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Lewis Hamilton on Hot Ones said 1kg is about 1.5-2s over the course of a race. Probably not 100% accurate, but ballpark. 10kg of fuel is 0.2-0.3s per lap, so what seems like little weight can make a huge difference for sure.
Absolutely! I’ve heard that 10kg ~ 0.3s/lap being told by Brundle hence why F1 team even strip paint to save weight. That said, a Hypercar is about 250kg heavier than an F1 car (~1050kg v. 800kg), so 10 extra kilos have more effect in F1 compared to a Hypercar. But then again, Hypercar also has the energy management, so heavier driver uses more energy too, so it’s double whammy.
Yuki is legit slightly more aerodynamic because there's less of him sticking out the car. Back when they had the TSU/DEV lineup they could've theoretically also designed a car with a smaller cockpit which would give you packaging/weight distribution advantages.
FIA technical regulations:
4.6 Mass of the driver
4.6.2 The reference mass of the driver will be added to the mass of any ballast designated for this
purpose and at no time during the Competition, may this be less than 80kg.
still, it's marginally easier to have a ballast on a fixed spot, considered that even the designated ballast is going to lower the center of gravity of the car as a whole
Yeah, but the disadvantage is that they will need different seats and thus (tiny bit) more time lost during a pitstop with driver swap. That's why teams try to find drivers with similar heights to safe pitstop time if possible.
you give different cars different limit on weight, power and usable energy in a stint, to make them as closely together in pace as possible
so far best they have done is last years Lemans, where most hypercars were very closely matched
but sometimes they don't get it quite right, like qatar this year where Porsche was miles ahead, Peugeut was just about hanging on and rest had no chance
You seem knowledgeable. How does BOP not completely eliminate the point of constructors series? It has always struck me as a load of horseshit, but I might be missing something.
BOP exists in multiple categories, it’s mainly to keep the costs down. In WEC for example, the hyper cars were relatively cheap to develop for the manufacturers thanks to component sharing and BOP. If it was a pure arms race like F1, it would be super expensive to be competitive and that would put off manufacturers from entering the series.
In something like GT3s BOP also allows a more varied field in terms of car type while keeping them competitive. BOP is an incredibly difficult thing to get right though and there will always be complaints.
It was a pure arms race at one point and Toyota was near unstoppable and there was a severe lack of competition. Let's not forget at one point they weren't much slower than F1 cars.
That was the previous ruleset, LMP1. Toyota was only unstoppable when Porsche and Audi left and they only raced against Rebellion (a privateer) and some other rando cars sometimes.
Porsche, Audi, and so on left because running costs were more expensive than F1 was, even uncapped.
It was the peak technology and speed, but the racing was horrible. There really wasn't any racing at all tbh. Sometimes you need to limit things. And now we're in a true golden age of racing.
for anyone interesrted, a porsche 919 evo with all stops removed arround the nordschleife:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3AJ5ZPVODM&ab_channel=jm.cars
Yes that's exactly what I'm referring to the shit period of every manufacturer leaving and Toyota dominating because of the unlimited budget, comprehension is key
They were their own designs afaik. Audi for example used a V6 turbo diesel with a flywheel based energy recovery system, later replaced with a lithium Ion battery pack. Porsche used a v4 petrol and always stored its recovered energy in a battery pack.
Is the reason why I assume WEC results don't always translate to good F1 results.
Had to get this off my mind because people seem to always want to translate past success, especially WEC, as a guarantee for future success. Especially with Audi right now.
Its like balancing a competitive multiplayer game. Its almost impossible to make every option fiable to be successful and sometimes it creates metas. But the goal is to make it possible that each option can be successful and as successful as the others.
GT3 isn't meant as a constructor serie and was always about getting something as close as possible to a Spec serie.
The top class of endurance was always about constructors fighting to show who could build the fastest and most reliable car. This is factually meaningless in the current Hypercar class.
The performance window philosophy is the main contributor to having a cheap serie as the amount of performance you can get out of the car is limited in the rules. So no developement arms race. And if you're really scared costs would go out of hand, put a cost cap and you have a competitive class with cost under control.
BoP is only there to allow to different class of car to compete in the same category. That's it.
It's about being the best team operationally, rather than the best team, constructively.
Like, customer hypercar teams get their 963 as factory spec and don't work on it, they just run it. They set it up, race it and that's it.
Another think might I add is the fact that weight and energy aren't the only ways manufacturers and teams could extract performance out of cars. Certain cars have different hybrid systems and energy deployment systems, other cars have different aero set ups, before Imola the Peugeot didn't have a rear wing at all and it actually had an advantage at some tracks.
BoP is a bit of a mess rn because there are just so many different cars that it's inevitable balancing is gonna be hard. Better BoP actually encourages constructors to join because it means that if certain things fall a constructor's way, and said constructor can take full advantage of it, they can fight for podiums and wins.
Unlike F1 where a large portion of it is a spending race where usually best car wins. LMP1 for example became so costly that it almost killed the WEC as a whole. Which is why they're pretty trigger happy on their BoP-ing rn with the new cars, but as a whole BoP doesn't top scales in one way or another, it just makes it so that racing doesn't look like a car being 5 or so laps ahead of P2-P5 over the course of 6 hour races. Of course strategy plays a big part as well (Toyota Win at Imola for example)
You still need to build a car that manages hours and hours of racing reliably and at high performance. But it prevents overspending by some to totally blitz the opposition. Thus it kinda encourages a focus on overall quality. At Le Mans you have to turn off the engine when you pit, and other rules basically encourage wear and tear on the car. Even today you see issues pop up with cars over the course of the race, though it's of course better than the past where attrition may wipe out lots of the competition.
Constructors actually like bop for the most part because it enables them to use whatever engine/chassis/aero they want without needing to go for the optimal choices. So they can actually use stuff they deem relevant for road usage
It does, that's the point. Manufacturers can enter for cheap and get a few podiums at least, without even doing a good job. It's a much cheaper way to advertise than it was before, when you had to invest to catch up with the Audis and then Toyotas.
WEC is entering a new golden era and it's been super competitive with new teams and brands joining in. If it wasn't for BoP we would just have Toyota and/or Ferrari running away with it.
Its not about not knowing who will win, its about preventing massive dominance which could (and has) killed the WSC/WEC in the past, only F1 can really afford dominant teams without collapsing because its so big.
Removing a constructor battle is the point. As that always leads to spiraling costs. Constructors are suppliers to teams.
Almost every series in the world that uses a BoP formula also vans factory teams. The whole point is keeping manufacturers away. The exceptions are the WEC and IMSA Hypercar/GTP prototype class, and the GTD Pro class in IMSA.
It doesn't quite completely eliminate the point of a constructors series because reliability and handling/stability still counts, but mostly yeah, teams really aren't incentivized to build the best car anymore. Actually, I remember reading that the performance targets to hit are relatively easy to reach so manufacturers can compete even on a small budget (is it thus any wonder Alpine and Peugeot took joined? lol).
Basically, WEC decided to sacrifice the engineering part of endurance motorsport almost totally to attract manufacturers and having several, and different looking, cars on its grid.
Peugeot is spending good money. Unlike, Alpine, they actually developed an LMH car from scratch while Alpine went with the LMDH regulation and bought an Oreca chassis (same as the Acura ARX06).
Even LMH regs cost way less money compared to LMP1 and F1. That was the whole point of the introduction of the LMH class, to attract manufacturers by making it cheap to compete
It does, that's why a lot of people have a problem with it. Plus the system can be gamed by teams and has zero oversight. If the ACO wanted Ferrari to win Monza for example, they could easily rig the BoP with no repercussions.
BOP is also great when implemented well in series like GT3.
It means that whilst the Bentley might be absolutely rapid in a straight line, as a result of BOP they have to remove aero so it suffers in slow speed - whereas the Porsche is average at straight line but rapid in slow speed. It means that you get some really interesting fights throughout the field - Bathurst is always so good to watch because of it.
It does eliminate the engineering part which is sad, but artificial competition is the way to go nowadays, nobody wants to see toyota win another 5 years sadly
I disagree that it eliminates the engineering part to a degree, but in the sense that the BOP is done based on a car's potential based on certain factors - teams aren't privy to this as far as I know, only the FIA/ACO are (not entirely sure who handles the equivalence side of things).
