Sportscar/GT (and Le Mans) Rumours and Repetition

[TF110]

Diveplanes and turning vanes are not going to be included in the 3/2 bodykits. The latter is a major difference maker. Underbody aero is a big reason the cars are so fast now. Look at the complicated setups behind the front wheel and the front wing. Theres no need for 4 body styles. F1 used to have new body panels every race, but you don't see that anymore either. I dont think all the cost cutting is smart, but new teams will look at lmp1 and see the multitude of body styles and all these other expenses that add up. They'd think why enter the wec when F1 is near the same price point with much more exposure.

[Spyderman]

Why do you think they came up with the different body styles? It wasn't through boredom. The emphasis on aero has been exacerbated because other avenues of development (or creativity) have been blocked . (Note: - I'm not saying that aero is not important)
New teams should be looking to enter the WEC because it reflects or best serves their marketing or technical objectives; Not because its racing on the cheap.
F1' problems are not just related to the outrageous expenses. It's the politics of it all that has many manufacturers steering clear.
The current WEC concept (for the LMP1 class) has so much potential. It has a real opportunity to position itself as a series that provides a real space for technical innovation which in turn will produce spectacular cars. I would love the discourse to be around how best to achieve that potential (and thus increase exposure and revenue), rather than around how to cut costs (how to manage other peoples money) and how to slow down cars.
Having said all that (and to try and maintain this conversation on a somewhat rational plain) I do think that good governance is of vital importance to the series, and perhaps it may be wise to clean our own house before attempting to clean other peoples homes.

[Mt. Lynx]

If they are so fanatically obsessed with the costs, why don't they make a rule that they must have full insight into any teams financials, and just decide on a set sum of money for each season?
I do see a few questionmarks on that, but nothing that can't be overcomed.

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by Mt. Lynx

If they are so fanatically obsessed with the costs, why don't they make a rule that they must have full insight into any teams financials, and just decide on a set sum of money for each season?
I do see a few questionmarks on that, but nothing that can't be overcomed.

If I were a manufacturer and the WEC tried proposing that rule, my middle finger would swiftly be shown and I would at the very least demand that the FiA/ACO do they same with their books.

P.S. It would then become a game of "creative accounting".

[Victor_RO]

Originally Posted by Mt. Lynx

If they are so fanatically obsessed with the costs, why don't they make a rule that they must have full insight into any teams financials, and just decide on a set sum of money for each season?
I do see a few questionmarks on that, but nothing that can't be overcomed.

Those question marks are the reasons this approach was never entertained as something realistic and/or workable in F1. At corporate level, "creative" accounting has always been a thing, so works teams will be able to hide some amount of expenses from any financial inquiry. Might be the same issue in this case.

EDIT: Also what Spyderman said above.

[Ephaeton]

Also think about where the money is coming from.

It's coming from marketing? Alright, limit that sucker. It's poisoned money anyways.

It's coming from R&D? Why would you want to limit the money? It's doing good.

So essentially if you make sure that everybody can get their R&D out of it, let them have at it.

But then there's the general setup: There's boxes into which the car must fit. There's driving time rules. You can't bring your own fuel. There's a LOT of rules that are essentially arbitrary (well, they have reasoning behind them, but essentially, they are arbitrary).

Where's the *****ing about the closed cockpit? Min weight? Four wheels? Diesel or Petrol? Imho, don't be so picky about the arbitrary stuff you're leaning up against. At least be consistent in your complaints, makes for a more entertaining read (and that's all it achieves anyways, so why not bother and make it more worthwhile?)

[chernaudi]

Of course, I'm cynical also about the fuel flow formula. Not the concept, but it's implementation. The fuel flow sensors and the electronics it takes to run them, including extra telemetry for and people to man it for each LMP1 team, has added $100K+ to the cost of each car.

The same results could be had for much cheaper with air restrictors and torque sensors for forced induction cars. You know, exactly what the new GTE regs are supposed to have. That wouldn't have crippled Toyota having to be stuck with a NA V8 if the Audi diesel and Porsche TDFI engines had air restrictors that limited all engines to 600 or so BHP max, and torque sensors to run the Audi and Porsche turbo engines torque down a bit in lower gears.

It's not like the ACO didn't know that turbo engines of any type have a torque advantage--that was known since even before the Audi R8 with a turbocharged gasoline engine cleaned house in 2000.

I also know that the fuel flow meters are part of the ACO/FIA green initiatives. Well, just like tech cost money, green also costs money, too, especially in motorsports. Again, the same things can be done with air restrictors and torque sensors. Torque sensors would also probably discourage using hybrid systems as go faster buttons and instead use them as range extenders.

