[WEC Race] WEC 2015 Round 5: COTA

[Richard C]

Round five of the 2015 World Endurance Championship will be at Circuit of the Americas (aka COTA) this coming weekend and is part of the "Lone Star Le Mans" double header event. The IMSA TUSC race will be middle of the day Saturday and the WEC endurance race later in the evening of the same day.

Porsche is coming off strong LMP1 wins in the past two races. Can they keep the streak alive, or will it be broken?

9/17 @ 2:45 PM FP1
9/18 @ 5:45 PM GT Qualifying and @ 6:15 PM Prototype Qualifying
9/19 @ 5:00 PM Race (6 Hrs)

All times are local track time

Schedule

Entry List

Spotters Guide and another

Course/Track Maps and another

FRC

RLM

Note: We already have a TUSC COTA thread, but I think the intent was for that to be specific to the TUSC race and not the entire race weekend at COTA, so that is why I created this WEC specific thread. Also joeb has been creating many of the WEC race threads, but I wanted to go ahead and create one to get the discussion rolling. Apologies to joeb if he had a race thread in the works. Admins should feel free to edit this as need

[seanyb505]

Really bummed I won't be able to watch much of this one, especially considering it's one of the last races of the season in a friendly time zone for U.S.

[Richard C]

So... If I was bold enough to create a race thread, that might be an indication of my enthusiasm for this event. I will be doing a one may road trip from North Carolina to the Austin area to attend this event. It will be my first trip to COTA. I am a long time Porsche fan, so I am excited to see them in person.

Who else here plans to attend? Any chance for some type of TenTenths meet up?

Richard

[seanyb505]

There are a couple members of the Greenville collective attending. Not sure of their time schedule, so I'll let them comment.

[Richard C]

I didn't want to try to attempt to provide a wide list of broadcast info, but in the US it appears that Fox will show the entire race live on Fox Sports 2.

Richard

[TF110]

No fs1 coverage?

[Mal]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

So... If I was bold enough to create a race thread, that might be an indication of my enthusiasm for this event. I will be doing a one may road trip from North Carolina to the Austin area to attend this event. It will be my first trip to COTA. I am a long time Porsche fan, so I am excited to see them in person.

Who else here plans to attend? Any chance for some type of TenTenths meet up?

Richard

Wow - that is quite a road trip, should be fun.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by TF110

No fs1 coverage?

It seems FS1 will be dominated during that time by collage football and a few other things. TUSC will be on FS2 as well.

Richard

[Danske]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

It seems FS1 will be dominated during that time by collage football and a few other things. TUSC will be on FS2 as well.

I don't think that the WEC had a better TV deal giving them higher priority than Tudor on FS1 before, but that racing early in the morning meant there was less competition from other events for the WEC.

[PorscheFanNo1]

Anyone know what time the race starts in CET?

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by PorscheFanNo1

Anyone know what time the race starts in CET?

11pm CET. The WEC website has a script for timezone conversions on the front page, so you can see when the various sessions are due to take place.

[PorscheFanNo1]

Thank you. Very clever feature, should have known to look there first :P

[Coach Ep]

Originally Posted by J Jay

11pm CET. The WEC website has a script for timezone conversions on the front page, so you can see when the various sessions are due to take place.

I'm sure the app will correct that for PorscheFanNo1 but in case you wanna do the time maths yourself here we go:

Remember Texas is Central Time, the race starts at 5pm local time = +6 for the UK = 11pm and +7 for Euro mainland = 12 am aka midnight.

(We don't run into the change(s) from Daylight Savings into Standard time yet.)

[J Jay]

Bahhh. You wouldn't think I teach maths for a living would you...

Thanks for the correction Coach Ep. I was under the (mistaken) assumption that the times in Blighty matched those in mainland Europe because we are in BST (UTC+1) until late October. My misplaced sense of nationalism continually fools me into thinking that Britain is the only country to bother with daylight savings.

[Danske]

Originally Posted by J Jay

Thanks for the correction Coach Ep. I was under the (mistaken) assumption that the times in Blighty matched those in mainland Europe because we are in BST (UTC+1) until late October. My misplaced sense of nationalism continually fools me into thinking that Britain is the only country to bother with daylight savings.

In another forum there were a bunch of people in England upset that a helpful GMT offset for some times was wrong. They thought it was wrong because they didn't know that GMT wasn't whatever their clocks said.

[nasportscar]

Pick 'Em: http://nasportscar.com/2014-tusc-pick-em/

[rich07]

Benny Simonsen replaces Roald Goathe in the #96 GTAM Aston Martin. Goathe can't make it for business reasons apparently.

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2015/0...-for-cota.html

[Akrapovic]

The tyre allocation is going back to how it was pre-LM, with one less set available. Why was it raised for the Nurburgring?

[Spyderman]

...Because no one had raced at the ring and they had no data.

[Jam3s]

There was a lengthy test at the ring before the event. That circuit is very hard on tyres though.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by Jam3s

There was a lengthy test at the ring before the event. That circuit is very hard on tyres though.

Which could have made strategy and the race more interesting I think.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by joeb

Which could have made strategy and the race more interesting I think.

Precisely.

[chernaudi]

Why is the #7 Audi sitting in the pits? And even though we've gone though only a third of the session, it already looks like a Porsche white wash.

[gsmith2424]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

Why is the #7 Audi sitting in the pits? And even though we've gone though only a third of the session, it already looks like a Porsche white wash.

More than likely trying to save that engine due to the penalty they got after LM and they have had a long yellow during this first session which has slowed things down. No point in running if you can't get the max out of the car if you are saving the engine.

[chernaudi]

No excuse for that since they're using old engines for opening day practice. It's been sitting in the pits for almost 20 minutes like they have some type of problem.

And though we're not even half way though FP1, either Audi are sandbagging or they once again have missed the mark with set up, be it aero or chassis.