Aston Martin & Lola performance in LMS

[dumrick]

It'll be the first I've heard the V12 was a DI motor....

Well it was. If I'm not mistaken it was first implemented for Le Mans 2009.

Yes it was, yet strangely it benefitted from superior capacity compared with the other petrol engines for being an "homologated GT1 engine"...

This year, Aston is being even more unspeakably amateurish than before, appearing at races "to test" and managing 15(!) laps overall with 3 cars in the 8 hours of Le Mans testing.

On the subject of petrol-diesel equivalency, at last weekend's Le Mans test the fastest petrol car was a grandfathered Pescarolo whose origins date to the Courage C60 from 2000, that managed a time 9s off the fastest Audi, fitted with evolutions studied before the collapse of the original Pescarolo team. No one can have an idea of what could be achieved by a real works effort with a petrol car. Sure Pescarolo is bitching now about the diesel-petrol equivalency and Rebellion is even bitching about the equivalency between 2011 and grandfathered petrols, but I guess it isn't ACO's role to offset the performance in favour of old cars and little teams...

[Pandamasque]

In all fairness the grandfathered cars (diesel and petrol) do look too quick compared to the new ones. That's another problem. But I sincerely doubt that even with best preparation the HPD ARX-01e is going to be near the old Oreca's Peugeot.

You can bash ARM all you like, but they were the only manufacturer to take a chance this year. If this stays like it is, other (bigger) manufacturers will keep away from Le Mans. Developing a racing diesel engine from scratch doesn't make any sense for most of them.

Yes it was, yet strangely it benefitted from superior capacity compared with the other petrol engines for being an "homologated GT1 engine"...

They 'promised' to put one in production soon. Just like Porsche did with their 4.0L, which is being put in limited production after 2 years of racing.

[Harrynelson]

I am little bit fan of F1 race.But I can surely say that there is not any budget problem with Aston Martin and others.I like the racing season of 2010.Aston Martin will try there best in next season I hope so.

[donskar]

dumrick wrote:

This year, Aston is being even more unspeakably amateurish than before, appearing at races "to test" and managing 15(!) laps overall with 3 cars in the 8 hours of Le Mans testing.

Very disturbing. What do you suppose the problem is:
Budget?
Incompetence?
Other?

[dumrick]

You can bash ARM all you like, but they were the only manufacturer to take a chance this year.

Let's hope the challenge of Porsche or Honda materialises in some new LMP1's next year. I'm guessing Audi and Peugeot being already developing hybrids, real competition must come soon or they will remain a long time behind

Very disturbing. What do you suppose the problem is:
Budget?
Incompetence?
Other?

I have no (educated) clue, but maybe it's a bit harder to make it technically and financially in endurance racing than it is in rallying, the traditional ground of Prodrive. After all, there's a lot of technical expertise required to be successful in rallying but you're still working around pre-established confines, those of the road car it's based on. But Aston also seems to be relying too much on the compromise of the ACO to keep different engine technologies within a few percent performance difference. If they are not managing to run it (they will also be skipping Spa), there's no performance balance they can benefit from to be a win contender. Maybe then it's the HPD performance the best in class already and the balancing will be done for the fastest. Like the HPD, the Aston seems designed for Le Mans, so there's already a benchmark for them to be measured against in June.


I've been working my head around Aston's option to make a Straight-6 turbo 2-liter. Meaning, I remember AER(?) having released a study on how a turbo 2 litre could be more competitive than a 3,4 atmo (AER's problem was rather to make an engine that could last 24 hours). But why 6 cylinders instead of 4? In a restricted formula, rpm usually isn't much of an asset, your engine "choking" eventually, no? In this scenario, isn't it better to profit from a better torque from a bigger-displacing 4 cylinder, or isn't this so relevant on turbo engines, whose torque comes more from the boost?

Restrictor regulations:

- 1 of 42.9 or two of 30.3mm, with 2500 mbar of boost for 2,0l petrol engines with turbo;
- 1 of 43.3 or two of 30.6mm, for 3,4l petrol atmo engines;
- 1 of 47.4 or two of 33.5mm, with 3000 mbar of boost for 3,7l turbodiesel engines.

What do you people think it's Aston's option logic?

[Pandamasque]

Let's hope the challenge of Porsche or Honda materialises in some new LMP1's next year. I'm guessing Audi and Peugeot being already developing hybrids, real competition must come soon or they will remain a long time behind.

Unless ACO stop treating the two factories like sacred cows that won't happen. Diesels are still given a huge advantage. How can a board of a big car company approve a racing programme that's aimed to be the best of the rest?
http://translate.google.com/translate?u ... =&ie=UTF-8

That being said, it has nothing to do with AMR's current problems. I really doubt they can reach anywhere near the car's potential by Le Mans. It doesn't look like they had any proper running to work on setups and stuff, just constantly shaking down various versions of components and solving countless problems. From what I understand the programme was signed off very late (probably the reason they opted for open-top chassis), and then they had more problems then expected. I don't expect them to be the petrol benchmark, so to say. HPD may well be one.

Between both cars AMR only completed twelve laps, with one of the pair completing just a pair of laps and the other managing just ten albeit in detuned form, and developing just 300bhp.

http://www.racecar-engineering.com/cars ... n-amr-one/

PS: Prodrive isn't just about rallying, don't forget they had 2 very successful Le Mans programmes in GT1 class with Ferrari 550 GTS and Aston Martin DBR9.

[dumrick]

Unless ACO stop treating the two factories like sacred cows that won't happen. Diesels are still given a huge advantage. How can a board of a big car company approve a racing programme that's aimed to be the best of the rest?

You'll never know how much of an advantage is given to the Diesels while you don't have any competent or well-funded effort to fight them. As I've mentioned, the ACO made the compromise of keeping different engine technologies within 2% performance difference from each other, what I doubt is, even when this balance is achieved, that any of the current petrol challengers (AMR, HPD, Pescarolo, Ginetta...) has the resources or the know-how to challenge Audi or Peugeot, with their backing, experience and development rate.

Like I wrote, let's just hope that Porsche, Honda or Toyota come to play, to see what real advantages diesels have.

PS: Prodrive isn't just about rallying, don't forget they had 2 very successful Le Mans programmes in GT1 class with Ferrari 550 GTS and Aston Martin DBR9.

That kind of makes my point, really. No real knowledge of any kind of formula or prototype work, where you have to build it from the ground up.

[Carbon Dev Racing]

Just a thought I dont think it is entirely down to budget, alot of people forget about What I call the Historical Data Advantage (HDA) - we use this term in our team. Basically Audi built a winner a couple of years ago so interms of development they had a huge advantage which is a plus. The main reason I think would be as a result of the data/ track experience they have.