I've also had a cynical attitude towards the governance and leadership of the ACO since 2009. Back in the LMP900/675 and 2004-08 LMP1/2 regs, we had relatively stable regs. IMO, stable regs are essential for growing a racing series, not year in, year out changes. Especially when the rules makers screw up or make a hasty decision, and then have to alter rules further as band-aids to fix said screw ups or hasty decisions.

I mean, you can't shoot a person or animal with a .30-06 Springfield rifle round, put a band-aid on the gunshot wound and expect things to be OK. You don't duct tape over holes in a sinking ship that was made that way by the 16 inch naval guns on an Iowa-class battleship and aerial torpedoes and aircraft bombs.

I know that costs in racing is a concern. But racing's always been expensive, and you don't save teams money with rules that are only good for 3 years at a time, that are often subject to change before hand, and do stuff with restrictions that are just going to drive teams with extra money compared to private teams to blow said money on something else that's going to leave the little guys and minnows equally as screwed.

Hell, I just got done watching clips from the ALMS Race of a Thousand Years at Adelaide in 2000. Yeah, the Audi R8 program was expensive at the time, but those cars would be cheap today. And you also have to remember that Audi Sport already by then sold Champion a R8.

The cars were cool then, and a lot of those cars, such as the Audi R8 and Panoz LMP1 Roadsters are still cool now IMO. But if we want to get back to having things like it was back then, we're going to have to go almost 15 years backwards in time. Do we really want that, especially when the car makers are wanting to push race car tech forward to help push their road car tech forward?

I'm with Spyderman on this. Maybe someone needs to be appointed to be a new ACO president and clean house of the guys who have done as much harm as good since 2009.

[Ephaeton]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

Of course, I'm cynical also about the fuel flow formula. Not the concept, but it's implementation. The fuel flow sensors and the electronics it takes to run them, including extra telemetry for and people to man it for each LMP1 team, has added $100K+ to the cost of each car.

A) you don't need one telemetry person per car. It only hit the private teams that harsh.
B) the 100k+ figure you cite, I believe you come up with by extrapolating the savings the LMP1-L people have agreed upon and transferring to LMP1-H. IIRC the 100k+ figure from the LMP1-L folks included more than just the fuel flow sensor adjustments and their downstream effects
C) This is a comparison of a supposed 100k$ cost for two sensors that add another few bytes on the already existing datastream (!!) and the magneti marelli person who is trained to read these values to a rough budget estimate of a P1-H:

The following represents the 100k:

.

The following represents the budget, in 100k equivalents (for ease of copy paste it's a 102.4M budget).

.................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ........................

Originally Posted by chernaudi

I've also had a cynical attitude towards the governance and leadership of the ACO since 2009. Back in the LMP900/675 and 2004-08 LMP1/2 regs, we had relatively stable regs. IMO, stable regs are essential for growing a racing series, not year in, year out changes. Especially when the rules makers screw up or make a hasty decision, and then have to alter rules further as band-aids to fix said screw ups or hasty decisions.

It's important to remember that not all rule changes that got (more) public now have been come up with hastily. The majority (ISTM) of them was well known a long time beforehand, discussed with the affected manufacturers, and agreed upon as generally a good idea (among the parties involved, obviously not the 10/10ers). So let's not throw the 300kw e-motor Le Mans limit into the same bag as the reduced number of aero options, fuel flow reduction, etc.

[Spyderman]

Thanks chernaudi!

I think we all understand that it is a question of balance, but when you see the movement is all in one direction (year after year) , that balance is bound to be upset. I don't see the difference in a series dying because it supposedly became too expensive and dying because no one was interested (neither fans or manufacturers).
Personally I have come to dread the end of each season. Not only because I will desperately miss the racing, but because of the next batch of draconian measures that will be introduced to slow the cars down or to cut the costs. I should not be feeling this way. I would rather feel sad at the end of the season (no more racing for a while) but really excited to see what new and freaky things the teams will bring in the following season. Instead, I am "just" looking somewhat forward to seeing how the teams try and get around these new blockades. Yes its not quite as boring as watching F1, but just imagine what it would be if we were discussing possible lap records at Le Mans (like in 2015) and revolutionary developments.
I wish we would get a positive message at the end of each season , rather than the now traditional "we will meet to discuss how to cut costs and slow down the cars".

[Ephaeton]

I understand your sentiment, Spyderman. The following helped me a lot in still enjoying racing (and living in general) nowadays. Maybe it does so for you as well. Maybe it doesn't.

