LeMans 2018

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

So you would consider Vettel or Hamilton better than Jimmy Clark, really? Well rounded? How about Vic Elford, Brian RedmanOr Sam Posey. To me they are all better drivers overall than Mario. Better people too. Don't get me wrong, Mario is a great driver, just not as great as you seem to think.

markwemple said:

In reply to Tom_Spangler :

So you would consider Vettel or Hamilton better than Jimmy Clark, really? Well rounded? How about Vic Elford, Brian RedmanOr Sam Posey. To me they are all better drivers overall than Mario. Better people too. Don't get me wrong, Mario is a great driver, just not as great as you seem to think.

Clark is absolutely one of the greats and probably would have gone on to win more titles had he not died. As for the other three, while Elford and Redman are certainly accomplished, they don't hold a candle to Mario. And Posey? Really? I mean, he was pretty good for a journalist-turned-driver, but he absolutely does not belong in this conversation. And the three of them have a total of 0 wins in F1, the supposed pinnacle of the sport. IMO, you'd have a better argument with Mark Donahue, Graham Hill, or Dan Gurney.

And of course, Vettel stands above all of them. 

Some of you are pretty harsh here.  Sure they didn't have much competition, but they still won.  They could have easily lost it as well.  There was a rule set in place and they built and ran to the rules.  There were other cars in the class, and to be fair, most of those had issues, some very early on.  Toyota managed not to have any.  Clearly they were faster, but you know what, if you want to win overall, you do what you have to do.  And of course the FIA wanted them there.  If they had messed up and lost, what would you be saying about them?  Clearly by some people's standard here, Toyota should have stayed home so someone else could win.

If we go by those standards there are plenty of races in the history books where the results will need to be discredited.  What about F1 for the past 4 years?  Mercedes was so dominate should Lewis Hamilton give back all his trophies?  What about Red Bull's before that, or Ferrari before that?  Does Senna give back a couple of championships because the Mclaren Honda was so dominate that they won almost every race?

What about the 917-30 era in Can Am years ago?  I was at Road Atlanta in '73 when Donahue had a flat early on, limped back to the pits and still almost won the race.  He had to keep the car turned down in most races just to make it look interesting.

In reply to racerdave600 :

I would say yes, there should be asterisks to almost all of those. 

Javelin said:

In reply to racerdave600 :

I would say yes, there should be asterisks to almost all of those. 

And those are but a few examples.  People are spoiled these days.  In years past it wasn't uncommon to have dominate cars that would win by laps, not seconds.

In reply to racerdave600 :

Already discussed on the last page.  Not having competition is not the same as dominating the competition...And no, with the rules structured to produce two separate LMP1 performance classes, non-hybrid LMP1 cars don't count as competition to hybrid LMP1. 

Nobody is blaming Toyota for no competitors showing up, or FIA wanting them to come anyway,but that doesn't change the fact that they were running in a race of one. 

Just saw where the GTE Pro 4th place finishing Ford GT has been penalized for messing up their driver rotation and has been moved down to a 12th place finish. How does a team not get this right? Do they think the stewards will not notice if one driver is well short of the 6 hour minimum or did they just fail to track it? Very strange. Similar think happened to the 14th placed For GT as well, but they missed it by a lot less and thus didn't get as harsh of a penalty so they remained 14th.

I hope they get rid of any rule about maximum number of laps between pit stops. I'd like to see the GT cars actually have a 24 hour race instead of a whole series of 14 lap races that follow an 11 lap race at the beginning. I get having a rule limiting the amount of fuel carried, but limiting the number of laps is plain stupid in my opinion.

This cuts way down on the available race strategy decisions. Now it's mostly a matter of how many stints to run on a set of tires before changing them. Yawn. I also didn't like that the safety car procedure fairly early in the race effectively determined the GT winner, but I'm not sure what could really be done about that. Perhaps they could eliminate safety cars all together and just make the entire track a slow zone. If you pit, you just rejoin where ever you come out and not get stuck sitting at the end of pit lane for minutes.

What does everybody think about the upcoming rules allowing Hypercars to compete at LeMans? I haven't seen all the details yet but I would get pretty excited seeing a McLaren P1 racing a Porsche 918 and LaFerrari. I don't know how the FIA would structure rules to keep the class competitive but I hope they succeed.

In reply to loosecannon :

Keith posted a link to the proposed rules on the previous page, but I have not yet read them. I don't really care one way or the other about supercars/hypercars since they are irrelevant to me, but I like the idea if it results in more teams having a chance to compete for the overall win at Lemans.

