[WEC] Rebellion Racing

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

The R-One is probably the least developed P1 car I have ever seen run 3 full seasons. (The CLM is a piece of crap, but they definitely bring new and trendy bits). I've never seen a supposedly major team take several months just to swap engines.

Bringing Pescarolo down to them is an insult. That team was doing extensive in house development by its 4th year and was a legitimate constructor within around twice that. In that time frame Rebellion is lucky to be able to come up with some diveplanes. But they either can't or won't pay ORECA to continue working on it either.

Times aren't the same anymore. What Pescarolo did in the past was great, but they couldn't keep up and couldn't afford it and now they aren't here anymore. And the last time those teams raced together (2012 LM24), the in-housed developed Pescarolo (with an AMR-One Tub) was 7 seconds slower than the Rebellion. It's all very good making your own parts, but if you're that far off then the result isn't any good is it?

[Coach Ep]

Also keep in mind a world championship requires substantial more funds - most privateers disappeared when the series went from a local series (ELMS) to global level.

A partial NA campaign in P2 should be significantly cheaper than the full WEC, even if in combination with the ELMS.

[carbsmith]

Obviously what Pescarolo did is more difficult now, but it's still totally unfair to say Rebellion is basically the same.

[CTD]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Obviously what Pescarolo did is more difficult now, but it's still totally unfair to say Rebellion is basically the same.

Who has said they are basically the same?

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Obviously what Pescarolo did is more difficult now, but it's still totally unfair to say Rebellion is basically the same.

Well nobody said they were the same, just asked what the difference between privateers is. In the examples, Racing for Holland was used and they also never really did their own development.

Anyway, you're right it's not a fair comment to call them the same. Pescarolo might've done development work, but Rebellion are surviving tougher times with higher budgets, and competing on the world stage. I think that offsets Pescarolos development.

[CTD]

Mentioning Rebellion, Pescarolo and Racing for Holland in the same sentence was to raise the point, that no matter what a privateer team will do they will always behind the manufactures, even if they chose to manufacture themselves or buy a complete package from a well respected manufacture.
In my view Rebellion has done nothing different from Racing for Holland, and had Rebellion gone the way of Pescarolo they still wouldn't be able to compete with the Manufactures.
Both Racing for Holland and Pescarolo is respected for what they did, why shouldn't Rebellion?

Let's face it a privateer can NEVER compete with the manufactures we have today. Even if they manage to get the budget, I seriously doubt that they will be able to access the same level facilities and even more important secure the high level workforce needed to be competitive. There simply isn't enough good people around...

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

The R-One is probably the least developed P1 car I have ever seen run 3 full seasons. (The CLM is a piece of crap, but they definitely bring new and trendy bits). I've never seen a supposedly major team take several months just to swap engines.

Bringing Pescarolo down to them is an insult. That team was doing extensive in house development by its 4th year and was a legitimate constructor within around twice that. In that time frame Rebellion is lucky to be able to come up with some diveplanes. But they either can't or won't pay ORECA to continue working on it either.

Rebellion did nothing in the engine swap, it's Oreca's responsibility to mod their own car to accept different powerplants. And last year they were still finalizing million projects at the same time as the AER modding was happening.

Development would be waste of money in a landscape where the factories are unreachable and the only opposition comes from Colin Kolles, they were always at the edge when they not only had competition in the ILMC / WEC 2012 but also when they were allowed to still run in the regional series. It's the fault of the organizers to not allow them anywhere else and to have created a vacuum for the class regulations wise, not the fault of the team.

IMO the only thing the team has done wrong (apart from choosing the crappy AER over Judd or what) given the circumstances, is/was not renting Paul Ricard for 30 hour endurance tests prior Le Mans, preferably multiple times. They should've spent all the resources on that and forgot everything else, even if it meant just running just single chassis in WEC. As performance means nothing right now the only thing enabling you overall results would be reliability. And this year, if they had lasted, I think given the problems of almost all the cars at Le Mans, I think problem free run would've meant at least 4th place, maybe even 3rd (looking at the Audi woes).

They should be demanding ACO to allow them to run the LMP1 in the ELMS rather than wasting money on some spec pro-am freeze Oreca 05.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by CTD

Rebellion fielding the 3rd Toyota next year?

