Hehe, here I am, sorry for the wait!modbaraban wrote:
Looking forward to vyselegend coming back with loads of pictures and videos.
What a fantastic Le Mans edition!
It had absolutely everything that makes an event unforgettable:Lots of drammas, lots of action, lots of emotions. A fantastic weather, splendid girls, tasty barbecue, maybe the sun was a little bit too warm but that's better than camping in the cold mud...
I'm glad Peugeot broke their duck finally, but I don't really agree that they were stronger than last year. Actually they ran a relatively similar strategy, and they had even less performance advantage, but it was simply the first time they didn't suffer terrible luck, as no lapped car crashed in them, the weather was stable, and even if they still managed to do something very stupid with #7, they were ok. Still some strange glitch affected the #8, like last year. But then again it just confirms that the fastest car tends to break more often... Perhaps it's safe to say the the real "reliable" pace of the 908 is the one of the #9.
Audi were hurt by the lack of dry testing, and it was obvious that all three R15 had to deal with massive understeer for the first six hours. If you've seen Premat's crash on youtube it appears understeer coming in the right kink before Indianapolis was exagerated! By the way I was at Indianapolis at the start so the #3 crashed just 25m in front of me! I've shot it in the gravel:
link
link
link
During those hours before the night they lost the race IMO (even if cooling problems and suspention reliability would have compromised it later anyway). They tried to change nose several times, desesperatly searching for more front grip, but in the end I think they got too far and altered the balance of the car in an unsafe way. If you've watched the Lucas Luhr crash, you probably noted he didn't lost the rear suddently, but inexorably during two plain seconds of steering corrections, and despite having good forward momentum! So It feels to me like a longitudinally unbalanced car, although I'm not in position to argue if it's about the rear being to light or the suspention/camber/anti-roll bar settings being messed up... Audi are famous to extract the maximum from their cars, but here they seemed lost in terms of set up, which is understandable when you know the only running they did here was on the wet.
Funnily, it looked like a reverse battle of 2007, with the R15 suffering the same youth-related problems than the 07' spec 908, while Peugeot had a good deal of experience of the track/car combo. Notably, the cooling problem that haunted Peugeot for two years, specific to this track, was now Audi's trouble, as the remaining two R15 had to pit systematically for cleaning the turbo intakes.
Btw I'v taken interesting pic of their brake duct, and it is the first time I've seen it "caged" like that. Certainly they were aware of the risk of sucking in much dirt from the track.
link
I've also jumped on the occasion to take a close-up of the controvesial winglets of the front
link
link
And the revised engine cooling extraction, replacing the abrut grid from sebring.
link
As for the 908, I've shot it with the front flaps opened, and after they made lots of ink sink, it was discovered they just help cliping the front bodywork in...
link
Another little detail worth a pic was the intake, which external shape looks unchanged, but I'm pretty sure the splitter dividing the flows for the turbos and the brakes was vertical before, and it looks horizontal now. Or I'm just confused...
link
I'll try to post more stuff tomorrow. I discovered late in the saturday night that my camera was actually able to record some video clips in avi format, so I've rec little clips which I'd try to upload later. But nothing really special.
If anyone have a youtube clip of Treluyer's crash of the #17 Pescarollo please post a link here, because I was just back in the camp when I heard it in the radio, but was too tired to return to the track so I haven't seen the images...
PS: It seems the hosting server for the pics sucks a lot (a myspace account)
, and hotlinking doesn't work ATM, so I've put a link under each pic. I hope it will work...
)
):
That engine is so awesome and it played it's swansong well. YouTube C6.R sounds and you'll see what I mean. It was such an assault on your hearing and whenever someone was being interviewed on SpeedTVs coverage there was no mistaking who blew by. Congrats to Peugeot, it took alot of effort to beat the juggernaut that is Audi to win the 24 hours. I've never been more interested in a race than I was about this one. It has something that F1 doesn't. Maybe it was the racing part rather than having politics dictate everything, or the sheer diversity of the cars. I don't know. I was really happy for Dan Binks as well. He has been on the other winning Corvette car for the past few years and finally got his 24 hours win. And a final attaboy to the teammates of Karthikeyan (? spelling) for running the whole race with just the two of them. Not a achievment to scoff at no matter what Nahrain did. I know I couldn't do that! =D>
