12 Hours of Sebring live Sat

[B Wulff]

On Speed

6:30 AM - 8:30 AM (live)
11:30 AM- 7:30 PM (live)

As dessert
Australian Grand Prix
7:30 PM - 11 PM (live)

[ronaldtrotter]

What a great race!!!!!

[Tawfik]

Did anyone catch that GT2 Finish!!!
The F430 and the GT3 bumping each other right be4 the finish line....... GT3 finished 2nd about .2 sec behing the F430 maybe the new motto for ALMS is Rubbin is racing.....
Also Porsche might have a tough year battling teh new Acura's in LMP2
Got to go see F1 now

[MVZ944T]

That's the kind of finish we need in the TT's! Just kidding That was about as close as it gets, although I think the Porsche would have had the win if the Ferrari had not played dirty.

[Mike]

the last lap...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fbl_Yjm7VBk

[Curt]

I didn't get to watch the race at all. I'm a little surprised that Acura waltzed right in and won P2 in their very first race. The fact that it was the brutal 12 hours of Sebring is even more surprising. Porsche has had a full year of development ahead of Acura and is teamed with Penske Motorsports. Doesn't look too good for the future, does it?

[Dan Chambers]

the last lap...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fbl_Yjm7VBk

Wow! I need a little education here ... I'm not a Wheel-To-Wheel racer.....

Was the Ferrari driver leagally allowed to bump the P-car team out of the line like that? Is that Sebring, or Nascar?????? Would/will the Ferrari Team be penalized? How's that work? Clearly, the P-car was "bumped" out of 1st place.

[Curt]

I imagine that Ferrari is going to suffer quite a bit of "Incidental" damage this upcoming season.

[Greg Phillips]

I didn't get to watch the race at all. I'm a little surprised that Acura waltzed right in and won P2 in their very first race. The fact that it was the brutal 12 hours of Sebring is even more surprising. Porsche has had a full year of development ahead of Acura and is teamed with Penske Motorsports. Doesn't look too good for the future, does it?

It probably did not hurt that Acura's engine has been tested and developed in the IRL series .
Not sure about their chassis, maybe it is an IRL chassis with new bodywork

The bumping and grinding between the Ferrari and Porsche did look more like NASCAR than ALMS, but if you have fenders, you might as well use them
It looked almost like Timmy passing that Honda at California Speedway

Greg

[ttweed]

It probably did not hurt that Acura's engine has been tested and developed in the IRL series.

While related, they are not quite the same engine. Although Honda certainly has benefitted from the experience of being the sole engine provider for the IRL, the IRL cars use the HI6R Series Indy V-8, which is a 3.0 liter originally developed in 2004 with Ilmor Engineering. The Accura LMP2 car's engine is a 3.4 liter racing engine completely designed and developed in-house by HPD of Santa Clarita, Honda's wholly-owned racing subsidiary, which also coordinates the IRL effort.

Not sure about their chassis, maybe it is an IRL chassis with new bodywork

They outsourced their chassis--the Andretti and Highcroft teams are using the Courage LC75, and Fernandez uses the Lola B05/40. There is talk that they are aiming to develop their own chassis for an LMP1 car to compete against Audi in the future.

While the Porsches were faster, but they just didn't have the reliability for 12 hours at Sebring yet. The 2007 RS Spyder is a new car in many ways, being redesigned this year, and they had electrical and transmission gremlins that plagued all the teams, as well as some bad luck in having damage from contact with other cars and losing time.

It looked almost like Timmy passing that Honda at California Speedway

Now that's funny!

TT

[ajackson]

I've been skimming through the huge pdf's of the rules for p1, p2, gt1, and gt2, but didn't see what I was looking for.

Can any of the knowledgeable people here enlighten me as to the basic difference between p1/p2 and gt1/gt2?

[RickK]

I'm unclear on the whole new engine, new chassis thing for Acura. First Acura stated they were using the Courage chassis now they are calling it the all new Acura ARX-01a chassis even though they admit it is a reworked Courage chassis (Fernandez still runs the Lola). I originally read the engine was derived from the IRL V8 engine and Acura says the engine was bult entirely by HPD in the US. Not to take anything away from their accomplishment (keeping in mind the reliability problems dogging the RS Spyders) but there seems to be a lot of marketing FUD being tossed around with this story now.

[ttweed]

Can any of the knowledgeable people here enlighten me as to the basic difference between p1/p2 and gt1/gt2?

The rules are complex, to say the least, and you have to slog thru the 5 PDFs here to get the whole picture, but the basic differences are that LMP 1 & 2 are for prototypes and GT1 and 2 are for 2-wheel drive modified production-based cars, which must be homolgated road cars.

The prototypes are separated by size (LMP1 min. weight=925kg while LMP2=775kg) and power (LMP1 allows 6 liter NA or 4 liter forced induction gas and 5.5 liter turbo diesel, while LMP2 allows 3.4 liter NA and 2 liter forced induction, but no diesels allowed). LMP1 can run 16"-wide wheels, LMP2 is limited to 14".

Differences between GT1 & 2 are more subtle, and involve the necessary sales volume of the production car from which it is homologated, differences in fuel capacity, and minimum weight for a given displacement, plus differences in allowed modifications from the production-based model. Both classes have minimum weight of 1125 kilograms and can displace 8 liters NA or 4 liters FI. Wheels can only be 12" wide under 1225 kg, and 14" if over that weight. Performance is balanced between the makes by different air restrictors, weight minimums, fuel capacities, and allowed aero and wing sizes, etc.

TT

[ajackson]

Thanks for that brief summary. I did read through the pdf's to notice that gt1 and gt2 both had the same power to weight restrictions. Obviously the Corvettes and Aston Martins are in the higher class and are faster than the Porsches and Ferraris, but I wasn't sure why. At first I assumed bigger engines, but then I saw they could both run 8L NA engines... It seems like it would be more fun to see all the production cars fighting it out in the same class. The one Ferrari won, but after that it was all Porsches.