[WEC Race] 2012 Six Hours of Fuji

[The Badger]

Dream come true for Toyoya really , plant the car on pole at their home race , with a Japanese driver no less , and go and beat Audi fair and square , at home , at their own track .

Whats next I ask !!! Proper please I am .....

[Mal]

Have any spectator numbers been released? I was good to see some nearly full grandstands.

[Bentley03]

Originally Posted by Mal

Have any spectator numbers been released? I was good to see some nearly full grandstands.

I heard 50,000 over the 3 days, although there was surprise amongst some of the media that the figure wasn't higher (ie there appeared to be more than that at the the circuit).

[CTD]

Originally Posted by The Badger

Dream come true for Toyoya really , plant the car on pole at their home race , with a Japanese driver no less , and go and beat Audi fair and square , at home , at their own track .

Whats next I ask !!! Proper please I am .....

Not only beating them fair and square, pushing them so hard they made driver mistakes and got penalties! Something Peugeot took longer to accomplice.

[aneesh99]

Don't know what Dr. Ullrich's problem is, it was quite clear cut, like Hindy said, he came from nowhere, to the point where I doubt he'd even make turn 10.

[vincegail]

Positive: the website of my local newspaper posted an article (although short) about the Fuji 6 Hours.


VERY NEGATIVE: the accompanying picture to the article was one of the 3 Peugeots on their way to the finish of the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2009!


http://www.gva.be/sport/motorsport/a...-van-fuji.aspx

Is it that much trouble to do your homework and source a decent picture???

[CTD]

Originally Posted by vincegail

Positive: the website of my local newspaper posted an article (although short) about the Fuji 6 Hours.


VERY NEGATIVE: the accompanying picture to the article was one of the 3 Peugeots on their way to the finish of the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2009!


http://www.gva.be/sport/motorsport/a...-van-fuji.aspx

Is it that much trouble to do your homework and source a decent picture???

The only reason i could think, to why they would chose that photo, is that it's the only photo they own, and therefor not wanting to pay for a proper from the race.
But very poor, indeed!

[Simmi]

It is tough when you don't have the shots to work with but you'd have thought GVA would have access to some decent image banks? Maybe not.

Can't imagine it would be easy to get any shots from Fuji but certainly from Le Mans. I sometimes plough through Getty images when I get bored at work.

[vincegail]

A quick search on http://picture.belga.be/belgapicture/editorial/sports/ (same newsagency the Peugeot picture came from) with keywords 'Toyota TS030' gave me a host of pictures! All of them of Le Mans, to be fair, but at least it's the Toyota!

So the fault is purely due to sloppiness. No excuses!

[carsten66]

Originally Posted by vincegail

Positive: the website of my local newspaper posted an article (although short) about the Fuji 6 Hours.


VERY NEGATIVE: the accompanying picture to the article was one of the 3 Peugeots on their way to the finish of the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2009!


http://www.gva.be/sport/motorsport/a...-van-fuji.aspx

Is it that much trouble to do your homework and source a decent picture???

Give a feedback about their mistake directly to the newspaper, that's the only way they can learn something from it as well.

[vincegail]

Originally Posted by carsten66

Give a feedback about their mistake directly to the newspaper, that's the only way they can learn something from it as well.

I already did!

[gregtummer]

Originally Posted by carsten66

Give a feedback about their mistake directly to the newspaper, that's the only way they can learn something from it as well.

Or apply for the position as their writer.

[carsten66]

Originally Posted by gregtummer

Or apply for the position as their writer.

Yep

[TF110]

Originally Posted by gwyllion

A little help from Audi's mess ups and penalty?! Toyota won the race because of Treluyer collision and the resulting penalty.

Hey, it's not Toyota's fault! Or is it? Your calculations are great, but lets not forget the huge mistakes that Lapierre made in traffic as well. That took plenty of time away from him. And he potentially lost a good deal of that lead that Toyota would have needed to win.

