Final thoughts: Congrats to Ferrari they definitely earned the win . I would not count out Toyota . Fantastic results for CGR Cadillac they really battled for 24 hours . Porsche Penske have to solve their reliability issues , to have both Glickenhouse entrees finish in front of PP is not good no offense to Glick . I think team Jota showed a lot of promise especially seeing they only got their car about 8 weeks ago .

LMP2 again was a very close fight and very exciting to watch . GT AM also was a good show , Corvette going out on top as a full factory effort . Iron Dames just finished off the podium in 4th .

I really enjoyed watching , the announcers at times were difficult to understand but overall did a good job . I think I heard them say that 3 hours were spent under yellow , could have done without that . Aprox 1/3rd of the field didn't finish that is high attrition . On to the next race SmileWavy

Wow, Porsche we're nowhere 16th place and 17 laps down on the winning Ferrari

Congratulations to Ferrari, they'll be celebrating back in Maranello

Cadillac should be pleased too

Garage 56, we'll at least they tried

Big surprise but the sport needed a new winner.

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Yea, Porsche's big return to the top level at Le Mans was an embarrassment. Five other manufacturers whipped them like a rented mule.

Oh well, maybe next year?

The coverage on Motortrend TV was pretty good overall. To cover the entire race was wonderful. I am really happy I have a DVR that recorded it for me. I could fast forward through the long long almost endless cautions. And the multiple commercials.

Porsche needs to have a long look at reliability. They built their reputation around reliability. They had a 10 year old 1960s British car, in the rain level of reliability.

I thought the coverage was awful. Seems that nobody could afford to buy even one pit reporter to ask questions, so we never had a clue as to what was happening to the cars when they came into the pits. Eurosport had a small covey of fluffers who asked completely irrelevant questions of the occasional driver, one actually wandered the grounds near the pits see if she could be spotted in the crowd. Riveting stuff.

Eurosport had a really bad habit of inserting pre-recorded crap at times when there was action on the track, as opposed to when we were going to sleep with an hour-long safety car parade.

Speaking of the safety car, whoever came up with that new procedure ought to be shot. Twice. A guaranteed one hour parade, every time the son of a ***** came out. The first four hours, I think they had something like a whopping 60 laps can of actual green flag running.

The decision by the tire companies to not have intermediate tires available was another godawful decision. I wonder how many millions of dollars got tossed in the dumpster as a result of all those crashes?

Listening to the commentary on RadioLeMans wasn’t much better. None of the commentary was sufficiently focused on the action appearing on the screen, they got into one tangent after another, and it made the old US productions on channels like Speed look a lot better than I ever thought they would.

That said, the racing in all the classes was pretty evenly matched. Good on them for that.

It was a sobering thought to think that, Ferrari’s absence from Le Mans was so long that they literally have missed half of the hundred years that the race has been held. Wow. Good on them for the win. I wonder if they permited the church bells to have been rung in Maranello today, even though it wasn’t an F1 victory…

I agree the coverage leaves LOTS to be desired but I'm appreciative that at least the entire race is televised. I prefer the RadioLeMans guys but they're not great either. They've got the guy who reads the entire scoring list for each class once an hour or so - usually while there's some critical action going on. Granted, it's not easy to cover a 24-hour race with multiple classes and a large part of it in the dark, compared to F1 or Indy, but still .... maybe the increased fan interest will warrant some investment in better coverage next year.

GH: my feed on Motortrend TV + had no commercials. Is it the + that makes a difference? They also had on-board feeds of 15-20 cars available but I didn't use any of that. Motortrend, in general, is a horrible app. I can only access it on my laptop and 1 of 3 TVs in the house. The others are "non-compatible devices" for some mysterious reason :( They need to move coverage to Peacock or a major network.

The Ferrari win, whether you're a fan or not, was fantastic for the sport - endurance racing is on a roll. A pic of the winning car, earlier this year in Sebring:

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Yep, it is great the Ferrari is back, and threw down the gauntlet for Porsche and the others to follow or take over the lead. Toyota had some actual competition for the first time in many years, and they are fast and finished the race. More than I can say for the mighty Porsche race teams. Cadillac is just a rebranded Corvette, none the less a GM based checkbook car. They were fast and reliable, just not quite fast enough.

