[WEC Race] 6 Hours Of Spa-Francorchamps 3-5 May 2018

[andrewn7]

Originally Posted by TF110

I think the safety cars worked against them. Sorry I wasn't clear about that in my last post. I forgot to say that their pit stops were slow as well. So I think without the multiple safety cars which basically gave the #7 it's lap back and put it in touch with those already ahead I think they could have had 2nd and maybe 3rd. The #7 would have had to drive through the field twice. Possible, but I think they would have been 3rd with the lead Rebellion just ahead had everything gone green and pit stops were 'normal' without other issues.

Sorry, but Akraprovic is 100% right. The Rebellion is a fine looking machine, and they both ran pretty clean races, but they'd still have gone a lap down quite a bit earlier if it hadn't been for the SC's.

The Toyota's had pace in hand, as was proven by the #7 car.

Rebellion's only hope for LM is that Toyota trip themselves up.

[JoeW04]

Originally Posted by andrewn7

Sorry, but Akraprovic is 100% right. The Rebellion is a fine looking machine, and they both ran pretty clean races, but they'd still have gone a lap down quite a bit earlier if it hadn't been for the SC's.

The Toyota's had pace in hand, as was proven by the #7 car.

Rebellion's only hope for LM is that Toyota trip themselves up.

We've regularly seen in recent years teams having a 4/5 second lap advantage at Le Mans and for whatever reason not winning, Pescarolo in 2005 in the R8s final year & Audi up against Peugeot later on in the decade. That's the beauty of Le Mans I guess!

[Steve McQ]

Akrapovic since you've done the maths, what do you think of Toyota pitstops ? Looking at the raw timing files, I have the feeling that they use their autonomy advantage to shortfill, not to extend their stints as long as they could. This resulted in 5 to 10" shorter pitstops than the competition (even when there was no driver change). Multiply this by 9 (number of regular pitstops of the race) and that's more than a minute gained !

By the way, with stints limited to 30-35' cars are always pitting. I can't understand how it is accordable with a formula made to put efficiency forward. Now it's like "Look we have really efficient cars ! But they have to stop every 30' to refuel... "

And finally, there are too many black and red Orecas in the running. With 2 Rebellions, 2 JCDC and 1 TDS it is almost impossible to tell which car is doing what watching TV !

[TF110]

Originally Posted by andrewn7

Sorry, but Akraprovic is 100% right. The Rebellion is a fine looking machine, and they both ran pretty clean races, but they'd still have gone a lap down quite a bit earlier if it hadn't been for the SC's.

The Toyota's had pace in hand, as was proven by the #7 car.

Rebellion's only hope for LM is that Toyota trip themselves up.

Doesn't matter how many laps down they are, they would potentially be ahead of the #7 Toyota at the end of the race. They were nearly handed free pass by the first safety car. And like JoeW04 said, the fastest car at Le Mans doesn't always win, Toyota know this all too well from 2014, 2016 and 2017.

[BSchneiderFan]

Toyota not even bothering to deny that the #7 was told to hold station behind the Chosen One. Pathetic.

[JoeW04]

https://youtu.be/ja8Q9NT4f_0

Wonderful video, the shot looking up towards raddilion makes you appreciate how on edge the cars are there

[Irie]

Originally Posted by BSchneiderFan

Toyota not even bothering to deny that the #7 was told to hold station behind the Chosen One. Pathetic.

They said they had an agreement not to race after the last stop which is a bit different to the situation you are describing

[Mike E]

Originally Posted by JoeW04

https://youtu.be/ja8Q9NT4f_0

Wonderful video, the shot looking up towards raddilion makes you appreciate how on edge the cars are there

Absolutely. I was going to post this link too. So many of these camera angles are better than the TV ones.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by JoeW04

https://youtu.be/ja8Q9NT4f_0

Wonderful video, the shot looking up towards raddilion makes you appreciate how on edge the cars are there

That was great. I felt like I was actually trackside while watching. The sun was bright and the cars were shining. I liked the way the SMP cars looked at Spa.