[chernaudi]

Originally Posted by Simmi

Predictably Ullrich isn't happy with the stop-and-go decision. I'd say it was pretty clear-cut to be honest. It's true the slo-mo replays did Ben no favours at all in terms of how bad it looked.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/103463

All sorts of variables at play as the safety car was a huge stroke of luck for them.

I have to agree that the replays show that it could've been avoided and Ben's admission of fault when interviewed during the race didn't help matters.

I do think that the Aston was trying to let the JRM HPD though, and didn't see the #1 Audi, but Ben admitted to forcing the issue, too.

[gregtummer]

Hindy even said on the broadcast that he hopes next year that they get rid of that chicane. There was a lot of contact there.

[TF110]

I think they should widen it a little in that area, that way there's more room for overtaking or faster cars.

[gregtummer]

Or they can just bypass it. There were just cones there blocking you from going straight on.

[chernaudi]

It seems that most drivers weren't enthused with that whole section of track, because of in spite of a lot of it being fairly wide, the racing lines were fairly narrow which limited overtaking in general, be it between classes or for position within a class, and the chicane especially was a big choke point.

With the relative straight line performances between LMPs and GTs as of now, I was surprised actually that there were no more incidents than there were. We have to remember that LRP abandoned a similarly tight chicane before the diving turn because of accidents there in '08-'10.

[TF110]

I didn't hear that. I only heard it was a technical section that was a lot different than other parts of the track. I saw plenty of passing through there. I think it was a good part of the track because it needs to be precise, and if someone has a screw up, it leads to a pass before the straight.

[deggis]

McNish & Trelyer interviews right after the race (from Fourtitude):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im2L96Y6H9c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsXmOOp0-4

[Purist]

TF110, there was an interview with Allan, either in Qualifying or Pre-Race, where he described the first part of the lap as fast (well, what else would you call it?). However, in talking about that last section, he used a number of terms to the effect of it being twisty and technical, and finished with the words "not very satisfying" to describe driving it, even when he did it well.

They should use that bypass road for the chicane next year. You still have to go through all those other corners at the end of the lap. Turn 10 (I think it is) should still be tight enough for outbraking and overtaking, even without the chicane.

This Fuji chicane really follows in this recent pattern of annoying chicanes, which really aren't necessary either, being installed at a number of Tilke's recent tracks. Fuji has one. Abu Dhabi has that one right before the Turn 7 hairpin. India has one at Turn 6/7. Korea has one at Turn 4/5/6. Moscow Raceway has one as well at Turn 7/8/9.

[gregtummer]

The reason for all these unnecessary turns at modern tracks is that F1 cars are limited to ~190 miles in race distance.

The modern day Fuji was designed to get F1 cars there. In order to get F1 cars there, they had to built a bunch of unnecessary, twisty, and slow corners at the end to make the lap time slower, or else the race would be over way too fast.

That is the ultimate problem with the new tracks. By making F1 a specific race distance for every track in order to make the race last about 1 hour 30 min (except Monaco), all the tracks are carbon copies of each other. This leads to unnecessary corners that have no flow to the track.

The solution to this is to take the 1 hour 30 min race window and apply that standard to each track to see how many laps each race should be. Some races would end up being a little longer than 190 miles then, but you could then design tracks that have a nice flow to them.

[TF110]

It provides an overtaking point where everyone brakes. A hard braking zone. Without the chicane there the braking zone speed is a lot higher speed where that part of the track isn't particularly wide. That'll cause more incidents IMO than the chicane. Unless they widen the track there. If they don't there's going to be lots of cars running off track. Super GT uses the same layout, it's not just FIA sanctioned series.

[banzailap]

In response to the 50 000 attendance number...

To put it in perspective, this is about the same level of attendance as the September Super GT race. The May 500km race and the Sprint Cup in November are usually 70 000 or more. Still, this is very good considering that there was not a lot of promotion and this is the first time in ages. There is still fondness and nostalgia in Japan for Group C, and if the WEC plays it well (as they did this week-end), they could get a full house next year, especially now that Toyota won it.