Hotrod
2022 RFFL Champion
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Green Flag at 10:40 a.m. EST Saturday 3-17-18
https://sportscarchampionship.imsa.com/events/2018-mobil-1-twelve-hours-sebring
2018 12 Hrs of Sebring
- Thread starter Hotrod
- Start date
Green Flag at 10:40 a.m. EST Saturday 3-17-18
https://sportscarchampionship.imsa.com/events/2018-mobil-1-twelve-hours-sebring
Get That 88 Up There !!
Love United Hate Glazer
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That was a wild start
Kiante
Team Owner
Pla and Paetron having gearbox issues again... Yikes.
Get That 88 Up There !!
Love United Hate Glazer
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Jesus what the hell happened
Hotrod
2022 RFFL Champion
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2017
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Wow - that may be it for them!
Huh .... an upside down Ferrari !
Whew - everyone walked away. Goodness........
Kiante
Team Owner
Montecalvo had no time to react, glad to see he got out okay.
Doc Austin
Back From The Dead
I really enjoyed the race. I managed to stay awake for all but a couple of hours. I normally can't take more than a couple of hours of any kind of racing, mostly because none of it is competetive enough. However, IMSA has gotten to be so good I can't get enough of it.
I was still re-watching some of the Rolex just yesterday!
I imagine Oliver Pla is going to get a firm talking to. Was he really trying to win it with 11 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds still on the clock? Imagine being Scott Sharp with all that effort and money invested in the team, and not even getting to turn a single lap.
Vautier had a great weekend going until he understeered into the wall. That just didn't look right. I'm guessing he had a LF tire go down. I'm also betting that tub took some damage. That team isn't exactly rich and this has got to really hurt. It was a hell of a hit, but these are really safe cars.
Really liked seeing the CORE Autosport team run so well. Competitive privateers are something you can build a good series around. IMSA needs to give the European spec P2 cars a little more of a break because that's the only car a privateer team can buy. In the first two races privateer P2 cars have run well, but been a little off the pace. While CORE has gotten exceptional results, they have done it by running perfect races and not with blazing speed. I don't believe any of the P2 cars has even led a lap this year, so I would like to see IMSA adjust the BOP and get them in the fight. After all, the P2 Gibson is supposed to be IMSA's baseline of performance for it's BOP, except it's not.
I was also glad to see the #28 Lambo have a good run after they were hosed with a 5 minute penalty while dominating the Rolex. Would have rather seen them win, but they got a podium and are probably near the top in points now.
Mostly though, all the Caddys were competitive but they all had a little bad luck, both the Mazdas were competitive except they seem to live off of bad luck, both Penske Acuras were fast but either blew up or got wrecked, and the Nissans were fast but their real advantage was Pipo Durani. The fight among the factory cars was really, really intense.
The only teams that were not really fast were the privateer P2 teams, and I think IMSA would do well to give them a little help on the BOP.
I was still re-watching some of the Rolex just yesterday!
I imagine Oliver Pla is going to get a firm talking to. Was he really trying to win it with 11 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds still on the clock? Imagine being Scott Sharp with all that effort and money invested in the team, and not even getting to turn a single lap.
Vautier had a great weekend going until he understeered into the wall. That just didn't look right. I'm guessing he had a LF tire go down. I'm also betting that tub took some damage. That team isn't exactly rich and this has got to really hurt. It was a hell of a hit, but these are really safe cars.
Really liked seeing the CORE Autosport team run so well. Competitive privateers are something you can build a good series around. IMSA needs to give the European spec P2 cars a little more of a break because that's the only car a privateer team can buy. In the first two races privateer P2 cars have run well, but been a little off the pace. While CORE has gotten exceptional results, they have done it by running perfect races and not with blazing speed. I don't believe any of the P2 cars has even led a lap this year, so I would like to see IMSA adjust the BOP and get them in the fight. After all, the P2 Gibson is supposed to be IMSA's baseline of performance for it's BOP, except it's not.
I was also glad to see the #28 Lambo have a good run after they were hosed with a 5 minute penalty while dominating the Rolex. Would have rather seen them win, but they got a podium and are probably near the top in points now.
Mostly though, all the Caddys were competitive but they all had a little bad luck, both the Mazdas were competitive except they seem to live off of bad luck, both Penske Acuras were fast but either blew up or got wrecked, and the Nissans were fast but their real advantage was Pipo Durani. The fight among the factory cars was really, really intense.
The only teams that were not really fast were the privateer P2 teams, and I think IMSA would do well to give them a little help on the BOP.
