24 Heures du Mans 2016

True, but Porsche themselves would acknowledge their good fortune. From Porsche instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BG1-j0RItJh/

Like the Porsche folks said. Respect to Toyota...T

 

One point for posterity's sake...in 1966, the Ford GT40 won the *overall* race, not the GT class as they did today. While it's certainly a feather in Ford's cap, it's not like they won the whole shebang. Jus' sayin'.

 

And Ford beat the Ferrari FACTORY team in 1966 -- not a privateer team working out of Houston as they did today.

Its all one big PR stunt and Ford and LeMans love it.

Ford threw everything that had at this project and had one of the best racing organizations in the USA run the program. For Risi to finish slow close is simply amazing -- but my feeling is the Ford was sandbagging even at the end to try to avoid being caught.

 

Maybe, but as the saying goes TO FINISH FIRST, FIRST YOU HAVE TO FINISH !!


I am quite happy that my favourite sport car won !!!

Porsche 18 times, that the double of Ferrari wins at Le Mans.

 

Yep, and Porsche started racing at Lemans in 1951 and did not win until 1970. Ferrari won on their first try with a private team no less and has not raced factory for years(1973).

Toyota should just stick to what you do well, making the Prius

 

I think the pity is that the Toyota was the class of the field for like 22 hours of the race. Then a spin out of nowhere hurting the number 2 car and a final problem taking out number 1.

It's a gift to Porsche. But, that's racing.

 

The ACO has made some Draconian rulings the past such as in 1982 when they disqualified
the Mirage M12 entered by Harley Cluxton (driven by Mario and Michael Andretti) literally
as it sat on the grid for (get this) the rear view mirrors being deemed too small despite the
the fact the car passed all pre-event technical inspections.

The timing of the move to reduce the weight of the Ford GTs by 25 kilos, adding 25 kilos
to the Ferrari 488 Italias and restricting the Corvettes, etc. etc. this year certainly seems
inappropriate.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there were no BoP changes to the cars through the first
two WEC rounds at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps this year, they only came after the
Le Mans test two weeks ago.

There must have some heavy lobbying by the Ford group (and we all know Ganassi is
good at that) going on post-Le Mans test in order for this curious turn of events to happen.

Certainly, the Ferrari 488 Italias had the upper hand at Silverstone and Spa but not enough
to warrant this sort of additional ballast whilst giving the Fords such a break.

Still, the Fords had a 24 hour race to run and they did that very well. Only one of them
experienced problems, the rest ran beautifully, executed their strategies and only the late
spin by Villander in the Risi Ferrari gave the lead Ford the win. It was such a pity for
Risi as they gave the Fords all they could handle the entire race especially after the A.F.
Corse cars fell out and they did the Tifosi proud by coming home second.

Great for the Scuderia Corse Ferrari 458 team with Segal, Bell and Sweedler!

BHW

 

Bless you sir !!!!! The Gods at Porsche will reserve a place at the table of the Final Supper in your honor!!!

Besides....who said you could make a Camry fast??

 

Agreed. Good points you make also about the Ford not being a production car.

 

All true but having FORD win helps the class series in the long run. I wish they would just go back to GT1 FIA type cars again that could win overall. Then they could allow other "supercars" in to play. Although the LMP cars are as fast as hell they are so hard to look at. Talk about ugly!!

 

"Will be" a production car... as soon as they can figure out who made a good enough YouTube video and has the money.

Ford promises to make a production car. But Enzo pulled these tricks as well.

What I hope is that Ferrari finally makes a full factory team to compete on an equal level with Ford, and also sells the Factory spec cars to privateers. But, with Mr. Sweater the bookkeeper in charge, there's little chance of that.

 

LMP cars make the current crop of F1 cars look good!



Mark

 

I think the ACO gave some leeway to ford so the GT was in the 50th anniversary race of the GT40 winning. not a big deal to me, customer car deliveries start this summer IIRC.

more compelling are the BoP decisions, and the lap times relative to the P2 cars. serious performance from that car.

 

Yes.... but technically against the rules. One more example of Ford getting the advantage that other teams would not.

