[ELMS Race] Round 4 - Paul Ricard

[isynge]

Enjoyable race if perhaps not quite a classic, a little hampered by the Dailymotion stream being consistently about a minute behind RLM commentary, which bemused rather than annoyed.

Worthwhile way to spend a Sunday and you can't help thinking with the majority of the raw materials being there, it could bode very well for Estoril and 2015.

[Deleted]

Didn't follow the race but the maximum speed chart shows two interesting things. For one, GTEs were generally faster than the GT3s (and again P2s) unlike in Q and practice... but secondly, it shows #76 IMSA with 295,1km/h top speed on lap two, which is 5,6km/h faster than the second fastest #54 AF and then most of the other cars are within 5km/h of that... fastest P2 had 286,5km/h

Okay the old Porkie is running air restrictor free but the other cars are nowhere in that zone and it had not shown such speed in other sessions. So did IMSA skip the track or something...

[GT-Eins]

Here our Race Report from Le Castellet:
http://www.gt-eins.de/Berichte2014/elms/elms_httt.html

Including some Driver-analysis from the LMP2-class:

[Pontlieue]

Interesting how the driver categorization doesn't necessarily reflect the actual pace of the drivers. Chatin was Alpine's fastest driver, and Hirsch could go the same pace as Klien in the Morand car, also Capillaire did quite well in the SLR car. Dolan appears to have had a rather bad day yesterday, usually he is one of the better amateur drivers.

[bella]

in the press conference yesterday, panciatici said he'd decided to go with the medium tyres and it quite obviously didn't work! from a place of complete ignorance (ie mine) it was probably a reasonable gamble - try and gain some pace and make ground for the lead battle and hope the tyres last long enough not to lose everything gained.

regarding dolan, ricard is a very "technical" circuit, very detailed and faffy for want of a better way of putting it. it's all about doing things exactly right. if there's anywhere dolan and the other non-pro drivers were going to struggle it'd be here, so in his defence it's not surprising that it's his worst.

the more races we're having the more it's obvious that chatin is the main reason signatech alpine could win the title. he's really rather good, and i'm a bit surprised there's not more noise about him in the written press. in terms of ultimate pace within the team i think he's not as quick as panciatici, but a little more able to deliver the pace.

equally, and i end up saying this every time he races, ragues is criminally underrated. brandela wasn't too bad, but he easily won the race for them in the same way chatin secured 2nd for alpine.

badey was really quick, wasn't he? having said the non-pro drivers should struggle here, he clearly didn't!

[GT-Eins]

Originally Posted by Pontlieue

Interesting how the driver categorization doesn't necessarily reflect the actual pace of the drivers. ...

Exactly my thoughts!
But Bella got the point: this is only one data set from one race - and there is much more (tyres, no. of stints, setup, experience of the team) which influences the pace. We would need more of these overviews to get a clearer picture.

[bella]

it's a shame that it'd be a pain in the arse to do, but what's most relevant for me is the pace of the car relevant to the car in front and behind at any given time. also relevant is the lead, for instance in this race with the driver changes out of sync you were looking at the gap between the car in front but also the lead. or it'd be interesting to see pace as a continuous line for each car, if that makes sense.

unfortunately due to the useless live timing online it's not possible to do that whilst you're watching the race unless you're at the circuit or privy to the full timing setup.

having been at the race, i can say there was a decent but not wsr size crowd, and the circuits attempt to lure people in who wouldn't otherwise bother with a rooftop party appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. decent music though, especially for packup

it seems somewhat ironic that there's almost always more people milling around on the grid than watching in the grandstands.

[Beryl]

I think this race showed the clear advantage of having three pro drivers over two and a fast am. The Morand car aside (they were just too well hooked up this race), the advantage that pro silver drivers Chatin and Gonzalez provided was monumental. Chatin is a young improving pro, who is already miles better than the true amateurs and will only improve. He struggled to get near Webb and Nelson at Imola and RBR, but this weekend he was just as quick, if not more-so. Gonzalez is a "bad" single seater pro compared to the very best coming through, but he's not racing against Grosjean, Perez, Maldonado and Bianchi (in single seaters) anymore. Radolfo is considerably better and faster than the likes of Thiriet and Dolan, and that's a huge advantage when you need to run 3 silver driver stints per race. Of course, you will see an am perform very well once in a while (like Badey did at PR), but over the season I'll take a young pro over any am for performance. Even at Morand, they have a young pro in Hirsch who can do some of their silver stints without much performance loss to the gold+ pros.

The Jota Zytek is most likely the fastest car from race to race (and the most consistent in terms of pit work), but Dolan has been a big weakness for them this season. They won Imola because the other top teams had problems and they lost RBR because Dolan was further off the pace than Chatin. Ticknell and Albuquerque show the true pace of that car, but might yet lose the championship.