2014 24 Hours of Spa (26-27 July)

Mattzel89 · PostPosted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 4:15 pm

I've got an awful sunburn

Rubmifer · PostPosted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 9:49 pm

Weather was fine today. Started of a bit grey, but in the afternoon the sun really did it's job. Such a shame I only managed to come today.

Nissan GT Academy by rubmifer, on Flickr

Fach Auto Tech Porsche GT3R by rubmifer, on Flickr

BMW Sports TrophyTeam Marc VDS by rubmifer, on Flickr

TDS Racing by rubmifer, on Flickr

BMW Sports Team Marc VDS byrubmifer, on Flickr

MP Motorsport AMR by rubmifer, on Flickr

Delahaye Racing by rubmifer, on Flickr

StanV · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 12:45 am

One of the most insane races I've ever seen, both in terms of dramatic and unnecessarily hard accidents as well as incredible racing. Will stay in my mind for a long, long time.

To me the #111/#333 incident seems to be 'separate' from the utter chaos at Raidillion earlier (same goes for Mullen's crash). All of the stuff happening on Eau Rouge has been nicely summed up by Andy Jaenen, someone with loads of experience both in driving and in guiding Belgian racing talent:

Quote:

1. The modern GT3 cars are about as fast as the GT1 cars about 6/7 years ago. All 61 cars can produce about the same laptime because of the Balance of Performance. Over 200 drivers had very fast machines, but are they able to control them?
2. The FIA status of driver gives extra pressure. As a gold driver you have no excuses to drive the 40th fastest laptime in this field, even in a 24 hour race. About 50 teams had to put bronze drivers in these super fast machines.
3. A bronze driver has not the experience nor the ability to drive a fast downforce car within 2 seconds of the platinum driver. But thanks to the data from his golden co driver, he is shown he can stay flat out at Blanchimont and only has to lift a little bit at Eau Rouge. When he tries it he sees the downforce of the car can handle it. But does he feel how close he is to the limit? Can he control it at the limit?
4. At the start the top drivers are at the wheel. From the second stint the bronze drivers are put in the car to put in some laps before it gets dark. This was when the problems started. They don't feel when a tire is warm enough to push. They can't read the track as well. But they just took over from a pro driver lapping at 2'22 and don't want to be embaressed by driving only 2'30 and drop back.
5. In the mean time other pro drivers are still pushing and don't want to be held up by those slow bronze drivers, so they take risks while passing.
6. A GT3 car back in 2007 lapped Spa in 2'26". Nowadays they are not faster on the straight but have huge downforce what increases their corner speed and drive 2'18" laptimes. All incidents happened at the high speed corners.
7. Why do formula drivers start in F Renault, F Ford and step up the ladder after a good year to end up with a few in the high downforce F1, GP2, WSR... and in GT racing, in every PRO-AM team you will have an Alonso joined by a top GP2 driver and obligatory 2 F Renault drivers with only little experience... Of course they can't handle and feel the high downforce GT3 car like a Pro, but they are pushed to follow their example.
8. As a motorsport fan, ex driver and ex flag marshall, I am worried about the respect for yellow flags...
9.Possible sollution is to continue this level of cars for the PRO class but cut the power/downforce for the PRO-AM class.
10. Speed differences are common in 24 hour races. Having 60 cars at same speed causes more problems than 20 very fast cars, 20 semi fast and 20 slower cars. The pressure on a bronze driver will be less in a semi fast or slower car. And the best bronze guys will be able to handle a top class car after some years of experience, but don't make everyone do it...

ellis · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 8:01 am

Don't really agree with any of what is said in that. It's very condescending tbh.

The cars have modern traction control and ABS, which makes them tamer beasts to drive than the old GT1 cars.

Pro drivers take risks when passing. Welcome to multi-class racing. So the solution is to make a bigger speed difference? Not sure I agree with that because it solves nothing, and completely ignores half of his own argument. If the Am driver is in the Pro-Am class and the Pro driver does a 2:22 and he jumps in, he's still going to aim for the 2:22 isn't he? Just because his car is slower, doesn't mean he suddenly doesn't care about his co-drivers time? Cutting the downforce and power won't make a huge difference. It's still a high downforce GT car with a lot of power. They'll just be doing the same thing at a very slightly reduced speed.

"All incidents happened in high speed corners", well no they didn't. There were many slow speed incidents too. But high speed incidents cause bigger crashes. Should the incidents at low speed happened at different points of the circuit, then we'd have huge crashes. As it stands, we had many incidents in the low speed corners, and even Pro v Pro drivers making mistakes in them.

If you don't want Bronze drivers there then fine, limit the field. But at that point you lose a LOT of cars. And it's not like GT racing hasn't been filled with gentleman drivers for decades..

StanV · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 12:03 pm

The Eau Rouge incidents were all either over-correcting or the result of cold tyres after a safety car. His points is exactly the fact that TC and the improved downforce gives a false sense of safety to people that don't drive these cars every week. It's most likely easier to drive the car to its limit, but once you go over it, it goes bad really quickly.

The slower classes is something I've been thinking about since last year's 65 car grid as well. A GTR-car is in essence able to drive the same laptimes as the ones at the front, so you get this trend of guys over-driving trying to keep up with the Pro Cup cars. I spoke to a few drivers last year that noticed how many of those drivers were struggling to keep the car on the road after going past them.

However, the biggest issue for me is how drivers are handling yellow flags recently. This counts for every series as well.