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

(even though I think I would have preferred to have been born some 30 to 35 years earlier than I was, I kind of accepted that I'm not going to change my birthday and try to work with it. I manage to get joy and excitement out of WEC racing this way. OTOH I fail to enjoy what IMSA came up with, so YMMV -- edit: forgot, one of the things I'm excited about is the cars getting faster. If you make them 3s slower and they end up at the same laptime, the tech made up 3s.)

[Spyderman]

Thank you for the wise words. I fully agree, however I'm a critical thinker (not encouraged now-a-days) and I very rarely accept things just because someone said it was so. I sincerely hope that the ACO changes this path it seems hell-bent on taking. That is why it was so encouraging to read Boullier's comments. We have not reached any crisis yet, but the general direction being taken has many pitfalls.
I understand that the ACO thinks it is being proactive, but there is a difference between being proactive and practicing the art of Lap-Gosh (a Welsh martial arts invented by Monty Python). One (Lap-Gosh) involves attacking the enemy before he even knows he is the enemy (), whilst the other (being proactive) involves actually identifying the enemy before attacking.

[Mike E]

At the end of the day, teams will spend all the money they have.

[chernaudi]

Originally Posted by Ephaeton

A) you don't need one telemetry person per car. It only hit the private teams that harsh.
B) the 100k+ figure you cite, I believe you come up with by extrapolating the savings the LMP1-L people have agreed upon and transferring to LMP1-H. IIRC the 100k+ figure from the LMP1-L folks included more than just the fuel flow sensor adjustments and their downstream effects
C) This is a comparison of a supposed 100k$ cost for two sensors that add another few bytes on the already existing datastream (!!) and the magneti marelli person who is trained to read these values to a rough budget estimate of a P1-H:

The following represents the 100k:

.

The following represents the budget, in 100k equivalents (for ease of copy paste it's a 102.4M budget).

.................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ........................



It's important to remember that not all rule changes that got (more) public now have been come up with hastily. The majority (ISTM) of them was well known a long time beforehand, discussed with the affected manufacturers, and agreed upon as generally a good idea (among the parties involved, obviously not the 10/10ers). So let's not throw the 300kw e-motor Le Mans limit into the same bag as the reduced number of aero options, fuel flow reduction, etc.

Here's the article on the LMP1 privateer team/LMP2 team meeting that they had with ACO brass at Bahrain:

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2015/1...-proposed.html

Specific quote:

"These included, questions over whether there was a need to employ fuel flow metering for the privateer LMP1s, approximate cost is €100k per year per car with the potential replacement being to defer to the previous (much cheaper) tech of air restrictors."

Note that the cost is actually in Euros, not USD as I originally thought. Though, that does make it worse, to the tune of nearly an extra 10 grand USD. The Marshall in the Cab for all other classes cost 8000 Euros. In LMP1, even for the privateer teams, that's 12,000 EUR tacked on to that, mostly though it's use in monitoring fuel flow.

I know that most privateer teams would kill to save a hundred thousand dollars on their cars as far as a questionably necessary rules mandated bit. There's a lot of things that I know that Rebellion and Kolles would probably rather spend a hundred grand on per car.

As far as rules changes, I'm tired of these band-aid rules changes that get done every year to either try and slow the cars down or just add cost to all teams for little to no safety or competitive benefit. Especially, as Audi, Porsche and Toyota are claiming, will hardly slow down their cars if at all at the end of the day.

Limiting bodykits probably won't save the big teams any money and is sort of an unnecessary rule. I can't see Audi, Porsche, or Toyota already running more than the two kits proposed under the 2017 regs. Audi probably even wanted to run just two last year and probably would've if Porsche didn't run 3 or so themselves, and even then if you count their LM bodykit, it was a minor revision of the Silverstone/Spa kit in the end.

Limiting testing won't save the teams much if anything in money. What'll be saved in moving men and machine around will probably be compensated for in terms of man-hours and tech costs on shaker rigs, bench tests, and engine/gearbox and chassis dynos.

Limiting wind tunnel testing won't save the teams money. The factory teams will just find ways around it, and that's one area where the bodykit limits might backfire, as per bodykit, teams might spend more hours and time on a specific bodykit, and hence not reduce much in terms of cost per unit. Besides, considering that CFD isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be as of yet, teams will be finding loopholes in the wind tunnel regs, as well as anything else.

But beyond that, I don't see how this will be of any serious help to privateer teams, who can't afford even the restricted amounts of testing that the ACO are proposing for factory teams.

The factory teams will just burn their money up doing other things, in part because they can, and in part because race teams fiscally function like any other corporation or government project or committee with a budget. Basically, just like spending money to make money, they'll spend money to secure the sizes of their budgets. Wasteful spending, yes, especially in government. But when you have a bunch of SOBs who are both cheap and greedy, that's how things work. And we know that bean counters everywhere are usually both cheap and greedy.

