[WEC Race] 6 Hours of Portimao [Race Thread]

[Mike E]

Originally Posted by Simmi

The article doesn't get into specifics, only that there is going to be an adjustment to aid to the LMDHs prior to Spa.

Have to assume Porsche and Caddy will get a break of some sort. You've got to feel for Peugeot.

Not to mention Glickenhaus and Vanwall...

[RL17]

Originally Posted by Simmi

The article doesn't get into specifics, only that there is going to be an adjustment to aid to the LMDHs prior to Spa.

Have to assume Porsche and Caddy will get a break of some sort. You've got to feel for Peugeot.

Porsches have lowest max speed of main manufacturer HY cars at both Sebring (slow circuit) and Portimao. Caddy fastest in both, Ferrari good and Toyota OK and Peugeot not too bad.

will possibly show more at Spa and then LM

[veeten]

I knew that after the second practice, the overall lap speeds were a dead giveaway to the BOP changes coming.
Toyota were maxing 305 kph, were as Ferrari was 303, and the others were 302 to 298. That's not what FIA and ACO were looking to maintain with Le Mans just weeks away. Reasons why you haven't heard from the other teams, they're going to let the powers that be handle this, and make the adjustments.
As my favorite character used to say, " It's the smart move... "

[Adam43]

The top speeds after the definitive FP2 and also the race. Look at the difference between them - wind?

http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com/Res...e_Hour%206.PDF

http://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com/Res...actice%202.PDF

Difficult to see what you would do to align the two types of cars, assuming that is the approach.

Porsche is clearer slower.

It is also interesting to see the variation across a class isn’t that different to LMP2 and GT.

[seanyb505]

How many of those race speeds were draft affected? Not that you can't draft in practice, but there's more opportunities to get the right conditions, and people are less likely to bail out of a lap.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by seanyb505

How many of those race speeds were draft affected? Not that you can't draft in practice, but there's more opportunities to get the right conditions, and people are less likely to bail out of a lap.

This is a good point. Even in practice I worry there is a chance of odd results - maybe only one got to draft and the others didn't. In the race all get a chance and are at least all trying. In practice not so much.

Of course, let's remember the rules aren't trying to equalise top speed. So we need to be careful to not read too much into any of this.

The power and how it is used is probably one of the more reliable and best understood parts of the data that the rule makers review.

Still looking at this variation is interesting in itself and to understand how the racing may develop.

To that end I have tried to compare top speeds of the different classes and also compare Hypercar (small sample) and LMDh (very small sample). These are attached.

Edit: the lines and the bars show the average for the class and 1 standard deviation above and below. It’s a little odd on the very small sample example of LMDh.

Ultimately there is not too many conclusions that can be drawn. Not really enough to base a BoP decision on. I'd probably give LMDh a tiny bump here, but that risks Caddy being too fast.

Also the range of the speeds isn't that different by class. The standard deviation (not a great sample size) is 2.6, 1.5 and 2.1s for Hyper (all), LMP2 and GTE-Am. Not terrible for the early days of hyper I would say. It is only 1.8s if we ignore the privateers (and non hybrid).

And seanyb, I haven't addressed your point. I had a plan to do that - perhaps look at the 20th fastest top speed lap for each car. Hopefully ignoring the draft - or take the average (removing the bottom quartile)? At some point I'll do something on this.

Note: it is clear that the top speed measurement is quite discrete!
Annoyingly when I upload it shows them all at different sizes, it was meant to be that they were the same height and scale for the 3 classes to see the relative spread. If you download them it is fine. And the chart will all the classes on is fine for this.

[Adam43]

With the aim of trying to correct for seanyb's point I looked at the distribution of lap top speeds across the race. To see how it varied.

Charts show every lap and the top speed from that lap. They are ordered from fastest to slowest. We didn't have much yellow so nothing really to worry about here.

Hot takes:

• There is a lot going on here. Not all of it helps. In fact I would say very little of it does!
• The only real takeaway is that you can see that discrete nature of the data. The measurement is very much not continuous. Which is fun.

Other takeaways? Well there is, er, somethings...

• There are clearly some laps that show a good tow.
• Oddly the effect seems to vary by car!
• Cars from the same team have big differences - now pretty much for every two car team, one car had a problem. However I would have expected the fastest few laps would be similar. See the Toyota, Ferrari and Porsche charts
• Some cars are slower with their fastest laps, but then win later on and have a stronger "tail". See Toyota/Caddy.
• There seems to be a Hypercar and LMDh difference here. This could decent drop off of speed, the LMDh are much more consistent. Something to so with the way the hybrid works/energy conservation. Which probably means that looking at these top speeds is a blind alley when it comes to comparing the classes.
• The Caddy Porsche one is interesting.

So, my main takeaway is that looking at top speeds would not help you do any BoPage. But I doubt the rule makers are, they have much better data. We don't so it is worth a look - but I don't think there is much here. At least not between the classes.

Some cars are obviously slower than others (privateer/non hybrid) and the Porsche. However this later difference isn't that much different to what you see between team cars.

[Adam43]

And for even more fun. Here is the comparison of LMP2 and GTEAm.

GTEAm is the top car from each manufacturer (because of the discrete nature the cars don't look nice with many lines)

LMP2 is the top, middle and bottom car (based on fastest top speed lap).

[Adam43]

So there we have it. The Porsche should get 2kW and lose 5kg, the Caddy should lose 3kW, and the Toyota lose 10kW and lose 5kg. These are only for Spa obviously. Different ones for Le Mans.

[Mike E]

Good effort! You're hired!

[Adam43]

If anyone can see any good trends, or interesting points let me know.

If I have time (unlikely) I’ll look at Sebring. It would be interesting so compare cars from the same team there when one didn’t have problems.

[Adam43]

DSC update: https://www.dailysportscar.com/2023/...ibextid=Zxz2cZ

- LMDh need to close the gap. Could happen “organically”, both the teams are short on WEC experience. Or could be helped by BoP between the two kinds of car.

[PhilipR]

Quick thought - the 7 Toyota just blitzed at the start and immediately set a pace that nobody could match - and then they dropped pace and the 8 was able to catch them
Could the initial pace be result of the driveshaft sensor? Not having data on the power delivery allowed the car to run with more power until they realised what was happening and slowed the car down?

I know there could be multiple reasons for what happened, I just found it intriguing how fast it was at the start and then dropping pace all of a sudden

[joeb]

Originally Posted by PhilipR

Quick thought - the 7 Toyota just blitzed at the start and immediately set a pace that nobody could match - and then they dropped pace and the 8 was able to catch them
Could the initial pace be result of the driveshaft sensor? Not having data on the power delivery allowed the car to run with more power until they realised what was happening and slowed the car down?

I know there could be multiple reasons for what happened, I just found it intriguing how fast it was at the start and then dropping pace all of a sudden

Tire strategy could have been a difference too.

[PhilipR]

Originally Posted by joeb

Tire strategy could have been a difference too.

True - they did say they used both soft and medium compounds. Maybe the 7 was on softs at the start

[Mike E]

Full race replay is up on YouTube

https://youtu.be/8ltsolMB-0s