IMSA DPi Discussion

[Fogelhund]

PR Speak... half is true, half isn't... and yet people are arguing over PR Speak as if it is gospel truth... and it isn't.

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

PR Speak... half is true, half isn't... and yet people are arguing over PR Speak as if it is gospel truth... and it isn't.

Blashphemer! The Atherton has spoken!

Give me a while to figure out if all those words he said actually add up to meaning something .... then we will Know ... as True Believers do ....


... that the opposite is true.

[knighty]

Originally Posted by hondafan37

The car is very nice, the trunk is fantastic. The only ugly thing is the shark fin, but that's not Mazda's fault, it's the ACO's fault

When will the Cadillac images be?

the shark-fin is there to prevent the car taking off and landing in a spectator area causing a potential massacre, like at LeMans in the 1950's......this has been proven beyond doubt to work via many high speed accidents at leMans, particularly from 2 Audi shunts that come to mind, whereby the cars took off but stayed on the floor and simply bounced off the barriers and just decimated the cars and the drivers walked away....the holes in the wheel arch tops/sides are also a big part of the package......the shark-fin is also a tidy sponsor board!.......its not that bad, and nowhere near as ugly as the now retired DP's.......I think the new DPi formula and general rule book will be a huge success, IMSA will boom and grow hugely off the back of it

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by knighty

I think the new DPi formula and general rule book will be a huge success, IMSA will boom and grow hugely off the back of it

Whether or not the DPi formula takes off and to a large degree, whether IMSA regains its former glory, depends a lot on how IMSA handles BoP.

I think DOi is a very sensible formula; it should work economically, it should provide variety, it should have longevity .... depending on what IMSA does with it.

If IMSA makes stupid BoP decisions, biased DPi decisions, or changes BoP form race to race, the series will probably, and should probably, bite the dust.

These are prototypes. They should be built to formula and allowed to run. If IMSA gets too deep into trying control power curves and revs and torque curves ... if IMSA keeps fiddling with aero BoP from race to race ... then DPi will end up where GT is now---people losing interest because they realize they are not seeing cars compete, but rather seeing whichever cars won the BoP lottery for that race, succeed as per the determination of the series management.

ALMS, FIA, and TUSCC GT racing used to be the best on the planet ... now it is a distorted shadow of its former self, where BoP is the only factor determining success or failure. It looks okay, but it is rotten inside.

If WSC does the same thing with DPi, I might have to stick to club racing and historics, where cars, drivers, and teams are actually allowed to do their best.

[TF110]

Yeah I think we all know that dpi will be a bop debate just like dp was. I don't know if imsa will move away from that eventually or not. I hope one day, soon, that they stop the micro managing and let the cars and teams do what they are paid for and develop and race to their best.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Maelochs

Whether or not the DPi formula takes off and to a large degree, whether IMSA regains its former glory, depends a lot on how IMSA handles BoP.

And getting rid of the bodywork requirement.

One of the things that made old IMSA do as well as it did is the fact that interested teams could buy a car and throw an engine in the back - no concerns about having to have custom bodywork involved.

If what we really want is a modern version of old IMSA, that's the single biggest detail that's missing.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by FormulaFox

And getting rid of the bodywork requirement.

One of the things that made old IMSA do as well as it did is the fact that interested teams could buy a car and throw an engine in the back - no concerns about having to have custom bodywork involved.

If what we really want is a modern version of old IMSA, that's the single biggest detail that's missing.

Could be done easily enough. Allow them to use the stock P2 chassis without the Gibson engine. That'd be a great set of rules. Lots of combos.

[Dyson Mazda]

Originally Posted by FormulaFox

And getting rid of the bodywork requirement.

One of the things that made old IMSA do as well as it did is the fact that interested teams could buy a car and throw an engine in the back - no concerns about having to have custom bodywork involved.

If what we really want is a modern version of old IMSA, that's the single biggest detail that's missing.

I can only think of a few examples of teams doing this. Really the only variation outside of the RS Spyder, HPD P1/P2, and Audi R8/R10 was that teams either ran a Judd or AER in the various Lola/Zytek options. This is not really very different from just having the Gibson option in one of the spec P2 cars.

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Could be done easily enough. Allow them to use the stock P2 chassis without the Gibson engine. That'd be a great set of rules. Lots of combos.

It's not expensive, nor hard to build custom bodywork. Certainly there is a cost involved, but, when you look at the cost of a custom install and everything else...building bodywork isn't that big of a deal when you can sell it as a customer operation.

[HORNDAWG]

Originally Posted by knighty

I think the new DPi formula and general rule book will be a huge success, IMSA will boom and grow hugely off the back of it

I agree. Against all the nay saying the DPi component of the IMSA P class as well as the P-2 component got from some quarters, they are seeming to be very well received by the teams. As the first example of DPi to meet the public eye the RT24-P is a very good looking piece of kit, IMO. Using that as the example of what IMSA's vision of DPi is going to be ... Bravo!





L.P.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Dyson Mazda

I can only think of a few examples of teams doing this. Really the only variation outside of the RS Spyder, HPD P1/P2, and Audi R8/R10 was that teams either ran a Judd or AER in the various Lola/Zytek options. This is not really very different from just having the Gibson option in one of the spec P2 cars.

