Prius loses LeMans!

Arthur McDonald · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 1:54 am **Posts:** 2052

A really good day for Toyota really turned sour this morning:
http://blog.caranddriver.com/24-hours-o ... -vanished/

And oh yeah, another company had a much better day!
http://blog.caranddriver.com/u-s-a-ford ... ts-return/

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:26 pm

I didn't watch the entire race, but watched bits and pieces live and via DVR over the weekend and did watched the end live. So it was something to experience the Toyota loss. As a Porsche fan I was hoping for back to back victories (which they did), but I really felt bad for the Toyota team. But as they say... To finish first, first you must finish. I don't think there has been an official reason discussed yet, but speculation was failure of electronic boost control. Toyota seemed to have the overall faster car. I haven't seen it talked about much, but historically, given the difficulty of avoiding either mechanical or on track problems, the larger teams have increased their odds by running a third car (instead of the usual two for the WEC series) at LeMans. Audi and Porsche only ran two cars this year due to the VW emission scandal. Toyota has generally only run two likely due to budgetary issues. But it opens them up for criticism in that they are throwing away a potential win by trying to do it on the cheap. The same criticism could be applied to this year as well. If they had run a third car it would have significantly increased their chance. At the end of the race, of the six LMP1 cars, I think maybe only two were really in contention for the win (lead Toyota maintaining a gap over the lead Porsche). The other four had fallen victim to issues throughout the race the pushed them back in the order. There is no way to ensure that Toyota will be as competitive next year as they were this. I am sure the team would want to run three, but it is likely a decision taken at a higher level.

Regarding the Ford GTE win... I follow the prototype stuff pretty heavily and the GT cars a bit more casually. There was cries of sandbagging by Ford for quite a long time prior to the race with significant predictions that the "fix was in" for Ford to have a historic win. This included late BoP (Balance of Power) adjustments which helped Ford prior to the race (via performance penalties for the other cars). All of which pretty much turned out as being true (at least as far as the sandbagging goes) as the Ford's qualified at a pace that was not seen during earlier earlier testing (which was used by FIA/ACO to help define the class specific BoP (Balance of Power)). Given the dominant qualifying by Ford there was talk of adjusting BoP between qualifying and the race, but that is almost never (if ever) done. Actually it was between the turbo cars (Ford and Ferrari) and everyone else as Ferrari was also sandbagging. I am not a BoP fan, so that is one reason I don't follow GT as much as I did years ago when it was more about engineering and less about politics.

To be fair, it might have been harder to balance these cars for all races using a single BoP adjustment. If you watched the race, you could see that he Ford is a visible smaller car than even the Ferrari. So low frontal area and a slick body allowed it to be quick (less drag) on the predominant long high speed course. So the car may not fare as well on other circuits (lower speed) or conditions (The Porsche did well early on in damp conditions as it historically is able to put power down better on a slick track). Even that C&D article says the Ford was designed just for the LeMans race. Regardless, Kudos to Ford for making a quick and generally reliable car plus playing the political game to the max!

Richard

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:32 pm

The C&D Ford article had a link to their own article on the BoP stuff....

http://blog.caranddriver.com/performanc ... -24-hours/

It appears there was a token tweak to BoP targeting Ford and Ferrari after qualifying, but given the real performance disparity, it had no real impact on the race.

Richard

RobLupella · **Posted:** Mon Jun 20, 2016 4:32 pm

The car is brand new and their only win came via fuel mileage not speed. Previously, the cars had broke so it was hard to tell how much speed they really had. The biggest thing is that the cars were made for LeMans and to perform there, not at other tracks since that is the high profile win.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Jun 20, 2016 5:52 pm

RobLupella wrote:

The car is brand new and their only win came via fuel mileage not speed. Previously, the cars had broke so it was hard to tell how much speed they really had. The biggest thing is that the cars were made for LeMans and to perform there, not at other tracks since that is the high profile win.

The cars are new, so they did have reliability issues at first. And that initial win was on strategy/fuel mileage. It also wasn't smooth sailing on LeMans with respect to reliability either. But even with early reliability problems, the speed of the car was evident based upon various evidence (i.e. string together ideal sector times). So people speculated the car would do well either in the race or in qualifying (if Ford decided to show their hand during qualifying). If the cars would last until the end was always an open question that couldn't be answered until raceday. Ford did show their hand in qualifying (good PR for starting up front), but it was so strong the ACO made the token BoP tweak because the gap was huge. The first six GTE positions after qualifying were...

1. Ford
2. Ford
3. Ferrari
4. Ford
5. Ford
6. Ferrari

Approx 1.5 seconds covered that group. Everyone else (Porsche, Aston Martin and Corvette) were between approx 2-6 seconds off the pace. Most everyone except Ford and Ferrari matched their pre-race testing times (those times would have driven race day BoP changes). There is no real reason for Ford and Ferrari to pickup the pace that much other than if they had sandbagged during testing (which is a strategy that can work, if just for a short period of time). That just can't show up with a new motor after testing that is better. These are homologated engines.

The FIA and ACO also have a history of getting BoP for GTE wrong and having to adjust it frequently. Additionally, given that they are balancing the performance of all the cars, they tend to have to pick one as being the target and then bring the others up/down to meet that target. If I remember correctly there was a feeling that the prior Ferrari GTE car (not the current turbo) was considered to be the benchmark (it was inherently quick). The current Porsche GTE is long in the tooth and there has been little incentive for the rule makers to gift Porsche parity. Porsche is rumored to be bringing an all new mid-engine car in the next year to so to GTE to compete against the Ferrari (and now Ford)). They tend to support the manufactures that are bring newer cars. So that is why recently it seemed Aston Martin could do no wrong in the BoP game. There is also a theory that the turbo cars is the direction that the FIA/ACO wants things to go. So someone like Corvette who likely will always run a large NA V8 might be screwed.

Richard

PS: In the race, at the end, in GTE class, there were two Ford's and one Ferrari on the lead lap, an Aston Martin two laps back and the best Corvette about four laps back. Porsche had lots of mechanical issues but they probably would have been inbetween the Aston Martin and Corvette.

PPS: I hope I don't sound too negative on the Ford. Kudos to them for getting that win so quickly. The car is fast and looks good.

Arthur McDonald · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 1:54 am **Posts:** 2052

Apparently there is still a balance of performance protest active.

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/mult ... t-le-mans/

I'm surprised (but very pleased) that Ford/Ganassi got the car sorted out so quickly. Winning Le Mans with a new car/new program only 4.5 months after its race debut is really something.

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