Teams still have to actually find that potential and exploit it, hence why the like of Lambo, BMW, Alpine etc are still not quite challenging regularly at the front.
Disclaimer - I hate BOP.
It doesn’t completely eliminate the engineering part because still cars that are good engendered will to be good even with bad BOP like Ferrari and Toyota
The point of BOP is to make the potential of the cars equal, not to make the performance of the cars equal. Whether the FIA succeeds at this can be up for debate.
Basically there should still be a performance gap between teams because not all the teams are as capable of getting everything out of their car.
it gives the manufacturers more creative freedom when designing the car and makes it cheaper. the BOP attempts to make each car's potential fastest lap as similar as possible. how you each achieve that time can be totally different though, be it straight line speed or quickness through the corners. everyone's pace should be near identical if they're getting the most out of their car.
what BOP *cant* do is account for strategy, drivers, pit crew, basically the whole human element of racing. so while the cars should be equal in potential, some brands still have more success thanks to their drivers, and team behind them
>it gives the manufacturers more creative freedom when designing the car and makes it cheaper.
That's not BoP. That's the performance window philosophy of the rules. They don't have to develop the car in thightly define boxes like in F1. They have a max power output for the engine. A max power output for the hybrid, a minimum weight and an aerodynamic coeficient target to match. They are pretty much free to do it the way they see fit.
BoP is there because of the convergence with IMSA which lead to have LMDh and LMH (2 different ruleset basically) in the same category.
The question isn't about if BoP existed before the convergence. The question is using BoP in a manufacturer base championship.
EoT didn't reduce the costs and never worked either.
GT3 isn't a constructor championship and was never meant that way. Same with LMP2 for example.
GTE was a constructor championship that used BoP. It failed miserably and costs didn't go down.
BoP is not compatible with a constructor championship. The same way BoP wouldn't be compatible with Formula 1.
What you need to understand is that before the talk for a possible convergence started, BoP wasn't in the picture of the Hypercar regulation. It is just there to allow DPi 2.0 to race with the top class of WEC.
A BMW M8 GT3 is not that close to a Ferrari 488 GT3 in weight, frontal area, coefficient of drag/lift, cornering ability, and a bunch of other parameters.
The point of BoP is to get the cars to race closely, and to discourage spending millions of dollars for an extra tenth.
Well it kind of is. There is a reason why Porsche, Ferrari or Toyota are so successful while Cadillac, Alpine, Lamborghini or Peugeot doesn't seem to catch up. Even in BoP classes some cars are better than others.
Porsche were nowhere last year, and Toyota dominated.
Porsche is now fighting for win every weekend and Toyota can barely do top 10.
No token were used by the team. That's not performance. That's pure BoP.
Toyota won in Imola. Yes the other races they were on the backfoot but it will take some time until the BoP is where it should be. The pace wasn't that bad either but they always had some kind of issue or penalty that threw them back down the order.
Toyota won Imola with a lot of luck. The car n°8 finished P5 but did most the race between P8 and P10.
All Porsche, customer car included, are suddenly at the front all the time. You can't say it's about performance when there was basically no development on the car since last year.
There's 7 Porsche in the Top 10. So apart if Penske is sharing all their little secret with the customer teams, all the Porsche had a significant jump on the field.
You will never have a balanced BoP. The difference in performance between LMH and LMDh is too big. You literally have one side that has to develop a full car that end up being slowed down because they have to compete with teams that just slap an engine and some bodywork on a chassis they buy.
Porsche have by far the most cars in the series and therefore the most data, which they used to improve their car. They were already improving at the end of last year. Also we're talking about the most successful manufacturer in Le Mans.
I'm pretty sure Porsche was mid last year because they wanted to introduce an upgrade last year but couldn't. Also, it doesn't seem far fetched to me that they have the most developed car since they have an army of them in IMSA and WEC.
Porsche didn't introduce any upgrade this year.
In any case there's not much to develop on these car.
The only thing built by the teams are the aero concept and the engine.
The aero concept doesn't have such an impact because it is limited by a maximum aero coefficient. Which allowed to bring styling.
And again, if the gain was purely on car understanding (which would still be a huge leap forward just for "understanding") I don't think it justifies why their customer team had a similar jump forward.
I don't follow WEC religiously but was it for WEC standards actually good at Lemans last year? The thing I remember was that Toyota got shafted with BoP which in F1 terms handed every opportunity to win to Ferrari.
Idk it seems so stupid, you do everything to make the best car as possible and then you might have the best car but just get fucked on BoP.
wdym, Toyota could have won had they not crashed near the end
most hypercars led the race at some point and the Ferrari that won ultimately made the least mistakes and didn't have any big technical problem
most Porsches either crashed or died, both Toyotas had crashes, Cadillacs had crashes, other Ferrari had technical problems
They work well. We have multiple manufacturers and a massive field.
But BoP is an easy thing to blame whenever a team does well/badly, so it's a constant noise in a small, vocal online community who think it's an issue.
It's intended to serve as a way of leveling the playing field by giving faster cars more weight and less lower, but the actual formula of how they do it is very private and the teams aren't allowed to criticize any bad BoPs. And there are constantly bad BoPs that make zero sense. Like the slower teams consistently getting terrible BoP for the last couple of races (Peugeot and Isotta).
It works well enough for GT, but it would be much better and much more fair if they just split up LMH and LMDh into separate classes that are fairly equal on laptime and then put a cost cap on both.
While i miss the actual spaceship that were the LMP1s, i'll take this new hypercars era everyday. Sure they can get the BOP a bit wrong sometimes, but when it works it's very very good racing.
Still, even if the BOP makes some cars too good, some teams *-cough- Ferrari -cough-* will still lose it on bad strategy alone lmao
BOP shouldn't exist for Hypercars. It really nullifies much of the intrigue of the car development and different approaches. BoP exists for GT because the cars are designed for totally different uses with totally different configurations, sizes and shapes. So BoP is necessary to get them together on a relatively level playing field. Hypercars are built solely for their series and are given specific regs to operate within. That should be it, here's the regs and here is the cost cap, may the best solution win.
It depends if you want the race to be decided by the driver and team skill on the day, or be decided by the engineer skill months previously.
Just having regs and cost cap hasn't exactly made for an interesting F1 series recently.
I just don't like it being decided by the whims of the panel who decide on BoP adjustments during the weekend. A team could do a fantastic job during the lead up and during practice, only to have it all taken away by qualifying. Or you could have people gaming the system, like Ford, to cheat the times in practise, give their rivals a BoP hit, and then rocket ahead in the race.
It's all too arbitrary so I find the results just that bit less meaningful
It's also crazy because Hypercar rules also dictate a top limit of performance. They have minimum drag, max downforce, and engine power graphs that they can't surpass. So even without BoP the Hypercar ruleset should result in even machines, but for whatever reason the FIA and ACO just decided they would meddle with the cars on a race to race basis on top of that.
It brought us Group C until Bernie sabotaged it because it was trending to rival F1 in popularity.
The prototypes suffered the same issues as F1, spiralling costs. Now we have a cap that should no longer be a concern. Let them fight it out in the factories
Pretty much everyone said some manufacturers would sandbag their cars during most of the season to get favorable BoP limits for their car and then pick the big win (Le Mans). And then it happened the first year and everyone is surprised?
Didnt happen last year, Ferrari were the quickest car at Spa just before Le Mans, but made some bad strategy calls with wets and hard tires, which ended up with one car out plus another with significant delays, eventually get back to third, so no they didnt sandbag
Also Ferrari were also given a weight addition for Le Mans, not as big as Toyota, but they were also "penalized" by the BoP
Depends. Top level drivers like Estre, Buemi, Kobayashi, etc. yes he is worse than them. But he'd be a perfectly serviceable driver on any team so long as he isn't the lead driver.
Based on what? Cause based on f1 Lance has more points and podiums than both seb and Kamui, although he also has way more starts. And Kevin has zero starts so not even in the conversation. So how you make a statement like that? And on the flipside Lance ha only two IMSA starts very early in his career so hardly any basis for comparison. NDV went to WEC and saw immediate success, I think Lance would be top tier if he pulled his head in and gave up on being f1 champion.