Tiny little Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, based in Sleepy Hollow New York had some bad luck, and still beat the Porsches.

Peugeot was disappointed in their finish, but they finished in a respectable place.

WEC next round is Monza. After this result for Ferrari it will be crazy town in Monza.

Not sure if it was based on facts, but the announcers were speculating that ticket sales have increased 5 fold as Le Mans got close to the checkered flag. I wouldn't be surprised.

I'm still trying to figure out how they got that car to turn right.

Surprise of the race for sure. From backmarkers to genuinely leading the race for an hour or 2. Great to see. But is the radical design intended specifically for Le Mans and this is the best they've got, or can they be semi-competitive the rest of the season?

Porsche is saying they will have up to 8 963 customer cars - 4 in IMSA and 4 in WEC + the 4 factory cars. So Le Mans 2024 could see 8-10 963s - the 6 WEC cars and 2-3 IMSA cars. Porsche being Porsche (and with so many cars to test) it is unlikely to suffer a repeat of the reliability problems they had this year.

I enjoyed watching the race with the sound turned down.
As an old guy I could only imagine what it was like back in the early '60's to race there.
Now I get to see it from inside the cars.

Late to the party as I was busy driving down from Le mans to the sout.. Managed to duck a lot of rain..
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^^^ Awesome, thanks!

I'm going to call it for BMW in the 6-Hour race at Watkins Glen. They've been slowly improving in each race and have had impressive practice times all weekend. I think they're calling for intermittent rain, so it could be a complete crapshoot.

You were off by one lap, Curt.

Great final stint for the #6. Post race interview of Jaminet is a gem.

^^^ even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Porsche found to have skid plate infraction and loses the win! BMW victorious - 1st prototype win in 23 years (V12 LMR). :cool:



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It was great to see both Penske Porsches lapping in formation at the head of the field for a couple of hours - the way it should be, all is right with the world :D And then it wasn't.

The Penske DQ may bump Cadillac up into 1st in the manufacturer championship?

This is the last winning BMW prototype, the V12 LMR. I took this pic at Sebring around 2001 I think.

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Watching the race I noticed the Porsche 963 repeatedly sparked (bottomed out) going through the esses. The skid plate infraction measurement was less than 1mm off. Rules are rules and spelled out in advance, but I wonder if this scraping had an effect of the skid plate. Also the Michelins had a problem getting up to temperature and pressure quickly and I am sure this affected ride height and balance a bit. Penske will appeal or blame the tires!

The winner should stay the winner and dock them points. IMHO

Originally thought you were referring to the GTD entry for BMW.

Fought back to 2nd place after being 3 laps back.

Paul Miller is my ‘home’ team. Was hoping to get up to Watkins to see the race but the sketchy weather kept me away. Lime Rock is their homecoming but I have family visiting and will miss that one too.


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So it was a set up thing. They could have run more ride height and not worn it down as much.

And look at the outcry when they did that for Daytona?

But I do agree more consistency is needed. It's hard to justify a team who obviously cheated keeping a win, where a team who arguably pushed too close to the edge on set up, get everything taken away.

^^^ My thought exactly Adrian. It seems to me that low tire pressure was a far greater advantage than a 1mm skid plate wear issue. But I don't know enough about either. Is it maybe that the skid plate wear sets a defacto limitation on spring rates (and/or ride height) in the car and that's why it is critical. i.e. - run whatever springs and ride height you want, but if your skid plate wears down, beware. I'm thinking maybe Penske ran soft springs with the rain forecast in mind (the rain never came).

I think IMSA was gun shy at Daytona, being the first race of the new GTP era.

Oh well, Penske is appealing the decision. Good to see BMW win though because all manufacturers have now won a race.

BMW is going to just keep getting stronger. WRT in Europe is the factory's chosen 2-car team in WEC hypercar for next year and are actively testing the sister cars.

Proton 963 livery for IMSA and WEC. Debut in IMSA is Road America.

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FP3 Live now at 6 Hours of Monza. Also, IMSA at Mosport this weekend.

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Who is this Peugeot on top of the timing? Kudos to them for keeping their heads down and making progress.

