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Human Grand Prix posted:The RT24-P did respectably, but it's still the slowest of the DPis. It was more or less equivalent to the Nissans and Acuras besides Dane Cameron's mega lap toward the end. If they're not competitive this year, it shouldn't be due to lack of pace (see also: 2016 season with the old Lola and the AER 2.0T, where the cars were extremely quick but they still never won)
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Jan 24, 2018 01:04
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MazeOfTzeentch posted:Does anyone know if BAR1 finally got their update package from Multimatic? I think the Mazdas actually lost some boost at the top and bottom end in exchange for a higher redline (meaning wider mid range to work with) and a big weight reduction. It should be an overall improvement but there were some unspecified aero changes as well that may be significant
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Jan 24, 2018 02:10
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What is BMW even doing. All of their latest racecars are depressing attempts to graft their motorsports heritage onto product that was never conceived for it and resists it at every turn. Most of racing is marketing anyway but BMW makes the cynicism of it all utterly transparent in their quest to sell ///M merchandise to accountants and optometrists who want people to ascribe the energy and bravado of sports cars to them without the inconvenience of any of actual sport in their cars Anyway, speaking of BMW, Ashley Freiberg finally got a ride in the Continental Tire Sportscar Challenge again, this time behind the wheel of an R8 GT4 alongside Gosia Rdest. In honor of the two women drivers, the livery incorporates the old Audi Sport colors in the style of Michele Mouton's ur-Quattro. Cool as hell.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:38
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orange juche posted:Mechanical gremlins kept both them from running on the pace, and in the case of #70 it didn't even leave the garage. I think the #22 Nissan did go out but crashed and had to retire from qualifying. The #77 Mazda definitely did not go out, apparently the team saw some telemetry during practice 2 that made them bring it into the garage yet again.
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Jan 26, 2018 00:24
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drgitlin posted:I had to turn down an invite to go this year, which made me sad but at the same time I’ve been traveling every week this month and am away next week too. That one will be of interest, I’m going to Charlotte to take a look at the technology behind NASCAR. You should've just bought SpeedSource's amazing simulator at the auction a month ago
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Jan 26, 2018 04:41
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That was a pretty disappointing 24 overall, there was more dumb poo poo happening actual good moments. Constant tire problems in the right rear that nobody can figure out, Cadillacs still fast enough to go 1-2 despite their engines trying to self-destruct, only half the GTLM cars were competitive and the Fords were clearly way better than anyone else, Land drawing that huge penalty, both Nissans going from strong at the end of last year to double DNFs, no yellow flags to offset the shaky early BoP, Mazda going to all the trouble of the Joest partnership to end up exactly where they started, Juan Pablo trying to punt GTD cars off the track again... I know Daytona is an aberration of a track and doesn't always forecast the whole season, but I hope things get a lot more interesting than this at Sebring and beyond.
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Jan 28, 2018 22:30
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harperdc posted:that was the first race for the new BMW, give them some credit. and it's not the same case as the Acura LMPs, it's much harder -- DPi is the case where the only big "differences" from global P2 to the specific DPi were engine (which has been run before and well established) and some aero bits (to make it look like the brand but not really have a major impact). The chassis and such has already been sorted. There's no reason not to give the BMWs credit for the reliability of the cars, which was impressive for a first time outing, but they already got a poo poo ton of favorable BoP adjustments after the Roar and they still were way off the pace. It comes out in the wash anyway, just like how the M6 GTLM was kind of crappy for a long time but eventually got so many breaks that it became competitive at the end of last year, but it's a bad look for a manufacturer to show up with a brand new car that is a non-entity in the actual race. You want your hot new global race car to come out, look stupidly fast, and eventually get knocked back down to earth by BoP adjustments- but hopefully not before winning a few races. Anyway I think the Fords will look a lot closer to the rest of the field at Sebring and beyond. The GT was built to win at Le Mans and those strengths play particularly well at Daytona. No doubt