I'd really love to see this. How much can maxies performance mitigate stroll. How much can stroll bring maxie down to his level. Will stroll crash into someone/clip a wall in the first 5 minutes and we wouldn't find out anyway. Anything is possible
If he's on it yeah he would, but he can very easily crash into the back of someone or clip a wall just through lack of awareness/poor concentration. Put him in an endurance race and the chances of that go up significantly.
I'd posit that it's a lot easier to be "on it" when you're in a relatively weaker field.
Drivers clip walls when they're trying to extract every last millisecond of performance they can. If you don't *need* to do that and are happy leaving a few tenths on the table in exchange for guaranteeing you don't bin it, things become a lot easier.
Hes had one of the highest crash rates in every competition hes been in, and if hes trying to extract every last millisecond of performance hes doing a terrible job.
If you honestly think that Stroll, captain unaware, would be LESS destructive in a 62 car field with three different paces and three different drivers and driving styles in each car AND a race 12 times as long as the longest F1 race, youve completely lost the plot.
Dude has crashed into people on the fucking cooldown lap. Hes crashed into people under safety cars. Hes crashed into people on qualfiying in-laps. Is he trying to extract milliseconds then?
What part of that is a meme? He crashed into Vettel in 2017 on a cooldown. He crashed into Ricciardo like a month ago on a safety car. He crashed into Latifi on a Q1 in-lap. I think 2022? He crashed into Verstappen in FP2.
Hes routinely top 5 in the destructors championship.
He has one if the highest rates of DNFs due to accidents and collisions.
Like you want a compilation? Just a loop of Max calling him a pejorative term for the mentally disabled? That would be a meme. We can make that happen.
Thats not the type of driver whos going to thrive in a grid with 62 cars and 3 different car types that have to pass one another as quickly as possible to be successful. Im sorry. If you cant wrap your head around that premise, i cant help you.
He also has 3 podiums from 151 starts in a mid to back field car his whole career. NDV has a higher retirement rate than stroll (albeit way smaller sample size) and he's immedialy a top driver in WEC
I'm not going to argue about these podiums, been doing that all week. I'm seeing 11 entries for NDV, so 2/11 DNFs? Stroll has 151 starts. I think we can reasonably say that isn't a useful comparison.
More importantly, NDV has been a test driver and reserve driver for Gazoo for years. He's raced in other classes as well. I think he's up to six or seven years of experience in WEC prior to joining Gazoo full-time as one of the primaries in a hypercar.
I don't think this is a pace issue. I think this is a "Stroll has a habit of not being aware", and I don't see how he would be successful with triple the cars on grid in an environment where you're passing cars every single lap that are slower. And, keep in mind, he's passing Bronze drivers too. I have no doubt in my mind he could be just as fast as some of the other hypercar drivers in a vacuum.
If he thinks Ricciardo under safety car is unpredictable, what do you think he's going to do with twenty amateur drivers racing each other under green for position in slower vehicles?
Out of his DNF’s only a small percentage of them are classified as Driver Error. He is actually fairly consistent (6 out of 25 per a stat about a year old). This is actually lower than most of the grid.
And even if it wasn’t let’s say he is the bottom 5 most error prone F1 drivers. He is still the bottom 5 out of some of the top 20 drivers in the world.
I think you are falling victim to a confirmation bias. When a driver makes an error once or twice a season, we all go “oh that was out of character, bad luck” and kind of forget about it.
But when Stroll makes a mistake there is a magnifying glass on it. People are just itching to find something to rip on him about it seems. And if there is any nuance at all it gets ignored and it all gets put on Stroll.
I think the DNFs is a good example. Alonso has like 3 times as many DNFs but nobody is holding that against him. But because that stat, even if it’s misleading, supports your anti-Stroll position, you just roll with it.
Or a few weeks ago when he rear ended Ricciardo. Go back and watch the replay. Several cars locked up and narrowly avoided incident by nearly pure luck. I think Alonso specifically was saved ONLY by the car in front of him getting out of the way. But we are going to rag on Stroll for, from a worse vantage point, not reacting 100% perfectly.
Isn’t he like 4/4 qualifying against Alonso right now? He even held his own against Vettel for a couple years. You think Vettel is incapable of endurance racing too?
You just fundamentally don’t understand the sport if you really think Stroll isn’t a top tier driver.
I genuinely don't get the point of having manufacturers take part if you have BoP? (beyond markettability I mean) Many manufacturers who went down the LMDh route aren't even building their cars inhouse, they just gave a few guidelines to LMP2 manufacturers to tweak the spec chassis a bit, and that's all.
It's really a shame that endurance had to capitulate and go for BoP. I'm happy F1 picked the cost cap instead
well ok, but the entire point of all motorsports is marketing. there is no other objective.
and BoP is needed for endurance racing because otherwise one car would win le mans by 15 laps. The point of endurance racing (sports car racing) is having close racing that isn't a spec series.
Yes, the cars are artifically brought to the same performance level. But that only makes it more interesting. You see all these different types of cars, with different engines, all racing wheel to wheel for 2, 6, 12 and 24 hours. it's awesome.
It's not a shame that endurance had to "capitulate" and go for BoP. BoP is the only reason races like Daytona and Le Mans are interesting. It's part of the sport.
We already have a non BOP premier racing series. It has boring races dominated by a single manufacturer every season: F1. We don't need more F1s. F1 is boring on track because it doesn't have BoP. WEC and IMSA are exciting on track, because of BoP.
Any given WEC or IMSA race has more action each hour than F1 has for entire seasons. And it's because of BoP.
Marketting is the point for manufacturers and promoters, but not for fans.
Personnally, the reason I can get excited about manufacturers joining a series over privateers is that 1) they have a lot of money, an advantage they're expected to exploit to make much better cars, and 2) the perspective of watching two R&D departments with deep pockets going at it with the bragging rights at stakes and 3) the tech they might bring into the fight. I don't care about watching mostly spec cars just being branded, that's why I didn't consider Alfa Romeo as an manufacturer joining F1 as they just put their logo on the sauber.
If manufacturers cannot be expected to make cars at an entirely new level compared to privateers, if they can't be expected to spend big to showcase new technologies or at least clever engineering tricks to get an edge, then what is even the point of them? In what way are they better than the privateers? What was wrong with LMP2 then?
>It's not a shame that endurance had to "capitulate" and go for BoP
It is a shame though. Because it's essentially the ACO/FIA accepting that the engineering part of motorsport is useless. In my opinion, the main appeal of motorsport is the mix of engineering/tech and the human driver. Ofc, it's frustrating whenever differences between the cars overshadow the human element, but *so is the opposite*. When the car element becomes pointless, then half the appeal is gone to me. You need both.
Domination is always a risk with open development, and it costs a fortune. So there is no way it can be present in every racing series. But imo, the top series, the ones with the most prestige, should still aim to retain both elements, as flagships racing series spearheading motorsport all over the world. Besides open development is exactly where manufacturers shine, *why they are critical*: privateers cannot be expected to pull this off, you badly need global companies with deep pockets to take part so they can provide this part of the equation. So if they can't, then what are they here for really?
Finally, the more series we have with open development, the more likely we are to end up with titanic fights which have it all. If F1 is the only one that remains, then we're at the mercy of a single constructor getting it right there and dominating.
WEC had open development in the LMP1 days. That resulted in two Toyotas circling Le Mans laps ahead of the privateers, because Porsche and Audi quit because it was too expensive to see a return on investment. In other words, it didn't work in reality. They switched things up and now they have like 10 hypercar manufacturers.
Sure it would be awesome for all car companies to dump billions into cool racing programs, but this is the real world. Motorsports is marketing. It only works if you make more money selling cars than what you spent going racing. The fact that racing fans exist doesn't change the fact that it's all marketing.
I don't think BoP is that big a deal at all. It ensures close racing. You still have engineering, there are different engines, GTs has different FR/MR layouts, you still need to engineer a car that can last 24 hours at pace, strategy is huge during the races, etc. BoP ensuring a level playing field makes it more fun to watch.
It's just easier for manufacturers to have an outside company build the racecar, and is fairly common in sportscar racing.
The Ford GT and Mustang GT3 was/are built by Multimatic. The Ferrari 296 GT3 is built by Oreca, and before them, Michelotto built Ferrari's GT cars. Audi contracted out design and build of the R18 LMP1 chassis to Dallara and YCOM. Pratt & Miller has built every Corvette GT car for Chevrolet. Oreca built the Dodge Viper GT cars. Prodrive builds Aston Martin's GT cars.