[EffectiveSprinkles]

If anyone gets a chance to go to Spa, take it. I went last year and the track is amazing as a spectator. You know the old cliché that height differences don't come across on TV bla bla well it is a cliché for a reason

[Adam43]

So true. I’ve not seen WEC, but have been lucky enough to see Group C (in historics) there. Amazing.

[Truckosaurus]

Originally Posted by EffectiveSprinkles

... You know the old cliché that height differences don't come across on TV bla bla well it is a cliché for a reason

Everyone needs to see Eau Rouge in real life at least once in their lifetime.

[chernaudi]

Both Kolles and both Rebellions got hit with 5 second holds on one stop each for exceeding fuel limits. Largely immaterial to the outcome of the race but an interesting point given that it was also brought up in the Rebellion thread.

[Coach Ep]

Originally Posted by Truckosaurus

Everyone needs to see Eau Rouge in real life at least once in their lifetime.

Trying walking up there!

Same goes for Kemmel, not flat at all!

[Damian Baldi]

Originally Posted by Truckosaurus

Everyone needs to see Eau Rouge in real life at least once in their lifetime.

I been at the circuit in 2010. It was a common day on the week with some BMW cars doing laps in group as a tryning.

As you said, until you are there, you can't understand the astonishing elevation change at Eau Rouge, and to see the river with his pacticular colour.

[S griffin]

Anyone who’s been to Spa is one lucky person, it’s an amazing circuit. Eau Rouge was never thought of much until the new circuit came in, now it’s one of the best corners in motorsport

[GT-Eins]

Our Racestatistics from the 6h Spa are online:



All of them here:

http://www.gt-eins.de/Berichte2018/wec/spa/index.php?sec=gal&gal=Statistiken

By the way: I just today found out that this race report from the Superseason starting 6h of Spa was the 1000.th Racereport we issued on GT-Eins.de. Kudos to all 72 people who helped in the last 20 race-seasons to assemble such a large variety of reports, photos and data!

[S griffin]

Toyota still way out in front, interesting to see what happens behind them. Will be an interesting season to say the least

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Steve McQ

Akrapovic since you've done the maths, what do you think of Toyota pitstops ? Looking at the raw timing files, I have the feeling that they use their autonomy advantage to shortfill, not to extend their stints as long as they could. This resulted in 5 to 10" shorter pitstops than the competition (even when there was no driver change). Multiply this by 9 (number of regular pitstops of the race) and that's more than a minute gained !

By the way, with stints limited to 30-35' cars are always pitting. I can't understand how it is accordable with a formula made to put efficiency forward. Now it's like "Look we have really efficient cars ! But they have to stop every 30' to refuel... "

And finally, there are too many black and red Orecas in the running. With 2 Rebellions, 2 JCDC and 1 TDS it is almost impossible to tell which car is doing what watching TV !

Sorry for the late reply here - been a busy week!

We'll post a full proper analysis of the race at some point in the coming weeks. But I don't think Toyota were short-filling. They were getting 1 more lap, sometimes 2 more laps of fuel than the privateers. If they were short filling to get shorter stops then they'll have a significant stint length advantage. I don't imagine they'd have done that with all stops.

The Toyota pit stops were more professional than the Rebellion ones - they had the driver changes completed before the fuel was done. Rebellion were still changing drivers at that point, usually for another 3-4 seconds. The fuel times are probably very similar - ACO used to balance fuel rate on energy flow (which is why diesels had such a slow fuel rate), but that can't happen now because the Toyota takes on much less fuel, so the pit stops would be 10 seconds faster on fuel alone. So the rates appear to be equalised fine.

Toyota were also able to leave the pits on electrical power, so the car fires away instantly, whilst the others had to fire the engine. There was a short of an LMP2 wheel as the driver was pressing the starter button and it took two attempts and spent at least 5 seconds doing so. You won't be able to engineer that out - that's just good old fashioned mechanical engineering.

As you said, the Rebellion stops were 5-10 seconds slower. So the faster Rebellion stops will be the ones with no driver change, where the only disadvantage is a mechanical starter. The 10 seconds slower stops are the ones where you add the driver change and they weren't slick enough.

You could slow the Toyota fuel rate to give the non-hybrids a couple of seconds back for refiring, but the driver changes are all practice-makes-perfect stuff.

Everyone was able to do tyres within the fuel time, so that's now completely taken out of the strategy calls, which is very sad IMO. They should go back to tyres separately. It may advantage Toyota due to the professionalism, but it adds another dimension due to pit stops.

I'm going to make an odd prediction now through - a cameraman will mess up someones stop at Le Mans. The cameramen at ELMS and Spa were too used to being able to zoom in on a driver change because the tyres weren't being done whilst the fuel was. At the ELMS race, they got in the way a couple of times as teams tried different ways of changing the tyres.

[Simmi]

Originally Posted by GT-Eins

Our Racestatistics from the 6h Spa are online:



All of them here:

http://www.gt-eins.de/Berichte2018/wec/spa/index.php?sec=gal&gal=Statistiken

By the way: I just today found out that this race report from the Superseason starting 6h of Spa was the 1000.th Racereport we issued on GT-Eins.de. Kudos to all 72 people who helped in the last 20 race-seasons to assemble such a large variety of reports, photos and data!

Thanks for this I always enjoy these.

One thing for me post-Spa. I have to eat my words a bit around those Rebellion lineups. While I still don't think they are 'balanced' - those boys in the #3 we're definitely impressive. Although I think this graph demonstrated what I gleaned from the race, which is that Beche might be a weak link here.

[Damian Baldi]

Originally Posted by GT-Eins.de

By the way: I just today found out that this race report from the Superseason starting 6h of Spa was the 1000.th Racereport we issued on GT-Eins.de. Kudos to all 72 people who helped in the last 20 race-seasons to assemble such a large variety of reports, photos and data!

Thank you for this work, and congrats to everybody at GT-Eins.de

Looking at the graphic of the P1 cars, it's very noticeable how grouped are the ByKolles lap time.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by GT-Eins

Our Racestatistics from the 6h Spa are online:



All of them here:

http://www.gt-eins.de/Berichte2018/wec/spa/index.php?sec=gal&gal=Statistiken

By the way: I just today found out that this race report from the Superseason starting 6h of Spa was the 1000.th Racereport we issued on GT-Eins.de. Kudos to all 72 people who helped in the last 20 race-seasons to assemble such a large variety of reports, photos and data!

Congrats! I like these types of reports,and it is great to see how quick Laurent and Menezes are in the Rebellion.

[TF110]

Dillman was the work horse for the Kolles, and for lmp1. More laps than both his teammates combined and more than any other driver in lmp1. Petrov was only 1 lap shy of his total too but only two drivers for his car.

[Truckosaurus]

Originally Posted by GT-Eins

For that single 'fast' lap for the #17 car (>1.5 seconds quicker than all the others) do we think that is due to them running to a set pace for the rest of the race or did they get a lucky tow up the Kemmel Straight?

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Truckosaurus

For that single 'fast' lap for the #17 car (>1.5 seconds quicker than all the others) do we think that is due to them running to a set pace for the rest of the race or did they get a lucky tow up the Kemmel Straight?

Here is the lap, straight from the alkamelsystems site-

Lap-56
Driver-2
Time-1:59.547
Sector 1-33.725 Sector 2-54.658 Sector 3-31.164
Top speed-324.4

The only special thing about that lap was sector 2, which was their best. Their top speed was 4kmh off their best too. Maybe he just hooked that lap up and none of the rest?