LeMans 2018

Type Q said:

Keith Tanner said:

Maybe someone can arrange a race at Indy that has one Indy car and a bunch of Spec Miatas, then Alonso can win it too  Good job to Toyota for getting to the finish line and not stepping on their crank or anything, but there needs to be an asterisk on that win. It's sad to see the crazy hybid LMP1s fizzle out like this. Watching them just destroy the other traffic was eye-opening. They're such spectacular machines.

Thanks for the link, Adam525i. Much appreciated. 

Reading up on why the #7 was so far behind the #8 - looks like Toyota did step on their crank a little bit. Got away with it because they didn't have any competition, but that could have easily knocked the second car off the podium if there had been any German teams in attendance.

 

Geez Keith,

Since we are diminishing accomplishments in speed, engineering and competition, we should put an asterisk in all that has been written about the Targe Miata. Everyone knows LS swaps are easy and you didn't to be good driver to go fast in it.  

Go right ahead, because I built the car and did all the suspension tuning. So if it's just a fast car, then thanks! Heck, it IS a fast car with a mediocre driver.

But in order to compete, it had to go up against other cars built to the same rule book. Toyota didn't. That's a pretty big difference. I don't claim victory at track days.

Im not saying the Toyota wasn't fast, just the opposite. But as the only entrant in the fastest class, it was basically a demonstration run. I wish it wasn't. I want to see more LMP1 beasts duking it out. 

Porsche did run a series of 917 t shirts. Maybe a dealer or Ebay has one?

Blipshift has a Pig shirt today. 

To clarify the Toyota situation: Porsche is running around with a car built to no rule book and setting lap records. This is cool because they're competing with everyone. If Red Bull decides to turn up the wick on a 2017 F1 car, it'll be fun. The rule book is that there are no rules.

Toyota is celebrating a victory over nobody, as the rules say the cars have to be a certain spec and run on a certain weekend. Nobody else showed up, so it's kind of a hollow victory in that regard. I have huge respect for the cars and the engineering, but it's not a race victory if you don't have to race anybody. I hope someone else steps up next year so they can properly defeat the competition. 

I suppoae they will keep the maximum stint length rule in place for GTE Pro since it seemed to help keep cars bunched up, but I don't like the rule. 

Toyota also had a lap limit, but seems like it would make more sense to limit how much fuel they can carry and let the team decide the best pit strategy. 

These rules pretty much removed a good chunk of the strategy from the race.  

Blipshift sorta has one.

The Toyota may have been competing with itself, but it was still a victory. They finally completed,unlike years past. Don't blame them for a lack of competition.

I'm not blaming them, but it still does affect the validity of the outcome. I mean, I can claim to hold the world record for the walk from my shop to my house. But that would obviously be ridiculous. 

They survived 24 hours, awesome. But they weren't pressured and they didn't have to beat anyone to do it. Everyone else in the race was handicapped by the rule book.

Alonso DID prove that he knows how to pick a winning team. Occasionally :)

Not only that  but Alonso's passing skills are top notch no matter the car.

Keith Tanner said:

I'm not blaming them, but it still does affect the validity of the outcome. I mean, I can claim to hold the world record for the walk from my shop to my house. But that would obviously be ridiculous. 

They survived 24 hours, awesome. But they weren't pressured and they didn't have to beat anyone to do it. Everyone else in the race was handicapped by the rule book.

Alonso DID prove that he knows how to pick a winning team. Occasionally :)

They did beat Porch, and the French- because THEY WERE THERE.  From what I can tell, Toyota was begged to show up, so they did.  And you are blaming them by wanting to take away from the win.

Given that there was a known set of rules that only Toyota decided to follow, good for them.   Sure, they had nobody else to race against, but for the year they lost it on the last lap- it was essentially the same thing- Toyota beat themselves.  This year, they finished, and won.  

I came in third in Open Division in the 2011 Targa Newfoundland after a relay failed. I was leading the division at the time with a comfortable margin, but I blew it.

What if I go back to Targa in 2018 and finish but nobody else enters Open Division? I'd be really proud of making it the end of a tough event, but I couldn't claim a win.

Keith, you need to look At P1 again. A lot more than 2 cars. Pus a P2 almost won last year. Your analogy fails here.

Keith Tanner said:

I came in third in Open Division in the 2011 Targa Newfoundland after a relay failed. I was leading the division at the time with a comfortable margin, but I blew it.

What if I go back to Targa in 2018 and finish but nobody else enters Open Division? I'd be really proud of making it the end of a tough event, but I couldn't claim a win.

If you are the only one willing to make the effort to show up and actually run and finish, you deserve the trophy and the win.

If you entered the event many times and come close to a win, the organizers asked you to come because they wanted your car, Janel and you as a focal point to bring good PR, and your closest class competitors bail because they were being indited for fraud that was helping pay for the their racing efforts, you deserve better than to have the win you worked for many years diminished because Ferdinand Piech's extended family have massive legal bills to pay.      

