April 17. The 6 hours of Silverstone.

[Jason Watt]

It wasn't great in terms of speed, but I will take the smooth overall operation. Drivers all stayed out of trouble except Franchitti getting clipper by the 919, pit ran smooth, cars were reliable.

They'll get back boost and lose some of the weight eventually. People need to remember, for this first race, the GT was penalized with a weight of 1260 kg, and the 488 was only 1240kg and the Astons were a paltry 1230kg. That's in addition to the GT losing boost at all RPM.

Those 488s were running around with 45 less lbs. That will be addressed. Not sure if the 488 boost level was penalized similarly to the GT.

FWIW, when the Corvette gets to run at Le Mans, they've been granted a 1240kg weight as well. That should tell you something, that seeing what they've seen, the FIA still chose to load the GT full of ballast.

It's all sandbagging from Ford before Le Mans. Why show the full potential now?? :wink

 

[RALPHIE]

It's all sandbagging from Ford before Le Mans. Why show the full potential now?? :wink

I hope you're right, because -

Out of the 7 cars LMGTE, 2 were sidelined with major problems which put them 11 and 14 laps behind, leaving 5 cars in contention. The Ford GTs were 4th & 5th, 2 laps behind the leading Ferrari and the 2nd place Ferrari had a 3-minute penalty....

View attachment 41964

 

[Vince H]

Both Fords ran trouble free in my opinion. All lining up for Le Mans.

Vince H

 

[dbk]

Crazy day. One of the 919s escapes doing somersaults by the narrowest of margins, one of the new Audis blows off it's fire system sitting dead in the middle of the track, an Audi ultimately ends up taking the win...only to be declared illegal hours later, handing the win to Porsche.

 

[dbk]

It seems the rules are controlled by those in power and and a lot of gamesmanship is going on to try gain advantage. Is this fair racing or something else? Do the people setting the rules get the cars telemetry data during the race? I can see a lot possibilities with engine management software to make the cars appear to under perform and with some tweaking they suddenly come to life.

There is a lot of gamesmanship. Everyone lobbies all the time. This year is probably worse than others because Ford wants to win LM, and everyone wants to stop them, so it's unlikely you'll see real flat out performance until June, and in the meantime everyone will say this and that is unfair. There's a lot of grumbling that the GT is a cheater car, which I find dumb because building a road car that is racy isn't cheating any more than building a race car based-off a 4,500 lb BMW M6 is.

Yes, they have Bosch data loggers that cost about $18,000 per car in every car. It is obvious when drivers aren't driving flat out (IMSA claimed literally every car in the field was sandbagging at the test prior to Daytona) and there's minimal sandbagging to be done through calibration. If they think you aren't running as hard as you can or your car is too fast at baseline, you get what the GT has, which is 20-30kg of ballast and a power reduction.

You can see below, the GT has been made the heaviest car in the field, and it's maximum boost pressure ratio is lower than the 488 (which obviously doesn't tell the whole story, but we know they reduced the GTs power relative to the IMSA cars). That makes yesterday's result unsurprising. What is surprising is that this was the table for the test at Circuit Paul Ricard, the FIA looked at everything and chose not to change anything for the Silverstone race. 488 was faster at Prologue, no changes were made, no shock 488 was faster at the actual race.

 

[dbk]

Blurry doc, here's what it says. 1240 kg is class baseline. GT got 20kg added in, Aston 10kg removed, all others stay the same.

Aston Martin Vantage - 1230 kg (-10 kg)
Porsche 911 RSR - 1240 kg
Corvette C7.R - 1240 kg
Ferrari 488 - 1240 kg
Ford GT - 1260 kg (+20 kg)


And maximum boost pressure ratios at specific RPM.



Honestly I don't think it breaks Ford's heart to be saddled with the penalties and slow now, so long as they get adjusted back to baseline for LM. The timing is important for their goals.

 

[w.a.nelson]

Still wish you could run what ya brung. If it's too light and falls apart, or too much boost and blows up, that's your bad. If, as Colin Chapman said, it crosses the finish line and than falls apart; the engine holds together and it goes like stink, then you just might have won yourself a race.

 

[Matt]

Still wish you could run what ya brung. If it's too light and falls apart, or too much boost and blows up, that's your bad. If, as Colin Chapman said, it crosses the finish line and than falls apart; the engine holds together and it goes like stink, then you just might have won yourself a race.

Although I agree, I also understand the need for driver/spectator/corner worker safety, which is an inverse operation of speed.

What about this as a race series concept: Showroom stock only (must have OEM provision for harness). Only one set of tires per race. lap times and number of laps completed are determiners of winner.

That's as far as I got before getting bored with the idea. LOL

 

[fordification]

Can't wait to watch the race when it gets uploaded.