Sounds like it may result in more manufactures joining the fray, but may drive out the privateer teams.

racerdave600 said:

Some of you are pretty harsh here.  Sure they didn't have much competition, but they still won.  They could have easily lost it as well.  There was a rule set in place and they built and ran to the rules.  There were other cars in the class, and to be fair, most of those had issues, some very early on.  Toyota managed not to have any.  Clearly they were faster, but you know what, if you want to win overall, you do what you have to do.  And of course the FIA wanted them there.  If they had messed up and lost, what would you be saying about them?  Clearly by some people's standard here, Toyota should have stayed home so someone else could win.

If we go by those standards there are plenty of races in the history books where the results will need to be discredited.  What about F1 for the past 4 years?  Mercedes was so dominate should Lewis Hamilton give back all his trophies?  What about Red Bull's before that, or Ferrari before that?  Does Senna give back a couple of championships because the Mclaren Honda was so dominate that they won almost every race?

What about the 917-30 era in Can Am years ago?  I was at Road Atlanta in '73 when Donahue had a flat early on, limped back to the pits and still almost won the race.  He had to keep the car turned down in most races just to make it look interesting.

Are you purposefully misunderstanding the point? There's a difference between dominating the competition and simply not having any. All of your examples were cars or drivers that were dominant, but they were racing against other cars in the same class. They earned those wins the hard way, by being massively better than anyone else. There weren't any other cars in the LMP1 Hybrid class. Despite the fact the ACO changed the name of the class, there were still two different rule sets in play so there were two classes in LMP1. Toyota didn't beat any competition.

My counterexample is, again, Le Mans 1966-69. If Ferrari (and the other makes) hadn't shown up, would the legend of the GT40 still be as strong as it is? Of course not. But that's a closer example to Toyota 2018. In 2016 and 2017, they failed to win the race. Then their competition packed up and went home. Or, if you want to use Can-Am, how about Shadow in the post-917-30 era? They couldn't make a dent in Porsche or McLaren. When both those teams left, Shadow won the championship. But nobody really cares.

Toyota was presented with a problem. When nobody else showed up, all they could do was lose. They managed not to do that, which is great. There's a lot of credit to surviving a 24h race. But if you have competition, you run harder and have to take bigger risks. Would they have survived if there were 919s chasing them around and forcing the pace? Would the #7 fuel screwup have cost them a podium for one of the cars? We don't know. They didn't have any competition, it was basically just a demonstration run with traffic.

The contrast between Toyota's decision to race and Porsche's decision to, well, do demonstration runs is a really interesting one. Porsche gets all sorts of publicity for showing what they can do when released from a rule set. Does it have any sort of relevance to anything? Not really, other than showing how much potential an LMP1 really has. But it worked out really well for them. Toyota decided to keep going with the race despite knowing that it would always have an asterisk next to it. I'm curious to see how they publicize it. Perhaps they're hoping that someone else will show up in the next couple of years and it's good to keep everyone in top shape. Or maybe they just wanted redemption after throwing the race away the past few years. Or maybe they'll just shout about it loud enough that everyone will forget that they didn't actually beat anyone.

loosecannon said:

What does everybody think about the upcoming rules allowing Hypercars to compete at LeMans? I haven't seen all the details yet but I would get pretty excited seeing a McLaren P1 racing a Porsche 918 and LaFerrari. I don't know how the FIA would structure rules to keep the class competitive but I hope they succeed.

"Hypercar" does not mean modified street cars in this case. It's just a catchy marketing name for the next generation of LMP1 because there is a world shortage of superlatives and they want to distance the new cars from the old.

https://www.autosport.com/wec/news/136849/gdrive-team-loses-le-mans-lmp2-win

Bummer for the G-Drive team, both the winning car and its 4th place sister car got booted for a fueling rig non-compliance issue.  As a result, United Autosports and JPM got promoted to 3rd in P2.  

In reply to Keith, as someone that has been involved in professional racing, I think you are the one missing the point.  There is no difference at all between someone not showing up and teams that cannot build a competitive car.  Had Porsche shown up, how do you know Toyota hadn't improved beyond them and would still have won?  You don't and I don't.  It's all speculation at this point.  Is Toyota going to be held in the same light as the original GT40's, I highly doubt it, but to say they need to somehow diminish their win because there competition wasn't strong enough is just silly.  They did have competition, they just weren't good enough, didn't have the same budget, whatever.  They absolutely were not in a two car class.  You race the race you are dealt, not the wish list of potential entrants.