Charlie Spencer
Road courses and short tracks.
I was only able to catch parts of this one, and not the first or last couple of hours. I take it Pla was apparently hitting the sponsor's product before the green flag instead of after the checkers. What happened to the Penske Acuras?
FLRacingFan
Redundant Tweet enjoyer
Yeah, he sure proved you can't win a race in the first corner (besides in F1) but you sure as hell can lose one. Bonehead award there.
The Acuras had a double engine failure. The #7 had an instant loss of oil pressure not long after a restart and the #6 never really got fired back up to speed after being spun by Vautier, but JPM said he had been losing power for several laps before that. Both engines are being flown to HPD in California for a full teardown so we'll see.
FLRacingFan
Redundant Tweet enjoyer
The #66 had contact with one of the BMWs on a restart about halfway through that sent them to the garage for a while. Other than that the BMWs were just fastest all week and the track really came to the Porsches at night. A track layout like this isn't a Ford strong suit.
StandOnIt
Farm Truck
Wasn't for the Vette's either. Disappointing when the 4 car went down so soon
Charlie Spencer
Road courses and short tracks.
From what I saw, the #3 wasn't impressing anyone either.
Doc Austin
Back From The Dead
I guess for the next race we are going to lose the United Autosports car and maybe another, which will put us at 16 prototypes. While that is disappointing after having 20 at the Rolex, remember most of the GTP years we rarely had more GTPs that that. We are actually in every bit as good of shape as we were in the golden GTP ear, but the trick is keeping it going and growing it.
The whole BOP business is way too complex for me to understand, but I know they have it wrong. While the United Autosports Ligier finished fourth on the lead lap, it was still about a second off the pace, and this was while being driven by former F1 driver Paul Di Resta and P2 ace Alex Brundle. Certainly the balance between the DPIs is really good, but the customer P2 cars need some help to get into the fight.
The European Gibson powered P2 is supposedly IMSA's baseline standard that all the others are BOPed to match, except it isn't. None of these P2 cars are being run by operations that don't what they are doing or driven by slow drivers....... the problem is that the BOP is off. The DPIs simply ran away from the P2 cars, and if I am a customer team who was forced to buy a Ligier or an Oreca because the factories wouldn't sell me a DPI, well, I would be pretty cheezed off right now.
We simply can't have this. The factory teams already have an insurmountable advantage with their huge budgets, but with the BOP this far off there's not a lot of reason to tough it out here getting their asses kicked, especially when they could go run up front right now in the WEC without changing a thing. Hell, a good P2 just might even have a decent shot at winning Lemans this year, so why muck around a second off the pace in IMSA?
We've got a really good field right now, but remember, teams almost always fall off the back of the grid. You never see the winners going broke and pulling out. It's always those that can't compete for good results, and we are not helping ourselves by letting the factories get this much of an upper hand. IMSA really needs to get the P2 cars and the privateers back into the fight and competitive again.
The whole BOP business is way too complex for me to understand, but I know they have it wrong. While the United Autosports Ligier finished fourth on the lead lap, it was still about a second off the pace, and this was while being driven by former F1 driver Paul Di Resta and P2 ace Alex Brundle. Certainly the balance between the DPIs is really good, but the customer P2 cars need some help to get into the fight.
The European Gibson powered P2 is supposedly IMSA's baseline standard that all the others are BOPed to match, except it isn't. None of these P2 cars are being run by operations that don't what they are doing or driven by slow drivers....... the problem is that the BOP is off. The DPIs simply ran away from the P2 cars, and if I am a customer team who was forced to buy a Ligier or an Oreca because the factories wouldn't sell me a DPI, well, I would be pretty cheezed off right now.
We simply can't have this. The factory teams already have an insurmountable advantage with their huge budgets, but with the BOP this far off there's not a lot of reason to tough it out here getting their asses kicked, especially when they could go run up front right now in the WEC without changing a thing. Hell, a good P2 just might even have a decent shot at winning Lemans this year, so why muck around a second off the pace in IMSA?
We've got a really good field right now, but remember, teams almost always fall off the back of the grid. You never see the winners going broke and pulling out. It's always those that can't compete for good results, and we are not helping ourselves by letting the factories get this much of an upper hand. IMSA really needs to get the P2 cars and the privateers back into the fight and competitive again.
FLRacingFan
Redundant Tweet enjoyer
I have yet to find anything definitive, but what I've generally heard is that the DPis have some parts that are open to development like shocks/dampers, and obviously that's pretty crucial to a place like Sebring (and Long Beach and Detroit).