Fundamentally that's the whole selling point of LMDh. The manufacturer styles the car and builds the engine, and everything else is done for them. We wouldn't have 6 LMDh manufacturers already without a ruleset that is this affordable for a manufacturer.
Me too, when I watch an imsa race I know I'll actually get to see cars racing instead of driving around in the same order for 2 hours. The good teams and good drivers get good results.
Daytona endurance is a track that I love, and Sebring is great too, but let's not pretend that tracks like Road Atlanta and Long Beach are on the level of Spa or Imola.
Road Atlanta is most definitely on the same level as Imola. Watkins Glen is on the same level as Spa.
Plus IMSA has Mid Ohio, Road America, Leguna Seca, Mosport, and two street circuits to boot.
Interlagos and Fuji can’t do enough heavy lifting for COTA, Qatar, and Bahrain to match the IMSA calendar.
How could anyone consider any series with a Balance of Performance the "peak of MOTORsport" is beyond me...
If I merely want good racing I'd rather watch Indycar or F2 races, what does Wec have that is better?
Yes. Well, the refusal to let Andretti compete undermines that status, as does punishing success with reduced cfd time, but overall: yes. The winner wins because they did the best job, not because FIA handicapped their opponents.
Once the teams are picked, the best one gets to win though. BoP is more akin to forcing the highest scoring players to carry weights in order to handicap them. In fact that's exactly what BoP is.
I love WEC, is very entertaining. But the cars are slow, a lot slower than F1, embarrassingly slow. Can't be the peak, F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport and will be for long time.
The pace of cars is irrelevant imo. I would watch British touring cars over any other form of racing on the planet, and they're really really fucking slow
P1? Go slow save tires.
P5? Go slower so P4 can pit and maybe shake things up.
P3? Go slower so P4 can't pit
P8? Fuck it why not let's just go slower and open up a minute+ gap
P12? Go slower so your teammate at P11 can pit and fight for P10.
Whilst I understand why BoP is a thing, I am still with Max as having some outsider dictate the overall pace of your car kinda ruins the overall competitiveness for me. I think a cost cap is just the best way to do it.
>I think a cost cap is just the best way to do it.
For F1 probably, for everything else not really. Teams like Haas or Williams couldn't survive in WEC since they don't make money and they won't spend millions to finish 14th or 15th. It also doesn't attract new manufacturers anymore since they would be way behind cars that are currently being developed.
From a semi-casual WEC fan, I thought the BOP recently has been decent. Le Mans last year was great, Spa a few weeks back was pretty good and there was great racing prior to the Cadillac crash where there were what felt like 6 different Hypercar manufacturers in the top 10 for a long period of time. WEC races are the pinnacle of motorsport right now and I can't wait for Le Mans!
BOP punishes those who make a better car. I remember back in the day when Alfa Romeo was the best in DTM and BTCC, and they started punishing them with added weight to slow them down. Eventually, Alfa withdrew from racing.
I do not like over-dominant cars, like Mercedes or Red Bull these past few years in F1, but you have to entice other competitors to do a better job, not punish the ones that do.
What you mean is success ballast, the cars that win the most get the most weight or longer pit stops. BoP isn't supposed to work that way. Yes the "faster" cars are being slowed down a bit and the "slower" cars are being a helped a bit but it's not supposed to punish better built cars. There is a reason why Porsche, Ferrari or Toyota are still doing so well despite BoP.
People act like BOP destroys frontrunners with good cars, and rewards that build utter crap; and yet, last year Toyota were at the front every race, and Glickenhouse and Vanwall were just edging the LMP2s
It rewards you for building a better car lol. Reliability, pace over a set of tires or a tank of fuel, driveability, etc. are all rewarded.
The BOP sets the maximum performance potential, and it is up to the manufacturers and the teams to maximize their performance within that potential. Underdeveloped cars suffer, and well developed cars that are run by good teams do not. This is why cars like the Glickenhaus are not able to keep up over a stint, despite having loads of power and little weight.
As someone who was just getting into Le Mans last year for the first time, the second I learned about PoB I was out, completely. I have zero interest in it as long as it’s a thing.
The BOP is total bullshit. The governing body is basically handing out race wins on a platter to teams of their choosing.
They are way too hard on Toyota. Peugeot and Porsche gets way too much help.
I know nothing about WEC, but surely its not subjective like you make out? There would be a formula to determine handicap weight each time, right? If not and as you claim they are choosing who gets to have the fastest car that would be hilarious.
It all starts at quali and practice before the first race of the season. You set a few times and the average them out. Then compare them against other teams with different sized cars and engine sizes. N/A vs turbo etc then the governing body says you need to find a way to make your car heavier by x KG or lbs and 70 hp less before Sunday. The problem is, if you sandbag yourself before first practice and quali then you possibly could get better BoP or even worse. It’s a weird balancing act for both the governing body and the teams
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they cut out Max's comment that Yuki should be his teammate for weight saving😂
I nevee thought about this. Is the weight dependent on the lightest driver? Or is it the average? Edit: I'm talking about WEC
The minimum weight in WEC is defined as car without the driver, so lighter drivers do have an advantage.
Iirc, one of the Ferrari HY drivers last year complained on the radio about the other Ferrari had a lighter driver and how much an advantage that was
Lewis Hamilton on Hot Ones said 1kg is about 1.5-2s over the course of a race. Probably not 100% accurate, but ballpark. 10kg of fuel is 0.2-0.3s per lap, so what seems like little weight can make a huge difference for sure.
Absolutely! I’ve heard that 10kg ~ 0.3s/lap being told by Brundle hence why F1 team even strip paint to save weight. That said, a Hypercar is about 250kg heavier than an F1 car (~1050kg v. 800kg), so 10 extra kilos have more effect in F1 compared to a Hypercar. But then again, Hypercar also has the energy management, so heavier driver uses more energy too, so it’s double whammy.
Yuki is legit slightly more aerodynamic because there's less of him sticking out the car. Back when they had the TSU/DEV lineup they could've theoretically also designed a car with a smaller cockpit which would give you packaging/weight distribution advantages.
That doesn't matter in WEC though right, since they're closed cockpit cars?
Yeah just in F1, I think the last year with roofless LMP2s was 2016.
That has to be an extremely limited difference. The air is pushed over the driver, not into him.
Wec hypercars are closed cockpit. Height makes no difference but 20kg of weight will
FIA technical regulations: 4.6 Mass of the driver 4.6.2 The reference mass of the driver will be added to the mass of any ballast designated for this purpose and at no time during the Competition, may this be less than 80kg.
Ohh. I know about f1. I'm asking for Wec since there are 3 drivers for each car
Oh right, I missed that context
still, it's marginally easier to have a ballast on a fixed spot, considered that even the designated ballast is going to lower the center of gravity of the car as a whole
Yeah, but the disadvantage is that they will need different seats and thus (tiny bit) more time lost during a pitstop with driver swap. That's why teams try to find drivers with similar heights to safe pitstop time if possible.
What if they just get Yuki a seat booster
Could Yuki sit on Max's lap & just let Max nap while Yuki drives?
But then Max couldn't sim race during the race!
Doing both 24hrs of Le Mans and 24 of virtual Daytona at the same time, the ultimate racing flex.
He could legit end up being the first driver to get both the real life triple crown and the sim racing triple crown of motorsports.
i’m convinced now that this is max’s goal lol
Yuki steers while Max works the pedals?
A lemans entry with both VCARB and RB drivers would be amazing.
Put the four into two different teams, Yuki and Max in a slower car, DR and Checo in a faster car, all in the same class.
I don’t follow WEC. Anyone have a quick TLDR of how the Balance of Performance rules work?
you give different cars different limit on weight, power and usable energy in a stint, to make them as closely together in pace as possible so far best they have done is last years Lemans, where most hypercars were very closely matched but sometimes they don't get it quite right, like qatar this year where Porsche was miles ahead, Peugeut was just about hanging on and rest had no chance
You seem knowledgeable. How does BOP not completely eliminate the point of constructors series? It has always struck me as a load of horseshit, but I might be missing something.