If the ACO are really concerned about saving any teams any money, have stable rules that last for more than a couple of years at a time. And unless it's a safety deal that will really help with safety and isn't associated with any other outside agenda, fine. But outside of that, stop making half-assed rules changes seemingly for the sake of making them and not helping out anyone.

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by Mike E

At the end of the day, teams will spend all the money they have.

...and rightly so. It is theirs to spend!

[Spyderman]

Just thought I'd post this for the next time we discuss Safety:

[Ephaeton]

What's your point?

[Spyderman]

The bottom one is not allowed to go as fast as the top one.

[Akrapovic]

And the top one killed a lot of people.

[Spyderman]

Well just look at it! Not surprising really.
Do you think that if it went at the speed of the bottom one it would not have?

[Ephaeton]

I see.

The bottom one also seems a bit more stable to me. IIRC the current state of affairs (WRT monocoque / car safety features) wasn't developed voluntarily.

So the regulators seem to have done at least some good.

As you write above, it's a matter of balance as well. The audience "swarm" accepts much less fatalities nowadays, plus even racing has external regulations (aka laws) to adhere to -- which change as well over time.

You and I value the achieved balance differently though. It's just ... neither the ACO is sitting in free space, able to implement any regulation. FIA has their safety initiative. Still 100 racers (and corner workers, audience, ...) die per year, to this year (AMS, german).

IMHO, even accepting racing is a dangerous sport, this number is too high. 1/2 of these deaths occur on 2, the other on 4 wheels. Most occur in the "lower" series -- the less regulated ones, if their fans are to be believed. One might suspect a correlation there. So gradually slowing down the cars and weaving a tigher net of regulations... I can live with that.

[Spyderman]

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for regulations on the cars to make them safer. It is remarkable the advances that have been made in that area. No argument from me here.
What I cant understand is having made these ginormous steps forward in car safety ,why is it that they are not allowed to travel at the same speeds?

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Spyderman

Well just look at it! Not surprising really.
Do you think that if it went at the speed of the bottom one it would not have?

Well it'a not strictly true that the top one went faster thought is it? It may have went in a straight line faster, but it had a far longer straight to achieve it. If we still had the full length Mulsanne then I'm sure things would be engineered differently now days.

However the modern car corners much quicker, and corners tend to be where accidents (and deaths) happen. So in that sense, the new car travels at a higher speed than the old. Would the old car manage to get through the Porsche curves as quick as the new one? Not even remotely close. It may not even do it at GTE speed. Would the old car have survived Duvals accident? Doubtful.

[Ephaeton]

Originally Posted by Spyderman

What I cant understand is having made these ginormous steps forward in car safety ,why is it that they are not allowed to travel at the same speeds?

I would naively suspect the quadratic component (v^2) of the overall kinetic energy of a mass m moved at a given speed v to be the root cause for this "paradox".
I.e., while the bottom one is safer, it's only safe to a given limit, and small voyages above the limit can yield quadratic pain.
The art (IMHO) is regulating the speed so that we're at or below that limit.

(edit: Also Akrapovic's point about cornering speeds is a good, valid one, I feel.)

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Well it'a not strictly true that the top one went faster thought is it? It may have went in a straight line faster, but it had a far longer straight to achieve it. If we still had the full length Mulsanne then I'm sure things would be engineered differently now days.

Well it certainly reached a much higher top speed (at Le Mans) and the reason we don't have a full length Mulsanne is precisely because they did not want the cars to achieve that speed , despite advances in safety.

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

However the modern car corners much quicker, and corners tend to be where accidents (and deaths) happen.

...and so the ACO decided to stick 2 corners in the form of chicanes on the Mulsanne. Do you think perhaps they were hoping for more accidents?

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

So in that sense, the new car travels at a higher speed than the old. Would the old car manage to get through the Porsche curves as quick as the new one? Not even remotely close. It may not even do it at GTE speed. Would the old car have survived Duvals accident? Doubtful.

Note that I'm not claiming the old one is safe.

[Deleted]

I could understand the uber safety implementations on cars, and even the controlled speeds in the name of safety, but when they are also forced to be raced on nanny state urban carpark circuits it becomes laughable. That's why I find some 200kph GT4s racing at Zandvoort or Zolder or wherever immensely more dangerous than 350kph LMP1 at Shanghai or COTA or even Spa or wherever.

Robotic cars, you know what I've been talking quite immensely as of late, they could ditch both the vehicle safety and circuit safety! The future is coming.

BTW I'm sure Porsche is happy to be the poster boy with that wrecked 919, you know in article discussing DEATH...