2019-20 WEC COTA Race thread

[joeb]

I think there is a race this weekend and they have just announced the bop for the new corvette making its WEC debut:

https://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/...-of-wec-debut/

It will be in 3 out of the next 4 races.

[broadrun96]

Good news, there's a support series for COTA. Well support rides I guess you could call it. And an Aston Martin Halo car will be running

***1990 Le Mans 24 Hours winner Price Cobb is on-site this weekend. Cobb’s business, Tread Connection Austin, is supplying tires to drivers taking part in the ‘Car Club’ hot laps initiative which is running in lieu of a support race series.
***One of the cars taking part in the Car Club is an ex-Riley Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 from 2016. There are also McLaren and Porsche GT4 race cars, two McLaren Sennas, an Aston Martin Vulcan and an GT1-spec Matech Ford GT

[chernaudi]

I'll be glad when the ACO drop this success BOP crap for LM and hopefully for whatever replaces current LMP1.

Rebellion's top LMP1 time from FP1 is just a few tenths of a second faster than the top LMP2 car and that LMP2 was third overall in terms of fastest lap in FP1.

[broadrun96]

Rebellion consistently fastest but engine failure in FP2. About 4 hours between failure and qualifying so they should be back out. But limited testing on the install.

The #8 was 7 tenths back by the end of the session. The 7 is back in the LMP2 field at 7th best overall.

Think the odds of an LMP2 overall win could be high if the 8 has problems with the curbs like they have so far, bodywork was coming off in FP2.

GTE has the 92 out front with the 95 Aston and 91 Porsche following. Corvette runs 6th 8 tenths behind the leaders.

[TF110]

The success penalties have gone too far. LMP2 should never be at the heels of lmp1. There should be a separation of the classes in terms of speed or lap time. 1 second difference is not enough. It needs to be at least 3 or 4.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

I'll be glad when the ACO drop this success BOP crap for LM and hopefully for whatever replaces current LMP1.

Rebellion's top LMP1 time from FP1 is just a few tenths of a second faster than the top LMP2 car and that LMP2 was third overall in terms of fastest lap in FP1.

Originally Posted by TF110

The success penalties have gone too far. LMP2 should never be at the heels of lmp1. There should be a separation of the classes in terms of speed or lap time. 1 second difference is not enough. It needs to be at least 3 or 4.

I think everyone agrees with you here. The penalties for all cars seem a bit harsh when an LMP2 is near the same speed.

[Akrapovic]

Lap times will separate themselves out after a few laps in the race.

Not that it makes the current situation ok. But it'll be fine in the race.

[carbsmith]

There is a lot of strange things with those lap times. So okay, the track was partially repaved very recently:

The fastest LMP2 time in practice 2 is 5s faster than the last time WEC was at this track. It's 3 seconds faster than any lap that weekend. If you look at Shanghai the 3 year lap time change there is small, only 0.5s difference, so you'd be inclined to say it's because of the new pavement then, right? But then I can't at all understand why the LMP1s are going so slow. This year's cars are about 3s slower then 2017 around Shanghai, and while the Rebellion is slower than that for CotA, it's not a lot. But so far they're lapping 3s slower than 2017 at this track too, while if the pavement is that great you'd expect them to be doing at least similar times. In particular there's no reason for the #7 to be so far off from the #8, the success penalty difference is nowhere near that big.

But maybe that's just looking too close anyways, the Shanghai practice times for LMP1 were pretty crap too, only 1.5s ahead of LMP2 which grew to 2.5s in qualifying and was at least that much in the race (the race winning Rebellion's best lap was only 2.5s faster than the best LMP2 lap, but the fastest lap of the race was nearly 1.3s faster than that)

By the way the ORECA 07 is just straight up faster than the Rebellion R-One was and would at least keep up with the original TS040.

[broadrun96]

Well GTE seems to be a battle and those infamous racing warning words played a part this afternoon. The 92 Porsche lost a few fast lap times for exceeding track limits. The 95 Aston ends up on pole with an average 2:00.733, 92 from 97 from 91. All 6 full time cars were within .5 seconds

The Corvette wouldn't have even been on GTE-Am pole, 2:02.967, 2.2 behind pole. 2:02.784 for Project 1 Porsche. Any bets on a BOP update for WEC C8 after the weekend?