Was not referring to the ALMS.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by MoMedic9019

It's not expensive, nor hard to build custom bodywork. Certainly there is a cost involved, but, when you look at the cost of a custom install and everything else...building bodywork isn't that big of a deal when you can sell it as a customer operation.

Given that the bodywork has to be visibly different, and you need to make sure not screw it up so badly that BoP can't help you, the cost is a lot higher than you'd think. To most teams with no interest in a customer program, it's far too much of an expense.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Could be done easily enough. Allow them to use the stock P2 chassis without the Gibson engine. That'd be a great set of rules. Lots of combos.

Indeed. And that's exactly what most people -inside and outside- want.

[Starfish Primer]

This means that effectively the IMSA has created a new breed of cheaper LMP1 privateer cars with the DPi.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Starfish Primer

This means that effectively the IMSA has created a new breed of cheaper LMP1 privateer cars with the DPi.

Given the expected performance gap I don't think that's a good comparison.

[BRG]

Dose this make sense. Build a beautiful but aerodynamically bad car that has brilliant mechanical grip Then expect BOP to give you more power and lighter min weight.
Then you win by having higher acceleration (and easier overtaking] out of slow corners and the car looks fantastic. Paint it BRG and call it a Bentley. Wow

[Ospi]

Originally Posted by BRG

Dose this make sense. Build a beautiful but aerodynamically bad car that has brilliant mechanical grip Then expect BOP to give you more power and lighter min weight.
Then you win by having higher acceleration (and easier overtaking] out of slow corners and the car looks fantastic. Paint it BRG and call it a Bentley. Wow

Problem with that is poor aero performance compared to the rest will chew tyres, you'll use more fuel due to bop adjustments, your braking performance will suck and you'll be too slow through a corner to use any advantage in engine performance to make a move.

[BRG]

Originally Posted by Ospi

Problem with that is poor aero performance compared to the rest will chew tyres, you'll use more fuel due to bop adjustments, your braking performance will suck and you'll be too slow through a corner to use any advantage in engine performance to make a move.

So I was talking rubbish then .
Is it possible to design a car in anyway that BOP could give it an advantage.
I'm thinking of this years BOP at lest early in the season. DP's had similar lap times but more power and better acceleration and fuel use was also BOPed? I think

[TF110]

Yeah DP's had more fuel to compensate for their more powerful engines and heavier cars. But I think the fuel efficiency between them and the P2's wasn't that big.

[carbsmith]

This is more of an off topic discussion in other threads, but it seems to me knowing what the Dallara LMP2, Mazda DPi, and Cadillac street cars look like it shouldn't be that hard to extrapolate what the Cadillac DPi will look like. For example, the headlight shape of the standard car isn't even that far off of a current Cadillac, it isn't very hard to imagine that with the projectors changed and the clear area reshaped to match the CT6. The trapezoidal, mesh V-series grille can pretty easily be fitted over the openings at the front of the car as well and the raised nose style of the Dallara isn't too dissimilar to the character lines in the hood of the current generation Cadillacs. Give a bit of edge to the body lines like the Northstar LMPs and you have a Cadillac, the only major question is how much of the front opening the grille takes up, since anywhere from Mazda sized to the whole thing would work.

Cadillac styling on that car ought to be pretty negligible in terms of performance anyways. If it was the Ligier or ORECA it would be another question. In that regard chassis selection matters for OEM, in the sense they should pick the car that fits their styling aesthetic the best. Nissan and Ligier is a pretty good fit too, the challenge seems to be in finding areas to differentiate the DPi from the standard model more than anything. I have no idea what manufacturer could use the ORECA 07 without having to change the aero concept of the car.

[chernaudi]

I hope that with more power and better aero that the DPI cars can be at least as fast as the LMP900 cars were from 2001-2005. They were running 1:48s in qualifying and the race. The old DP/LMP2s could hardly keep up with the fastest race lap that the winning Audi from 2000 ran (1:50) with the DPs/IMSA spec LMP2s in qualifying trim.

[Maelochs]

I don’t see any way to design a car to take advantage opf BoP—BoP depends upn the performance of all the other cars as well, and one design, even if deliberately compromised in certain directions to excel in others after BoP, might not be competitive against another car in that supposedly superior area ....

Besides, with so little of the car actually open to development, I am not sure how much aero performance an engineer could throw away without becoming ridiculous.

Also, there is a sort of a minimum standard—the DPis have to be at least on par with the new P2s. The series probably won’t want to have to strangle the P2s too badly—IMSA’s image would suffer by comparison. I think the series wants to keep the DPis about on par with the unfettered P2s in performance ... so a manufacturer deliberately building a much slower car might incur the displeasure of the series. After all, all the bodywork is subject to series’ approval.

[wdave0]

I'd say the best way to police a deliberately slow car would be to just let them lose. No silly BOP needed.

[AoB Special Stage]

No, the best way is to develop a car with all the development put in areas where the BoP doesn't account. But only 2 automakers have the tech to pull that off, if you've figured it out yet.

[TF110]

That's basically how the big Nascar and Indycar teams get ahead. They have the fancy rigs and can get that sweet spot setup a lot easier.