Penske is going to be competitive this year. Not that anyone expected any less, but they showed up fully formed and ready to fight. JPM needs to get a loving grip though and respect the GTD traffic or he's going to end up undermining his team through penalties, or worse. Joest Mazda was really just embarrassing. I still can't believe they overhauled the whole car and program and ended up with the archetypal contemporary Mazda endurance race performance: one car on fire, the other limping along until it goes into the garage for good, and punctuated with horrible pit lane mistakes along the way. I doubt the Riley-Multimatic chassis is going anywhere before the 2022 FIA LMP2 regulations are written, but if I'm running that program, I'm already starting the preliminaries on finding a new engine partner for next year or begging the mothership to do a feasibility study on building a race engine in-house. Even if they somehow manage to find a way to get the AER 2.0T to deliver the performance they ask of it with acceptable reliability this year, how much more can you ask of it the next year when all the competition ups their games again? an oddly awful oud fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 04:06
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SPACE HOMOS posted:
mazdafandom.jpg
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Jan 31, 2018 01:03
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So it turns out that Land Motorsport drew that insane 5-minute stop & hold penalty because they figured out how to arrange the fuel tank ballast in such a way as to reduce turbulence in the fuel tank, allowing them to fuel faster than the competition. There is no regulation about how the fuel tank ballast is set up, and all the regulated parts like the fuel tank restrictor were still in spec. It was a bit of clever Smokey Yunick engineering, violating the spirit of the BoP rules without actually violating the letter. Which makes IMSA's decision to end their race with that penalty even more questionable: http://www.racer.com/imsa/item/147156-pruett-the-strange-land-motorsport-penalty
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Feb 2, 2018 04:50
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It's logical for the WEC to do this in terms of desperation to keep eyes on the series, but it's going to piss off a lot of the other teams that show up to race. They're so desperate to avoid alienating Toyota that they're going to alienate several other drivers and teams instead, which may not be as instantly disastrous, but is still terrible for the long-term health of the WEC. I know a lot of teams still have their grievances with IMSA but the FIA-ACO seems to go out of its way to piss people off and that's not going to entice teams to stick around. I guess there must be enough fans who think differently but I personally could not give any less of a poo poo about Alonso at Fuji. Toyota hiring F1 talent to beat up on a bunch of privateers between sitting red-flagged for rain is not my idea of an especially interesting race.
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Feb 11, 2018 18:45
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Even in more recent racing Katherine Legge goes full kamikaze when pissed off so in conclusion, motorsport is a land of contrasts
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Feb 13, 2018 04:18
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Time for everybody to set their watches, the #55 Mazda DPi caught fire during the Sebring test today
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Feb 23, 2018 01:32
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drgitlin posted:There is a feature in this month’s Racecar Engineering about the Mazda, details some of the reasons why last year’s car was so terrible. Sounds like a moron laid out the radiators and cooling systems and Joest had to unfuck a lot of that, plus the rear suspension. The extreme crapluence of the Riley is well-known issue at this point, the problem is that the car has shown improved pace but no improved reliability so far for all the work that has gone into it. It's starting to look like a McLaren-Honda situation with the Riley and AER motor, where you have a lousy powerplant made far worse by terrible packaging. What can Mazda even do about it? They said they want to race what they sell, so that rules out buying a racing V8 from whomever. So they go with 4 cylinders and a turbo, but they're up against V8s by ECR and Gibson and turbo V6s by Nissan and Acura, so all can you do is turn up the boost further and further and that's like bringing a knife to a swordfight and trying to compensate by welding increasingly longer pieces of metal to the sharp end. It's not like dropping a rotary in would help either if the engine thermal management is already that questionable, given how hot rotaries run. Not to mention it would disqualify them from going back to Le Mans in a future DPi-LMP2 harmonization assuming the rotary ban wasn't rescinded. Probably the best case scenario would be Hiroshima developing an all new, larger-displacement turbo 4 for use in the prototype and upcoming Mazda3 TCR car, but that's a pipe dream.