T.J. said:

I thought the rothman car should've been penalized for crazy driving during the battle with the ford. Doing four or five blocking moves at a time at 180 moh is dangerous. 

Completely agree with you. I am a Porsche fanboy but that was worthy of a penalty. 5-6 blocking moves weaving down the straits and then when the ford does get next to them they try to run them off the track.  Yep proud day for Porsche and that team. If you can’t be fast just try and get the opponent killed. 

markwemplesaid:

Keith, you need to look At P1 again. A lot more than 2 cars. Pus a P2 almost won last year. Your analogy fails here.

Only Toyota was running hybrid LMP1s. There was an attempt by the ACO to come with up a balance of performance for the non-hybrid cars, but it didn't work and there were effectively two classes inside LMP1.

Last year was interesting. All the LMP1s were pushing really hard and there was a lot of attrition. That's what happens when you have competition, you're forced to run harder than you would solo.

The LMP2 did come within a lap of the winning Porsche. What 2017 showed us was that an LMP1 can give an LMP2 a one hour head start and still win the race, that's how amazingly fast they are.

Type Q said:

Keith Tanner said:

I came in third in Open Division in the 2011 Targa Newfoundland after a relay failed. I was leading the division at the time with a comfortable margin, but I blew it.

What if I go back to Targa in 2018 and finish but nobody else enters Open Division? I'd be really proud of making it the end of a tough event, but I couldn't claim a win.

If you are the only one willing to make the effort to show up and actually run and finish, you deserve the trophy and the win.

Some might feel that way. I wouldn't, and that's the fundamental disconnect between the viewpoints here. 

Keith Tanner said:

Type Q said:

 

If you are the only one willing to make the effort to show up and actually run and finish, you deserve the trophy and the win.

Some might feel that way. I wouldn't, and that's the fundamental disconnect between the viewpoints here. 

This where we can agree to disagree.

FWIW I have seen the Targa Miata in person and shared track time with you at several "Miatas@MRLS" events. I have great respect for the development you did on the car and your ability to drive it.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I once won a trophy for being the season champion in my local autox club in GP. I was the only car in GP. I accepted the trophy, but I don't consider it a great achievement on my part. What Toyota accomplished was about a million times more impressive (and about $120 million more expensive) than what I did, but yeah, to me they almost could have an asterisk next to their place in the record books.

Type Q said:

Since we are diminishing accomplishments in speed, engineering and competition...

Accomplishment in speed?...Sure.

Accomplishment in engineering?...Definitely.

Accomplishment in competition?... What competition??

I'm with Keith. Finishing LeMans is an accomplishment, but with no competition it's a hollow victory.

Kinda bugs me that Mario Andretti tried so many times over many decades to win this race and was never able to, despite all his other accomplishments in racing. But Fred gets it handed to him on a silver platter by Toyota.

It seems to me that in the 80's there were a few years when group C was effectively Spec 956/962. Does that cheapen Porsche's wins during those years?

Would the GT40 story have been as compelling if Enzo hadn't shown up in 66? 64 and 65 didn't work out for the Fords. 

Porsche built an astoundingly dominant car. There were others racing, but really to win you needed the Porsche - and Porsche would sell you one. There's a big difference between a car so crushing that you had to drive one or lose to one, and a car that didn't have anyone to race. 

Driven5 summed it up pretty nicely.

That depends...Was the 956/962 going up against privateers specifically operating under a different portion of the rules, perhaps non-aero 'Group C' cars, or were there full factory backed development efforts also utilizing the full extent of the same rule set? There is a subtle but distinct difference between a lack of competition and dominating the competition. One is an accomplishment of every type, except of competition.  The latter is an accomplishment of every type, especially of competition.

The spirit of 'competition' is that in order to be the best, you must first beat the best.

So, all the fans have gone home, is Porsche running the 919 Tribute around La Sarthe smashing the lap record? hopefully.

Adam

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

Really? Silver platter. Then look at Mr. LeMans' record. TK was usually in the best car and won almost every time. Fernando showed his skill justt like at Indy. To compare Mario with one of the 5 best F1 drivers is a stretch. Mario is a US legend. Fernando is an international one.

Racecar Engineering on the 2020 proposed rule set. Bad news for privateer budgets but they're courting more manufacturers. No matter how any of us feel about Toyota in 2018, I think we can all agree that more competition and more, different cars, the better. I'm not sure why the engines are so constrained, though.

http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/wec-2020-2021-regulations/

markwemple said:

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

Really? Silver platter. Then look at Mr. LeMans' record. TK was usually in the best car and won almost every time. Fernando showed his skill justt like at Indy. To compare Mario with one of the 5 best F1 drivers is a stretch. Mario is a US legend. Fernando is an international one.

And he has one fewer F1 championships than Alonso. Mario is a lot more than a "US legend", in fact he might have the most well-rounded record of accomplishment in motorsports history.

And, while Alonso is clearly very talented and fast, I'd argue that calling him one of the 5 best F1 drivers is more of a stretch, considering that there are 9 people with more championships than he has, and he's not even in the top 5 for wins.