[LM24 Race] Drivers of the race

[FIRE]

Which drivers (mainly interested in LMP1 and GT2) were a positive surprise and which were disappointing?

[jab]

Originally Posted by FIRE

Which drivers (mainly interested in LMP1 and GT2) were a positive surprise and which were disappointing?

Raymond Narac drove well in the 76. Put some cracking lap times

[CTD]

Originally Posted by FIRE

Which drivers (mainly interested in LMP1 and GT2) were a positive surprise and which were disappointing?

Frank Montagny is almost self said to be a positive surprise.
Others i would say almost all of the Kolles drivers to be positive!, they did a good job of keeping those cars clean, without dropping in pace! (The Bakkerud clash with the barrier under one of the safety cars was not a driver error but a faulty in the R10)

[supermario21]

Like I've said time and time again, Lotterer and Zwolsman did an amazing job. I was a bit surprised when I saw the article about David Richards complaining the his 009 car had been reduced to 2 drivers after Hall was excluded, saying it was unfair for only 2 drivers to do 18 or so hours. Yet, Lotterer and Zwolsman, both rookies, did the whole race themselves. They had great pace, and at the end of the 15th hour were only 2 minutes behind the 007 which would have put them in 4th place. Unfortunately, the gearbox problem put them back to 9th but they fought back to 7th, finishing only 1 minute behind the 7 peugeot. Hopefully we will see them back at Le Mans next year.

[Mike_Wooshy]

Lotterer is no stranger to endurance racing he race's out in Japan in the SuperGT. This of course is not taking anything away from Lotterer and Zwolsmans achievement for there first Le mans!

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by jab

Raymond Narac drove well in the 76. Put some cracking lap times

Not to deny his the full respect of his fast laps, but was he in the car when the air filter had come dislodged? And did he maintain his pace after it was fixed or had the pump failed before he got back in the car?

Sorry, drawing a blank about the timing of the race, didn't do any of my homework over the weekend for the obvious reasons and now it's catch-up time.

[cmk]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Not to deny his the full respect of his fast laps, but was he in the car when the air filter had come dislodged? And did he maintain his pace after it was fixed or had the pump failed before he got back in the car?

Sorry, drawing a blank about the timing of the race, didn't do any of my homework over the weekend for the obvious reasons and now it's catch-up time.

He was in the car when the restrictor problem occurred, yes. My understanding was that he was also in the car when it was in place correctly, and his pace was still very close to the pros in the car. I do not think he was quicker than them on raw pace - that was spurious and a result of the restrictor dislodgement.

[The Badger]

Originally Posted by Mike_Wooshy

Lotterer is no stranger to endurance racing he race's out in Japan in the SuperGT. This of course is not taking anything away from Lotterer and Zwolsmans achievement for there first Le mans!

Yeah , hats off to them . All in all , the Kolles team really impressed me for their first attempt at the big one . But they also had a completely sorted out machine they managed to make work resonably well .

I had a conversation with some knowlegable friends at Le Mans about Kolles having bought the cars from Audi , like where did the money come from ..... reply seems a bit dodgy to me !!!

[Dani Filth]

Originally Posted by CTD

Frank Montagny is almost self said to be a positive surprise.)

Frank a surprise ?? .. can't see it.. wasn't expecting anything else from him broken leg or not

[cmk]

Originally Posted by The Badger

Yeah , hats off to them . All in all , the Kolles team really impressed me for their first attempt at the big one . But they also had a completely sorted out machine they managed to make work resonably well .

I had a conversation with some knowlegable friends at Le Mans about Kolles having bought the cars from Audi , like where did the money come from ..... reply seems a bit dodgy to me !!!

I think the reply was exactly what you would expect! Nothing new there, really, some of the previous privateer Audis weren't owned by the teams running them either. Great job by the Kolles boys after being roundly panned (sometimes unfairly) during the LMS this year. Zwolsmann in particular went from looking like he was nowhere to doing an ironman job, consistent and clean, and Lotterer may have sportscar experience but to step into a top-flight diesel P1 with so little time in the car and do what he did really earns kudos! Pity Andy Meyrick wasn't given the chance to join them, I'm sure he would not have fallen off the pitwall! He was quite a good sport about spending his time on RLM though...

In GT2, well, it was hard with some of the coverage and transponder issues to know who was really putting in the performance, but there's no question that Jaime Melo did a superb stint for Risi to put them out front and build a margin as the Porsches faded. Melo takes some flack here for various reasons, but his talent is unquestionable.

[Rodger Davies]

it might not be much compared to the Lotterer or Montagny ones, but I'd definitely have Christophe Bouchut on the list just for his performance over the first few hours in the, year old and uncompetitve in the hands of its regular pilots, JMB car.

[dxk1]

I thought Johnny O'Connell and Antonio Garcia did yeoman's work once Jan couldn't drive anymore and the car started having refueling issues. Since Jan was arguably the fastest GT1 Driver in the race this year their work was extra special. Also thought Nic Johnnson did suprisingly good work for the Krohn Ferrari. He did most of the driving and did it well.

DK

[Dunlop Corner]

O'Connell and Garcia did well, but after Jan got ill the 64 car slowly but surely clawed back the lead of the 63 car. In the end 64 was going to win, until it died.

I thought Wurz did particularly well. When Brabham in the car, the Audi was able to gain some time, and you started thinking wether they would be able to get back. Once Wurz took over the car, there was nothing the Audi could do. He was clearly the best driver in the winning car.

[Mal]

I dont think it is mentioned above but although they didnt win the Audi trio of McNish TK and Capello once again did a stirling job with no mistakes finishing way in front of their team mates in the other cars.

[Dunlop Corner]

Noone can be surprised by that, they are the three stars of the Audi program. Sure they finished way ahead of the others, but they were not nearly as dominant compared to their sister cars as last year. Last year McNish was way ahead of the other cars after his stint, this year the #2 car was actually quite close until Luhr smashed it.

But i must say that Kristensen did very well indeed. After the race (when danish television was holding him up, making him miss the french anthem), he commented that it was his best Le Mans after the DTM crash, that he finally was back on full stength. Looking at the laptimes, i would agree with that assesment. Certainly last year, McNish was the star of that trio. This year i actually think Kristensen was the best driver in the car, he did some very fast stints until he had to turn down the boost because of overheating.
It was great to see Kristensen so happy with his race even when beaten. Hopefully this is proof that he can do many more races. Despite getting old, he is still the fittest driver in the Audi program. And with him finally getting back to pre-crash driving form, he can hopefully have a good bit of racing left in him.

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by Dunlop Corner

Despite getting old, he is still the fittest driver in the Audi program.

That's an interesting one? How do you justify that? Or is it just an opinion?

[CTD]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

That's an interesting one? How do you justify that? Or is it just an opinion?

Just for clarification, i'm not taking side of Dunlop Corner, but you can define "fit" in basically 2 ways when it comes to racing.
1. being psychical fitness
2. being racing fit (meaning not having large breaks between your racing)

And no one can argue against that Tom Kristensen is the one who's getting most racing this year of the Audi Drivers. (because of the more races in DTM than ALMS)

But the psychical fitness, i guess no one on this forum really know anything about! (Maybe Aslak?)

[Aysedasi]

Yes, I see (and accept) the regular racing point.