no more Lamborghini

[panoz.lmp1]

Originally posted by billnchristy
Its a shame that lambo didnt keep their promise (or at least from this side of the story) Arent the Euro lambos doing alright...or at least pretty good compared to the KB versions?

I heard that Lambo said befor the season that the priority is on developing the FIA-GT Lambos because LAMBO KNOWS that the Murcielago R-GT has problems with the ACO regulations.

At the end of September Reiter will go to start the tests of the next engine step which is build for the 2005 GT1 restriktors.

Another interesing point: They (Reiter/Lambo) are learning a lot what it means to have customers. Currently they are working hard to communicate all their knowledge to the customers. In Valencia Reiter runs the car and knows everything about the car and doing the right decisions.

[minimangler]

damn
i was looking forward to seeing it
i remember the first time i saw race saleens
it wouldnt be that good, but such a shame!

[marcush.]

You can only inform your customers about things you actually know....
Basically they have no clue about how to setup the car for different race tracks and this will hurt their qualifying performance even with Drivers like Brabs or Peter Kox.
Having no advance Information your posibilities to fix issues that limit the cars performance are limited at best
and so you have to go into the race with a setup sacrifying out and out performance for balance.It´s quite a simple equation ,you have to pay the price for campaigning a untried car against fully sorted competitors.

[Bob Riebe]

Originally posted by marcush.
You can only inform your customers about things you actually know....
Basically they have no clue about how to setup the car for different race tracks and this will hurt their qualifying performance even with Drivers like Brabs or Peter Kox.
Having no advance Information your posibilities to fix issues that limit the cars performance are limited at best
and so you have to go into the race with a setup sacrifying out and out performance for balance.It´s quite a simple equation ,you have to pay the price for campaigning a untried car against fully sorted competitors.

In the past a good number of drivers could convey to the mechanics compentent information on how the car was working or get out and actually work on the car itself.

Are there any drivers left who are more than just drivers and have mechanical ability?

Bob

[marcush.]

well Bob ,you are very right about this.
But on the other hand I prefer a driver who does not want to engineer the car.
The more these guys have experienced the more (some of them)seem to know a cure for everything .
A little knowledge is dangerous ...and this way quite often you struggle to optimise your package for performance because of the driver insisting on mods he thinks are necessary.
Personally I prefer a driver relaying his feelings and experience on track,and clear statements what he needs to go faster,what keeps him from doing just that.
Posing the right questions and building up confidence is the key to lap time,and of course potential of the package.
Never worked with Brabs or Kox though...but what I´ve heard from tghe lambo development Reiter seems to be a little unfocused ,maybe due to the technical issues unsolved maybe due to the lack of experience i don´t know.
The Feedback to one of their Suppliers was as bad as it could have been,coming back from a threeday test with no
answers and no clue what testing and developing components is all about.sure they may have had other troubles and simply no time/workforce to evaluate the components but things like that tend to bite you very soon...as we saw.

[mikmx]

I know that Peter Kox is an excellent development driver. Ask Prodrive and he has good mechanical and technical knowledge. So in search of the weakest link we can continue..

[marcush.]

I would never think of kox or Brabs as a weak link...these are two very capable pedalers...so they are surely the strong point in the lambo scenario

[JAG]

Is this the first sign of future troubles for the GTS class?

Costs are rising and there is no longer any prospect of GTS becoming to top sportscar class due to the ACO's commitment to prototypes and the class's revival in the LMES.

AudiSport realise this and do not want to divert resourses away from there new LMP1 car.

Lets face it the Maserati MC12 was built to compete in a Super GTS class for overall wins, not for class wins. Now the GTS bar has been raised too high for some of the smaller/less well funded manufactuers.

[marcush.]

I´d say Fia-GT is less of a indication of a car´s potential due to the regulations leveling the playing field quite drastic.
Even the Viper showed speed this year and lost out only due to the better tyre wear over the stint of the newer cars.
The Lambo,Pagani,and even 575 Maranello theme is of course
one of individual failures to deliver whatis necessary to be competitive.I think all these project underestimated the level of the other teams/projects and went in a bit
naive.This led to the failure of pagani and put Lambo at risk .Ferrari woke up this summer ,but the basic design
seems to be no better than prodrives development,the teams relying on superhero efforts from the drivers to succeed.
Should we be afraid of the MC12 ? Don´t think so.In my personal view ,it is just the new car with the best potential and will get quite a challenge from the Corvette
and the Aston Martin.If there´s enough Money and ideas to bring the Saleen to that level we´ll see...

[Fab]

Originally posted by JAG
Lets face it the Maserati MC12 was built to compete in a Super GTS class for overall wins, not for class wins

Let's not forget that, from the start, ACO said "no" to Jean Todt, who intented to enter a GTS beeing a possible overall winner. He knew from the start that ACO'd never let this be.