Motorspot chat - No dull F1 though

[marsh]

Blancpain heads off to Hungary this weekend, and despite them throwing two sprint races, it's going to clash with BTCC action and possibly the F1.

 

Quite why they're going to one of the most boring tracks on the planet for two 40/60 minute races is something of a mystery....?

[Sun Tze]

Money most likely. Those short Blancpain sprint races don't really do it for me tbh. 

 

After F1 I ended up watching the last ever Suzuka 1000K super GT race. 

Next year it will be the ten hours of Suzuka but with a complete GT3 field instead of GT500 class from SuperGT. Honda NSX and Nissan GT-R GT3 entries confirmed. There's word Toyota will be entering with the GT3 Prius but i sincerely hope they will go with a GT86 GT3 version instead. I can see them picking the Prius vs. Lexus RC-F internal battle though, it's probably better from marketing perspective. 

[marsh]

Meanwhile, the WEC appears to have imploded. I'm glad I went at what was pretty much it's peak, this time round.....

 

I'm not even sure I understand what the plan to race is, a season split over two years or something? going to be a lot of unemployed drivers kicking bout in October.

[Dudley]

A season running over the winter ending with the one race most people have heard of.

 

That worked so well last time.

[wev]

Watching the new FreeSports channel and they're showing NASCAR from Darlington. They're doing a throwback theme to the liveries of the cars and I've just been reading up that they're supposed to cover 1985-89 but a fair few of them are running with liveries from the 90s and even 00s. Doesn't matter to me as I've never followed NASCAR, just seems daft to set something like this up and then alot of the field don't follow it.

 

 

[marsh]

3 hours ago, Dudley said:

A season running over the winter ending with the one race most people have heard of.

 

That worked so well last time.

 

 

It looks pretty bad to be honest. They should have just linked in with IMSA, Blancpain will be trying to figure out a way of getting 70 cars on a grid......

 

What a shame.

[Dudley]

DPI is not the solution to a prototype class though, mainly because it isn't one.

 

I don't know what the actual solution is though other than to accept the death of the final race cars that are even close to having any kind of tech relevance and accepting that from now on all racing of every kind will be more or less a spec series.

 

Maybe that's inevitable, which is a damn shame but the costs of doing the highest of 2017 technology may now just be too high.

[marsh]

Well, there's a few teams in for what's left of LMP1 next year, that very few will see them race is a shame.

 

McLaren must be eyeing the LMP1 class up now at the very least?

 

WRX looks like it's fucked too, Ekstrom has put 4 of his 5 Audi's up for sale citing that he can't be certain they'll be there next year. And that's from the current champion. If ever there was a formula where battery power should be taking centre stage, it's WRX. The racing format would be absolutely perfect for it.

[Sidewaysbob]

a winter series i can go with  ... but no silverstone ... I'm out

 

[marsh]

Indeed, who doesn't want to be at Silverstone in April as a minus ten wind howls through the grandstand....?

 

[Sidewaysbob]

and all of a sudden Silverstone is back .. and in august.. Happy days

[Sun Tze]

The WEC survey is up guys. Seems i can't link it because i already completed it.... 

 

[dino_jr]

Crash from 1:40, literally a pile up!

 

 

[JohnC]

That's some Blues Brothers shit.

[Dudley]

One day they'll learn not to race at Macau.

[kiroquai]

Mmm, especially if it continues doing horrid things to motorcycle racers. Was watching the live stream of the race over the weekend and the live feed showed far, far too much of what was an awful accident.

[Dudley]

It's just a joke of a track these days really. The WTCC is bad enough but GTs are waaaay too quick for the back half and the F3 scares the shit out of me.

 

Bikers are always a law unto themselves but taking a risk to do the TT is much, much more understandable than some smoggy craphole in China where you're not even the main attraction.

[Dudley]

So further to the grid girl thing, as I said in #metoo I'm much less fussed about the jobs of grid girls than I am about whether it stops women taking up the actual sport.

 

And the reason I say that is we're just starting to get to a tipping point.

 

For instance, Natalie Decker is on pole for the Arca (essentially Nascar's Formula 3) race at Daytona.

 

 

(Also in that race is the excellently named Lelani Munter).