Lol I actually enjoy this fantasy scenario. Run it only at Spa and Le Mans to give reasonably realistic chance of Rebellion being able to hand the task and costs. Oreca is (co-)running Toyotas anyway so you could have them assisting Rebellion as well. Add single R-One (with AER ditched) to the campaign as plan B car

You know, even if one were to dismiss this, I think the rules should be flexible enough to allow old gen factory cars eligible for few years after the factory regulation evolutions, you know so that even old now-dust-collecting TS030 or TS040 or whatever would be eligible today in (semi) privateers hand.

[TF110]

Oreca has little more than some resource and personnel involvement with Toyota. I'd like to see a Toyota Rebellion, but I doubt it'll ever happen. Someone like Tom's or SARD are more likely.

[carbsmith]

Lack of development includes the car still breaking down left and right. It's not like it should be a fundamentally unreliable car, the cost capped version runs great. Running an ORECA that ORECA doesn't have time to work on when you can't do it yourself falls under the things that make it hard to look at as all that serious.

Early 2000s privateers are being considerably undersold here. Many of them were far more competitive on pace than last year's Toyota. You'd be hard pressed to say the Zyteks, Domes, and Pescarolos weren't comparable to manufacturer cars on chassis performance.

[Lasse]

When Pescarolo was within a chance of winning LM, the Audi R8's were severely handicapped, and funny enough won on reliability. When was a Zytek or Dome ever within a decent shot of getting near the podium?

And when talking about chassis performance, do you also mean aero? Because i have a hard time seing how a private team is ever going to do battle with a factory team in that area.

[carbsmith]

ORECA qualified a second behind the full blown factory Audis and way ahead of the Cadillacs and Bentleys with a Dallara Judd in 2002 and the Racing for Holland Dome was a second behind them. I don't think anyone thinks the 4L Judd was as powerful as the direct injection Audi engines to start with but the real killer is that those engines had to be run super conservatively to try to make it 24 hours.

The Dome was again only a second off the second Bentley in 2003 and ahead of most the privateer Audis.

Zytek was in third only a second off of pole in 2004 with a 675 car. Those obviously really struggled with reliability as well.

What allowed Pescarolo to be a contender over a Le Mans race length was not just the hybrid restrictor breaks in 2005 but also that the Judd GV5 was much more suited for endurance racing than the GV4 (although even then they needed a significant qualifying speed advantage to hold up in the race). In 2001-2002 ALMS Panoz could occasionally beat Audi in sprint races and by then the Panoz was a slower car than what was available to independent teams.


Anyways I still appreciate Rebellion for at least showing up, but in fairness to the performance gap to the factories privateer LMP1 is more like HRT and Caterham than Williams and Force India.

[Lasse]

Looking at the qualifying pace, the difference between factory and privateers were much closer. I was looking at race results and race pace, since that is really the important thing in my book. Come raceday only the Pescarolos did fight with the Audis, and they lost any chances on reliability issues.

The introduction of hybrid engines have pushed the advantage into the factory backed teams court, but i don't think that is the Rebellion teams fault. Had the Pescarolo's been running now, i don't think they would have been much closer.

[DistortedSmile]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Lack of development includes the car still breaking down left and right. It's not like it should be a fundamentally unreliable car, the cost capped version runs great. Running an ORECA that ORECA doesn't have time to work on when you can't do it yourself falls under the things that make it hard to look at as all that serious.

Early 2000s privateers are being considerably undersold here. Many of them were far more competitive on pace than last year's Toyota. You'd be hard pressed to say the Zyteks, Domes, and Pescarolos weren't comparable to manufacturer cars on chassis performance.

And you're considerably underselling how much more money the factory teams spend these days, there's a reason why most of the P1 privateers are not around anymore. In Rebellion's case they've always been among the top privateers and I'd argue they could easily do much better and are deliberately half-assing it due to a lack of serious privateer competition and the sheer impossibility of actually challenging the factories, certainly not because they're a Caterham type team.

[Deleted]

I can understand half-assing the 6 hour races, because it's pointless there, but not Le Mans. Which they unfortunately have lately (not that AER helps though)

If they were allowed to run the LMP1 car in ELMS and/or NAEC they'd likely spend actual effort on performance upgrades, as then there would be a reason for investments in search of real achievements. And then that would also mirror back to Le Mans where their car would be better prepared from the get-go

[CTD]

Before we start to blame AER and Oreca too much for Rebellions performance, we must remember that you get what you pay for.
If there was 2-3 more privateers paying the same money for the equipment, it would be better developed. But when it is just two teams paying a price intended for more teams, the development will be less, as there simply isn't the ressources to it. (or the ressources is moved to where there is more money for it)

[Akrapovic]

I don't understand why Rebellion gets to much flack, whilst Colin sets fire to his car consistently and they're heroes.

