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Le Mans - A place where you can see heroes weep


Junkman

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I feel a bit sorry for the septics (honestly).
They are now down to one car, although it seems to run beautifully.
But their hopes to sweep the class with three cars have been crushed badly.
 
Jim Miller said the car Jan Magnussen put into the wall can be rebuild, just not in France.

His words: It's going to be very lucrative. For the guys in Bowling Green.

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Dunno what I was thinking about, paying actual money for the Malbec. Live and learn etc.

 

Well, goodnight Alpine, that's all for this year. Presumably a mechanic was sent to the nearest Renault dealer for bits, but found they were on back order, as per usual.

 

See what you mean about the #64 Vette, it just sounds and feels like it wants to eat stuff. Mind you, Oliver Gavin has been racing those for yonks, hasn't he? He ought to have the hang of it by now.

Is it just me, or are the ex-F1 drivers not getting it all their own way? Most of the top runners are GT specialists. Although Fisi looks quick in his Fiat.

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I think bringing a Fiat to Le Mans is a bit like bringing a knife to a gun fight, but that's probably just me.

 

Interesting phase now.

The Audi lap times are going down, wheras the Porsches' remain pretty constant. My guess is that the Diesel fuel flow rate goes down a bit as the temperatures drop.

This might not be race deciding, but it is noticeable.

It could be a different story in the morning, when the atmospheric air pressure raises from ca. 1004 hPa (now) to an estimated 1011. The turbodiesels will certainly

benefit more from the higher pressure than the petrols. However, rain might nix this advantage.

 

Am I too academic?

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Don't think you can be too academic about it, if you start to try to understand how it really works. It's the enquiring mind. I tend to wonder more how the people involved get through it. Either way, it's an endurance test and designed to break people and machines, so quite a lot of science goes into it one way or another.

Having said that, I wonder if the cooler ambient temp gives the turbo diesels a slight advantage. Which they're choosing to use to mega-mile the juice, in hope that it pays off later? It's probably a tactical back-off all the same. Maybe it makes the drivers think a bit more, thus keeping them switched-on, and not turning into crash prone automatons?

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The Team manager of the #18 Porsche has been summoned to the race management "immediately".

I wonder whether this is related to the incident earlier?

 

Was reported it had brake problems, it's been repaired and pitted recently. Any of these things would be black flag if they were so bad (or a stop/go if Lieb had been hooning down the pit lane) surely. It's an odd one. Must be review of evidence. Any bets that was requested by Audi? :mrgreen:

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Talking about mental strain, with all this talk about LMP1 and GT, we seem to overlook that there is some extremely close racing going on in LMP2

what with the Oreca vs. the Ligier Nissans. P2 is firmly in French hands, we'll have to see whose in the end.

The pressure in those teams must be immense.

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The dark horse in GT is the remaining #91 Manthey Porsche. Their other car was set on fire by the #13 Rebellion early in the race.

So now they can focus all resources on this car.

Talk about a veteran team, those guys have more Le Mans miles under their belts, than some people will drive in their lifetime.

There are more than 11 hours left...

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Yeah, I'm watching that on the timing board at least. Chandhok has to pit soon, but they might get out ahead of the next Ligier. Other than that, there's only really the Gibson in contention. At least the Dome and the SARD Morgan are still going.

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Team L13 experiencing difficulties: Flash Player Hybrid Drive System non-functional, Firefox Directional Stability Unit crashing quite a lot. Pit crew fast asleep, team manager running out of hybrid super-fuel*. Going in the pits for a bit to see what can be done.

On the upside, Team L13 hasn't been daft enough to employ Webber or Chandhok as drivers...

 

*Winning combo of Rossi Monster, Malbec and Absolut Citron. In honour of fallen heroes, it will henceforth be known as Alpine's Demise.

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Aye, but the Datsuns were actually in the sharp end to start with. Bykolles appear to have had an extended fixit session. Y'know, one of those ones where you spend time spannering, drive it round the block, decide it isn't right, get the spanners out again...repeat...

 

At least P2 isn't a snooze. That Gibson (was formerly Zytek btw) is keeping the French cars honest.

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