Porsche RS Spyder set for European LeMans debut
Porsche is finally set to race the RS Spyder in Europe. Making its debut next season in Europe's Le Mans Series, this LMP2 dominator will be further restricted to help it stay behind the P1 cars. While P1 was intended to be for factory teams with professional drivers, and P2 was envisioned as a class for customer cars and amateur pilots, the Porsche P2 team has been more like a P1 effort in ALMS races.
In order to keep things closer to the ideal, the Dutch Equipe Verschuur team will only use one professional driver in 2008. Well, at Le Mans they will use two pros, but for the rest of the season they have entered a "gentleman's agreement" to run only one. Additionally, the LMP2 cars, including the Verschuur Porsche, will also have their minimum weight raised by 50kg to 825kg. Similar restrictions in ALMS racing haven't had the desired effect, but this should help them stay off the top step. Or, you know, not.
[Source: Autoweek]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
why not the LS2/LS7? 8:01PM (8/25/2007)
LMP2 cars have a 15% smaller air restrictor at LeMans and in European LeMans than they do in IMSA-governed ALMS. That should be enough to keep them behind the Audi and Peugeot.
Reply
Dondonel 8:14PM (8/25/2007)
I say it's about time. Audi had no actual competition for almost a decade, and that's not because Audi has found the unbeatable formula for the endurance race car. It happened simply because no manufacturer has been interested to race there in the past years. The only car that challenged Audi for a while was Bentley Speed 8, but that was a shared design with Audi, not a real competitor.
It is true that Audi kept the endurance racing alive during this period. Endurance racing remains surprisingly weak despite that it has an audience. Lately however, Audi seems to do more harm than good, by abusively modifing the regulations first to give an unfair advantage to R10, then to keep it competitive when the opposition finaly grew stronger.
Despite that Porsche involvement remains modest, Porsche Spyders consistently get better results than R10 in ALMS lately. To me this shows how weak the series are at this moment and how overhyped R8/R10 are as race cars, but hopefully this also indicates that Porsche might once again get serious about endurance racing.
Reply
nagmashot 5:04AM (8/26/2007)
sorry thats wrong...
Audi dominate LeMans since 2000...that are 7 years now and they have seen competition in every year only 2005-2006 lacked in real competition
teams racingsame class as Audi
2000
BMW, Cadilac
2001
Cadilac, Chrysler, Bentley
2002
Cadilac, Dome, Bentley, MG
2003
Bentley, Dome, MG
2004
Lister Storm, Dome, MG, Lola
2005
no serious competition
2006
Lister
2007
Peugeot the first company that realy treid to stop Audi 24h LeMans domination...
Simple fact in the long history of LeMans Audi has by far the lowest fault rate of all time team (driving more than one race!).. golden rule if you wanna win a 24h race you have to finish it first..
A problem for the R10 is it is slowed down by regulation in the ALMS to make it less dominant.. amazing how fast people forget..only a few months ago here at autoblog were reports about rumors that Audi pull out of the ALMS if new regulations continue to kill the perfromance advantage of the R10...
Dondonel 9:39AM (8/26/2007)
@nagmashot
Get real man. R8/R10 competed in the last decade only against car shop size teams (Dome, Lister, Lola and like).
The manufacturers involvement was always half-hearted during this period. BMW, won in 1999 and abandoned in 2000 - if the victory did not come easy they retired, kind of like Audi in ALMS these days. Chrysler tried to enter the prototype class with team Orega and retired after 2 seasons. Cadillac never made a competitive car, nor they seem to actually want one, during their 3 year presence in endurance racing. Bentley was designed starting from Audi R8, with resources coming from the parent company (VAG) and when it was made competitive it was ordered to step aside.
Such was the opposition the R8/R10 had. Now when they face strong LMP2 cars (backed by financially far weaker teams than Audi, btw) Audi frantically tries to push for regulations that hurt LMP2 even harder. From the start LMP2 class (a privateer class) was designed to have both a power to weight and an aerodynamic disadvantage compared to LMP1, disadvantages that actually got worse lately despite Audi's claims. Audi should concentrate on winning races on the track, not behind closed doors.
carluvr 11:24AM (8/26/2007)
Dondonel.......
What? Are you kidding us? Audi has been forced to restrict the R10 all year long so the P2 will be a competitve factor to make the series more exciting to the spectator because there seems to be no one in P1 able to give Audi and the R10 a run for the money. So, the fix is, give the R10 a smaller fuel tank so it needs to pit more often for fuel and make the flow of fuel even slower so it also takes longer to fill the smaller tank. You really should know your facts before you say ignorant things. Some will actually believe what you say.
Dondonel 2:55PM (8/26/2007)
@carluvr
Diesel powered LMPs have to use smaller fuel tanks because diesel fuel is denser. 81 liters diesel fuel tank contains as much fuel as 90 liters gasoline tank, as simple as that. All the cars in the competition have the same quantity (mass) of fuel in the tanks to burn.
The fuel flow during refueling is slower because diesel is very oily compared to gasoline, so it takes slightly longer time to fill the tank. This problem is not caused by the regulation, it is just a property of the diesel fuel.
LMP2 are the disadvanged class, not LMP1 (especially the diesel cars), ACO/IMSA make no secret about this.