[Hawkwood]

People have extremely low expectations of Kolles, despite the fact that he consistently turns up and does a decent job with the resources available.

People expect more from Rebellion as they seem, from the outside, to be more professionally run.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

I don't understand why Rebellion gets to much flack, whilst Colin sets fire to his car consistently and they're heroes.

Didn't you already say this

http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....postcount=1462

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Didn't you already say this

http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....postcount=1462

Yeah, and I'll continue to say it. Everyone keeps saying they expect more from Rebellion, but there's no evidence to suggest way. Given Kolles involvement in F1, and ability to produce there own chassis (which Rebellion does not/cannot do), it makes sense that you'd expect more from Kolles. ByKolles get better treatment for being the underdog. But that's like saying you treat the teams who do worse, better. So surely then we should lower our expectations for Toyota since they haven't won Le Mans? It's silly.

Rebellion are continually criticised on some illusion that they should be better, but logically ByKolles should be doing better. Rebellion has a few technical issues and it's embarrassing, but ByKolles sets fire to a car and they're heros for even trying. YOU may say that ByKolles are just as embaressing as Rebellion, but that isn't overall what is posted.

[silente]

I see Akrapovic point.

My feeling (and i tried to point it out in this article: https://drracing.wordpress.com/2016/...ng-simulation/ ) is that the level in this class is so low, that the teams don't even try to push for the best performance.

First of all, as far as i know, they have big problems with the powertrain compartment.

Secondly, they probably don't care to really push, Rebellion in the first place. All they have to do is to stay in front of ByKolles, which is not hard apparently. Actually, by not pushing at all, they also have a better argument with FIA and ACO to try to get more performance from the rules.

I am pretty sure that an LMP2 with 600hp will be probably quicker than a current LMP1-L.
As i am pretty sure that the AER engine is not really producing the power this guys expected. Moreover, Oreca itself is probably not "motivated" to develop this car, as somebody already pointed out, because of low budget and also because they don't really need it.

I have the feeling that an Oreca05 is much more refined, nowaday, than a Rebellion.

The truth is that this class as it is has no real sense. And next year there will be even less motivation to stay there, with the performance increase an LMP2 will see. The only incentive is that you can use a crew made of professional drivers only. But would you go for it, knowing that probably you still need a much higher budget than an lmp2 program to have similar performance?

[carbsmith]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Yeah, and I'll continue to say it. Everyone keeps saying they expect more from Rebellion, but there's no evidence to suggest way. Given Kolles involvement in F1, and ability to produce there own chassis (which Rebellion does not/cannot do), it makes sense that you'd expect more from Kolles. ByKolles get better treatment for being the underdog. But that's like saying you treat the teams who do worse, better. So surely then we should lower our expectations for Toyota since they haven't won Le Mans? It's silly.

Rebellion are continually criticised on some illusion that they should be better, but logically ByKolles should be doing better. Rebellion has a few technical issues and it's embarrassing, but ByKolles sets fire to a car and they're heros for even trying. YOU may say that ByKolles are just as embaressing as Rebellion, but that isn't overall what is posted.

What is now ByKolles' involvement in F1 was fronting the facilities to build a habitually crappy Dallara designed car, hardly anything to give high regards to. Otherwise it's been a mediocre to poor sports car team for the last 15 years. They didn't originally design the CLM either and as much as that car has sucked since 2013 I doubt they'd still be running it if they were able to design a replacement. I don't think WR or Courage were expected to win every year just because they built their own cars either.

I think you're wrong to think ByKolles gets off easy, that's a dead horse that was already well and truly beaten a long time ago, any positive reaction you see now tells you just how little anyone thought of them to start with.

To put it another way, you take a team and car that were 2-3s a lap off the pace in P2 everywhere they went and they lose their main sponsor and miss half a season hackjobbing the car into a P1, and you're surprised people have low expectations?

[rdjones]

They are going to down to one car for the rest of the season, however they will be back in 2017.

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2016/0...mp1-in-17.html

[tux]

Rebellion are down to one car for the rest of the season.

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2016/0...mp1-in-17.html

[Coach Ep]

Kinda surprised (and at the same time not so much) to see them fully commit at this point to the stage that doesn't seem to bring them much. But that's the owner's preference I guess.

Too bad, I would have liked to see Rebellion stepping out of their current comfort zone.