To use your Shadow example, yes, they also deserved their wins.  They stuck it out when everyone else packed it up and went home.  Sure they are not remembered the way the Porsche and Mclaren's are, but that in no way takes away from their wins.

Again, I ask you, what would you have said about Toyota had they lost?  I doubt anything close to the current comments.  

racerdave600 said:

There is no difference at all between someone not showing up and teams that cannot build a competitive car. 

That makes no sense. The difference is that, in the first case, all you have to do is show up and finish, in the second case, you have to show up, finish, and beat someone. It's much harder.

I don't buy the Mercedes F1 analogy, either. Merc may have designed a better mousetrap these last few years, but they weren't competing with privateers with a fraction of their budget. Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren all have similar budgets, experienced designers, and world-class drivers at their disposal, just like Merc. Merc just did it better. That's racing, and not at all like Toyota running in a class of one this year at LeMans. 

racerdave600 said:

In reply to Keith, as someone that has been involved in professional racing, I think you are the one missing the point.  There is no difference at all between someone not showing up and teams that cannot build a competitive car. 

This is a fundamental disagreement in our viewpoints then. I see a huge difference between vanquishing the competition and simply being the only guy who rolls up to the start line. Sure, the prize money is the same and the marketing staff gets to parade the trophy around, but that's about it. They didn't have anyone else in the same class, they didn't have competition. I'm viewing the hybrids as a different class because they're built to a different, slower rule set, and there were no other hybrid LMPs on the grid this year.

Again, I ask you, what would you have said about Toyota had they lost?  I doubt anything close to the current comments.  

As I said, they were in a bad situation. All they could do was not fail. They made the decision to show up, knowing that the consequences of failure were big and the rewards of not failure were small. It was actually a gutsy move to enter at all, I would have understood if they'd said "well, there's nobody to race against so we're not going to bother". The ACO was apparently very concerned about this as it would mean the end of their premium class.

Had they managed to fail, I would have been disappointed because I revel in the sheer capability of the LMP1 hybrid cars. Watching that 919 destroy the field last year after spending an hour in the pits was amazing. But I still don't view the 2018 result as a victory, just a failure to fail. It was a demo run. Like you said, we'll never know if they could have finally beat Porsche because they never raced against them.

Porsche was smart to play it how they did 

They were pretty sure to be  winners in the classes they entered ,  but not sure if they went up against Toyota ......

So now they can advertise Winning ,  and that sells cars !

I just looked at everything I posted yesterday. I apologize if I came across harshly. There are different and equally valid ways to look at this. 

A huge thank you to everyone who helped figure out streaming options. I got to see a fair amount of the race and really enjoyed it.

My wife watched part of it and got hooked. She decided that we need to be there to see the race in person in 2019. So my "Honey-do " list now includes planning for a trip to LeMans.     

In reply to Type Q :

Nice. That's a bucket list item for sure. 

Tom_Spangler said:

racerdave600 said:

There is no difference at all between someone not showing up and teams that cannot build a competitive car. 

That makes no sense. The difference is that, in the first case, all you have to do is show up and finish, in the second case, you have to show up, finish, and beat someone. It's much harder.

I don't buy the Mercedes F1 analogy, either. Merc may have designed a better mousetrap these last few years, but they weren't competing with privateers with a fraction of their budget. Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren all have similar budgets, experienced designers, and world-class drivers at their disposal, just like Merc. Merc just did it better. That's racing, and not at all like Toyota running in a class of one this year at LeMans. 

How is what you are saying any different?  People act like they didn't have any cars in their class, they did.  They built the better mouse trap per the rules and showed up.  Just because another factory backed car didn't show up didn't mean they didn't have anyone to race against and couldn't lose.  Of course they were much faster and this will not go down as the greatest race ever, but they had to build the car, show up, perform at all levels, and not make mistakes.  I've been on both ends of races like this and a win is a win.  As I said before, you race the race you are given, not a fantasy race that you can't win because someone said you did not have enough competition.  I'm sure Toyota would have preferred to have Porsche, Audi or another factory team there, but they weren't.  

I still stand by previous comments,you race against whatever the competition brings, and if you have the better car, you win.  In this case, Toyota had a much better can than the others, just as Mercedes and others before them have had.  

In reply to Type Q :

Our honeymoon in 2008 included LeMans and the French GP.

In reply to markwemple :

I am thinking about other events we could take in while we are there.

I guess we need to go back and put asterisks on all those early 2000’s victories for Audi and TK.

In reply to Type Q :

Like Motogp or the Tour!

In reply to racerfink :

Or the Bentley, I mean Audi coupe victory