Le Mans - World Endurance Championship [ WEC ]

It seems like the WEC is beginning to challenge F1 as an international motor-racing spectacle. Bernie must realise it if he's quoting the same sort of power figures to that WEC cars have, just to increase the competitiveness of the F1 show.

Alonso has been making cooing noises about LeMans, and with Hulkenburg just winning Le Mans, and Mark Webber obviously enjoying his time there - its looking more and more interesting.

I'll always be an F1 fan, but WEC, and Le Mans in particular, looks like it could become the premier motor-racing series if F1 goes further astray.

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I'd welcome it. F1 is a 200mph queue of fragile, hog-tied, inconsequential mechanical marvels, playing to mistakes, holding circuits to ransom, compromising drivers at every turn. Obviously I'm a know-nothing, but I'd rather watch rallycross.

Great win for Porsche, huh?

I think F1 has lost a potential manufacturer (Porsche) to WEC. Its telling.

Is it though? It's been completely dominated by Audi for years and years. Porsche (also owned by VW) won it this year but essentially it's still a VAG win. That's 17 wins out of 20 races for VAG manufactured cars.

Imagine if F1 was dominated by a single manufacturing group like that.

Didn't the Audis of a few years ago win the Le mans with almost zero mechanical issues? Basically total domination of the LMP1 class. I think it's the spectacle of all the other classes around the top prototypes that make it interesting. Still it is better to watch than F1 and it's cool seeing cars drag themselves back to the pits after a shunt to get rebuilt and continue racing. Also seems there's a better scope for development that has an impact on everyday cars. Some stat I heard over the weekend was that this years LMP1 cars were 40% more efficient, but 8 seconds faster than last year. And laser headlights.

Yeah, the tech is certainly a lot more useful to everyday cars. Audi got a lot of R&D for their diesels out of it.

I wonder if it was more the other way round for Porsche this year, with the 918 spyder being a test bed of sorts.

Are there any decent highlights of this? Missed it over the weekend and would like to catch up.

23 secs between the first three cars with 3 and a bit hours to go
fastest lap 3:21.4

on gran turismo 6 currently there is a le mans challenge where, to get gold, you need to do a lap in 3:15.00 currently struggling at 3:22 in a peugeot 905 evo 1 bis and a pescarolo

It's been a cracking race this year. Ford and Ferrari also super-close.

Are Manor Racing sponsored by Tudor? 😀

So Toyota are doing well...

The average LMP1 times seem to be 3:28:something, I geekishly tried to see what I could do it in on project cars in various LMP1 cars and can't get lower than 3:40 ish. How bloody quick are these guys going to be ten seconds faster? They must be doing well over 200 on the big straight.

the fastest lap on gt6 is somewhere around 3mins dead

Gutted for Toyota - cruel, cruel way to end a 24hr

Ha! Yes Porsche.

Definition of pain. #Toyota

What are the odds their car would last 23 hours and 57 minutes? Unbelievable bad luck.

I usually watch this every year but missed it all but a few hours this weekend... unbelieveable what happened to the Toyota but good to see Porsche winning for the second year in a row

Didn't realise Chris Hoy was driving one of the LMP2 Nissans... Nice.

He wasn't taking it easy either. He did a quad and 2 triple stints.

Footage of the Toyota team when the car stops.
https://youtu.be/1tFDsL_mwBY

Le Mans this weekend! If you're going, you've probably left already. Anyone watching on to?

me! - eurosport player - has also 4 to 5 onboard camera's on a permanent feed

those lmp1's are so bloody fast and corner so bloody quick, i'm amazed the driver can think that fast.

i'll be busy during the start but hopefully watch quite a bit sat night through to sunday morning!

They're incredible. Shame it looks like the future of LMP1 won't be with the hybrid cars but it was great while it lasted!

whats happening to LMP1? ???

Audi have flounced, possible future allows non hybrids, Peugeot want back in but only if the costs are reduced (hence the non hybrid future, as they are spendy)