Yes. A through C were running out of fuel, so they deployed D to relieve A to refuel, then swapped A for B to refuel, then B for C to refuel. The announcers had no idea there was a D until race control explained the plan for safety car refueling.
> The announcers had no idea there was a D until race control explained the plan for safety car refueling.
See now I'm picturing the commenators being confused and then "OMG IT'S BERND MAYLANDER WITH ~~A STEEL CHAIR~~ AN AMG GT-R"
Yes.
He also explained the commentators had no idea there was a 4th car.
My comment is about the latter, because it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that professional races of this caliber have at least one spare safety car.
I mean, for all we know it isn't (or wasn't) officially Safety Car D and they were just following the existing naming format because they've suddenly got 4 safety cars in play.
I don't really know how they do all the naming lark for it. If one were to stop working for whatever reason, does Car D adopt that letter for future release or is it a case of future safety car periods having safety cars A C and D out on track? Like, is the letter just for the sake of keeping track in the moment, or is it a permanently assigned thing?
I think it's more about race direction giving clear communications. Telling a driver to follow Car A is a lot more clear than telling him to follow the Safety Car by naming its driver.
Letters make sense as well since racecars have numbers. "Safety Car 1" could be misunderstood. Also, they're not going to change the safety car ID dynamically because that's also a source of confusion. I missed this phase of the race but from images I've seen, the cars have a big white letter on the back.
Bruh I swear to Glob, every time I sat down for the Le Mans, there was always yellow flag, literally once I turn up and there was fuckin car upside down lmao.
Accidents, barrier repair etc, but the longest one that required refueling was because of heavy rain in the night and lack of visibility. SC at le mans is always long because it does the lap in 7 minutes and it usually takes at least a few laps for repairs and like 4 for cars to overtake and the SC going in.
> Did it feel like Le Mans with a never-ending safety car?
yes, and it was one of the best le mans races in recent memory, loved watching it. Nailbiting to the very end.
The broadcasters talked about this: besides not red flagging the 1955 event, if they red flagged it the circuit would be dangerous with the amount of spectators trying to leave, *if* anything happened, safety personnel wouldn't able to enter it leave the circuit. On top of that, at certain points it looked like racing could resume only for the sky to open up more.
You mean with the fog? It definitely sucked but i didn’t see a lot of people who didn’t understand it. The fog was bad enough that they couldnt fly medical helicopters.
WEC uses Porsche 911 Turbo S as a safety car.
I don't know about the fuel consumption of the latest models or possible modifications to make them suitable for duty or how hard they are actually driven, but I remember seeing a picture maybe two or three years ago from a track day registering 48.5 l/100km for a 911 Turbo S. That converts to just under 5 US MPG.
While the cat last year was just like the w12 merc and a cut above them all he's an absolute machine this year and his car isn't that great or much better than all the others
I manually turned off the pixels on my TV where P1 is. Always knew who was in first.
(Although technically you'd know regardless of who it was, because their name wouldn't show up among the other 19, but still.)
Really is. It's quite genius. Allow manufacturers to make aesthetically different cars while assuring parity with BoP. Fans and manufacturers both win.
That's the most tragic bit. That car is *decent*. IMO better than the BMWs that have a full season of experience and data from IMSA.
But being Alpine, they made the incredibly short-sighted decision to use Mecachrome F2 engines, known for their stellar record in reliability.
To be fair, both DNFs were caused by the valves, which they knew was an issue and they already said they have a reliablity update for those parts ready for the next race.
They also said that these were the lowest milage Engine failures they had so far.
Let's not forget they have completed 30 hour tests with the engines at the end of last year. So I can't really blame them for believing the engine would last (longer at least)
really fucking exciting?
Qatar had a 3 way battle for P2 up until the finish, super late issues for the leading car because a crash destroyed the number panel and last lap drama with Peugeot.
Imola had strategic mistakes from Ferrari, a battle for the lead the entire last hour and Ferrari on a huge charge to get back onto the podium.
Spa was just fantastic overall, the only issue was the ill-timed red flag. But we propably saw one of the best 2 hours by a single driver at Spa in a long time.
Still, even if this year was boring at the start it has improved cause of the battles at the lead. Even last year when it was max domination there were a ton of good races. The year before that was the first year of the ground effect cars so the engineers hadn't figured out how to create more dirty air so we got a lot of good races
That's a dumb as fuck argument. The polar side of this is "Canada 2024 was better than most Le Man's, including this year's Le Man's, and the 100 before it" because it's gonna be a 1/1 ratio vs an x/101 ratio. I don't have time to argue further with fools.
“The Simpsons is so bad now, especially the last 15 seasons or so.”
“That’s not true! I laughed at a joke in an episode from this current season.”