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Feb 24, 2018 00:10
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Schlesische posted:There was a rotary ban? Under ACO rules? Interesting, I haven't actually read the ACO engine regs lately but I'd always heard the rotary was banned after '91 and took it as gospel. And of course the rotary probably isn't an actual improvement over a turbo 4, but if you're going to lose literally all the time, you may as well do it while making a hilariously loud and antisocial buzzsaw noise and shooting flame
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Feb 24, 2018 14:26
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Must've been giving away extra cans of paint when Audi Sport closed their program
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Mar 7, 2018 12:51
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iospace posted:Worked for Aston Martin at Le Mans last year It worked for the M6 GTLM, this is just history repeating itself
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Mar 9, 2018 13:18
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I don't think pace is going to be the issue for the Mazdas this year, it's going to be maintaining their pace for 12 hours without blowing the engine up
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Mar 16, 2018 03:36
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That end for Mazda was heartbreaking but holy poo poo have they improved this program in just one race. They took advantage of their competitors' misfortunes in some cases but that looked like a competent race team at pretty much every turn Also I want to publicly apologize to Harry Tincknell about thinking he was a dumb hire, the guy is a beast and gently caress the FIA for making him go to Fuji instead of PLM
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Mar 18, 2018 14:48
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if they manage to balance the Toyota and the rest of the LMP1 field it will be a drat miracle what's their intention, just let the TS050 pull on everyone coming out of the corners with its hybrid system and then hope the non-hybrids are fast enough in the straights to run it down?
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Apr 7, 2018 13:25
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do this with all the LMP1Hs imo someone get the R18 out of mothballs
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Apr 9, 2018 11:45
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the speed of the 919 Evo is breathtaking and it's a major accomplishment, but I can't see that record standing after this year's F1 qualifying. those cars are definitely going to find a second over last year
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Apr 10, 2018 02:38
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Another processional Long Beach, like the soup course in the middle of the season-long banquet. Bring on Mid-Ohio already It's really starting to look like the Acuras are hard on their tires, they seem to be really racy at the beginning of every stint so far this year and then 20 laps later, they're losing ground to the Cadillacs and Mazdas in a big way I'm sure they're going to win a race at some point but the Cadillac is still the package to beat when it's not cooking its own motor Also the DPis are all still clearly better than the P2s, time for another round of horsepower reductions
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Apr 15, 2018 04:03
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MazeOfTzeentch posted:I think the big problem with DPis at the street circuits is that dampers are an open development item for DPi and spec homologation for P2, which gives then a fairly significant advantage over the P2s on bumpy circuits like Sebring, Long Beach, and Detroit That is a fantastic point. The two specs seemed a lot closer at Daytona than they have since
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Apr 15, 2018 20:40
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Cooper MacNeil is the racing equivalent of those teenage girls whose wealthy fathers pay obscene amounts of money to music producers to transform their mediocre singing into a full-blown vanity album
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Apr 22, 2018 13:04
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MazeOfTzeentch posted:I'm gonna be at Mid-Ohio on Saturday and Sunday, hopefully dodging the rain slated for Friday. Otherwise the weekend should be nice, with a chance for late-race CHAOS: Rain makes for entertainment but thunderstorms on race day are hateful, getting the black flag for lightning in a timed race is just pure poo poo
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May 4, 2018 00:28
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In racing news in which the winner isn't a foregone conclusion, Acura Penske swept the front row at Mid-Ohio qualifying today and Mazda Joest swept the second row We may actually see one of these teams finally score a win tomorrow, probably Penske but the Acuras may eat their tires too quickly and fall off the pace late in the stint, so I'm hyped
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May 5, 2018 21:56
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I wonder if there's going to be any controversy over Pipo Derani and Colin Braun not giving way for JPM and Oliver Jarvis on their charges toward the front. No question they both got checked up badly by lapped cars while trying to catch the #7
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May 6, 2018 23:29
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drgitlin posted:If anyone has questions for Roger Penske or Art St Cyr about the DPi program, post them in this thread and I’ll see about asking them at Belle Isle in a couple of weeks. Why is your car so loving ugly
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May 24, 2018 11:54
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SPM in IndyCar just fired Leena Gade, so it looks like she'll be a free agent just in time for WEC teams preparing for Le Mans
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May 25, 2018 03:09
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Xisticide posted:Someone at Porsche remembered that they used to have awesome liveries : Finally an actual reason to watch Le Mans this year.
