It’s that time of year again, the Le Mans 24 hours. It should be an interesting race if a bit quiet with a total of 8 diesel entries. Here are my predictions. LMP 1 Another close call between the Audi R15s and the Peugeot 908. The new Audi won its first outing at Sebring but everyone reckons the Peugeot is faster overall. I’m going for the number 1 Audi of McNish, Kristensen, and Capello. One of the Aston Martins will be the best of the petrol bunch.
LPM 2 It will probably be a Porsche RS Spyder, but which one? I’ll pick the Navi Team Goh for their experience.
GT 1 A disappointing class this year with only 6 cars and 1 ‘factory’ team with the Corvettes. Barring accident the 63 and 64 Corvettes will be racing each other hard. I’ll pick the 64 based on the driver lineup. It would be nice if the JLOC Lamborghini could get a finish this year.
GT 2 I don’t really follow this category much. What I’ve read is that the Porsches are faster than the Ferraris this year. I’ll pick Team Felbermayer-Proton since Autosport magazine rates them highly.
We set off at stupid-o-clock tomorrow morning to get the ferry from Portsmouth and if all goes well should have camp set up by late afternoon. We get back late Monday night. I’ll check in here on Tuesday to see how well I did and maybe post a picture or two.
I know this is a thread for endurance racing fans, but I just can’t stand watching LM or endurance racing in general anymore. 4 classes, each with about two manufacturers- and they seem to change the rules weekly.
I mean, it was confusing enough back in the day when you had Group C, IMSA and whatever the non-prototype category was called back then, but four classes is way too many.
GT2 is my main bag-always rooting for Risi. Given the downfall of GT1 (many ALMS races have had no GT1 entries at all), I’d imagine that GT will get reconfibulated during the offseason, and what is now GT2 will be allowed to add some HP boost or something, and we’ll get a new GT2 class which is a bit slower than what we have now. 4 classes overall for is-the more the merrier.
Good thing I didn’t bet on any of my predictions! The French at the circuit were going fairly mental at the finish with good reason as the Peugeots hardly put a tyre wrong. It was nice seeing the 007 Lola Aston Martin do so well. It sounded fantastic! In LMP2 I got the car right but the wrong team. It looked like the 63 and 64 Corvettes were going to have a race right to the finish until 64 broke or fell off, I don’t remember which. I got GT2 completely wrong with even the Dutch Spyker beating all the Porsches.
The Classics race was for cars from the 40’s to 60’s and there was some fantastic old metal getting chucked around. Even Sir Stirling Moss, at nearly 80 years of age, is still hammering his OSCA.
There was also a round of the Formula Le Mans series which is a single-make series with cars built by Oreca. The 6.3l V-8’s in these make a wonderful sound.
The low point of the week was probably our camping. It rained Tuesday night and most of Wednesday then Monday as we packed up. We were out near the Porsche curves and there were a couple good banks to watch from but they’re too fast thru there for good pictures. Plus there was a distinct lack of toilets for the girls but plenty of hedges for us guys. The main track village was about an hour away on foot and I couldn’t be bothered to make the trek more than once.
kferr, I’m super jealous of you. I hope to get to Le Mans before I die. Had it rained it might have made for a more interesting race between the Audis and the Pugs but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Now the Pugs will disappear and we’ll have Audi domination again next year, I expect. Hopefully the Vettes will be back in a unified GT category too next year. It won’t LeMans without those cars, that is for sure.