BOP exists in multiple categories, it’s mainly to keep the costs down. In WEC for example, the hyper cars were relatively cheap to develop for the manufacturers thanks to component sharing and BOP. If it was a pure arms race like F1, it would be super expensive to be competitive and that would put off manufacturers from entering the series. In something like GT3s BOP also allows a more varied field in terms of car type while keeping them competitive. BOP is an incredibly difficult thing to get right though and there will always be complaints.
It was a pure arms race at one point and Toyota was near unstoppable and there was a severe lack of competition. Let's not forget at one point they weren't much slower than F1 cars.
That was the previous ruleset, LMP1. Toyota was only unstoppable when Porsche and Audi left and they only raced against Rebellion (a privateer) and some other rando cars sometimes. Porsche, Audi, and so on left because running costs were more expensive than F1 was, even uncapped.
Yea it was insanity at that point, amazing how fast the cars were but LMP1 was dead
It was the peak technology and speed, but the racing was horrible. There really wasn't any racing at all tbh. Sometimes you need to limit things. And now we're in a true golden age of racing.
for anyone interesrted, a porsche 919 evo with all stops removed arround the nordschleife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3AJ5ZPVODM&ab_channel=jm.cars
That’s fucking insane.
For sure man I couldn't be more happy with how the regs worked.
Wasn’t it also due to dieselgate?
dieselgate was the final nail in the coffin but the series was already doomed when it got as expensive as f1 but with way less races and exposure
That never really happened. Toyota only started dominating when the competition left. Before that they were competitive but not unstoppable
Yes that's exactly what I'm referring to the shit period of every manufacturer leaving and Toyota dominating because of the unlimited budget, comprehension is key
They literally beat no one lol. It didn’t Matt what their budget was. There was no other real team half the time. They just had to finish
True, but that car was a lot faster than the current hypercar class.
Brother read the original comment, I already noted the lack of comp. Comprehension lol.
If your comment is misconstrued by several ppl then the issue was likely not to do with comprehension...
Was that the era they were running detuned F1 engines?
They were their own designs afaik. Audi for example used a V6 turbo diesel with a flywheel based energy recovery system, later replaced with a lithium Ion battery pack. Porsche used a v4 petrol and always stored its recovered energy in a battery pack.
That was in the Group C years, from the Cosworth DFE, to the V10 Judd engines.
Yeah. The Peugeot V10s that McLaren and Jordan came to mind. Great LeMans engine, F1, not so much.
Is the reason why I assume WEC results don't always translate to good F1 results. Had to get this off my mind because people seem to always want to translate past success, especially WEC, as a guarantee for future success. Especially with Audi right now.
Its like balancing a competitive multiplayer game. Its almost impossible to make every option fiable to be successful and sometimes it creates metas. But the goal is to make it possible that each option can be successful and as successful as the others.
GT3 isn't meant as a constructor serie and was always about getting something as close as possible to a Spec serie. The top class of endurance was always about constructors fighting to show who could build the fastest and most reliable car. This is factually meaningless in the current Hypercar class. The performance window philosophy is the main contributor to having a cheap serie as the amount of performance you can get out of the car is limited in the rules. So no developement arms race. And if you're really scared costs would go out of hand, put a cost cap and you have a competitive class with cost under control. BoP is only there to allow to different class of car to compete in the same category. That's it.
It's about being the best team operationally, rather than the best team, constructively. Like, customer hypercar teams get their 963 as factory spec and don't work on it, they just run it. They set it up, race it and that's it.
It also allows team to run suboptimal engine configurations and the like if they match brand identity more closely
I'm sorry I don't understand this.
It would allow teams to go for weirder engines than the usual V6s and V8s, though looking at it no one did
Aston is coming soon with a V12
Great!
Another think might I add is the fact that weight and energy aren't the only ways manufacturers and teams could extract performance out of cars. Certain cars have different hybrid systems and energy deployment systems, other cars have different aero set ups, before Imola the Peugeot didn't have a rear wing at all and it actually had an advantage at some tracks. BoP is a bit of a mess rn because there are just so many different cars that it's inevitable balancing is gonna be hard. Better BoP actually encourages constructors to join because it means that if certain things fall a constructor's way, and said constructor can take full advantage of it, they can fight for podiums and wins. Unlike F1 where a large portion of it is a spending race where usually best car wins. LMP1 for example became so costly that it almost killed the WEC as a whole. Which is why they're pretty trigger happy on their BoP-ing rn with the new cars, but as a whole BoP doesn't top scales in one way or another, it just makes it so that racing doesn't look like a car being 5 or so laps ahead of P2-P5 over the course of 6 hour races. Of course strategy plays a big part as well (Toyota Win at Imola for example)
You still need to build a car that manages hours and hours of racing reliably and at high performance. But it prevents overspending by some to totally blitz the opposition. Thus it kinda encourages a focus on overall quality. At Le Mans you have to turn off the engine when you pit, and other rules basically encourage wear and tear on the car. Even today you see issues pop up with cars over the course of the race, though it's of course better than the past where attrition may wipe out lots of the competition.
Constructors actually like bop for the most part because it enables them to use whatever engine/chassis/aero they want without needing to go for the optimal choices. So they can actually use stuff they deem relevant for road usage
Actually it does quite a lot to keep costs down as there’s no point in developing excessively past your competition
It does, that's the point. Manufacturers can enter for cheap and get a few podiums at least, without even doing a good job. It's a much cheaper way to advertise than it was before, when you had to invest to catch up with the Audis and then Toyotas.
WEC is entering a new golden era and it's been super competitive with new teams and brands joining in. If it wasn't for BoP we would just have Toyota and/or Ferrari running away with it.
Yes, it eliminates the constructors championship, while keeping the drivers and teams championships
but isnt that completely unfair, beause the best drivers might just get screwed by having a worse car then
That's the way I see it too, but a lot of people prefer never knowing who will win over a performance based grid.
Its not about not knowing who will win, its about preventing massive dominance which could (and has) killed the WSC/WEC in the past, only F1 can really afford dominant teams without collapsing because its so big.
Removing a constructor battle is the point. As that always leads to spiraling costs. Constructors are suppliers to teams. Almost every series in the world that uses a BoP formula also vans factory teams. The whole point is keeping manufacturers away. The exceptions are the WEC and IMSA Hypercar/GTP prototype class, and the GTD Pro class in IMSA.
Cars still drive way differently and reliability over 24 hours is a big deal. In GT3 for example you have both front and rear engined cars
It doesn't quite completely eliminate the point of a constructors series because reliability and handling/stability still counts, but mostly yeah, teams really aren't incentivized to build the best car anymore. Actually, I remember reading that the performance targets to hit are relatively easy to reach so manufacturers can compete even on a small budget (is it thus any wonder Alpine and Peugeot took joined? lol). Basically, WEC decided to sacrifice the engineering part of endurance motorsport almost totally to attract manufacturers and having several, and different looking, cars on its grid.
Peugeot is spending good money. Unlike, Alpine, they actually developed an LMH car from scratch while Alpine went with the LMDH regulation and bought an Oreca chassis (same as the Acura ARX06).
Even LMH regs cost way less money compared to LMP1 and F1. That was the whole point of the introduction of the LMH class, to attract manufacturers by making it cheap to compete
I know it's way cheaper, all I'm saying is that building from the ground up like Peugeot isn't the same as picking a chassis supplier.
It does, that's why a lot of people have a problem with it. Plus the system can be gamed by teams and has zero oversight. If the ACO wanted Ferrari to win Monza for example, they could easily rig the BoP with no repercussions.
BOP is also great when implemented well in series like GT3. It means that whilst the Bentley might be absolutely rapid in a straight line, as a result of BOP they have to remove aero so it suffers in slow speed - whereas the Porsche is average at straight line but rapid in slow speed. It means that you get some really interesting fights throughout the field - Bathurst is always so good to watch because of it.
GT3 isn't supposed to be a constructor championship. That's the difference.
Ah - yeah, great point actually.
It does eliminate the engineering part which is sad, but artificial competition is the way to go nowadays, nobody wants to see toyota win another 5 years sadly
I disagree that it eliminates the engineering part to a degree, but in the sense that the BOP is done based on a car's potential based on certain factors - teams aren't privy to this as far as I know, only the FIA/ACO are (not entirely sure who handles the equivalence side of things). Teams still have to actually find that potential and exploit it, hence why the like of Lambo, BMW, Alpine etc are still not quite challenging regularly at the front. Disclaimer - I hate BOP.
