Blancpain GT Series / Discussion topic

Gravel traps don't work good enough for safety IMO. He just surfed on top of the kittylitter without slowing down. To avoid abuse of track limits (Paul Ricard) there could be a narrow path of slippery astroturf outside of the curbs and white lines before the friction pad begins.

 

Gravel traps don't always work, but I'd still rather having them than infinite amounts of asphalt run-off areas.

 

Which races in this years series will have night qualifying? found it. looks like just the 24hrs of spa

 

Maybe Paul Ricard, I know they finish the race at night so possibly qualy could also be late if its the day before.

 

Hope the sounds will be this good taken from the Sprint Round at Brands Hatch sunday 6th May 2018

 

God they do sound good don’t they, especially the NA motors.

I gotta say, I do struggle to enjoy the 488 with its muted turboed tone quite so much as the old 458 with that glorious, free revving, NA V8 screaming in your ears. I fear this is the end of a generation, enjoy those screaming V10s and burbling, big bore V8s while you still can. Sorry, as you can see, the sun is out in the UK, and all this gin is making me wistful and nostalgic.


In-car sound plays a big role in which cars I enjoy to race (VR, immersion, yada-yada) but it always seems a tricky one from a recording and implementation POV. Not that I’ve had the pleasure of driving a GT3 car, but is it not the case that much of the guts of the engine noise comes from the exhaust note, and that doesn’t really make it into the cabin that much? In reality isn’t it all mostly brake squeal and transmission whine?

 

While you're complaining about NA sounds reaching their end, keep in mind that turbo engine sounds are a lot better than no engine sound:

 

I hope formula E dies a horrific fiery death.

 

With all the major manufacturers joining it I’d say you have no chance of that happening

 

Yeah, it actually made me really sad to see Audi and Porsche leaving the WEC to join that **** show. I mean, you're giving up on a chance to win Le Mans just to be able to win the legendary "Monaco e-Prix"?
The FIA and ACO are in urgent need to find a way to make LMP1 viable again, ever since 2015 (with the Nissan fiasco) not a single manufacturer has joined them.

 

Well this was a little heartening to read this morning:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...es-67pc-jump-sales-escalating-costs-hit-home/

 

Won't happen. If anything it will will eventually replace formula 1 as the top tier motorsport.

The bottom line is the electric motor is already better than the combustion engine, it's quicker and has more control over output. It's only a matter of time before the batteries get light enough before switching to electric becomes a no brainer simply because it preforms better.

If it's a sport then all that matters is performance and fairness. We wouldn't tell footballers they have to wear old leather boots with those generic studs because we don't like the look of the fancy new boots. I suppose the problem for motorsport is it started out as a spectacle as much as a sport. People went to see incredible machines that you couldn't see anywhere else and the crazy people who risked their lives driving them.

I'm sure 30 years from now people will wonder how we put up with the constant noise out of a combustion engine.

 

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with your prediction but I don't think its success would have much to do with performance, especially when you consider what sort of power we could get out of a heavily blown engine back in the 80s (assuming you meant that sort of performance).

I'd argue it's all about the money these days, and that's generally down to the number of eyeballs; so by extension, whether we like to admit it or no, it's all about entertainment. If Formula E manages to match the performance levels of F1, will it be any more entertaining? Given that all else is equal, I don't see it myself.

Now, public opinion could swing heavily away from gas-gussling combustion engines due to environmental and/or legislative concerns, which could potentially have a massive effect, but I don't think we're there quite yet.

The big question right now is will Formula E manage to turn a profit soon or can it keep investors engaged long enough for the tide to turn in its favour?

 

I'd certainly like to have an electric car to go to work everyday, but then you have to consider:

A Formula E battery is only able to last for a whole race distance because they have tyres with lower grip and lower rolling resistance, very little downforce and circuits with really short straights. Put an F-E powertrain on a car with tyre as wide and as sticky as F1, the brutal drag from F1 and circuits with really long WOT times and I'm not sure if they last 20 minutes.

And then there's everyday usage: The only people able to have an electric car today are very rich people, first because they cost a kidney, and second because you'd need a combustion powered car for any long journey you'd do.

And last but not least: All this marketing BS about electric cars being clean, while forgetting that cars account for 10 or 20% of man-made emissions, not to mention a big battery having to be replaced and disposed after a few years of usage, and that a big part of the world's electricity is produced by... guess what? Burning fossil fuels. And that's what makes it even more sad, we lost Audi because of dieselgate, and porsche because of the nice eco green tree hugging marketing about clean energy, when replacing every petrol car in the world with an electric would make almost no difference at all for man-made emissions.

So the only advantage I see to electric cars is that they're cheaper to run.

 

And also: I do agree with the idea that the day an electric F1 car is faster than a petrol powered car, then F1 should go full electric. But I think we'd only be able to say an electric car is faster over a race distance if we put an electric car up against a combustion powered car with no constraints on engine displacement, boost, number of cylinders, and allow refuelling. If then an electric car is still faster without changing batteries or cars during the race (not viable in the real world), then I'd admit that electric is better and F1 should go full electric.
But if FE is ages away from F1 even with all constraints imposed to the F1 engine design and no refuelling, I can't even imagine how much catching up electric power would have to do if compared to an ICE with no constraints.

 

They could get a lot of raw power out of an engine back in the 80s but as far as I know they weren't exactly dependable, they could be delicate, whereas an electric engine could go at full power non stop for thousands of hours. I have some experience with very powerful electric motors at work. We have a machine that uses 3 large electric motors and when their running they are pretty awesome both the noise they make and the amount of power they draw. Remember we're only at the start of electric cars (I know they've been arround longer than combustion but they never got developed to the extent combustion did. Up until recently they've been running off the shelf motors in electric cars, with more development specific to motoring I think we could see more performance from electric motors.

I'd agree that it's all about money these days but that's not exactly a good thing. It's the ruination of everything these days, everything from sport to fun is being hijacked for profiteering. I think sport can be entertainment, but I don't think it can be a sport if the entertainment takes precedence.

I don't think changing batteries has to be the deal breaker it seems to be. I've seen prototypes of automatic battery swapping machines for cars. The car simply drives on top of a swap plate, it drops the battery out of the floor and swaps in a fully charged one. Takes a few seconds. I think it makes more sense than waiting around for a charge. In the real world it would lead to fully automatic stations for swapping batteries and the end of all battery anxiety because you're leasing charged batteries rather than owning one that's slowly dying.

Put that kind of setup into a race and the electric is winning again. In something like a 24 hour race the combustion engines still have to refuel, so it loses all it's advantage once the battery can be swapped out in a few seconds, even if it has to refuel less often.

Todays electric cars suffer from a lack of infrastructure. With proper infrastructure, to match the infrastructure available to combustion engine cars, electric would be a much more viable option. The fact electric is ready viable for some people even without the support infrastructure highlights just how good the cars can be. And we still have to remember these are the first batch of electrics, they will only get better from here on.

 

Okay, I'll rephrase then:
The day you can own an electric car, drive up to a station with a flat battery and swap it for a fully charged one for reasonable money, then I'll have no problem with electric race cars swapping batteries during pitstops. And if then an electric car is a faster race car than a combustion powered car, I'll be glad to see fully electric cars racing (apart from the annoying lack of noise).

 

what they could do is have lots of grooves in the tarmac and have a connector coming down from the bottom of the car so it can get power from the groove

 

Perhaps have some chicken wire over the track with electricity running through it, then the cars have some sort of an antenna that contacts the fence and draws electricity from it, sor of like this: