IMSA Race 2017 - Rolex Daytona 24

[Damian Baldi]

Originally Posted by TF110

I didn't enjoy the race as much as I thought I would. To me, it was average as a whole. Too many cautions, PC again, crappy tires ruining good cars chances, a two-tier prototype level of competition and questionable officiating brought it down for me.

Those are my feelings too. I had a great expectation about the race, but after just a few laps most of the race was decided when the Cadillacs started to get low 1.37 as average lap time, while the rest of the fiel was a second or more behind. Then when the two fast Orecas got technical problems the race was decided.

The best part of the race from my point of view, was at midnight when the Nissan #22 was on the leader lap or at the lead going at the same speed of the Cadillacs or even faster, then Hartley had the crash and the race was boring until the end. It was interesting to follow the Riley at the end, but it had no possibilities with his poor speed.

- Good: The amount of great drivers and some reliability surprises. Oreca's speed, Riley and Nissan reliability, Riley finishing 3rd, 10 cars finishing the race, JDC and PR1 finishing the race with some partial good speed, the heavy rain.

- Bad: The BoP that gave the Cadillacas and huge advantage in acceleration and final speed, the horrible Continental tyres, the amount of technical problems on the fast Orecas, the PCs, the uncessary crash at the end of a 24 hs race.

Top speed during the event
http://results.imsa.com/Results/17_2...Speed_Race.PDF


Fast laps during the race
http://results.imsa.com/Results/17_2...test%20Lap.PDF

[MoMedic9019]

Five MPH gap in top speed during the race? Oh lord. Sebring is going to see some interesting BoP changes.

[Maelochs]

For all those calling for Cadillac to be cut back ... you all do know that there will be an entire test session at Sebring to balance the cars for road courses, right?

Some really good comments in this thread .... some.

Canamman, I respect your opinion after having read your posts for years. I sort of see the incident the same way ... sort of. It was a silly move, a low-percentage dive-bomb ... but Albuquerque cuts down on him way early from what I see in photos (from the video it wasn't as clear.)

Since both drivers played a part, no penalty should be assessed.

I also agree that trackside ... That was a Great race. None of the teams I wanted to win did (except Perf tech ... who?) but as a race to watch trackside, I loved it.

[Damian Baldi]

Originally Posted by Maelochs

For all those calling for Cadillac to be cut back ... you all do know that there will be an entire test session at Sebring to balance the cars for road courses, right?

I know the BoP is not easy to do, and worse if some cars have done very few laps. I do physics for car simulators and it is very very difficult to match different cars. Being said that, I think the BoP until the typo seemed to be better than what we saw for the race, but maybe we could been arguing about the Orecas being too fast.

Sebring will be very different, because all cars will have more development, tyres will be different too, the track is of another kind, and the race is 12 hours shorter.

I hope to see the Orecas in form, the Riley doing it better with his downforce, all the Gibson at full power, the Nissan with a ligher plenum etc etc etc

[carbsmith]

Originally Posted by MoMedic9019

Five MPH gap in top speed during the race? Oh lord. Sebring is going to see some interesting BoP changes.

All 3 Cadillacs and the ORECA having the same top speed to the tenth of a mph in practice 3 is a pretty weird thing on its own. But AXR did look fairly consistently 2-3 mph faster than Rebellion in both practice and the first few laps of the race. It's about a half hour in that things get silly when Cameron decides to head to the front and starts setting fastest trap speeds of the weekend with mid-195 runs without any draft.

[TF110]

I don't think Caddy should be bop'd down, yet. The other cars need to get it together first and find their sweet spot. Get the kinks ironed out and then see where they're at. When I said "two tier prototype" that wasn't me saying I fault the Cadillac's. They obviously had their stuff together, but the others were so far off it doesn't look good for Sebring, unless the p2's can get the Gibson running at 100% or maybe ESM.

[JHamilton]

Yes, make the other cars faster. Outside of Daytona, we don't quite know how much faster though. There's obviously an imbalance but you can't be too surprised to see Action Express and WTR at the front either.

Overall, aside from the ending which was a bummer, I thought the new lineup did pretty well. The cars both look and sound the business, which is a big part of why I watch. A little tweaking and we've got a great season ahead of us.

[Damian Baldi]

Originally Posted by TF110

I don't think Caddy should be bop'd down, yet. The other cars need to get it together first and find their sweet spot. Get the kinks ironed out and then see where they're at. When I said "two tier prototype" that wasn't me saying I fault the Cadillac's. They obviously had their stuff together, but the others were so far off it doesn't look good for Sebring, unless the p2's can get the Gibson running at 100% or maybe ESM.

Yeah, I agree that the rest of the cars need to improve (some cars a lot), that's why I think Sebring will be very different. About Daytona, knowing the state of the non Cadillac cars, BoP could be a bit different. That would has been fair for Cadillac, I think no, but the competition would has been better.

[carbsmith]

From best lap times prior to the race vs. during the race.
#5 -0.6s
#10 -0.6s
#31 -0.2s

#13 +0.3s
#81 -0.0s
#85 -0.4s

#90 +0.2s

#2 +1.0s
#22 +0.2s

#52 +0.3s

#55 -0.4s
#70 -0.3s

The #85 is just too slow to matter and the Mazda's horrendously underperformed in qualifying, so I would ignore them entirely. Everybody else made no performance improvement in the race and usually they slowed down about a couple tenths, while the Cadillacs were 0.6s faster. How much more blatant does the sandbagging need to be for everyone to understand they have to fix the BoP just to get the Cadillacs to where they made IMSA think they were when they were topping every practice and qualifying session?

At this point I'd practically consider the #90 the real winner of the race, because the Cadillacs should have had a 5 minute stop and hold penalty.

[WolfsburgRS]

Originally Posted by fieldodreams79

I enjoyed it well enough. It's a classic in a classic location. Sure the roval and cautions take away from things but it was overall decent enough imho.

I've always preferred Sebring so that's where I'll be in about 1.5 months.

Love Hobbsisms! I agree with you and have certianly softened my original outrage, even though at times, horses can be in the wrong doors at the wrong times!

Yeah I think watching the replay a a few times made it a little more clear for me. It's not the classiest way to win, but I've seen worse... and agree with the Daytona race. It's not the best track, it had far too many cautions, but it's a classic in every sense of the word and even with the Caddy's dominant speed I think it lived up to the hype, in particular with GTLM and GTD.

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

How much more blatant does the sandbagging need to be for everyone to understand they have to fix the BoP just to get the Cadillacs to where they made IMSA think they were when they were topping every practice and qualifying session?

I mean.... it's not that obvious for some even though I've been saying they were running to a delta time since the Roar. Absolutely nothing they did was shocking, nor was it surprising. Plenty of people I talked with in the teams racing against them, again, were not shocked this happened. They knew it was coming.

This was Caddies race to lose....everyone else had to pray for something to happen.

[Nick Woodbury]

Here is my take on the race.

I give my overall impression of the 2017 Rolex 24 a solid B. Watched via hacked Live Streams and ~2 hours on the FOX network for the start.

The new Prototype regulations certainly gave this race a new air of excitement and curiosity that I haven't seen since the first Rolex 24 after the merger in 2014. It is without question that IMSA's DPi formula has generated a new buzz in the Sports Car Racing community, a buzz that certainly has the potential to create some good momentum for the series. I am excited for the series.

Now, being the hyper-critical type that I am....I will get straight down to the negatives.

1 - Continental Tire - This year's race was SCATHING for one of the series' LARGEST CONTRIBUTING SPONSORS and providers. With the obvious exception of the infamous Goodyear fiasco at Indy a few years ago, never in my life as a fan of Motorsport have I played witness to such a dismal display of a major tire manufactures sheer inability to produce a half-way decent rain or dry running motorsport tire. I don't have an official count, but during the thick of the night time running when the conditions were at their wettest, I would estimate in the region of 10-15+ tire failures across the three classes in use, when all of the teams were using Continental's Wet Racing Tires, (one of which caused the remaining Lexus to shed about a quarter of its damned bodywork). As far as I saw, and I could have very well missed a few, I only witnessed one Michelin tire failure in the early stages of the race suffered by one of the GTLM Porsches, but I saw no wet weather Michelin failures.

Admins, please pardon my forthcoming profanities, but in the process of typing this I am vividly reminded of this 's**t for brains' corporate puppet that Justin Bell interviewed during the 2016 Sebring 12 Hours. He has the audacity to brag and gloat in front of thousands of viewers about how superior their wet weather tires were at the 2015 Petit Le Mans when infact it was completely the other way around. The GTLM's and their superior to continentals wet weather tires allowed them to totally out perform the struggling prototypes on the continental wets, and eventually take the overall lead by the time the final FCY came out that ultimately ended the race during a monsoon. It didn't take a rocket scientist to notice the glaring differences in medium speed and slow speed cornering ability in full wet conditons between the Conti-Shod Prototypes and Michelin-shod GTLMs. Even if IMSA had an intervention and decided to back out of their tire provider's contact and swap out to Spec Dunlops, or Michelins, it would be leagues better than what Continental are capable of producing.

Corporate mouthpieces like this dink here in the video and the subsequent performances from Conti that I have witnessed since 2014 are the reasons why I have never held Continental in any sort of regard, and never will - https://youtu.be/AUOD7GSXFxE?t=10m18s .

I encourage you to go to any one of your local tire dealerships be it NTB, Discount Tire, Town Fair Tire, anyone...and ask for an average cost quote on their tires from cheapest to most expensive...I can guarantee you 9/10 times the most expensive options include Michelin, and among the cheapest options are Goodyear and Continental. If that isn't a reflection of their overall quality then I don't know what is.

2 - Full Course Yellows - In the specific case of North American Racing, it seems as though the rest of the world has it completely figured out. Yet, IMSA's lengthy FCY procedures was the defining factor that barred me from giving this race the full A+. 20+ Minutes for a car stopped on track (that is subsequently recovered/started back up again within 5 minutes), is getting so long in the tooth for me after 3 years of IMSA. I completely understand the need for the preservation of intra-class battles, but for the love of pete, the sheer length of Saftey Car running completely ruins the momentum and the spectacle of a true 24 Hour Endurance Classic like the Rolex 24. IMSA would do well to begin researching Code 60 and/or Code 80 procedures in order to reduce the overall length of time that the race is slowed, it works perfectly well in Europe for the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Dubai, why can't they give it the time of day over here?

3 - Prototype Challenge - Is it a habit that is restricted solely within the PC class? Is there a certain mental-state that is sub-consciously aroused once any given driver steps into a PC car? The decommissioning of this class simply cannot come soon enough, both for the benefit of the fans and the benefit of other drives out on the track, **COUGH Matt McMurry COUGH**. It seems that despite the added driver aids mandated by IMSA last year, PC drivers are still struggling to perform like they should be, accounting for a large portion of the FCY's thrown during this race. The platform is 8 years old, they have more than overstayed their welcome. I believe it was Clarence Boddicker who once bluntly said, "B*tches Leave...".

[Lagunaseca_4life]

I don't think it's fair to say the Cadillac needs to be bop'd down for Sebring,when the Gibson engines were not running at its max horsepower as it was their own choice to retain reliability. To get a fast lap and top speed around Daytona and its banking you need two things,low downforce and HORSPOWER!!!!

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Lagunaseca_4life

I don't think it's fair to say the Cadillac needs to be bop'd down for Sebring,when the Gibson engines were not running at its max horsepower as it was their own choice to retain reliability. To get a fast lap and top speed around Daytona and its banking you need two things,low downforce and HORSPOWER!!!!

But all cars were restricted down to match the Gibson. So the Gibsons shouldn't have been any slower - everyone was meant to be running slightly detuned.

Whilst I agree it's maybe a bit hasty to BoP the Caddys down straight away, this is a BoP class, and IMSA did say they'd get it equal. It was all magically equal during the run up to the race, and then the race comes and Caddy find 5mph. So there is a BoP imbalance, whether the other cars are sorted or not.

[carbsmith]

Originally Posted by Lagunaseca_4life

I don't think it's fair to say the Cadillac needs to be bop'd down for Sebring,when the Gibson engines were not running at its max horsepower as it was their own choice to retain reliability.

So they just let the Nissan engine that has finished dozens of 24 hour races trouble free stay 5mph off the pace?

[knighty]

Sorry no, the top-speed figures released by Imsa show the Nissan as the fastest, and the top speed is a result of how fast it acellerates there, which is a factor of torque, not horsepower, with the boost factored in the Nissan engine has the most torque potential in the whole DPi & LMP2 field due to the largest resultant capacity, and I really cannot see the Nissans having their motor pegged back......I watched a lot of the race, and really to me it seemed the Cadillacs had a good well honed package that could set fast sector times in the in-field section, they just turned up with a well developed race car package, and the onus is now on ESM-Nissan, Mazda and the Gibson gang to up their game and get on the same playing field as Cadillac, which is just a polished spec chassis, with a push-rod V8, its hardly a technological marvel, in reality the Gibson, Mazda and Nissan engines are far more advanced than Cadillacs, but they are not yet on the overall pace of the Cadillac package as a whole.......no need for BoP just yet

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by Nick Woodbury

Here is my take on the race

1 - Continental Tire - This year's race was SCATHING for one of the series' LARGEST CONTRIBUTING SPONSORS and providers.

This was a complex year. While I'm not defending them, there were multiple reasons for failures, many caused by teams and the setups they chose. Other issues were getting the tires into operating ranges. The ambient temp hovered in 40's overnight, with wind chills pushing it down into the mid 30's. Add in the rain, and you don't have a recipe for success. As an aside, the lack of tire warmers is a major problem, and it's pathetic that a professional series doesn't have them, or allow their use.

2 - IMSA would do well to begin researching Code 60 and/or Code 80 procedures in order to reduce the overall length of time that the race is slowed, it works perfectly well in Europe for the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Dubai, why can't they give it the time of day over here?

it's been researched, they don't want it. You can draw your own conclusions as to why.

3 - Prototype Challenge - Is it a habit that is restricted solely within the PC class? Is there a certain mental-state that is sub-consciously aroused once any given driver steps into a PC car? The decommissioning of this class simply cannot come soon enough, both for the benefit of the fans and the benefit of other drives out on the track, **COUGH Matt McMurry COUGH**. It seems that despite the added driver aids mandated by IMSA last year, PC drivers are still struggling to perform like they should be, accounting for a large portion of the FCY's thrown during this race. The platform is 8 years old, they have more than overstayed their welcome. I believe it was Clarence Boddicker who once bluntly said, "B*tches Leave...".

they'd have been better of just binning it this year..... having said that, even with driver aids, those cars are actually pretty hard to drive, even worse on super hard conti's that can't come up to temp.

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by WolfsburgRS

It's not the best track, it had far too many cautions ....

I think we can thank Continental for a lot of the cautions.

Conti is generous with the money, I guess, but it makes crap tires ... hard, slippery tires which only work in a very narrow window of set-up and conditions.

The rain tires couldn't handle light rain on the infield because the banking was too dry .... and none of their tires could handle a cold track.

The rain was never really heavy, but the Contis couldn't provide grip.

Watching particularly and the International Horseshoe, it was pitiful how slowly the cars had to creep around that corner ... but then a driver would get a little bit daring and either the back end would step right out or the whole car would slide off.

Plenty of cars used the grass as much as the road to get through there, and more than a few used the tire barrier when the brakes were useless because there was no grip.

I think--no "inside info"---that Conti has decided that it doesn't rain often enough to really do the research and development, set up the production lines and all that, to make a really good rain tire ... and their whole philosophy with tires in general seems to be, "performance isn't and issue when they all have the same rock-hard tire, so let's focus on consistency."

This means the tires don't fall off much over a stint---they suck at the start (compared to Michelin or Dunlop) and they suck just as hard at the end of a stint. They would probably suck the same for three stints, but with IMSA fueling rules, why bother?

The only reason Anyone Ever double-stints in IMSA is to avoid the few laps of ice-cold, rock-hard tires which are far worse that warm but worn tires.

I am alright with this, actually,. The series needs to focus on getting viewers, getting sponsors, and keeping team costs affordable so the whole show can be stable and an attractive business venture.

But I know from being there, the "rain too hard to run" was really just a light mist or an intermittent light rain, coupled with an ice-cold track and tires which wouldn't warm up for several laps.

[Matt]

Those were the old DP tires as well, the new for 2017 tires come at Sebring.

Also, the reason for the long yellow overnight was more due to the pools of water than the actual rain coming down. The busstop was horrendous.

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by knighty

......I watched a lot of the race, and really to me it seemed the Cadillacs had a good well honed package that could set fast sector times in the in-field section, they just turned up with a well developed race car package, and the onus is now on ESM-Nissan, Mazda and the Gibson gang to up their game and get on the same playing field as Cadillac, which is just a polished spec chassis, with a push-rod V8, its hardly a technological marvel, in reality the Gibson, Mazda and Nissan engines are far more advanced than Cadillacs, but they are not yet on the overall pace of the Cadillac package as a whole.......no need for BoP just yet

A lot of this.

The Taylors and Mustang Sampling to a lesser degree emphasized how many laps they had in the cars, how they had done long, long test runs, how they had really figured stuff out.

Some of the cars showed up barely in time for installation laps at the Roar.

I am Not saying Bop was perfect, but I do think any inconsistencies were offset by the many hours of testing the other teams had not done.

Here is another point everyone keeps over looking: Daytona BoO is Just One Race.

Everything will change during the Sebring Winter Test. Every team will have another chance to learn their vehicles and experiment, and at a track which,, while it is equally complicated in terms of set-up, is better known to some teams, and doesn't have the high-speed banking which forces such extreme compromises in set-up.

BoP for the rest of the season will be based off the Sebring results, not the Daytona results. All you people howling for a Cadillac cut-back are wasting words. Everything is going to change ....

Except one important thing ... the most important thing.

Testing will still be compromised by the fact that teams do their own tests. Every team is going to cheat at least a little because they know every other team will. IMSA obviously cannot tell, or does not care, all their "new telemetry" nonwithstanding.

IMSA refuses to spend the time and money to really test.

It is insane that the series hands down "final race BoP" without testing it. Basically the series says, "Okay, we made one guess, then when it turned out wrong, we guessed again ... so this one must be right, right?" And shockingly, it rarely is ... because the series won't test it.

If IMSA was serious, they'd have independent drivers do a three-day test in January, and set the Rolex BoP from that, and have the same drivers do the Winter Test, and do road-course BoP on that basis.

Having teams do their own driving is plainly ridiculous. Not testing the final Bop before the race is plainly ridiculous.

If people want to put an end to bad BoP, start looking at how the BoP is calculated to begin with.

All I hear is a lot of useless b17ching about stuff that is already in the past. This is worthless. And, it will have to be repeated after every race ... unless the testing procedures are amended.

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by Matt

Those were the old DP tires as well, the new for 2017 tires come at Sebring..

Which, if true, and I can't argue otherwise..... if they've been sitting around waiting for use since last year as Daytona is a special build... those things were probably much harder than a fresh tire due to age.

[seanyb505]

Originally Posted by Matt

Also, the reason for the long yellow overnight was more...

to stop the gtlm cars from catching the prototypes.

[Mike Hedlund]

I can't say anything nice about the Continental tires we use at Daytona in the wet or the dry, but keep in mind... the cars on Continental tires use a special "speedway" tire for Daytona which is much harder than the normal tire (I believe that goes for the slicks AND wets, but I'm not 100% on that). And with the really low ambient temps, it's not surprising that there was so much trouble getting the tires to work. Some of us had more problems than others with it.

I do believe Continental could make better tires, but all I've heard is that IMSA won't let them. I'm not sure I believe that, but that's what I hear from everyone at Continental and IMSA. Btw, the Continental tires we have to buy at the track are the same costs as Pirellis, Yokohamas, customer Michelins, Dunlops, etc. At least they could give us a price relative to their performance.

-mike

[chernaudi]

There's plenty of professional series that don't use tire warmers (though most are spec tire series), such as NASCAR, Indy Car, and the WEC.

There's, as implied, no tire warmers in the WEC/LM24. ACO technical regs won't allow for them, though they're allowed to use tire warming ovens at least for rain tires. Also, it's clear that the Michelin and Dunlop tires are just quite a bit better than the Hoosier made Continentals.

[Mike Hedlund]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

There's, as implied, no tire warmers in the WEC/LM24. ACO technical regs won't allow for them, though they're allowed to use tire warming ovens at least for rain tires.

Uhm, the tire ovens in the WEC and ELMS do the same thing as tire warmers. I think you're confusing "tire warmers" with "tire blankets", as an oven is a "tire warmer". And they're used for all tires, wet and dry. And they're f*cking awesome. :-)

-mike