randr

No I'm not making my decision based on the above - I found aspects of the discussion interesting and parts of it simply firmed up much of my current thinking - I personally don't believe Porsche are being innovative and I'm not going to buy a car thats barely evolving. I can think of many better cars for daily driving than a GT car - the fact you can do it in a GT car is incidental.

They need to make the GT cars the best they can be at the price point - they resolutely refuse to do this, yet they are clearly prepared to do it for GTEpro - the irony is profound, and yet the job remains half done.

Why did they do this, because the rear engined version is so massively outclassed. So why insist on offering consumers a track going (but road capable) variant in a configuration they themselves don't believe in for its intended purpose.

If they put the engine in the middle I'll buy one, if they add turbos and the engines in the middle I'll buy two. But they won't.

The "purists" can have the manual and NA - I'm not a "purist" - I would rather have the best and most competitive car they can produce at the GT3/RS price point (and I would buy it if it happened to be manual and NA). I can see no benefit of keeping a deposit down on something I don't want or don't believe can deliver what I want from it.

isv

The RSR is the way it is because of the rulebook in GTE.

If your ideal road car is one with this ride height and this size of diffusor then fair enough, I can see why you think being mid engined is that important...

Guest89

(1) Speed is only one component of performance in an endurance race, as you know. It annoys me to no end when people say "Toyota deserved to win" or "But the Toyota was faster." There are many reasons why Porsche has won the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency 19 times and Toyota has failed to do so after decades of attempts (off and on); Porsche have worked hard to make the 919 and latest 911 RSR highly serviceable. E.g., Porsche did a front end hybrid change and lost ~ 1 hour (#2 car), whereas the Toyota #8 car lost ~2 hours for similar repairs.

(2) (4) BOP is essentially a political game. Last year Ford won it with ease. This year it was more competitive, but the Astons were so far out of the class parameters (e.g., 65 kg UNDER the class minimum weight) in order to be competitive...

If BOP remains, then the racing will remain somewhat arbitrary, capricious, and political. Perhaps FSW is a brilliant engineer, and a relatively poor political tactician? With a BOP designed to accommodate advantages and shortcomings of each car, Porsche could ostensibly field a car that - baseline class configuration (i.e., pre-BOP) - would be woefully off the pace.

If BOP departs, then the racing will be exciting for a few years before budgets spiral out of control and the class implodes; cyclicality is an enduring theme in sportscar racing. I can assure you that Porsche would not be fielding a rear-engined or naturally aspirated car without BOP. Witness the GT1 period two decades ago for an example of how things could go.

neanicu

To be fair,it took longer for Toyota because they've decided to change the battery pack too. Their engineers believe the car wouldn't even have finished had they not changed the battery pack. They also said,they've never had to replace the motor in all the races and tests prior to LeMans.

I agree though,the speed argument is lame at LeMans... What I found even lamer is the comment about a competitor team member posing as an official : guess at whom they were hinting... and that burned their clutch. Seriously! What a brilliant plan by Porsche to burn Toyota's clutch! And it worked...

hf1

BOP is a logical contradiction even before you top it off with the politics.

What's wrong with imposing just these limits for GT: (1) Minimum Weight and (2) Maximum HP? Everything else is free if it satisfies (preferably stricter) homologation rules. No BOP.

Whoopsy

Torque plays a big deal in racing.

2 cars can have the same HP but the car will the torque advantage will be the much quicker car. It's all about acceleration out of corners. And that's where torque output comes to play.

isv

Cost. Guest89 had already mentioned it previously. It's about having a sustainable race series ultimately and without BoP costs would just spiral out of hand very quickly.

Petevb

It's an easy assumption to make- the race car is now mid-engine, so it must be "better". But better how?

Not because it's outright faster. The goal of the BOP rules is for all cars to run within a fraction of a second of one-another over a lap, so if they make a faster car the organizers will simply slow them down. More reliable then, or easier to drive? Not likely...

However a mid mounted engine has a critical advantage for endurance racing: it's much easier on tires. The lower load combined with the larger diffuser that helps keep the rear from sliding around means that rear tires last far longer. This in turn means the new RSR's performance doesn't drop off as much towards the end of a stint, and that makes them far more competitive. Like all race cars the RSR is shaped primarily by the rules it runs under. If it wasn't it'd look more like:



Back to the question: would making the GT road cars mid-engined make them "better" at the current price point? They'd get far more expensive to produce: bespoke chassis homoligation spread over a small number of cars gets pricey fast. And why bother, when as Chevy recently proved with the 1LE you can make numbers without any of that cost and complexity?

