[WEC Race] 2013 FIA WEC - Round 8 - 6 Hours of Bahrain

[SpikerJack]

Chills when AF corse crossed the finish line.. GREAT JOB!!!!!!!!! BRAVI!!!!!!!

[Beryl]

I hope G-Drive and/or SMP win often next year, just for that Soviet anthem.

[isynge]

Originally Posted by Simmi

A race of attrition this one but great to see the #8 car get the result they deserve.

Sets things up really nicely for next year. Roll on Silverstone!

Caught the last three hours of coverage and enjoyed it. A solid endurance race with enough to keep the interest throughout. Genuinely pleased to see the Toyota get the win, likewise to see Oak get the title.

140 days to Silverstone does seem like quite a while, but I guess we'll get through it one way or another. Suppose it's rather less to wait for Daytona.

[helgi]

Originally Posted by Beryl

I hope G-Drive and/or SMP win often next year, just for that Soviet anthem.

I hope, in Indycar they know the difference between our anthems

[airbusA346]

Originally Posted by Victor_RO

*raises hand*

Vibration news were worrying after Wurz's car broke, but... phew.

The vibration was due to a bollard.



(Photo: James Moy)

[JoestForEver]

Congratulations to Toyota and let's hope the rules of next year stops the eeverlasting dreadful moaning about diesel vs. petro.Focus on the race and victory.

[isynge]

Originally Posted by airbusA346

The vibration was due to a bollard.



(Photo: James Moy)

Impressive that Buemi was still doing 1:44s right up to the end with that additional bit of bodywork modification.

[chernaudi]

Toyota got lucky there--imagine if that thing went into the radiator intake--at best, it might have caused an overheating issue (clogged intake), or at worst, it could've damaged the radiator/oil cooler.

Of course, luck is something that TMG have lacked all year to this point, and seeing how he's matured as a racer and a personality at the track, as much as I root for Audi over Toyota, I'm glad to see Ant finally get a win at Toyota, especially after Shanghai.

And horrible attrition today--Toyota had two of their engines get destroyed/busted, and the Audi that was in the best position to challenge had what sounds like a carbon copy of the differential failure that they had at Silverstone in '10.

Thankfully, both Audi and Toyota waited until Bahrain to start breaking stuff in a big way, not that Toyota hasn't been the victim of such issues enough this year already (hybrid system at Spa, suspension failure at Shanghai).

I wonder if these were freak failures or a deal of Audi and TMG having a sale, cleaning out their '13 inventory, and deciding that everything must go. But with no buyers, they waived the "you break it, you buy it" policy for themselves (and Rebellion in the case of Toyota)

Of course, these phenomenal cars are now obsolescent because of the new rules for next year. The sprint spec Audi R18 e-tron quattros and Toyota TS030s are probably going to be mothballed at Inglostadt and Cologne, with the LM cars coming out occasionally to do demo runs at things like the Goodwood Festival of Speed or other events that Audi and Toyota/TMG will put on. Or in the case of Audi, the LM winning R18s will be on exhibit at the Museum Mobile in Inglostadt.

It's an end of an era. Hopefully the new cars will be just as interesting to watch and see develop and race.

[TF110]

Theory is they were testing new components for 2014. Thats the first engine failure of the RV8 from Rebellion I recall.

[chernaudi]

I know that TMG have had occasional engine issues with the TS030--including one today--but I can't remember Rebellion ever having a problem, and I also can't remember a car catching fire because of one. Hearing that, I'd bet on a rod failure on the Rebellion Lola, since it sounded like an oil fire.

[JoestForEver]

The guy on Radio Le mans said that today is the first engine failures of the Rebellion since they adopted the RV8K in 2011

[Bandicoot17]

Quick question : Is Alkamel data reliable? The trap speed for the Audi's in the race is often 20 kph slower than what the Toyota's were hitting (and what Audi's best was), which to me would probably be completely wrong. Also differs to shanghai where they had similar speeds.

Edit: Although it seems on average the speeds are closer than the data makes them appear.

[Victor_RO]

Originally Posted by Bandicoot17

Quick question : Is Alkamel data reliable? The trap speed for the Audi's in the race is often 20 kph slower than what the Toyota's were hitting (and what Audi's best was), which to me would probably be completely wrong. Also differs to shanghai where they had similar speeds.

Edit: Although it seems on average the speeds are closer than the data makes them appear.

The speeds depend very much on the location of the speed trap, maybe the cars had to break before the speed trap line because of heavy traffic ahead?

[Rennen]

Originally Posted by Maelochs

How many other Toyota fans finally took a deep breath after the #8 crossed the line?

Until Buemi took the checkered, I refused to think anything would go wrong but couldn't believe nothing would.

Count me in mate!
Like Ant said... "It's harder watching it than driving!"

[chernaudi]

I'd bet: at least when you're in the car, you feel that you can control your destiny a lot more than watching from the pits. Plus, you're focusing on driving the car, rather than watching and worrying about the "what ifs".

[TF110]

Im glad Anthony Sebastian and Stephane got the win for the TS030's last race! Fitting end for such a pretty car! Going out on top is the best to do. All hands on for the TS040 now

[GT-Eins]

Yes - Toyota deserved that!

Another Topic: the good debut of the 991 GTE evo-Porsche. There seems to be indications that this will make life for Ferrari much harder next year:



(This analysis is from our race-report of Bahrein - for more of this go here:
http://www.gt-eins.de/Berichte2013/wec/bah/bahr.html)

[Brake dust]

GT-Eins,

Looked at your site - great review of the race! Can you explain the graph above - not sure what I'm looking at?

Performance did improve for the Porsche - still need to solve the rear tire degradation late in the stint.

[Victor_RO]

Originally Posted by Brake dust

GT-Eins,

Looked at your site - great review of the race! Can you explain the graph above - not sure what I'm looking at?

Performance did improve for the Porsche - still need to solve the rear tire degradation late in the stint.

Spread of top speed values in kph between the top GTE-Pro cars.

[GT-Eins]

Originally Posted by Brake dust

GT-Eins,

Looked at your site - great review of the race! ...

Thanks - i´ll forward this to the guy who wrote the report this time (Timo)

Originally Posted by Brake dust

Can you explain the graph above - not sure what I'm looking at?
...

This is the development of Top-Speeds for each car during the race - upper edge of each row is race-start and lower the race-end.
As for the Porsches and Ferraris you see slight differences between both cars of each team which may indicate they did go for different setups to ensure one could win.

Originally Posted by Brake dust

...
Performance did improve for the Porsche - still need to solve the rear tire degradation late in the stint.

As we mentioned in our news Mantheys guys have to start the setup-development work again as the suspension-geometry changed with the evo-update. So all the development results they got through the season to archieve a tire-durability of more than one stint may not work with the new geometry now.

[Brake dust]

Thanks for the explanation. Have your web page book marked for future viewing !!