[broadrun96]

And the LMP numbers are in and yup slowing the fastest cars hurts their speed.
Rebellion in pole by 1.6 seconds at 1:47.530. The "slower" Toyota was actually faster, 7 averaged 1:49.161 to the 8's 1:49.431.

LMP2 not far behind with Cool Racing actually averaging slower than LMP1, 1:49.910.

[TF110]

The #8 had a lap deleted or else it would have been ahead of the #7 by about half a second. It'll probably pass the 7 in the race.

[carbsmith]

If Magnussen backed up his practice 2 time they would have been comfortably ahead of the GTE Am field, although still even more comfortably last.

[Truckosaurus]

Just realised that if I sign up for a month of Motorsport.tv today (for 4 of your British Pounds) to watch the COTA race this evening then it will also cover the Sebring WEC race (and probably the IMSA race but I am not geoblocked from the free coverage of that in any case).

I can then spend the month reliving my youth by watching all the '80s Duke Video content they have.

[airbusA346]

Originally Posted by Truckosaurus

Just realised that if I sign up for a month of Motorsport.tv today (for 4 of your British Pounds) to watch the COTA race this evening then it will also cover the Sebring WEC race (and probably the IMSA race but I am not geoblocked from the free coverage of that in any case).

I can then spend the month reliving my youth by watching all the '80s Duke Video content they have.

Annoyingly it looks like BT Sport don't do a catch up service for WEC and I can't record it onto the Sky box because they keep putting it on the Red Button/Extra section.

[seanyb505]

Stream up on motortrendondemand. Looks like probably 50,000 people in the grandstands.

[Adam43]

Rebellion wanting to go as late as possible on the start. In the end managed to keep ahead over the first lap, so now it can make its lap pace count.

LMP2 and GT-Am as close as expected.

[Akrapovic]

Rebellion played that game in Shanghai too. The leader controls the start speed, and people assume the leader will just go. Toyota didn't fall for it that time but it does seem like it hampers the hybrid get away.

Interesting comments from Bart Hayden on Toyotas first stop being 10 seconds shorter. We've seen that before. Toyotas regular stops are shorter too with less fuel and not needing to start the engine, and being immune to the wheels spinning rule, so they get be super aggressive in stops.

Toyota are not out of this. The regulations on track are stacked in favour of Rebellion, but the pit stop regulations are stacked in favour of Toyota.

[TF110]

not much of a 'race' up front. But lmp2 is good. So is GTE AM.

[TF110]

Rebellion pits before both Toyota's. We'll see how fast they stop to determine what the gap is they'll have to recover on-track.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by TF110

not much of a 'race' up front. But lmp2 is good. So is GTE AM.

It'a funny that the rules are meant to make for good racing but it isn't. I imagine the Rebellion speed drop off will be larger than the Toyota. It should come back to them.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

It'a funny that the rules are meant to make for good racing but it isn't. I imagine the Rebellion speed drop off will be larger than the Toyota. It should come back to them.

That might be starting to happen now that they’ve got into the second stint on these tyres ???

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Adam43

That might be starting to happen now that they’ve got into the second stint on these tyres ???

Seems to depending on traffic. Really bad lap for the Toyota that time around. The esses are super difficult to pass in, even as a hybrid.

[Adam43]

Yes, seems that couldn’t be further from the truth!

[Akrapovic]

The gap has now stablised. So I think we're at the point where the Toyotas are now going to slowly but surely close the gap over the remainder of the race.

[helgi]

Well, as there's no special thread for the race, it's a good example that ACO and FIA managed to complete their mission transforming racing into exciting show. I mean, nobody makes a special thread anywhere to comment a TV show while it's on air. Everybody is just watching TV. Just watching colourful machines running round around. There's no need in pre-show articles. No need in those pre-race chats. Even BoP is not exciting anymore. I think ACO and FIA are very successful managers.