make a race borring any time an opponent encounters problem, because without safety cars no one is going to come back from a ten laps deficit, even in eight hours, not even in 24!
I believe you should have watched more closely the race in GT2. With the HPD in LMP2, it will take the P1 field we'll have at Spa to make any other class interesting, given that the Oreca Peugeot was so early out of contention in this one.
vyselegend wrote:The Audi seems to be faster than the Pug in straight line now, judging they were consistantly quicker in sector two (the long mistral straight).
Indeed! The R15+ reached 331Km/h
(McNish), followed by AMR with 327Km/h
(Fernandez) and the 908 with 325Km/h
(Sarrazin). The Lola-Aston of Signature Plus reached 323 and all other cars were at 307Km/h minus.
The Audi seemed to have the upper hand, indeed. I haven't watched most of the race, so I have downloaded the timing data
(here) and analysed it a bit.
Pace:
First thing: Audi worked hard to lose aero drag. They are already faster than they were at Le Mans 2009, even fastest overall, so that's major, even to predict how this year's
24 hours will go. In my view, the best tribute to Peugeot's performance in 2008 is that, usually so pragmatic Audi, produced a beast in the form of the R15, trying to match Peugeot's superior handling with a car that seemed tailored for ALMS, like Audi's engineers had forgotten that the one most important race in the year is in Europe and that its peculiar layout tends to reward high top speeds.
Finally, they seem to have managed to turn that beast into a very serious competitor, much like the R8 and R10 before him. Audi led in Paul Ricard with an impressive pace, always marginally faster than the Peugeot, even with Sarrazin behind the wheel. That's impressive and reminiscent of last year's Sebring Audi dominance, only this time in a circuit much more similar to
La Sarthe.
Fuel economy:
Given the impressive economy of 2010's Peugeot at this year Sebring, I jumped at Pandamasque's posted results and particularly at the "NB BOX STOP" column.
There, the Audi had stopped
10 times, the same amount as the first petrol engines. I knew that Dindo had stopped in the end of the race for tyres, something I believe none of the the other top P1's had done. Comprehensibly - Audi had such a huge advance that they had nothing to lose
and potentially a lot to gain, given the risk that the track was starting to be, that could originate an off... the others were just playing
chicken, not wanting to lose time in the pits. 2nd and 3rd were close and the Peugeot was trying to gain a position
(with an help from the team that was slowing the Oreca 01)...
So, that's anyway one more stop for the Audi over the Peugeot, in an 8-hour race. I looked at the stint duration over the race. Both Diesels manage a
52 minutes first stint. But, over the race the Peugeot started making constistently longer stints - from
58 minutes to one hour to the Peugeot,
versus 54 to, more consistently,
56 minutes of the Audi. Since I don't believe the Peugeot was running in
economy mode, trying to make up places and if the Audi wasn't being conservative
(if they were it only makes the consumption comparison worst for them, naturally...), we are talking to a potential difference from 1 to 3 laps stints at La Sarthe. Of course, the 8 stops for the Peugeot in 8 hours at Paul Ricard were only possible because of the time lost from their problem. But,
if it were the official Peugeot drivers at the wheel? They surely should know the car and fuel efficiency strategies better than the two novices
au Castellet. So, it's possible to imagine that the Peugeot
could do 8 stops in a 8 hour race. That's one stop less in 8 hours than the Audi. In
a third of 24 hours.
Conclusion:
This to say that I have hope that we'll see a close battle in June, even if the R15+'s prove to be ultimately faster than the 908's. And
La Sarthe is a very special lady, very unlike any other circuit, so to extrapolate directly is very tricky.
La Dame only reveals its secrets in June...
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