I'm gonna be honest. The "top" class in Le Mans, Hypercar, is fucking gay. They don't even look like proper cars.
That's what a car would look like if it was made to go around lemans as fast as possible for 24 hours
>>28773490Yeah if you're gay
>>28773490It’s actually not designed to go as fast as possible it’s designed to go around a benchmark time of 3.25 which is to reduce cost.
>>28773502So they win by pit efficiency and reliability?
>>28773526You theoretically are all running the same lap time more or less but your car and strategy and drivers are still competing at the other variables .>pit stop efficiency >pit stop timing >car drivability >car tire management >driver tire management >car repairability >driver vs driver skill> driver skill in traffic> driver skill in various weather> car adaptability in various weather I’m sure there’s other stuff the teams all consider but I’m a casual. The Glickenhaus for example was fast for its qualifying lap and all that but it was too hard on tires so it never won and the pit crew never got it to a competitive level.The old Audi R8 was dominant mostly because it was built to be repaired extremely easily. The Porsche 963 is almost a perfect car by all accounts in terms of the above qualities and hitting that lap time so Porsche is seething mad ACO keeps bopping them below the Ferrari. The Peugeot is cool because it acknowledges the lap time kap and just skipped all the downforce that comes with non ground effect aero and so can avoid the tire wear that comes with all that downforce. Not sure they have won for other reasons but it goes to show that just because there is a lap time benchmark it opens up a lot of ways to win that don’t necessarily involve a faster lap.
>>28773558>The old Audi R8 was dominant mostly because it was built to be repaired extremely easily.No. They were dominant because they were the only factory team that competed regularly throughout the season. Their biggest competition were much smaller outfits.
>>28773558>The Porsche 963 is almost a perfect car by all accountsAside from being a pig to drive and Penske withholding all setup data from the privateer teams, sure
>>28773745The Pescarolos were definitely much faster over a lap, but Audi had the budget and team to hold it all together for 24hr.
>>28773940Pescarolo were basically shedbuilt toys compared to Audi-Joest who had the backing of Peak VAG to fund them. the 2000s were a real dark age for endurance racing, the most senior championship at the time was ALMS of all things.
>>28773940The Pescarolos couldn't swap the whole fucking gearbox in 5 minutes
>>28773470The Daytona Prototype class was the real sweet spot to me between a dedicated prototype and a street car, I wish they'd kept the production homologation mandate for the LMH class.