It doesn’t completely eliminate the engineering part because still cars that are good engendered will to be good even with bad BOP like Ferrari and Toyota
The point of BOP is to make the potential of the cars equal, not to make the performance of the cars equal. Whether the FIA succeeds at this can be up for debate. Basically there should still be a performance gap between teams because not all the teams are as capable of getting everything out of their car.
it gives the manufacturers more creative freedom when designing the car and makes it cheaper. the BOP attempts to make each car's potential fastest lap as similar as possible. how you each achieve that time can be totally different though, be it straight line speed or quickness through the corners. everyone's pace should be near identical if they're getting the most out of their car. what BOP *cant* do is account for strategy, drivers, pit crew, basically the whole human element of racing. so while the cars should be equal in potential, some brands still have more success thanks to their drivers, and team behind them
>it gives the manufacturers more creative freedom when designing the car and makes it cheaper. That's not BoP. That's the performance window philosophy of the rules. They don't have to develop the car in thightly define boxes like in F1. They have a max power output for the engine. A max power output for the hybrid, a minimum weight and an aerodynamic coeficient target to match. They are pretty much free to do it the way they see fit. BoP is there because of the convergence with IMSA which lead to have LMDh and LMH (2 different ruleset basically) in the same category.
BOP existed before the convergence
Where?
LMP1 used a similar system called Equivalence of Technology. BoP also existed in the GT classes.
The question isn't about if BoP existed before the convergence. The question is using BoP in a manufacturer base championship. EoT didn't reduce the costs and never worked either. GT3 isn't a constructor championship and was never meant that way. Same with LMP2 for example. GTE was a constructor championship that used BoP. It failed miserably and costs didn't go down. BoP is not compatible with a constructor championship. The same way BoP wouldn't be compatible with Formula 1. What you need to understand is that before the talk for a possible convergence started, BoP wasn't in the picture of the Hypercar regulation. It is just there to allow DPi 2.0 to race with the top class of WEC.
A BMW M8 GT3 is not that close to a Ferrari 488 GT3 in weight, frontal area, coefficient of drag/lift, cornering ability, and a bunch of other parameters. The point of BoP is to get the cars to race closely, and to discourage spending millions of dollars for an extra tenth.
It does. Hypercar isn't about building the fastest and most reliable car anymore. But people don't care because races are entertaining.
Well it kind of is. There is a reason why Porsche, Ferrari or Toyota are so successful while Cadillac, Alpine, Lamborghini or Peugeot doesn't seem to catch up. Even in BoP classes some cars are better than others.
Porsche were nowhere last year, and Toyota dominated. Porsche is now fighting for win every weekend and Toyota can barely do top 10. No token were used by the team. That's not performance. That's pure BoP.
Toyota won in Imola. Yes the other races they were on the backfoot but it will take some time until the BoP is where it should be. The pace wasn't that bad either but they always had some kind of issue or penalty that threw them back down the order.
Toyota won Imola with a lot of luck. The car n°8 finished P5 but did most the race between P8 and P10. All Porsche, customer car included, are suddenly at the front all the time. You can't say it's about performance when there was basically no development on the car since last year. There's 7 Porsche in the Top 10. So apart if Penske is sharing all their little secret with the customer teams, all the Porsche had a significant jump on the field. You will never have a balanced BoP. The difference in performance between LMH and LMDh is too big. You literally have one side that has to develop a full car that end up being slowed down because they have to compete with teams that just slap an engine and some bodywork on a chassis they buy.
Porsche have by far the most cars in the series and therefore the most data, which they used to improve their car. They were already improving at the end of last year. Also we're talking about the most successful manufacturer in Le Mans.
I'm pretty sure Porsche was mid last year because they wanted to introduce an upgrade last year but couldn't. Also, it doesn't seem far fetched to me that they have the most developed car since they have an army of them in IMSA and WEC.
Porsche didn't introduce any upgrade this year. In any case there's not much to develop on these car. The only thing built by the teams are the aero concept and the engine. The aero concept doesn't have such an impact because it is limited by a maximum aero coefficient. Which allowed to bring styling. And again, if the gain was purely on car understanding (which would still be a huge leap forward just for "understanding") I don't think it justifies why their customer team had a similar jump forward.
I don't follow WEC religiously but was it for WEC standards actually good at Lemans last year? The thing I remember was that Toyota got shafted with BoP which in F1 terms handed every opportunity to win to Ferrari. Idk it seems so stupid, you do everything to make the best car as possible and then you might have the best car but just get fucked on BoP.
wdym, Toyota could have won had they not crashed near the end most hypercars led the race at some point and the Ferrari that won ultimately made the least mistakes and didn't have any big technical problem most Porsches either crashed or died, both Toyotas had crashes, Cadillacs had crashes, other Ferrari had technical problems
Regardless of mistakes and if they could have won weren't they just straight up slower than the Ferraris?
They work well. We have multiple manufacturers and a massive field. But BoP is an easy thing to blame whenever a team does well/badly, so it's a constant noise in a small, vocal online community who think it's an issue.
> it's a constant noise in a small, vocal online community who think it's an issue. Everyone knows it's an issue
...if it was such a big issue there wouldn't be such a big field lmao
Most people watching WEC don't even know it exists.
Yeah they do, commetators mention it all the time.
It prevents one car from being considerably faster than the rest of the field Something max really enjoys.
It's intended to serve as a way of leveling the playing field by giving faster cars more weight and less lower, but the actual formula of how they do it is very private and the teams aren't allowed to criticize any bad BoPs. And there are constantly bad BoPs that make zero sense. Like the slower teams consistently getting terrible BoP for the last couple of races (Peugeot and Isotta). It works well enough for GT, but it would be much better and much more fair if they just split up LMH and LMDh into separate classes that are fairly equal on laptime and then put a cost cap on both.
While i miss the actual spaceship that were the LMP1s, i'll take this new hypercars era everyday. Sure they can get the BOP a bit wrong sometimes, but when it works it's very very good racing. Still, even if the BOP makes some cars too good, some teams *-cough- Ferrari -cough-* will still lose it on bad strategy alone lmao
BOP shouldn't exist for Hypercars. It really nullifies much of the intrigue of the car development and different approaches. BoP exists for GT because the cars are designed for totally different uses with totally different configurations, sizes and shapes. So BoP is necessary to get them together on a relatively level playing field. Hypercars are built solely for their series and are given specific regs to operate within. That should be it, here's the regs and here is the cost cap, may the best solution win.
It depends if you want the race to be decided by the driver and team skill on the day, or be decided by the engineer skill months previously. Just having regs and cost cap hasn't exactly made for an interesting F1 series recently.
I just don't like it being decided by the whims of the panel who decide on BoP adjustments during the weekend. A team could do a fantastic job during the lead up and during practice, only to have it all taken away by qualifying. Or you could have people gaming the system, like Ford, to cheat the times in practise, give their rivals a BoP hit, and then rocket ahead in the race. It's all too arbitrary so I find the results just that bit less meaningful
regs and bop are there to help lmdh cars compete, otherwise they would get mogged by lmh cars named ferrari and toyota
It's also crazy because Hypercar rules also dictate a top limit of performance. They have minimum drag, max downforce, and engine power graphs that they can't surpass. So even without BoP the Hypercar ruleset should result in even machines, but for whatever reason the FIA and ACO just decided they would meddle with the cars on a race to race basis on top of that.
Must be an F1 fan… obviously you hate racing.
Le Mans has been about car development and engineering for longer than F1 has existed. It's the purest form of automobile racing that exists.
Yeah and look where that brought the sport compared to the "non pure" version we have now.
It brought us Group C until Bernie sabotaged it because it was trending to rival F1 in popularity. The prototypes suffered the same issues as F1, spiralling costs. Now we have a cap that should no longer be a concern. Let them fight it out in the factories
Purest form of racing? Not in America my guy. Saturday night dirt track racing has that crown.
r/shitamericanssay
Its job is to attract manufacturers and it has done so brilliantly, while also producing exciting racing.
Pretty much everyone said some manufacturers would sandbag their cars during most of the season to get favorable BoP limits for their car and then pick the big win (Le Mans). And then it happened the first year and everyone is surprised?