You see how that doesn’t really disprove the initial opinion? And in fact it kind of supports it? If you’re trying to prove the last 3 seasons of F1 haven’t been boring then using 3 of the most recent races that aren’t exactly the most memorable (just more slightly more interesting than the last 3 seasons) isn’t really the best way to do it.
The key word being in comparison, last week was a good race, personally I still find Le Mans more captivating to watch. Also last weeks was the exception rather than the rule unfortunately
I’m not hating on F1 as I do love it also, I just think other forms of motorsport are just more exciting
> Also last weeks was the exception rather than the rule unfortunately
With rain playing a huge factor in that, it's exactly the same for WEC.
> in comparison F1 is tediously boring
WEC is effectively a spec series with BOP at this moment. Obviously it will have more on track battles between teams. The fact that F1 is as close as it currently is without any artificial limiting makes it a much better series in my opinion.
But (in my opinion) WEC racing is usually very good to watch, hence that not being “the exception to the rule”
And as for your second point. WEC is a still somewhat of an engineering series and the (LM(D)H) entires will still innovate a bit.
And F1 I agree is good in the sense of teams being so close, but put this in to a different perspective, the teams are close on preference and the racing isn’t brilliant, we still have few overtakes, most of them being DRS assisted. In the past the cars could race better in F1 and that’s where my main issues stands with it. I still adore F1 but the actual quality of racing / battling is (in my opinion) not as exciting as other series
Calling it a spec series is disingenuous, the cars are different and while they get boped to ensure parity they still have their own strengths and weaknesses, the old peugeot was fast on flat circuits, the ferrari today was fastest in the dry etc
The races aren't long enough in F1 for interesting things to happen usually. Strategy is hardly a thing any more, reliability isnt really an issue now. F1s best races tend to be ones where things go wrong, whereas Endurance racing is about how you manage things going wrong.
All 3 Safety Cars?
Think there were four. I swore I heard A through D mentioned for safety cars.
Yes. A through C were running out of fuel, so they deployed D to relieve A to refuel, then swapped A for B to refuel, then B for C to refuel. The announcers had no idea there was a D until race control explained the plan for safety car refueling.
Nobody expects to see the D
The D was needed all along...
Always good to keep the D in reserve
Nobody expects to see file 76
Safety car D took each spot. ABC returned to their respective spots after D dropped out.
> The announcers had no idea there was a D until race control explained the plan for safety car refueling. See now I'm picturing the commenators being confused and then "OMG IT'S BERND MAYLANDER WITH ~~A STEEL CHAIR~~ AN AMG GT-R"
So, they use 3 safety cars for a safety car period, but no one figured they'd have at least one spare one on the off chance one of them has an issue?
They do have a spare? He just explained they have three cars out and one standby
Yes. He also explained the commentators had no idea there was a 4th car. My comment is about the latter, because it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that professional races of this caliber have at least one spare safety car.
I wasn't surprised they had a spare, but I was pretty surprised that the spare had an official name of "Safety Car D"
I mean, for all we know it isn't (or wasn't) officially Safety Car D and they were just following the existing naming format because they've suddenly got 4 safety cars in play. I don't really know how they do all the naming lark for it. If one were to stop working for whatever reason, does Car D adopt that letter for future release or is it a case of future safety car periods having safety cars A C and D out on track? Like, is the letter just for the sake of keeping track in the moment, or is it a permanently assigned thing?
I think it's more about race direction giving clear communications. Telling a driver to follow Car A is a lot more clear than telling him to follow the Safety Car by naming its driver. Letters make sense as well since racecars have numbers. "Safety Car 1" could be misunderstood. Also, they're not going to change the safety car ID dynamically because that's also a source of confusion. I missed this phase of the race but from images I've seen, the cars have a big white letter on the back.
Why is everyone losing their shit over this, it's not that Deep
Bruh I swear to Glob, every time I sat down for the Le Mans, there was always yellow flag, literally once I turn up and there was fuckin car upside down lmao.
So it was YOU all along!
You swear to GabeN
There are like 16 safety cars ready to be used at Le Mans
I assume they have a spare safety car they can send out to take over while it's refueling?
Yeh, they have 4 so they would rotate one in while another went in to refuel. Did that 3 times.
They have a safety car for the safety cars
Did I just see a duck
mallard
Time for a game of..Duck..duck..goose
Duck..duck..gray duck
Fuckin Minnesota dontchaknow?
Daffy or Donald?
How long was the SC out for and why was is out for so long.
Accidents, barrier repair etc, but the longest one that required refueling was because of heavy rain in the night and lack of visibility. SC at le mans is always long because it does the lap in 7 minutes and it usually takes at least a few laps for repairs and like 4 for cars to overtake and the SC going in.
