IMSA Race 2016 12 Hours of Sebring

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by rich07

There are a lot of people on this forum with insider knowledge but what separates them from you is how they go about it.

I couldn't see many team managers being very happy at their team being discussed like this by one of their staff regardless of whether the teams identity is known or not. Dropping hints is fine but when it turns into a soap opera it leaves a sour taste in one mouth.

Building a new race team is itself a soap opera when you get down to it.

Besides this should really be in the rumours thread.

Honestly, I agree.

[Maelochs]

So ... I hear there is a thread about actual automobile racing, and specifically about the oldest North American endurance race? That sounds pretty exciting to me.



I have to say, rain and all I enjoyed Sebring more this year than any since the merger .... by far. Even when it looked like AXR would sweep, I didn't care because they raced their way to the front. GTLM is always GTLM, it is the one thing that has worked right for this entire century, and GTD was about as good as GTLM. Even PC managed a cliff-hanger finish of sorts.

Yes I know everything we see on track is entirely the result of BOP .... but given what we are given, once things were underway they weren't blatantly manipulated ... i didn't see any spurious cautions (unless teams are getting paid to stall or crash at series-determined moments, but that it a bit too tinfoil-hat for me.)

Derani's late charge was a huge bonus, but even if he hadn't succeeded, there were 11 hours, 55 minutes of racing before (well ... 8 hours, 55 minutes or whatever) which were all good racing.

The simple thrill of seeing which car is gaining or losing minutely to its competitors each time around doesn't go away because of changed restrictor sizes ... the cars all sound awesome regardless of whether they were given success-ballast.

We look back on the Puegeot-Audi days as some kind of golden age, but back then we were all complaining about how the diesels had bought FIA and made the rules suit them ... there has Always been politics in every human endeavor.

Scott Atherton realized (I think) that there has to be a balance between pure competition (expensive and messy and hard to sell) and pure entertainment (not what the sports car crowd is looking for.) it strikes me that IMSA has refined the balance pretty well.

[Nick Woodbury]

Sebring fans still bitter?

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Nick Woodbury

Sebring fans still bitter?

Probably will continue to be so until IMSA becomes their vision of perfection.

[Starfish Primer]

Originally Posted by Maelochs

So ... I hear there is a thread about actual automobile racing, and specifically about the oldest North American endurance race? That sounds pretty exciting to me.

I massively agree with your post. I enjoyed a lot Daytona and Sebring this year and I'm expecting to watch the next round of the series.

[Accident]

I agree we are off on a tangent a bit, but I don't think our bickering needs to be moved. A thread for a race that most people are done talking about is a better place for it than derailing another thread that people might actually still be using for quite a while.

I generally agree with Maelochs, I quite enjoyed this race (and Daytona before it) more than I have the last few years, and I'm not even someone who was particularly down on the series during that time.

One spot where I disagree, and maybe this was just because I was running on two hours of sleep before the start and was grouchy, was that PC was anything other than a joke. This felt to me like the worst showing from them we have seen thus far, it felt like every 5 minutes we had one sliding through the grass or spinning out. I know the conditions were tricky, but I don't think it looked good. Maybe if I watched it again in a less sleep-deprived state it wouldn't be so bad though, I dunno.

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by Accident

One spot where I disagree, and maybe this was just because I was running on two hours of sleep before the start and was grouchy, was that PC was anything other than a joke. This felt to me like the worst showing from them we have seen thus far, it felt like every 5 minutes we had one sliding through the grass or spinning out.

But ... PC didn't cause half a dozen or more yellow flags all by itself (only three by my count,) so all that spinning and sliding didn't bother me.

It is still a Pro/Very Am class. What I mostly ask of it, is that it not interfere with the rest of the race, and in this case, PC did okay compared to many other races.

[Accident]

Originally Posted by Maelochs

But ... PC didn't cause half a dozen or more yellow flags all by itself (only three by my count,) so all that spinning and sliding didn't bother me.

It is still a Pro/Very Am class. What I mostly ask of it, is that it not interfere with the rest of the race, and in this case, PC did okay compared to many other races.

True, for all their shenanigans not a lot of them ended in a FCY. I'm not too concerned with a car having a little off and rejoining, but when they spun on track or came to a gentle rest against the tires it was sort of a FCY-scare. As I said though I was pretty ragged, so I probably wasn't being too generous.

You are right though, they didn't actually affect things much on track and very rarely were involved with other cars which is a positive. I think the only incident I remember was some very very light contact at turn 10 between one of the dark PCs and a GT car, and GT car wasn't even affected as the PC mainly spun in avoidance.

It does make me wonder though, how many times did other cars pit anticipating a FCY when the camera showed a PC off and backwards in the grass somewhere? Not implying that it was a lot or something, just would be an interesting statistic.

[Coach Ep]

the #20 and #85 were all over the place, both during practice and the race, the fact that only 3 (?) of the 13 (!) FCYs were "caused*" by them is rather astonishing therefor!

*of course race control takes the real blame for throwing so many cautions, worst example was the car that got parked at the end of pit-out which could easily have been retrieved either by pushing (manpower) or flat towing (recovery vehicle) it backwards...