2015 LeMans Thread

[manbridge 74]

Got up to see the last hour. A great finish.

Good to see the unscheduled pit stops affect the other guys for once.

Heard in the after race interviews that Audi could not keep up the pace at night. They had to top up oil and inspect engine cover a few times. Seems their hybrid system was on the blink too.

[sand_man]

Was very happy to see Dempsey move up in the podium standings due to Aston's misfortune!!

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by farrell

excellent win from porsche today!! Man, the cockpit view inside the 919 is insane. That car is fast!!

+1

[oldE]

Spambot reported.
Les

[Baz]

Enjoyed the respect paid to Porsche by Dr. Ullrich at the end of the race....very classy!


Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich of Audi Sport Team Joest congratulates Friedrich Enzinger, Head of LMP1 Porsche Team, following their Le Mans victory

[Baz]

Porsche had the fastest most reliable car in the race this year - really remarkable!

Interesting article here:
Porsche chief makes shock Le Mans admission | LE MANS news | Motorsport.com

[Deschodt]

Awesome. Just a tad disappointed for Weber... He put in the time, and got that penalty for Hartley's mistake... And Hulk just waltzed in between Grand Prix and wins it... Gotta hurt... But I'll take it ! I'd be happy with 2nd at le mans for myself ! Happy for Dempsey too, after the heartbreak of 4th place (and thanks to Pat Long) !

[Rtrorkt]

Congrats to Porsche. No one called that win. At the start the common wisdom was Porsche's focus on getting the electric power down immediately would be offset by Ulrich's focus on aero and the fact that Audi had won multiple times. Wonder how much money changed hands between Stuttgart and Ingolstat. Kudos to Dempsey. Finally on the Le Mans podium. Great work. Not much good news after that for the Porsche GT cars.

what crappy coverage from Fox Sports. Tried to watch the scheduled interim last night at 8PM my time, but the soccer game went into penalty shots and Fox didn't have the brains to let the auto racing fans know whether the 24 would get on between games. This morning they were switching back and forth between FS1 and FS2. Frankly embarrassing coverage. But i guess that what you get from a Murdoch run organization.

[Flieger]

I thought it was interesting that 19 won after it fell back at the start and after Tandy's majorly embarassing oops in Spa (colliding with the GTE Pro 911). I thought if a Porsche won then the Lieb-Dumas-Jani car would be the one to win, they certainly deserved it with Lieb being an engineer who helped develop the car, Dumas being a long time factory driver, and Jani putting it on pole. Hartley seems to still make rookie mistakes (passing under yellow, gives Webber a 1 minute penalty) so I'm not too surprised they didn't win. I suppose it is the same story as 1970- the fast cars broke and the slow car people didn't think much of came through to win.

I was quite surprised by Audi's race pace (lap record). I guess Porsche had to dial back the speed to save tires? I've got to go watch my recording but what happened to the #7 Audi? I heard the commentators saying it was loosing pace towards the end and the #17 was able to pass. Now I see the picture of the engine cover off.

What caused the brake troubles on the #18 at Mulsanne? I figured it was an ERS system problem but they say they had no "significant" hybrid problems.

[FLYGEEZER]

Glad for the Porsche win. Been a long time. Just can't get into it, with all the new Electrolux hybrid schit.. I like internal combustion noise, lots of it! These cars sound like some kinda high speed electrical appliance. Vintage racing lookin' better day. But....I'm an old guy!

[gorthar]

Originally Posted by vbaron

Great race, but Fox coverage sucked! Changing channels twice in the last hour, cutting the post race coverage short, they could have done much better.

Vin

When it comes to stuff like this I have learned to assume that it isn't even on TV. Coverage of endurance racing apparently doesn't event merit 'niche sport' coverage in the states. I just automatically hunt for a quality bootleg stream on the web, bring up the FIA Timing and Scoring page and stream the Radio Le Mans audio feed and I'm in heaven.

[Flieger]

Fox did show the other two WEC races in their entirety. I believe they will be doing so for the rest of them as well. Those were only 6 hours though.

They have contracts for the stick and ball sports that say they need to stick with a live game until it is over, as I understand.

[GH85Carrera]

Fox coverage sucks balls.

Jumping channels and interrupting coverage of a SPORT like racing to show men playing a GAME makes no sense. Change the name of the channel to Fox-Games instead.

The race results were great the TV coverage was horrid.

[gorthar]

Lol

Woe be unto you if you’re trying to watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans in America and accidentally decided to trust Fox Sports to cover it. Hahaha. Haha. No. We’ve had this discussion before. I’m not sure I’d trust them to broadcast anything without randomly preempting it for poker, or quilting, or professional farting.

Fox Sports Interrupted The Biggest Event In Motorsport For A Soccer Game

[Rtrorkt]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Fox coverage sucks balls.

