TBK-Light.com

Too many people using Skype and Twitter instead ¬.¬

Toyota board room people should take a long, hard look at how they ended up once again giving so restricted budget (3rd car would have made no difference [unlike last year] but maybe with more development the car would have been a bigger evolution). Maybe this is a wake up call, until now they've achieved too much with too little and back in 2012 too soon.

Does anyone know how Nissan's budget compares to Toyota, actually? Maybe it's out there somewhere, but a bit too lazy to search.

Was their budget bigger last year? If they could have the upper hand like that then, with the same budget differential to Porsche and Audi, then the question is "why the worse job this year?"

Also, did BMW completely dismiss the LMP1 rumours during the weekend?

There are no specific figures from this or last year but seems to be a consensus that they've always had considerably smaller budget, they've said it themselves too. Toyota wasn't slower than they were year ago, they were faster without even pushing that much (since the strategy was different) it is just that Audi and Porsche improved so much more during the winter and did revised cars while Toyota mainly optimised, which is probably partly explained by the budget.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119388
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119439

Basically they threw in the towel, and concerante on 2016. Going to be fun rest of the season for the team. If they don't even end up skipping races (just my doom & gloom scenario) which would pretty alarming for WEC.


http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119395

Last year Toyota had the fuel flow BoP in their advantage and that hurted Audi very much who was also on the 2MJ. Porsche was on 6MJ, as Toyota, but it was their first year. Even with all this, Audi managed to be a bit faster than Toyota at Le Mans, last year, too. Toyota was overall the best car on WEC but not at Sarthe.

Toyota is the only one that stayed on the same ERS capability this year. Plus, their aero is not as developed, so it's no surprise their pace was 3s slower than the VAG cars

Porsche have hit the ceiling being on the 8MJ, but Audi still have a LOT to improve on ERS alone. Audi is closer to the aero ceiling, though.

We'll make some noise to the ACO so that they don't slow down the cars and we can see how much the gains will be for next year. If they wanna bring the ax, let it be in 2017.

The Nissan that is hopeless, imho. The car is too slow in cornering, the whole concept is wrong, again imho. The rear tires are too small and that jeopardize their grip far too much. They already are quick on straights but I can't see them fixing the car for the remainder of the track

Eh? Toyota was in quite comfortable lead until the weirdest and most invisible DNF ever (FIA monitoring box which failed and melted a wiring loom), if I remember correctly it was from pace alone as the 2nd place Audi's turbo problem came only after that.


Porsche might in reality outputting anywhere between 6 and 8 MJ, so more might come and Audi's problem of bigger MJ class will continue to be weight.


Just accept the changes.


I'm not really defending them, but this doesn't really tell much about the concept itself: it's designed to be 8MJ AWD, and now it was a 0MJ FWD. It might be still slow next year, but certainly not this slow and will certainly never be fastest in the corners.

Nah, skype barely happened, not gonna bother with it any more tbh, its time seems to have passed.

Either that or you all hate me and had a super secret VIP FORUM chat without me, meh.

Not going to bother in the future,people have probably grown up and real life takes preference, which is fair enough.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

From what I remember, Audi #1 had problems and stayed some minutes in the garage to fix it(so did the #2), maybe that happened even twice. What I know for sure is that Lotterer had a stint, that I was following closely, which was significantly faster than anything Toyota did. To give an idea, Audi's ideal race lap is 3.21.7, which is the same laptime of Nakajima's pole(an ideal qualifying lap). So, Audi's race pace was on par with Toyota's qualifying pace.

We know that Porsche is recovering way more energy than Audi as it's visible from low speed acceleration(when both are on hydrid+ICE power). Audi definitely has way more to improve on that. On tentenths, it has been posted many ways to which Audi may go to up to 6MJ. Obviously, Porsche has a lot of room for improvement in aero, so, I'm not saying Audi will necessarily dominate next year


There are not even stablished changes for me to accept, just speculation and maybe an indication from a couple of people I won't conform to it. I only accept changes for the better. Why slow them down, anyway?! The LMP1s being some 3s faster, next year, wouldn't be the decisive factor whether someones dies or not. ACO doesn't need to fix what's not broken

I read wikipedia race summary, at least it only mentioned the fuel injector problem for #1 and turbocharger problem for #2, the last one happeing after Toyota DFN at which point the #2 was 2nd placed.


Beaumesnil's mouth is pretty reliable source (http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/lmp1 ... n-in-2016/). Small adjustments to the fuel flow table will do it.


If they always become only faster annually, where is the limit then? The intent was never to be this fast but since once again engineers were more clever than the rulebook. Or actually the point is not about making them slower, but maintaining approximate current speeds which isn't possible unless you change something because there is always annual evolution. The difference won't be big, couple of secs (race / avg pace), in fact it can't be a big difference since GT(E) Premium is going to get faster and so is LMP2 (=the passing problem).

I saw that before. He says they already talked about it but the hammer is not down, yet. At least I think it's important for the fans that don't wanna see an ax to manifest themselves and make ACO knows this won't be a welcomed changed for a part of the spectators. Fans are the real bosses here(no different than any other thing, actually), without us, there is no Le Mans

So what if they grew beyond what was expected? Let it be, I say. Regulations always impose limits, so don't worry, the rate of improvement won't be as big every year. That's why I want 2016 to be left alone, let's see first how much more they can improve. If they improve another 5s, then, ok, slow it down for 2017. Afterall, it would mean 10s over two years.

I still can't see how a FWD car can race with others using AWD and MR configuration as power output on front wheels is so high that understeering is unavoidable, even with aerodynamic tweaks

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

You will watch the race next year and people will attend the race and new attendane records will be set regardless of changes, so... I don't remember much whining about speeds after 2008/2009 or 2011 when the speeds dropped last time more significantly. WEC's current growth generally has little to do with the increased speeds.


Then there will be a big drop off in speed at once, which could be an issue because ~10 secs is something you can see with your own eyes too. 2-3 seconds, not so easily and certainly not on tv.

I think that they will just bow out, honestly. I could see them just doing WRC and NASCAR, and maybe if the new Supra comes out, they'll do GTE, but I don't think they're going to ramp it up. Once the new regs hit, I bet they'll be gone.

_________________

I found these on imgur: http://imgur.com/a/8dHPH

Not sure who is the photographer ... maybe somebody here can shed a light ?

Jiminy Cricket! That's quite the collection of photos

_________________
Lurking around since 28/06/2002

Definitely not from the same photographer since there are pictures that were taken at the same time.

Cool photo of the echelon grid, posted by Julian Roberts in the Midweek Motorsports Listeners Collective group on facebook.