^^^ :D

and the brand new Proton 963 running very well yesterday and today - ahead of the Penske factory cars. But only qualifying will show true times. :cool:

Sunday Sunday Sundayyyy

IMSA at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park on NBC - 12 PM ET

Pre-event entry list: https://www.imsa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2023/06/28/2023_IWSC_CTMP_PreEvent_EntryList.pdf

______________________________________________
Today: Qualifying 12:40 - 1:55 PM ET on IMSA.TV

More (including additional offerings if you have Peacock or Peacock Premium):
https://www.imsa.com/events/2023-chevrolet-grand-prix/

NBC/Peacock is just such an amateur crap show sometimes. What is with the audio on these IMSA broadcasts? It's like listening to the raw feed and all you can hear are the cars with some faint mumbling from the announcers in the background. Then at some point during the broadcast, somebody wakes up and figures out they forgot to flip a switch and it goes to normal. This happens all the time with them. Oh well, easy enough to mute them and listen to radiolemans. :rolleyes:

Boy howdy on the audio...have to confess, not so crazy about Imsa since they went "green" with hybrids.

Mosport sure is a purty track.

Simpson beats Penske, wow.

Pretty much disastrous for Porsche at both Mosport and Monza.

curt. in the MPC race, the video or audio on peacock did not even start until the 3 or 4th lap..... totallly focin crazy. hate it.

BTW, quick comment on Le Mans 24 in person...

The wife used the trip as an excuse to book a castle nearby and invite 15 friends to share the costs, so that part was fun - highly recommended. Of course 13/15 did not buy tickets on time and they sold out fast, so that was less nice..

Le Mans in person is interesting... It's very cool to see the structures in person and experience the event live, but for those of us used to US events, it's nowhere near as approachable. Fences all over, very few vantage points where you aren't seeing a fence in your line of sight outside of reserved seating... Access to cars/drivers is more restricted than in the states too... So if you come in person, book a seat in a stand somewhere with shade (for rain too), or come to the week before the race and watch the parade in town, the qualy, etc... The race itself is a friggin' zoo !

Parking was impossible, lucky I had a friend locally who stored our car and gave us a ride. 350K people is a LOT of people and you are swimming in a sea of people going from place to place - I caught Covid shortly thereafter (for the 3rd time) and I doubt it's a coincidence. You'd think "hey it's a big track, spread out a little" but no. In reality the public - as far as I can tell, is pretty much concentrated from the end of the Porsche curves (so before the end of a lap) to the last turn before the first big straight... So I'd say 95% of the spectators are basically occupying 5% of space around the circuit - as far as I can tell you cannot go see the chicanes after the long straights, either that or it's a completely different mode of access but not from the main entrance. I did not see any shuttles to go there.. the paths just end.

The lines for the stores were huge, food and drink the same, there is lots to see and do aside from the race (the museum is incredible and free but also, lines for an hour) but by and large it's not super pleasant overall due to the crowd everywhere. I came once before for le Mans classic, and that is now 240K folks but over 3 days. You can pick a seat for free, access more stuff. If you come, I recommend coming for the classic le mans instead of the 24h race, which is easier to follow on TV at home anyway. Classic OTOH has was more free access to paddocks and you see more cars all over the place, like you would at rennsport, say.

Still an interesting experience, down to getting my US license taken away ("you cannot drive on french territory anymore for 3 months") by french gendarmes in a nicely setup speed trap.... (it's easy to be 40KPH over the limit.... if you drop the limit 40KPH and hide the sign right behind a truck I was passing), azzholes in reality because I slowed down immediately after when I saw the cones, but no points because they can't touch a US license. Wife had to drive rest of the trip !

All in all, I'm happy to have seen it and smelled the "merguez" - but you will get a much more personal experience and 10x better access in IMSA, at any track (I recommend laguna seca for visibility). The Nascar entry was insane and clearly wowed the crowd, you could hear it come from a mile away over all the noise of the prototypes...Lots love for the corvette also. The Ferrari was the crowd favorite, nobody there wanted Toyota to win, kinda funny...

So yeah in my book, Come for LM classic, not 24. Watch the speed traps, and get a booster shot ;-)

^^^ Excellent info! Thanks.

Lamborghini SC63 LMDh for IMSA and WEC next year finally unveiled. Twin-turbo V8. I was expecting a more radical design - this looks very conventional.

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