Jumping channels and interrupting coverage of a SPORT like racing to show men playing a GAME makes no sense. Change the name of the channel to Fox-Games instead.

The race results were great the TV coverage was horrid.

+1, that's what you get when conservatives run the world

[Tervuren]

Nissan was pretty embarrassing out there in LMP1, never mind their LMP2 win.

It felt like they always had a car in the garage. They also had real problems putting the power down for the first third of a straight a way. Often, the traction control would choke out, the driver would have to take it out of gear, pull over , reset while coasting ,then take off again. (I assume it was the TC farting.)

Must be frustrating to pass a GT by going 230MPH down one straight, only to coast and wave it by on the next straight.

[manbridge 74]

Conservatives run the world?

[JasonDTM]

Originally Posted by Flieger

I was quite surprised by Audi's race pace (lap record). I guess Porsche had to dial back the speed to save tires?

Porsche is quick over one lap in qualy, but slow the next two.

They have to be more reserved with their boosting in race conditions to remain running a consistent pace.

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by gorthar

When it comes to stuff like this I have learned to assume that it isn't even on TV. Coverage of endurance racing apparently doesn't event merit 'niche sport' coverage in the states. I just automatically hunt for a quality bootleg stream on the web, bring up the FIA Timing and Scoring page and stream the Radio Le Mans audio feed and I'm in heaven.

This.^^^

I knew the cable package we have doesn't include FS1 and FS2, so I was elated to see that Fox was making most of the race available on FoxSportsGO online at no charge.

Those here who want to try to take it political by ranting about Murdoch/Fox/conservatives are just typical "it's all about me" lib whiners who haven't thought about the fact that WEC racing has a very small audience here in the U.S. compared to soccer and other stuff.

If anyone knows the viewership stats on that or how to find it, please post it here.

I'd watch Le Mans on a 5" black and white TV with Italian announcers if that's all I could get my hands on. I'd turn the sound off, though.

Thank you to all of you who posted various links on how to get the race in different places... PPOT is the best... and thankfully, relatively free of whiners.

Sure, I expressed disappointment when the FSG coverage wasn't flag to flag the way it seemed was promised and I commented on the barrage of ads during part of the late stretch, but if I had been on that link from gorthar the whole time, all of that would have been moot.

I remember sitting in our den in the 60's, watching whatever coverage the networks had of it when the Ford GT40's were blasting down Mulsanne blowing by everbody. Sometimes it was probably less than 20 minutes and perhaps shown on the following Saturday. I especially remember a long shot of them coming toward the camera from a fairly low angle that would show them coming up to a rise in the topo as they were coming up on some slower cars. They'd all disappear behind the rise, then when their headlights reappeared a second or so later, they were ahead of those cars and going after the next pack.

Just crazy fun for me as a young kid. On a black and white TV, too... probably about a 25" set.

I'm thankful for whatever I can get... even if it's only available to me on this 23" flat screen monitor. I was able to put it on top of the tower and spin it toward the couch in the LR, put my glasses on, and watch it from 11' away when I got tired of sitting in the computer chair.

A great race at a great track... the biggest and baddest... Le Mans... may it never cease to run.

Be thankful, people. This is great stuff... don't stress out over it when it's not perfectly to your liking.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

so I was elated to see that Fox was making most of the race available on FoxSportsGO online at no charge.

I'M SO HAPPY YOU GOT THEIR LOUSY SITE TO WORK FOR YOU.

Me, I gave up after three hours. That included downloading new browser software, upgrading a whole bunch of other software, in case some of that was holding me back and following the useless suggestions of one of the FOX IT nerds, who I pestered until it became obvious he had no clues.

SO, I missed the best part of the race, the part where most of the action is, the run into the night. I recorded the rest on FXS1 and FXS2, and following that was an exercise in frustration. Glad I recorded everything manually, as if I'd just recorded "Le Mans" coverage I'd have missed half of it.

The production was the worst I've seen in a long time. It sure was nice to know that they could give me the top four in a class, once an hour or two, but could never bother to include their lap counts in their graphics. Yeah, I could almost read the scrolling bull**** at the bottom of the screen and figure it out for myself, but that was just as likely to be baseball scores.

It sure was nice to know the winner of the MotoGP race, before I watched it. Truth is, I almost forgot who it was, when I had to wade through a third of the recorded MotoGP program, to find the start of the MotoGP race in the midst of the Le Mans footage.

I enjoy Sam Posey as much as the next guy, but if they repeated his diatribe one more time I was going to chuck a shoe through the TV screen. At least I was spared Justin's yearly stroll through the drunks.

I could go on for days, but I just don't give a **** at this point. The highlight of my TV viewing year, wasted by some worthless ******* in a programming committee meeting.

JR