2011 Sportscar Racing Thread

[Ketchup345]

I guess this can be compared to the seasonal threads for other sports, consider this a floating sticky until the 2012 season starts. Use this thread for now for Grand-Am, ALMS, F1, and any other racing. If needed later, I can split it.



The Grand-Am 24 Hours of Daytona takes place on January 29th (today). Check your local TV listings for what times and channel it will be showing for you. Some online sites may also stream it. Expect some night time racing to be cut though, I know the station I watch on will be offline for a few hours overnight.

For those unfamiliar, the Grand-Am series features 2 classes of cars on the track at the same time: Daytona Prototypes (DP) and Grand Touring (GT) cars. The DP class has an engine from a well known manufacturer and puts it in a chassis designed by a company that usually specializes in them. The GT cars are usually race prepped models of cars you can walk into a dealer and buy, such as the Mazda RX-8, Porsche 911 GT3, Chevy Camaro and Corvette, and the BMW M3.

The DPs are usually faster and handle better, so they can't be directly compared to the GT cars. This usually makes for some close and very interesting racing. I just heard that on the Daytona track they use, the DPs are up to 10 seconds a lap faster.
The Grand-Am series uses some nice tracks, never any oval tracks. For example: at Daytona they use part of the infield and add a bus stop to the portion of the oval they use.

[Palle]

Boycotting F1 again, feels like old times. Looking forward to your links from some other circuits, as we have discussed in previous threads.

[Ketchup345]

The race has now ended. Of the 24 hours of racing, just over 17 hours was under green flag, part of that was due to early morning fog that lasted (I believe they said) between 2 and 3 hours.

In the early part of the race the bus stop was a major challenge. Many cars either went off roading, spun, or a few times skipped the bus stop to take the stop and go penalty. Here is one of the major events there from under 2 hours into the race, which I believe caused a few popped tires for several cars driving over the kicked up debris:


And another event at the bus stop:


This crash unfortunately ended the race very early for one of last year's top teams, the number 69 Speedsource Mazda RX-8, (looking at the results) amazingly the 07 Camaro was able to reenter the race, but did take a hit and finished a few hundred laps behind the GT leaders:


After racing resumed after the fog yellow, there wasn't as many incidents.
The most notable thing towards the end was a yellow after one car's tire took off the back end of the car, scattering debris. They had 2 laps under yellow, and went back to normal racing on the last lap.

The top positions for DP (engine/chassis) in order were BMW/Riley, BMW/Riley, Porsche/Riley. The BMW/Rileys were two cars from the same team. The first place BMW's primary 2 drivers dominated last year.
Tops in GT were Porsche GT3, Porsche GT3, Mazda RX-8.



Next week I will hopefully bring in info on the Continental Tire series, basically 2 classes of cars at the same time again: Grand Sport (GS) performance/"muscle"/"pony" cars and the Street Tuner (ST)which appears to be cheap cars (tops looks to be the lower end cars from Mercedes, Acura, Porsche Boxster, and BMW).

[FOkyasuta]

Aye! now thats some thing you don't see every day.

[amtalx]

It's nice to see BMW do well. I bought a 3-series last year, and I've been really into their cars ever since.

[Ketchup345]

Aye! now thats some thing you don't see every day.

Which part specifically?

It's nice to see BMW do well. I bought a 3-series last year, and I've been really into their cars ever since.

In this series BMW does great in DP, especially with the team of Rojas/Pruett in the 01 (winner of this race and most of last year). The BMW GT teams didn't do too well last year, hopefully this year they can be more competitive, especially after Turner Motorsports switched from the M6 to the M3 (the improvement in looks helps too ).

[FOkyasuta]

Which part specifically?

The danger part. Seen other things like it but not one like that.

[Ketchup345]

A few weeks ago I watched the Continental Tires series (described above). BMW, Chevy and Porsche took 1,2,3 in the Grand Sport division, and Volkswagon, Kia, and BMW took the top 3 in Street Tuner.

Earlier today was the 2nd race of the Rolex series, BMW took 1st in both DP and GT classes. Porsche took 2nd and Chevy took 3rd in the DP class. the BMw that won was the same team that won the 24 Hours race.
In GT, a Mazda RX-8 took 2nd (and 4th, and 5th), and a Porsche placed third. This puts Mazda only 3 points behind Porsche for the class leader.
Sorry, didn't see many exciting things to look for Youtube videos about for this race.

The 2nd race of the Continental Tires race is going on now, but will be televised next week. I can post results after the race ends.

[Ketchup345]

Updates coming soonish.

Big news: Tomorrow is one of the biggest racing of the year- the 24 Hueres Du Mans (24 Hours of Le Mans). A 24 hour endurance race, 56 cars scheduled to start the race, split into 4 classes (do not ask me to explain the 4 classes, I don't even know, I can deal with 2 classes, 4 is just plain stupid to me). Sunday we get to see how many finish the race, and who wins. In 2010, Audi took 1,2,3 for the "top" class, while in 2009 Peugeot took 1,2 with 3rd going to Audi. Audi and Peugeot use turbocharged-diesels, and Aston Martin is usually pretty strong for the best contender in that class that uses petrol ("normal" gas) engines.

[Mantiskilla]

Heck yeah I'll be watching that off and on tom depending on how busy I am I'll have to be sure to have my browser on Speed.com since they will be showing the race on there but on TV the coverage starts at 8:30am EST I believe. Not too many racing events I watch but ones I do try to watch every year are Le Mans and WRC. I wish they were more popular in the states but oh well.