The race organizers clearly loved this idea of Ford vs Ferrari, even if Ferrari wasn't really involved.

 

Gte pro is a complete farse decided by arbitrary bop and race penalties. must be the easiest race category to win if you have enough money and little talent.

 

I don't understand the arguments about BoP or sandbagging or whatever that gave Ford some unfair advantage.

You have the average speeds and best laps for each car. Whatever BoP changes that were made, good or bad, clearly was fair.

Average speed for the Fords: 211.6, 211.9, 211.9, 211.1
Average speed for the Ferraris: 211.2, (211,) (210)
Best lap of the winning Ford: 3:51.84
Best lap of the Risi Ferrari: 3:52.26

How can you say it wasn't fair? If Ford had an unfair advantage over Ferrari, then Ferrari had an unfair advantage over Corvette, AM, and Porsche because those cars had wider gaps in average speed and best lap from Ferrari than Ferrari did from Ford. Hell, Risi was even leading at one point. It's obvious the playing fields were level as far as Ferrari and Ford are concerned. Ferrari would have had just as good of chance of having 488s on the podium had they not broke. No one is complaining that Toyota and Porsche had an advantage just because the Audis were slow. I don't see anyone saying anything at all about the gaps in performance of LMP cars.

24 hour races are about endurance of the cars and drivers just as much as a fraction of a kph or second of performance. The cars survived and the drivers drove well. Did the winning Fords hit a curb and spin? Did they make mistakes from time to time too? Ford won fair and square. It's a good car and they drove well. It's not like they casually drove 340 laps around the track at half throttle...

 

I have a better story. The great Colin Chapman of Lotus fame took his cars to Lotus for the final time in 1962 when the scrutineers complained that the front wheels had four studs and the rears six. As they pointed out the spare wheel could only fit one of either front or rear and forced CC to change the rear to four stud hubs which wasn't hugely problematic except the scrutineers then refused entry because they claimed it was unsafe since the car was designed with six stud rears. Lotus cars would not reappear at Le Mans for 35 years. NART also had some scrutineering shenanigans in the early 70s but thats another story entirely.

 

So why did AF Corse retire two cars? Not enough money? No enough talent?

 

Classification in GTE PRO is suspended until several protests by competitors are reviewed by the ACO.

Source, Autohebdo, France's leading racing weekly and website:

Le Mans - Classement suspendu en GTE Pro | autohebdo.fr

 

What an amazingly ignorant and silly statement.

 

GTE PRO Protests decisions by ACO:

Le Mans update: Winning Ford GT hit by post-race penalties

 

That's worrying, got a feeling Ford are going to get there dream finish by hook or crook.

 

Snake bitten...

 

What's a BoP?

Anyways really gutted for Toyota...almost...just almost..

 

It is such a shame for Toyota to lose the race that way.

Things like this have happened before of course, Gurney's loss at the 1966 12 Hours of Sebring
in the Ford GT40 as he pushed the car across the finish line in first place only to find out that he
had lost as the car was not under its own power and had no headlights on.

The same could well have happened at Le Mans in 1983 when the team of Hurley Haywood, Al Holbert
and Vern Schuppan had their factory entered Porsche 956 lose all of its coolant in the final laps with
Holbert driving.

Holbert reported smelling all of the water leaving the car which briefly stalled but he was lucky enough
to bump start it again, just in time to cross the finish line ahead of Derek Bell in the hard charging sister
Porsche which itself had cracked brake discs and likely wouldn't have lasted another lap which, in theory,
would have handed the victory to Mario & Michael Andretti and Philippe Alliot. In this instance, the results
were status quo and no penalties were handed out.

As proven yet again with Toyota yesterday, racing can be a cruel business. The final insult
must have been with the car was then stricken from the results as it did not complete the
cool down lap. I'd not personally heard of this rule which seems rather arbitrary given the
history of this race with winners crawling across the finish line and parking with no penalties
in the past.

The ACO must have their reasons for this?

Last I have read, Toyota has yet to provide an official explanation on what happened. Perhaps
in light of the disqualification, they won't now. The most logical theory seen so far is that
the turbo gave out or an electronic malfunction.

BHW