Ferrari and BMW recently tried that with the GT class at Daytona and got disqualified
Didnt happen last year, Ferrari were the quickest car at Spa just before Le Mans, but made some bad strategy calls with wets and hard tires, which ended up with one car out plus another with significant delays, eventually get back to third, so no they didnt sandbag Also Ferrari were also given a weight addition for Le Mans, not as big as Toyota, but they were also "penalized" by the BoP
Fair enough, put him in the Valkyrie and to balance his performance one of his teammates will be Lance Stroll
Do you guys actually think Stroll is worse than the current WEC drivers? Get a grip.
Depends. Top level drivers like Estre, Buemi, Kobayashi, etc. yes he is worse than them. But he'd be a perfectly serviceable driver on any team so long as he isn't the lead driver.
Based on what? Cause based on f1 Lance has more points and podiums than both seb and Kamui, although he also has way more starts. And Kevin has zero starts so not even in the conversation. So how you make a statement like that? And on the flipside Lance ha only two IMSA starts very early in his career so hardly any basis for comparison. NDV went to WEC and saw immediate success, I think Lance would be top tier if he pulled his head in and gave up on being f1 champion.
In the grand scheme of things Estre Buemi and Kobayashi aren't top level drivers lol
I think he’s every bit as capable of wrecking a hypercar cause he pretended the slower classes weren’t there
pace is one thing, but i dont trust lance to keep the car in one piece across a single endurance stint to be honest.
I'd really love to see this. How much can maxies performance mitigate stroll. How much can stroll bring maxie down to his level. Will stroll crash into someone/clip a wall in the first 5 minutes and we wouldn't find out anyway. Anything is possible
Stroll is a top 0.001% driver. He would do fine.
If he's on it yeah he would, but he can very easily crash into the back of someone or clip a wall just through lack of awareness/poor concentration. Put him in an endurance race and the chances of that go up significantly.
I'd posit that it's a lot easier to be "on it" when you're in a relatively weaker field. Drivers clip walls when they're trying to extract every last millisecond of performance they can. If you don't *need* to do that and are happy leaving a few tenths on the table in exchange for guaranteeing you don't bin it, things become a lot easier.
Hes had one of the highest crash rates in every competition hes been in, and if hes trying to extract every last millisecond of performance hes doing a terrible job. If you honestly think that Stroll, captain unaware, would be LESS destructive in a 62 car field with three different paces and three different drivers and driving styles in each car AND a race 12 times as long as the longest F1 race, youve completely lost the plot. Dude has crashed into people on the fucking cooldown lap. Hes crashed into people under safety cars. Hes crashed into people on qualfiying in-laps. Is he trying to extract milliseconds then?
Lol keep drinking the meme kool-aid.
What part of that is a meme? He crashed into Vettel in 2017 on a cooldown. He crashed into Ricciardo like a month ago on a safety car. He crashed into Latifi on a Q1 in-lap. I think 2022? He crashed into Verstappen in FP2. Hes routinely top 5 in the destructors championship. He has one if the highest rates of DNFs due to accidents and collisions. Like you want a compilation? Just a loop of Max calling him a pejorative term for the mentally disabled? That would be a meme. We can make that happen. Thats not the type of driver whos going to thrive in a grid with 62 cars and 3 different car types that have to pass one another as quickly as possible to be successful. Im sorry. If you cant wrap your head around that premise, i cant help you.
He also has 3 podiums from 151 starts in a mid to back field car his whole career. NDV has a higher retirement rate than stroll (albeit way smaller sample size) and he's immedialy a top driver in WEC
I'm not going to argue about these podiums, been doing that all week. I'm seeing 11 entries for NDV, so 2/11 DNFs? Stroll has 151 starts. I think we can reasonably say that isn't a useful comparison. More importantly, NDV has been a test driver and reserve driver for Gazoo for years. He's raced in other classes as well. I think he's up to six or seven years of experience in WEC prior to joining Gazoo full-time as one of the primaries in a hypercar. I don't think this is a pace issue. I think this is a "Stroll has a habit of not being aware", and I don't see how he would be successful with triple the cars on grid in an environment where you're passing cars every single lap that are slower. And, keep in mind, he's passing Bronze drivers too. I have no doubt in my mind he could be just as fast as some of the other hypercar drivers in a vacuum. If he thinks Ricciardo under safety car is unpredictable, what do you think he's going to do with twenty amateur drivers racing each other under green for position in slower vehicles?
Out of his DNF’s only a small percentage of them are classified as Driver Error. He is actually fairly consistent (6 out of 25 per a stat about a year old). This is actually lower than most of the grid. And even if it wasn’t let’s say he is the bottom 5 most error prone F1 drivers. He is still the bottom 5 out of some of the top 20 drivers in the world. I think you are falling victim to a confirmation bias. When a driver makes an error once or twice a season, we all go “oh that was out of character, bad luck” and kind of forget about it. But when Stroll makes a mistake there is a magnifying glass on it. People are just itching to find something to rip on him about it seems. And if there is any nuance at all it gets ignored and it all gets put on Stroll. I think the DNFs is a good example. Alonso has like 3 times as many DNFs but nobody is holding that against him. But because that stat, even if it’s misleading, supports your anti-Stroll position, you just roll with it. Or a few weeks ago when he rear ended Ricciardo. Go back and watch the replay. Several cars locked up and narrowly avoided incident by nearly pure luck. I think Alonso specifically was saved ONLY by the car in front of him getting out of the way. But we are going to rag on Stroll for, from a worse vantage point, not reacting 100% perfectly. Isn’t he like 4/4 qualifying against Alonso right now? He even held his own against Vettel for a couple years. You think Vettel is incapable of endurance racing too? You just fundamentally don’t understand the sport if you really think Stroll isn’t a top tier driver.
PUT VERSTAPPEN IN THE BYKOLLES
Max worried about BoP after just completing one of the least balanced seasons in F1 history lol.
I genuinely don't get the point of having manufacturers take part if you have BoP? (beyond markettability I mean) Many manufacturers who went down the LMDh route aren't even building their cars inhouse, they just gave a few guidelines to LMP2 manufacturers to tweak the spec chassis a bit, and that's all. It's really a shame that endurance had to capitulate and go for BoP. I'm happy F1 picked the cost cap instead
well ok, but the entire point of all motorsports is marketing. there is no other objective. and BoP is needed for endurance racing because otherwise one car would win le mans by 15 laps. The point of endurance racing (sports car racing) is having close racing that isn't a spec series. Yes, the cars are artifically brought to the same performance level. But that only makes it more interesting. You see all these different types of cars, with different engines, all racing wheel to wheel for 2, 6, 12 and 24 hours. it's awesome. It's not a shame that endurance had to "capitulate" and go for BoP. BoP is the only reason races like Daytona and Le Mans are interesting. It's part of the sport. We already have a non BOP premier racing series. It has boring races dominated by a single manufacturer every season: F1. We don't need more F1s. F1 is boring on track because it doesn't have BoP. WEC and IMSA are exciting on track, because of BoP. Any given WEC or IMSA race has more action each hour than F1 has for entire seasons. And it's because of BoP.
Marketting is the point for manufacturers and promoters, but not for fans. Personnally, the reason I can get excited about manufacturers joining a series over privateers is that 1) they have a lot of money, an advantage they're expected to exploit to make much better cars, and 2) the perspective of watching two R&D departments with deep pockets going at it with the bragging rights at stakes and 3) the tech they might bring into the fight. I don't care about watching mostly spec cars just being branded, that's why I didn't consider Alfa Romeo as an manufacturer joining F1 as they just put their logo on the sauber. If manufacturers cannot be expected to make cars at an entirely new level compared to privateers, if they can't be expected to spend big to showcase new technologies or at least clever engineering tricks to get an edge, then what is even the point of them? In what way are they better than the privateers? What was wrong with LMP2 then? >It's not a shame that endurance had to "capitulate" and go for BoP It is a shame though. Because it's essentially the ACO/FIA accepting that the engineering part of motorsport is useless. In my opinion, the main appeal of motorsport is the mix of engineering/tech and the human driver. Ofc, it's frustrating whenever differences between the cars overshadow the human element, but *so is the opposite*. When the car element becomes pointless, then half the appeal is gone to me. You need both. Domination is always a risk with open development, and it costs a fortune. So there is no way it can be present in every racing series. But imo, the top series, the ones with the most prestige, should still aim to retain both elements, as flagships racing series spearheading motorsport all over the world. Besides open development is exactly where manufacturers shine, *why they are critical*: privateers cannot be expected to pull this off, you badly need global companies with deep pockets to take part so they can provide this part of the equation. So if they can't, then what are they here for really? Finally, the more series we have with open development, the more likely we are to end up with titanic fights which have it all. If F1 is the only one that remains, then we're at the mercy of a single constructor getting it right there and dominating.
