Ray wrote:
It was a great film, I don't disagree at all. Yet they missed a HUGE part of the plot completely glossing over the switch from roadster to coupes. It was a massive change for Audi, the car wasn't ready at the beginning of the season, pretty much saved Alan and Rocky's lives and gave them the extra speed to barely beat Peugeot. How they can ignore the most important change in Audi's Le Mans history diminished the film and story of their 10th win substantially. They only barely beat Peugeot by going balls to the wall the entire race and owe a lot of that speed to the coupe. I seriously doubt either Rocky or Alan would've walked away unscathed from either crash if they were in the roadsters from years previous.They could have easily filled that time with an explanation of the design changes, talked with Baretzsky about why they went with a V-6 and not a V-8 and why the changes in design of the car allowed them to get more speed out of the car. There was more than enough material to keep the story interesting, provide some good tech info without being overwhelming and give the engineers behind the scenes a little face time. Instead they chose to use footage from last year, gloss over a massive design change, and then hop straight into the story almost too quickly to get a feel for the challenges getting there. I loved the film a lot, but it's very apparent they didn't put in the effort that went into the first one and I think it suffered for it.
I really wish they'd released both on Blu-Ray because Apple in their infinite wisdom decided to put bullshit DRM on a free movie. I'd be more than happy to pay for it and I'm sure there are a lot of people that would do the same.
I agree, absolutely, that going into the design changeover, beyond just "single-piece monocoque" mentioned, would have been infinitely interesting. It did actually bother me that they glossed over it. Crunched for time? Preserving some technical secrets since the R18 is still under development? Forced to try and get new viewers up to speed quickly on the cheap? I don't know. A special version of Truth in 24, perhaps a "Truth in Design" analyzing the changes throughout Audi's line-up would be in order?