At the end of the day, however, chasing numbers is not really Porsche's game. Technically they are more than capable, of course, but to what end? If numbers are what you're after I would agree with you- time to look to a manufacture with a different philosophy. Luckily there are quite a few to chose from:



However when it comes to total driving experience at a price point (rather than shear speed) the consensus seems to be that the Porsche GT models remain in a class of their own. This is in large part due to choices you disagree with- remaining normally aspirated, continuing to offer a manual option, etc. You might not agree with Porsche's choices but I hope enough of the motoring world does so I don't need to worry about a turbocharged, PDK, mid-engined GT3 any time soon.

That said "driving experience" is down to personal preference, so if you know what's on offer doesn't suit I would encourage you to look elsewhere
Not because the RSR is now mid-engined and therefore "better", however.

hf1

Then maybe add (3) Max Torque limit? My point was that any set of pre-set limits that are acceptable to all participants would be far superior to BOP.

tcsracing1

well,

1) Quicker is great. But this is a 24h race and not a sprint race. If you have mechanical issues and do not finish the race then it dosnt matter how much faster the car is. Reliability is part of endurance. Toyota lost in that department during this round.

2) The RSR running normially aspirated is like fighting with one arm tied behind your back. Turbos would fix this. I have no idea why they didnt jump on the turbo wagon like everybody else....

hf1

Not if you tighten up homologation rules. That would also have the advantage of the race-cars resembling more closely what we could be able to enjoy on the street/track. Just like racing was 50+ years ago.

tcsracing1

I think the 992 will be more "mid" engined 911 if that is important to buyers.

The current 991.2 911 GT3 motor is last of the normally aspirated motors. It is really somthing at full song to drive.
Turbos will be great, and everybody is using them which gives them staggering performance compared to the Porsche, but i think people fail to see how lucky we are to still have normally aspirated high tech, high rev motors.
Once it is gone, it is gone.

Petevb

And viewership would drop.

We know where this leads, and Porsche was the master at it: ever more creative ways to game the rules to run pure race cars. Dauer 962 winning Le Mans in 1994. The Porsche GT1 EVO (and Mercedes CLK-GTR) of the late 90s. You get street cars that are not street cars, you get big performance differences leading to boring racing, you spend more money for fewer viewers and less connection to road cars.

Currently we have close racing and the illusion that the racing says something about cars we can actually buy (see above). It's far better bang-for-the-buck, which is why BOP rules have persisted for so long despite the results being largely contrived. As dumb as it is there's simply not something better to replace it.

Waxer

I agree with this and Randr. If PAG is fielding a mid engined 911 RSR that they don't plan to build then its a farce on the 911 brand. The 911 should be updated and improved to be the best it can be. The rear engined 911 was competitive years ago but no longer with mid engined technology etc...

BOP is a farce. It was clear the FGT was given the win at LeMans going in last year. Yawn..unless you were a lottery winner. All political. Everyone looked the other way so Ford could have a big 50th celebration in return for quid pro quo later. Kinda like NFL draft and trading.

World Endurace should set requirements/limitations for cars as to weight; hp and torque. How each manufacturer puts it all together is up to them. The best car and team wins. No more BOP BS. Have scrutineers and each car is approve at the beginning of the season with no changes. Cheating means race disqualificaiton.

In GTE Pro and Am cars should be homologated production based cars. Otherwise its just like NASCAR. A tube frame racer wtih a pretend Monte Carlo etc.. body shell and stick on headlights.

BOP basically allows for horsepower wars and 0-60 wars between manufacturers and then neuters the cars for WC to be as close to each other as possible. They basically say "Make whatever you want and we will equalize the field with weights and restrictor plates and boost control". Ridiculous. With BOP we could have Miatas racing 488's. Doesn't interest me.

This will also control the horsepower races. Cars are getting stupid fast and powerful. PAG is getting ready to market the new GT2RS with 700hp. Who needs 700 hp on public roads? Answer: No one.

I think car enthusiasts would prefer to buy GT cars that were really the base for what is really racing. I would.

World Challenge is difficult and confusing for the average car enthusiast to follow and understand. If they made it easier to follow and understand they would draw more. If they required Manufacturers to race what they sell they would draw more.

They spend the most time televising the LMP cars. Techno spaceships speeding around a circuit. Most enthusiasts want to see production GT cars squaring off. I do. Not that I don't like LMP but GT interests me more.

Where is the coverage of GTE Am. Non existant. Again production based cars pushed to the back of the room.

My 2 cents.

isv

Petevb has answered that more eloquently than I could have. The 90s sports car racing strongly suggests that the above is the opposite of what would actually happen if BoP was removed.