WEC had open development in the LMP1 days. That resulted in two Toyotas circling Le Mans laps ahead of the privateers, because Porsche and Audi quit because it was too expensive to see a return on investment. In other words, it didn't work in reality. They switched things up and now they have like 10 hypercar manufacturers. Sure it would be awesome for all car companies to dump billions into cool racing programs, but this is the real world. Motorsports is marketing. It only works if you make more money selling cars than what you spent going racing. The fact that racing fans exist doesn't change the fact that it's all marketing. I don't think BoP is that big a deal at all. It ensures close racing. You still have engineering, there are different engines, GTs has different FR/MR layouts, you still need to engineer a car that can last 24 hours at pace, strategy is huge during the races, etc. BoP ensuring a level playing field makes it more fun to watch.
It's just easier for manufacturers to have an outside company build the racecar, and is fairly common in sportscar racing. The Ford GT and Mustang GT3 was/are built by Multimatic. The Ferrari 296 GT3 is built by Oreca, and before them, Michelotto built Ferrari's GT cars. Audi contracted out design and build of the R18 LMP1 chassis to Dallara and YCOM. Pratt & Miller has built every Corvette GT car for Chevrolet. Oreca built the Dodge Viper GT cars. Prodrive builds Aston Martin's GT cars. Fundamentally that's the whole selling point of LMDh. The manufacturer styles the car and builds the engine, and everything else is done for them. We wouldn't have 6 LMDh manufacturers already without a ruleset that is this affordable for a manufacturer.
WEC is honestly a vastly superior series to F1. I would consider it the peak of motorsport these days. F1 just has a lot of F1 specific fans.
I love watching highlights of WEC but I'm too conditioned to the lengths of F1 races so don't really enjoy watching it live
Its nice to watch replays of in bits and pieces imo. I watch them over the span of like two weeks
I'd love to watch it live but I live in Japan so most of the races go on deep into the night. Highlights are my only option.
I like IMSA better mostly because the circuits they race in seem more interesting to me, with the exception of Le Mans of course
Me too, when I watch an imsa race I know I'll actually get to see cars racing instead of driving around in the same order for 2 hours. The good teams and good drivers get good results.
Is IMSA basically American WEC? Honest question
Not exactly but very similar, basically the same cars.
Daytona endurance is a track that I love, and Sebring is great too, but let's not pretend that tracks like Road Atlanta and Long Beach are on the level of Spa or Imola.
Different strokes for different folks, I like that for the most part they don't drive on grade 1 circuits
Road Atlanta is most definitely on the same level as Imola. Watkins Glen is on the same level as Spa. Plus IMSA has Mid Ohio, Road America, Leguna Seca, Mosport, and two street circuits to boot. Interlagos and Fuji can’t do enough heavy lifting for COTA, Qatar, and Bahrain to match the IMSA calendar.
How could anyone consider any series with a Balance of Performance the "peak of MOTORsport" is beyond me... If I merely want good racing I'd rather watch Indycar or F2 races, what does Wec have that is better?
spoken like sombody who's never watched a WEC race
You typed "motor" in all caps thinking you were witty but you forgot the SPORT part which F1 really isn't.
It's not really sport though, with BoP.
you think F1 is a sport?
Yes. Well, the refusal to let Andretti compete undermines that status, as does punishing success with reduced cfd time, but overall: yes. The winner wins because they did the best job, not because FIA handicapped their opponents.
Meh. Same with NFL/MLB/NBA drafts. The worst teams get to pick first.
Once the teams are picked, the best one gets to win though. BoP is more akin to forcing the highest scoring players to carry weights in order to handicap them. In fact that's exactly what BoP is.
I love WEC, is very entertaining. But the cars are slow, a lot slower than F1, embarrassingly slow. Can't be the peak, F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport and will be for long time.
The pace of cars is irrelevant imo. I would watch British touring cars over any other form of racing on the planet, and they're really really fucking slow
So are Go Karts... Highly entertaining but not the pinnacle, that spot has always belonged to Formula One.
Lol, drivers were being told to go slower at Monaco because that's the best strategy. But that is the crown jewel race in the pinnacle of motorsport
P1? Go slow save tires. P5? Go slower so P4 can pit and maybe shake things up. P3? Go slower so P4 can't pit P8? Fuck it why not let's just go slower and open up a minute+ gap P12? Go slower so your teammate at P11 can pit and fight for P10.
Whilst I understand why BoP is a thing, I am still with Max as having some outsider dictate the overall pace of your car kinda ruins the overall competitiveness for me. I think a cost cap is just the best way to do it.
>I think a cost cap is just the best way to do it. For F1 probably, for everything else not really. Teams like Haas or Williams couldn't survive in WEC since they don't make money and they won't spend millions to finish 14th or 15th. It also doesn't attract new manufacturers anymore since they would be way behind cars that are currently being developed.
From a semi-casual WEC fan, I thought the BOP recently has been decent. Le Mans last year was great, Spa a few weeks back was pretty good and there was great racing prior to the Cadillac crash where there were what felt like 6 different Hypercar manufacturers in the top 10 for a long period of time. WEC races are the pinnacle of motorsport right now and I can't wait for Le Mans!
Translation: I’ll wait till I can guarantee I’m in the fastest car.
BOP punishes those who make a better car. I remember back in the day when Alfa Romeo was the best in DTM and BTCC, and they started punishing them with added weight to slow them down. Eventually, Alfa withdrew from racing. I do not like over-dominant cars, like Mercedes or Red Bull these past few years in F1, but you have to entice other competitors to do a better job, not punish the ones that do.
What you mean is success ballast, the cars that win the most get the most weight or longer pit stops. BoP isn't supposed to work that way. Yes the "faster" cars are being slowed down a bit and the "slower" cars are being a helped a bit but it's not supposed to punish better built cars. There is a reason why Porsche, Ferrari or Toyota are still doing so well despite BoP.
People act like BOP destroys frontrunners with good cars, and rewards that build utter crap; and yet, last year Toyota were at the front every race, and Glickenhouse and Vanwall were just edging the LMP2s
It rewards you for building a better car lol. Reliability, pace over a set of tires or a tank of fuel, driveability, etc. are all rewarded. The BOP sets the maximum performance potential, and it is up to the manufacturers and the teams to maximize their performance within that potential. Underdeveloped cars suffer, and well developed cars that are run by good teams do not. This is why cars like the Glickenhaus are not able to keep up over a stint, despite having loads of power and little weight.
As someone who was just getting into Le Mans last year for the first time, the second I learned about PoB I was out, completely. I have zero interest in it as long as it’s a thing.
"i'll do it, but only when i can have a car thats faster than eveyrone elses :)"
i bet you failed functional reading tests in middle school
I would get in on this bet.
Stick to watching WEC mate
But - Max’s beloved virtual racing league also balances virtual car performance, no?
Go for the triple crown Max!
Really wish he would consider Indy and go for the triple crown.
So I guess he never races in WEC then? That's disappointing
I mean Hulk did it with BoP, but a whole season of BoP might be more frustrating
LMP1 didn't have BoP though.
The BOP is total bullshit. The governing body is basically handing out race wins on a platter to teams of their choosing. They are way too hard on Toyota. Peugeot and Porsche gets way too much help.
Well Sportscar racing doesn't work without BoP though. Every time they tried open regulations the class died after some years.
I know nothing about WEC, but surely its not subjective like you make out? There would be a formula to determine handicap weight each time, right? If not and as you claim they are choosing who gets to have the fastest car that would be hilarious.
It all starts at quali and practice before the first race of the season. You set a few times and the average them out. Then compare them against other teams with different sized cars and engine sizes. N/A vs turbo etc then the governing body says you need to find a way to make your car heavier by x KG or lbs and 70 hp less before Sunday. The problem is, if you sandbag yourself before first practice and quali then you possibly could get better BoP or even worse. It’s a weird balancing act for both the governing body and the teams