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Jun 2, 2018 16:11
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Xisticide posted:Oh Mazda The 55 snapping a driveshaft was a real bummer but I can't be too upset about the way the 77 went down. The car obviously didn't have the pace to frontrun so trying to do one less pit stop was about the only legitimate way to have any chance of contention at the end. It went down in flames but it was at least a strategy of some kind. At least somebody competent is in charge of the team, which is a big change from the last couple years Anyway, the race wasn't especially interesting but it's still better than Monaco. Bring on Watkins Glen and the NAEC teams
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Jun 2, 2018 22:51
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Without roadgoing homologation specials, I don't see much to be excited about when it comes to prototypes that look like road cars. It's just making aerodynamics less effective in most cases. I guess that's the point, so you don't need a wind tunnel every step of the way to be competitive, but it's not exactly a cause for celebration in and of itself
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Jun 7, 2018 23:30
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Cygni posted:Doesnt sound too good that IMSA will re-adopt the top class: The WEC is more expensive on a support/logistics side than IMSA since they travel much further, but even throwing that out with the exception of going to Le Mans once per year, it'll still probably be too much for half the teams. Cadillac is probably willing to spend big, and if they build something suitable to race in the WEC, then why not race there instead? Their primary market is Asia anyway so winning big in places like Shanghai and Bahrain suits them well. Acura is in a weird place where they exist pretty much everywhere but Europe, but they'd probably be willing to spend money to go into the WEC as well if they're going to have to spend that much more for North America alone. Mazda almost certainly can't afford to spend even more money on their prototype program unless Joest starts winning races and raising their profile enough to get Hiroshima directly involved, and Nissan Motorsports is nearly an oxymoron at this point and they'd probably make ESM pick up the tab for a more expensive program. IMSA really has nothing to gain right by now adopting this proposed LMP1 regulation. They'd more likely lose teams than gain them.
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Jun 16, 2018 02:39
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This was a Le Mans to forget
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Jun 17, 2018 14:14
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Wirth1000 posted:Congratulations, Toyota. I kinda hope this happens because gently caress the ACO
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Jun 17, 2018 15:18
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Just nullify all this year's Le Mans results and force them to run the race again. This time use a giant roulette wheel to determine who gets the obvious and blatant BoP advantage. Make the Pink Pig coat their steering wheel with bacon grease. Lash Chip Ganassi to the Ferris wheel. Force the hybrids to stop and plug in to a wall socket every 15 laps and make Alonso wear a helmet with a bunch of dicks pointing at his face design. Make Cooper MacNeil turn laps with Ted DiBiase riding shotgun
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Jun 19, 2018 02:09
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As usual, VW really does not gently caress around when it comes to motorsport. I wish they weren't honest-to-god evil bureaucrats of the worst Teutonic stereotype and were instead people you could actually feel good about rooting for
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Jun 25, 2018 02:17
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Going to be 95 loving degrees at Watkins Glen this Sunday. I wonder if the Cadillacs fixed their cooling system issues from Daytona yet
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Jun 28, 2018 02:34
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Holy poo poo that thing jumps to hyperspace out of corners
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Jun 29, 2018 13:26
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Well that was a really great race in really oppressive heat. I can't believe Dane Cameron did a triple stint, even early in the day before it started to feel like the surface of the sun It was pretty wild to see the LMP2 cars as the main contenders, other than the #6 Acura every other DPi seemed to struggle with either pace likely from engine temp management (Cadillac), utter engine failure (Nissan), or boneheaded pit lane mistakes possibly from heat stroke (Mazda) GTLM was also awesome, not sure what the problem with the M8s was all of a sudden but the rest were very evenly matched all race long Nice to see Turner win in GTD, grats to Katherine Legge and Alvaro Parente for another awesome drive, I don't know what happened to Wright at the end after they were doing really well for once, and I can't wait to read the postmortem on the Land penalty because that's going to go down as either an epic petulant meltdown over their own fuckup or an epic bad call by the stewards if they actually did make it into the pits before they closed
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Jul 3, 2018 00:25
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