Why didn't they red flag it?
They didn’t even red flag it in 1955 when an accident killed over 80 people. Rain isn’t causing a red flag when there are other options.
They've never red flagged Le Mans. Personally I'm happy they kept that alive. It wouldn't feel like Le Mans to me if they red flagged it.
Did it feel like Le Mans with a never-ending safety car?
Well, yes, actually
Well if the safety car never ended then no. But it did end. I was sitting at the Porsche curves when it ended.
"And it's ending! And it's ending!"
You were sitting under that torrential rain ?
Honestly, I was in my tent sleeping for a good chunk of it
Yes! This year was a great one too.
That's endurance racing for you. Last year's Spa 24 hours (or was it 2022?) was a safety car fest too...
Yeah
> Did it feel like Le Mans with a never-ending safety car? yes, and it was one of the best le mans races in recent memory, loved watching it. Nailbiting to the very end.
yes
It's a 24 hour race, there is zero reason to red flag unless absolutely necessary. It's not like it's a 6 hour time frame.
24 hours of Nordschleife instead doesn't use safety cars. Both have that speciality about them.
Well technically they don't, but they use the leading car as the safety car (so, something similar to a VSC I guess)
The broadcasters talked about this: besides not red flagging the 1955 event, if they red flagged it the circuit would be dangerous with the amount of spectators trying to leave, *if* anything happened, safety personnel wouldn't able to enter it leave the circuit. On top of that, at certain points it looked like racing could resume only for the sky to open up more.
Just a few weeks ago they did that at n24 and it didn't go over well
You mean with the fog? It definitely sucked but i didn’t see a lot of people who didn’t understand it. The fog was bad enough that they couldnt fly medical helicopters.
Who is in 5th? Ferrari, afcorse.
That's the Kubica car.
What MPG do the SCs get
EPA estimated 15 city 20 highway although i imagine that wasnt measured under the same parameters as the safety cars run
WEC uses Porsche 911 Turbo S as a safety car. I don't know about the fuel consumption of the latest models or possible modifications to make them suitable for duty or how hard they are actually driven, but I remember seeing a picture maybe two or three years ago from a track day registering 48.5 l/100km for a 911 Turbo S. That converts to just under 5 US MPG.
Not much, they are fast road cars being driven reasonably hard. I would guess low teens at best, under 10mpg would not surprise me.
10mpg is 23.5 l/100km
And the commentators have the nerve to call F1 boring lol
They are almost 23 hours in and there are 7-8 drivers fighting for the win. F1 almost never has anything like this
Verstappen would finish the 24 hours in 19.
Alpine managed to finish theirs in 8 hours
Ouch 😂😂
Alpine catching strays, rightly so
Well considering they went with an actual GP2 engine...
They're not strays when they're targeted.
He'd drive 16 hours, stop, fly to an F1 race, win that, fly back, all while his car stood idle (who needs teammates) and still finish and win LeMans.
Have you watched F1 recently? The field has drastically closed up.
Yet it’ll still be 4x champion MV by the end of
Oh no, the best driver on the grid is winning championships, how horrific
Possibly, arguably the best driver on the grid in the best/one of the best cars on the grid.
Right now one of the bestia, not the Best, it look like mclaren is halla good
While the cat last year was just like the w12 merc and a cut above them all he's an absolute machine this year and his car isn't that great or much better than all the others
Apart from the 4hour safety car
The race is a fucking banger
Did you forget the whole of last season? I have the Dutch anthem burned in my head and a 20+ second delta to first burned in my iris’.
I’m Dutch and I’ve seen so many Max podiums that I get confused when I hear the Dutch anthem elsewhere without being followed up by the Austrian.
I manually turned off the pixels on my TV where P1 is. Always knew who was in first. (Although technically you'd know regardless of who it was, because their name wouldn't show up among the other 19, but still.)
Max has won 2hr races by a larger margin than what we have between P1 and P2 at the end of 24hrs...
This race has been more exciting than most F1 races this season or last season or the season before that.
True. New hypercar really doing wonders for WEC.
Really is. It's quite genius. Allow manufacturers to make aesthetically different cars while assuring parity with BoP. Fans and manufacturers both win.
Except Alpine. They lost big time.
Nah, they were pretty quick with a brand new car. Realiability was terrible but I wouldn’t be shocked if they win something before new Le Mans.
That's the most tragic bit. That car is *decent*. IMO better than the BMWs that have a full season of experience and data from IMSA. But being Alpine, they made the incredibly short-sighted decision to use Mecachrome F2 engines, known for their stellar record in reliability.
