[WEC Race] 2016 WEC Round 2: Spa

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by MoMedic9019

Well, trim sure... but, aero kits from Porsche and Audi were the low-downforce spec.

And we keep hearing that Toyota is inherently only for Le Mans at the moment.
Not even a fox can know how close each car is to Le Mans spec.

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Artur

The track was 43ºC on QLF, much more than the alleged operating window of Audi's and Porsche's tires(15 to 30ºC). Difficult to imagine it would be Toyota having problems with the temps on their rubber.

The bold part is funny, you are trying to get around the fact that both Audis did faster times than both Toyota's. Fact that is contrary to what cokata claimed (of Toyota being faster over 1 lap. I personally think everything about Spa is uncertain due to the difference in tires). They "outqualified" Audi only because of the average lap BS, not pure speed. Also, you can't give tires as excuse here and then overlook it as a factor for the race pace, ie, use the "harder" tires as excuse for QLF but not for Toyota's relatively better(only to Audi) race pace.

Btw, didn't you say that only one of the Toyotas had the "harder" tire, during QLF, while the other used the same one as Porsche and Audi and, of course, that car was slower than Audi too. So, if that info is correct, "no matter how you slice it....."


IIRC, the air temp was 10ºC hotter this year and, as I believe you know it(given your great response when TF110 said the "3 times hotter" thing...), the hotter air is less dense. Precisely, this means 96.6% of last year's air density and that, thus, means 3.4% potentially less downforce/drag.

Curiously, GT's best S2 is exactly the same from both years(1.02.9), as downforce matters much less to them and their new bigger diffusers make up for the hotter conditions.

In summary, they should have been be a little slower, on high speed corners, this years due to hotter temperatures but not the huge amounts that cokata seems to think.

Anyway, I think all this talk about Toyota vs Audi and the track conditions have gone too far and I don't intend to make it any longer. The fact is that, regardles of the tires, Toyota is back to somewhat competitive pace and that's good for LM

You confirmed my point. The softer tires worked better for a smaller amount of laps. They also don't require multiple laps to reach their optimum, that's a constant in any series with different compounds. And even though they're 'only' supposed to be for temps up to 30 degrees, that's a designation for a whole stint, not 6 laps in qualifying. So the softer tires aren't going to stop working because it's warmer, especially in qualifying, but they won't do as good over a longer period of time (the whole stint). That's partially why Toyota caught up to Audi and Porsche. But you can't say that Toyota has poor downforce when none of the cars were near as quick as last year thanks to track circumstances. On those aero packages, seems Toyota spent 80% of their resources on the LM package.

[Gregory S]

Originally Posted by airbusA346

Wonder if Lotterer was trying to get some practice in before the race?



I saw something was posted on DSC, but it had been removed before I read it.

Sad to see this. Glad he is ok!