Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike E
The 11 vs 10 lap restrictions, and the related per stint fuel allocations, while utterly repellent to any right minded race fan, are doing the non-hybrids a massive favour.
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No ... it is ensuring a hybrid victory.
The regs allow one car to have twice the hp (approximately,) only some of which uses petrol, so a straight-up equal fuel allocation would effectively ignore that huge advantage ... not a level playing field.
The 11- versus ten-lap stint length Combined with the rest of the regs Still ensures (and is intended to ensure) a P1-H victory ... why else set the limit there? if true parity between the two cars was the intention, maybe fuel allocation should be set by relative total horsepower? Adding weight based on the car's' qualifying speeds?
The fact seems to be, that the two classes are radically different and balancing them would be ridiculously hard ... and FIA-ACO does not Want to balance them anyway.
If the regs allowed each car the same amount of fuel ... that would not be "equal," because of the electric hybrid system. Even trying to match lap times wouldn't work, because the hybrids can get out of corners so quickly ....
That is why the 11-10 ration is so insulting ... the hybrids already have Every possible advantage ... and with no lap limits still. no one would expect anyone except Toyota to take the top two places, barring accidents. Toyota can dial back their engine power in favor of reliability and still pretty much have the guaranteed ability to overtake any car on the track.
The 11-10 ratio gives the hybrids one more advantage on top of every other. If ACO had simply not bothered, Toyota would have pretty much exactlyt he same chance to win, and no one would bother being outraged ... but by e3stablishing the 11/10 ratio, FIA_ACo is jus highlighting exactly how much they are doing to ensure that Toyota is rewarded with another Le Mans win ... and could it, just possibly, just at the outside edge of imagination, be because FIA-ACO Really wants Toyota to come back to support the next set of regs? Just maybe?
The best dirty politics happens behind the scenes. This is blatant, in-your-face favoritism ... but whatever. No matter how much we don't like it, we all know what we will be watching when the green flag waves.