WEC 2023....LeMans

Ne pinaillons pas !

 

Not terribly surprised, the 499 always has been fast in a single lap. Let's see on Saturday.

 

That engine basically won the 24hr of Nurburgring a few weeks back so at its core the 499P has the heart of an endurance champion.

 

It's a LONG race... IMO, none of the newcomers have shown enough endurance. Anything can happen...like audi in 2011...

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Push hard, keep it safe, be there at the end.

sjd

 

That's can happen anywhere at anytime and not even be the driver or the car at fault. It's the risks that go with Racing

 

I've TV watched this race pretty much every year since Speed starting showing it in 1999 and I was going in 2000. The beauty of endurance racing is the unpredictability.... Toyota not finishing the last lap while in the lead...2018.

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Mercedes woes...

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By definition it is a long race and a lot can go wrong.
But, I am very excited.
Well done AF course and everybody at the Factory.
Tomorrow I am having lunch and watching the start at my local Ferrari dealers in Devon, U.K.
If we win, next year I will return to Le Mans.
It was a yearly drive for me.
I haven’t been since Les Flics started actually enforcing speed limits.
Outrageous!

 

'Merica!

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AF Corse stands for Amato Ferrari (no relation to Enzo), a private team created by an ex-racer.
It started racing Maseratis for years, then Lolas and Oreca at Le Mans.
A few years ago, they entered Ferrari GTs in the Blancpain series, and the WEC.

 

Maybe Ferrari should hire AF Corse to run the F1 team!

 

Hey! Don’t get any crazy ideas!

 

Lol !
Be careful when you drive in France now.
Autophobia is reaching new high levels unfortunately..

 

Its the Caps, Restrictions and Governing body that lays at the heart of the F1 issues. Its now like the Rock n Roll hall of fame unless you are in there favor your **** out of luck to get in. Regardless of Who you are and what you have done. Sadly Ferrari is on the ****list they have no chance of being let into the #1 spot anytime soon.

 

So yesterday I drove home from Le Mans southeast to Burgundy (too busy to stay for the LM 24 weekend). I expected to see some nice cars heading the other way to the track but wow. Yesterday morning I had never seen any Purosangue...and a few hours later I had seen six (!) -including two in gorgeous light/sky blue- amidst about 25 F cars (!) all of them current except a 599. It was either a media test operation, a club group or a dealer group such as the one from Lyon.

The funny thing is that when I drove TO Le Mans on Tuesday I saw a beautiful pop up headlight Daytona in light blue driving the opposite way hundreds of kilometers from the track.

As if in tribute to Ferrari the roads near Le Mans were all lined up with poppies; gorgeous

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France countryside is just so beautiful.
My god Burgundy is a so nice place for wine and food !
Enjoy the weekend !

 

Yes, excellent quality of life yet near Macon TGV station and easy reach of Geneva: here my summer office in my previous home minutes from my current one
Oh and lots of fabulous traffic free back roads, photo last week during a drive in a friend's Khamsin;-)


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That car is so beautifull, but it looks like an offroad version!

 

Back on topic: the pole position lap onboard, poor video quality but a historic lap:

 

Onboard the Garage 56 Camaro. The more I see of this thing the more I like it.

 

That alone might be worth an 1/18 model, even if it fails o win!

 

I'm presuming that during the testing of the car before it ever appeared in competition that Ferrari ran a "simulated" 24-hour race at someplace like Mugello to try and work out all the bugs.

 

Any serious effort will have multiple simulated 24 hour tests (Paul Ricard is a popular spot with long straights similar to LeMans) in the lead up. There is also often a 30-40 hour test to check durability. These are normally taken at full race pace and treated as 100% real including pit stops and any repairs. It is MASSIVELY expensive and involved to do a full LeMans effort.

 

Portimao, and I think they're 30 or 36 hours...
I think they possibly did one at sebring too...

I understand Portimao is the goto testing spot as they're fairly unrestricted noise-wise.

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And nice weather almost all year round....

 

Rain coming to the Sarthe this weekend...