2023 WEC

Doc Austin

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Bykolles is a big disappointment. They have never been very good, but I was ill hoping they wouldn't' be fighting with the P2 cars again.

With the Toyotas a second clear, a BOP adjustment might be a good thing. Still, a second is not so far off as to be an utter disaster. They can adjust that out, if they want to.
 

Doc Austin

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Compared to two years ago, which seemed hopeless, sportscar racing is in pretty good shape. We just need a few more cars and a little less disparity. More cars are coming. We'll see what they do about the disparity.
 

FLRacingFan

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Lone Cadillac was narrowly quickest over the GR010s in the PM session.

AE4EEE03-944D-4757-A84A-CC50A83E9115.jpeg
 

Doc Austin

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Uh, oh. We could actually see a race break out next week. Caddy, Toyota, Ferrari and Porsche all within a 1/2 second or so, and one of the Peugeots are within a second too.

Anyone seen any video?
 

Hotrod

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Dumb question time : Are the IMSA GTP's equal to the WEC Hypercar's ?
If not , whats the primary difference?
 

FLRacingFan

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Dumb question time : Are the IMSA GTP's equal to the WEC Hypercar's ?
If not , whats the primary difference?
Yeah, different name for the same class. IMSA just doesn’t have any of the LMH entrants like Toyota/Ferrari/Peugeot/Glick yet. Only cars from the LMDh regs so far.
 

FLRacingFan

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Things started to bunch together in the Sunday AM session. The Vanwall managed to leapfrog the P2s and is about half a second adrift of the tail of Hypercars now. Peugeot found pace overnight. The #51 Ferrari wrecked on cold tires out of the pits and didn’t log any laps.

2FD9F373-FEB5-45B5-8C70-D252AF671A2D.jpeg
 

FLRacingFan

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Thing I’ve noticed looking at individual driver times is that ByKolles absolutely need to get Jacques Villeneuve out of that Vanwall. All three sessions so far he’s been slower than every single P2 driver, and four or five seconds slower than his teammates. Dangerous. You gotta know when to hang it up.
 

Doc Austin

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Jacques has one more day to show some speed. If he's that slow the team might look for another driver. I don't know that it matters either way considering the car is not that good.

Most drivers are notorious for hanging on too long.
 

Doc Austin

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Toyota has 1/2 second on the field, but the entire Hypercar grid is covered by (excluding the Glick) 1.565, so that's an improvement across the board. We'll see who stands where in qualifying, but at least we've got a reasonably tight field.

The big surprise was how much speed Vanwall found, They carved it down from 4 or 5 seconds to 1.5 or so and that's massive. Slightly less surprising is Glick at 2.7 back, but that is still a big improvement.

All we can do is speculate because it's just a test, but it's good news things look so competitive....for now anyway.

 

FLRacingFan

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Sunday PM session…I’m pretty confident Glickenhaus have more pace than they’re showing. Toyota and Cadillac seem pretty consistent across the day, everyone else seemed to lose pace in the afternoon. Same Pug that wrecked yesterday had a technical issue and lost laps again.

45BCEDCB-8774-4137-9A39-E381E2257064.jpeg
 

Doc Austin

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Yeah, different name for the same class. IMSA just doesn’t have any of the LMH entrants like Toyota/Ferrari/Peugeot/Glick yet. Only cars from the LMDh regs so far.
With that reported $35 million budget, we probably won't see a lot of hypercars here. GTPs are already insanely expensive enough. Maybe we could see Ferrari in IMSA, and maybe Peugeot can race under the Dodge name, but neither Glick nor Vanwall produce enough road cars to quality for IMSA.

So far they have done a reasonable job of BOPing everything. I was concerned that the BOP would favor the hypercars too much, and in the case of Toyota they did, just not as bad as I was expecting. It's at around 1/2 second now, which is far closer than they had it two years ago when everyone else got fed up and left. It's also close enough they could make a small tweak and put everyone on the same plane, or at least closer.

We've waited 50 years for this kind of convergence to happen, and while after all that time patience is short, we won't have to wait much longer to get everything we have been screaming for. It's a good time to be optimistic.
 

Kiante

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Jacques has found pace, but he's still well behind.
 

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