 

We don't need grid girls, we need Natalies.

 

In the regional series below this we have 16 year old Hallie Deegan making her "Proper car" debut.  She's won off road championships, she's run modified Kart championships.

 

 

These are the women we need in racing.

 

So, I think the way to help is going to be to point out these women throughout the season....

 

So in the first post let's deal with a series that's already begun, IMSA, the Weathertech sportscar championship.  Think of it as America's World Endurance championship, with LMP2 and GT cars.

 

And it's in the GTs that our interest lies.

 

The twice reigning GT3 champion is Christina Nielsen.

 

 

Thanks to funding issues, she's driving for a much smaller team this year though. They finished 19th in the Daytona 24hr last week.

 

Also in that series, Katherine Legge, former Indycar driver and multiple race winner last year in a Honda NSX. She was 2nd last week...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dudley]

[layten]

 24h Nurburgring qualifying is live on Youtube right now.

 

[Dudley]

LMP1-L is going south.

 

Manor's sponsor is effectively dead and their 2 cars missed Spa.

3 of the remaining 6 cars are BR1s and...

 

 

 

Last time a car did that, Mark Webber ended up in the trees at LeMans and Mercedes pulled out of sportscars.

[wev]

I read the other day that local councils, police etc have been given the go ahead to be able to host Motorsport events on their own streets? I've no idea how my local area could host something but what's the condition of local non-dedicated circuit Motorsport like these days? I recall going to an RAC National Rally (or something to that effect) as a kid and watching old Vauxhall Cavaliers fly over cattle grids and stuff but as far as I'm aware there's nothing like that any more.

[marsh]

There's a local race in Newquay on a public road this year (outside of tourist pissheads using it a race track) or at least as far as I can tell a 'sprint' style race. I'll not be going as some genius has decided to host it the same weekend as the boardmasters or some other such event which is likely to cause bedlam.

 

Also recent talk of Birmingham hosting a round of formula e, in a nod to the superprix of yesteryear.

 

As for the LMP1 mess, the sooner they strike a deal with IMSA the better for all concerned. Fittipaldi was in talks with HAAS and a few cars went off there over the weekend in a number of high speed incidents.

[Sidewaysbob]

Lets see what happens at Le Mans before we perform the last rights on LMP1. Toyota haven't won it yet and given their luck I'm not putting any money on an easy win.

[marsh]

I'd put money on the fact they won't win it. It'll be the Rebellion outfit that win it when the Toyotas grind to halt within a sniff of the finish line. Either that or Alosno will win it by pushing the tub of the car across the line with only one wheel left on it.

[Sun Tze]

Rebellion haven't been the most lucky outfit on la Sarthe either have they ? 

 

Was able to watch the start of the Nur24h and was slightly surprised by the speed difference between GT3 and the rest of the field. Difference in pace looked much bigger then between LMP and GT in WEC races. So many cars on that narrow track with such difference in speed yet so few accidents (in the first few hours anyway).  

 

 

[Sidewaysbob]

I thin kits GT down to almost production cars, well it used to be like that. I think the back marker jonnies are a little more prepped these days but a lot of the teams only do the one race a year.

 

Rebellion have always been there or there abouts. They're certainly the only thing that will stop a Toyota win.

the bug question is whether the Manor boys are going to turn up at all. that's two cars gone before we even start  

[marsh]

There is a reserve list for Le Mans though, and while it's for a couple of LMP2 cars, that's fairy tale stuff right there potentially.

[Dudley]

Yeah the reserve list is only LMP2 and GTE Am but the 2 cars (plus potentially at least Dragonspeed's LMP1) will be replaced.

 

 

KCMG are a quality outfit, they've won the class before.  We won't get down to Racing Engineering but they've won in GP2 and Scuderia Corsa are former GT champions in the US, although this is very much a pay driver car.

 

Krohn is a liability, the Riley would be epically slow.

[marsh]

Weird isn't it, you watch three f1 cars run around the streets of Monaco and you get bored. You plug yourself in for 6 hours at Paul Ricard and on the last lap after 6 hours the lead changes place and you fall off your seat. Blancpain delivered massively today. Astonishing race.