StanV · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 12:38 pm

On a more hilarious note, these scenes currently happening in the paddock of Spa:
https://t.co/b2Kqyebkyp

Cheeveer · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 12:45 pm

At first I didn't see the upside down car at the bottom there. It's like Jurassic Park combined with the 2nd Jurassic Park, only without the dinosaurs.

Anyway, aren't GT4 cars good enough for bronze drivers? Welp, Carl Rosenblad spun off with an R8 in Gentleman's Trophy early on, and he has huge amount of experience in F3000, GT1-cars (both 1st and 2nd Gen.) among a lot of other stuff. The level of preparation in the lesser teams will make those cars more of a handful too.

Mattzel89 · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 1:25 pm

StanV wrote:

On a more hilarious note, these scenes currently happening in the paddock of Spa:
https://t.co/b2Kqyebkyp

Must be the TBK curse

ellis · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 1:44 pm

I'm still not really sure the arguments of GTR Class hold as much water as has been stated.

First accident wasn't cold tyres, it was a typical Eau Rouge accident. It was Simon Knap, who has been driving GT3 cars for 3 years, with some GT4 events in there too. Does he fit the description of a potentially dangerous lower quality driver? Not really, he's been fine for years, he's just had a crash.

Second one was Karim Ojjeh. He has a class win at Le Mans in LMP2 and is generally a safe pair of hands. He doesn't fit the description of a potentially dangerous lower quality driver either.

Marcus Mahy is the first candidiate for first potentially unsafe driver, however we haven't seen that accident at all. However his accident was with Vadim Kogay, which is where alarm bells ring. He was the moron in the green Ferrari at Monza. However, he would be dangerous should he be given a motorised scooter, nevermind a car. So do you really want a big speed difference with Kogay in the unpredictable slow car? I don't.

The other accident was Tim Mullen, who is as safe as a safe thing on national safety day. He really isn't a problem at all.

So looking at these accidents, what problem are we trying to solve really? Is it that Gentleman Drivers shouldn't be given such powerful cars because they can't handle them? Well frankly, the only difference between the Spa 24 and a generic IndyCar race was that at Spa the drivers had the accidents at high speed, whilst IndyCar they tend to have ridiculous and stupid accidents after every safety car at low speed. The cause is the same, in that the drivers can't handle the cars properly..so should we detune the IndyCars until they stop crashing?

The only issue I really have with Spa is how the drivers treated yellow flags, however as you said, that is far more of a worldwide issue and it needs looked at before someone is killed. In terms of the driving standards and causes of accidents, we had 4 large accidents, only one of which involved these potentially dangerous lower quality drivers. Maybe the real cause is that in endurance racing of the past, you preserved the car. Todays cars are so reliable that you have to drive at 100% if you want to win. And asking 180-200 drivers to be perfect, for 24 hours, on one of the most difficult courses in the world, is not going to happen.

Gaara · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 1:54 pm

Knap just made an honest mistake, too much kerb and unsettled the car. Can happen to any one.

Mahy as it turns out has done VLN and the Nurbugring 24hrs, plus plenty of other races in historics and endurance. He's got plenty of experience but can't find anything from before '08.

Kogy however has only been racing since 2012.

StanV · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 6:52 pm

It wasn't Knap though for the first crash, it was Vyacheslav Maleev in the SMP Ferrari. Knap was on the car that caused the multi-car accident, and that one was piloted by Andrew Danyliw at the time. He also went off during practice, causing a red flag. Of course the Mullen crash has nothing to do with lack of experience (I also mentioned that I didn't really count that one). To be fair, that accident seems like the weirdest of them all. I have no idea what happened there (mechanical?): you see him driving all by himself in front of the pack and suddenly he's in the barriers at a really weird place to go off.

ellis wrote:

Maybe the real cause is that in endurance racing of the past, you preserved the car. Todays cars are so reliable that you have to drive at 100% if you want to win. And asking 180-200 drivers to be perfect, for 24 hours, on one of the most difficult courses in the world, is not going to happen.

This is also a very good point.

But I think we can agree on the premise that first and foremost, something needs to be done about the yellow flags. Cars still kept coming in full speed after more than 5 seconds of yellow all over the place for that Danyliw incident, which is really worrying.

Btw, better picture of the truck-over-the-railing in the paddock:

Rubmifer · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 7:42 pm

Seriously, what happened there? Did the truck push the car of the edge or something?

StanV · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 7:46 pm

AF Corse truck without the handbrake on I think. All I really know is that the car was parked in front of the truck and got pushed off the edge. Nobody injured and lots of laughs, luckily.

Rubmifer · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 10:01 pm

Not so many laughs for the owner of the car that got pushed over though.

Gaara · PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 10:03 pm

Yeaa was thinking the same. I certainly wouldn't be laughing if it was my car.

But if it had been a hire car, maybe.

bmwpower86 · PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:21 pm

Here are some of pictures i´ve taken during on saturday

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... a146315620

StanV · PostPosted: Wed Jul 30, 2014 7:55 pm

What to do when you nail Eau Rouge? Cheer!

Mattzel89 · PostPosted: Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:48 pm

Very good point by Darren Turner

https://twitter.com/DarrenTurner007/sta ... 7673637888

Quote:

Wonder if Spa could paint the barriers a different colour from Red & Yellow to make it easier to spot the flags?! Just an idea...

deggis · PostPosted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 1:26 am

Traditionally or at least for a long before they and curbs were red & white. Maybe yellow color was cheaper or something.

StanV · PostPosted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 1:42 am

It's because of the Shell sponsorship for Formula 1.

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2014 24 Hours of Spa (26-27 July)

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