Quote:
Originally Posted by Félix
Another manufacturer needs to come in to "offer things" to the ACO as well so they have to balance their rules a bit in return. Not gonna happen because they all sniff around and pass - or at least never get really involved.
When was the last time we saw an air restricted engine have a significant advantage when they play from sensible balanced regulations? Such an engine can lose races if it's not reliable, win races if it's efficient, but it never accounts for more than 5-10 kph at the end of a straight.
And the HPD was incredibly lucky with safety cars at Sebring because it would have ended up numerous laps behind as usual, "in contention" with the diesel cars that crashed early in the race.
I'm pretty sure the petrol cars from OAK (recently), Pescarolo and Rebellion have had more perfect runs this year than the factory diesels (who love to play bumper cars it seems). Seriously.
But all they're "in contention" for is a spot behind the untroubled diesels. And even then, if the DP1s who had problems lost less than 10-15 minutes (!!!) they'll come back before the end of a 6 hour race.
You don't believe me? Watch the Silverstone coverage again, pay attention to the speed gaps between DP1-P1-P2 and look at how close the crashing diesels were from beating the P1s with a flawless run.
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Ok, the diesel giants have had problems with bumper cars and such, but that is a whole different discussion. Anyway, Porsche will be coming in and I don't think they are going diesel. They must feel pretty comfortable with the way the rules will be. Whether Audi and Peugeot switch to petrol or stick with diesel is to be seen, but I don't think fuels will be a problem.
I know some here say the gap between the diesels and petrols is too much for the rules to be legitimate, but I don't necessarily buy that. There was a 7 second difference between the pole sitting Audi and the top petrol runner (Rebellion) at Le Mans in qualifying. Ok, that is a lot, but in 2010, there was a 7.5 second difference between Strakka and the fastest non-HPD powered LMP2 car (Quifel-ASM Zytek). The difference was 8.3 seconds to the fastest Judd powered car (OAK Pescarolo). Keep in mind that all of these engines are the current LMP1 engines plus the TMG Toyota. How do you explain those massive gaps? The cars were running to the same rules. There's no "unfair" diesel advantage at play here. Maybe Strakka is better than OAK and Amaral's team, but I don't think that is true by a huge amount. It's simply that the engines and the chassis those teams are running are inferior. They are inferior to the ex-factory HPDs and RS Spyders and they are definitely inferior to the diesel giants. Frankly, it almost seems as if the gaps should be even bigger than they are!