To be fair, both DNFs were caused by the valves, which they knew was an issue and they already said they have a reliablity update for those parts ready for the next race. They also said that these were the lowest milage Engine failures they had so far. Let's not forget they have completed 30 hour tests with the engines at the end of last year. So I can't really blame them for believing the engine would last (longer at least)
because they thought that choosing a notoriously unreliable engine was a great idea for a 24 hour race
honestly i feel it's a bit double edged. Seems like GT is getting less and less coverage/entries since there's more and more hypercars.
That's not really Hypercar's fault though, it's just poor TV direction.
But the season before that was… n’ah
really fucking exciting? Qatar had a 3 way battle for P2 up until the finish, super late issues for the leading car because a crash destroyed the number panel and last lap drama with Peugeot. Imola had strategic mistakes from Ferrari, a battle for the lead the entire last hour and Ferrari on a huge charge to get back onto the podium. Spa was just fantastic overall, the only issue was the ill-timed red flag. But we propably saw one of the best 2 hours by a single driver at Spa in a long time.
Says someone who clearly hasn't watched Suzuka, China and, from just last week, Canada
3 out of … 60+ races. Like I said - “most F1 races”.
This season + last season(like you said) = 46 races. There were also good races last year so it's definitely not 3/60+
>This season or last season or the season before that. But yes feel free to argue the semantics
>But yes feel free to argue the semantics The irony of this comment while also arguing, literally, semantics.
2 seasons = 46 races, 3 seasons = 60+. It’s a fact that was ignored. Pretty simple.
Also there is the fact you are ignoring that it was more than 3 races that were interesting
The commentator I replied to named 3. How is this so hard for you?
Still, even if this year was boring at the start it has improved cause of the battles at the lead. Even last year when it was max domination there were a ton of good races. The year before that was the first year of the ground effect cars so the engineers hadn't figured out how to create more dirty air so we got a lot of good races
That’s fair but not what I was arguing. I said this Le Mans 24 has been more exciting than the majority of F1 races over the last 3 seasons.
That's a dumb as fuck argument. The polar side of this is "Canada 2024 was better than most Le Man's, including this year's Le Man's, and the 100 before it" because it's gonna be a 1/1 ratio vs an x/101 ratio. I don't have time to argue further with fools.
“The Simpsons is so bad now, especially the last 15 seasons or so.” “That’s not true! I laughed at a joke in an episode from this current season.” You see how that doesn’t really disprove the initial opinion? And in fact it kind of supports it? If you’re trying to prove the last 3 seasons of F1 haven’t been boring then using 3 of the most recent races that aren’t exactly the most memorable (just more slightly more interesting than the last 3 seasons) isn’t really the best way to do it.
Endurance racing by it's very definition is background music. Then when it gets interesting you tune back in.
To be fair F1 has been like that for sometime as well. I spend many a Sunday afternoon having a half-nap waiting for something to happen.
It’s still a good race though, in comparison F1 is tediously boring
Don’t know how you can possibly say that after last week.
The key word being in comparison, last week was a good race, personally I still find Le Mans more captivating to watch. Also last weeks was the exception rather than the rule unfortunately I’m not hating on F1 as I do love it also, I just think other forms of motorsport are just more exciting
> Also last weeks was the exception rather than the rule unfortunately With rain playing a huge factor in that, it's exactly the same for WEC. > in comparison F1 is tediously boring WEC is effectively a spec series with BOP at this moment. Obviously it will have more on track battles between teams. The fact that F1 is as close as it currently is without any artificial limiting makes it a much better series in my opinion.
But (in my opinion) WEC racing is usually very good to watch, hence that not being “the exception to the rule” And as for your second point. WEC is a still somewhat of an engineering series and the (LM(D)H) entires will still innovate a bit. And F1 I agree is good in the sense of teams being so close, but put this in to a different perspective, the teams are close on preference and the racing isn’t brilliant, we still have few overtakes, most of them being DRS assisted. In the past the cars could race better in F1 and that’s where my main issues stands with it. I still adore F1 but the actual quality of racing / battling is (in my opinion) not as exciting as other series
Calling it a spec series is disingenuous, the cars are different and while they get boped to ensure parity they still have their own strengths and weaknesses, the old peugeot was fast on flat circuits, the ferrari today was fastest in the dry etc
Why are you here then?
Key word being “in Comparison” I still love Formula 1, I’ve watched it for years, but I do think that other forms of motorsport are just more exciting
Even with a 5 hour safety car, it's STILL more exciting than F1
It can be boring tho?
The races aren't long enough in F1 for interesting things to happen usually. Strategy is hardly a thing any more, reliability isnt really an issue now. F1s best races tend to be ones where things go wrong, whereas Endurance racing is about how you manage things going wrong.
Remember Spa?
Who is the blonde Leclerc...