Jarez Mifkin

My guess is that they know the V8 won't last 24 hours.

Congo

An issue of Christophorus a few months ago showed how Porsche conducted a 24 hour test at Paul Ricard. I think a leak kept the car from finishing.

Nordschleife

Its rather shocking to consider that if it doesn't have 911 on it, PAG might have lost the plot on motorsports.........its hard to think of a more benign circuit than Paul Ricard to run a test on, contrast this to Audi's approach, run 12 Hours of Sebring, lock them in the garage and bring them out for another 12 hours during the next week when the 'captains and the kings have departed', to say nothing of begging the organisers NOT to make the track surface smoother.

So the Spyder is 'fragile', and the V10 that ended up, somewhat modified, in the C-GT, was pulled from a stillborn racing project. Makes one think..... and the C-GT was released in a chassis which ensured that it would NOT go racing in any 'important' race series (no carbon fibre chassis/tubs in GT racing, only prototypes for the most part).

One of the problems is that PAG is full of very clever people that have a million and one reasons for not doing anything except the way they are presently being done. Well a few years ago Joest saw how this left the racing effort vulnerable and beat the factory at its own game with 'his' version of the 962.

If somebody suggested that they set up a tiny skunk works in a shed at Leipzig, poached a couple of chaps from Prodrive and Dallara, and let them get on with it - GT1, LMP1 or LMP2 - let them decide which they can do best - would anybody listen, I doubt it.

There are inherent issues associated with the Racing Department, its Bizantine in its labyrinthine organisational structure, for starters. Ask yourself who the stakeholder is ffs....

R+C

Mike in Chi

You got a problem with that?

bgiere

The rules seem to be designed to discourage Porshce teams.

Bryan Watts

Please explain.

Nordschleife

You are confused - too much moonshine

its the NASCAR rules that discourage non-American teams, not the Le Mans rules discouraging Porsche

R+C

Congo

IIRC that issue of Christophorus said that it costs over $20,000 to rent the Paul Ricard circuit.

Audi did a recent test there with the R10 on April 6th.

http://translate.google.com/translat...e.php?sid=3446

2007 Le Mans poster with what looks like a 911 and a DBR9 in the background. This will be the 75th running of the race.

Nordschleife

Paul Ricard is ideal for introducing drivers to the car - and in early April its usually warm, and there are nice restaurants and hotels on that part of the Riviera.
A lot of FIA testing takes place there too.

R+C

Congo

Oreca has talked with Porsche about an RS Spyder, but Oreca would only be racing an LMP car by 2009/2010 according the interview by endurance-info.com two months ago.

http://www.oreca.fr/

http://translate.google.com/translat...e.php?sid=3147

songhoh

You are right, the regulations are against Porsche, bgiere. And why not. Take a look at Porsche's racing career. Not long ago, the only cars in GT2 were Porsches. The 996 first turned a wheel at Le Mans in 1999. Back then the class was LM GT. And the GT3 was created to dominate it, which it did. Only it did too well and won every year until last year. The ACO and Le Mans organizers have been trying to stop our domination ever since. It's a fine line to create artificial equality. I still think we have a chance. As has been said, it only takes one.

Jarez Mifkin

a french run porsche....could bring either of two scenario's.

Scenario A.) Oreca gets all sorts of competition breaks and is allowed to run the Porsche with a reduced weight and no restrictors...

Sceario 2.) The ACO gets furious at Oreca and makes ALL porsches run with straw sized restrictors and 400 more pounds!

Nordschleife

Great levels of paranioa being shown here - love it

To be honest, go back a few years and the GT2 class at Le Mans was a big YAWN, it was who cares, its irrelevant, just a load of P-cars fighting it out amongst themselves - great if you are a competitor but for everybody else a huge turnoff.

Then along came the joke entrants, like TVR, Spyker, Morgan where the major interest was how many hours would they last. The V8 BMW was never an issue at Le Mans and its only now that we are seeing some real competition in the class, and its getting interesting again. Some people have very short memories and forget that Ferrari has been building great Le Mans cars for years. Entrants just had to get used to the fact that no longer could they load up a trailer at Modena with the latest car and win their class at Le Mans with it without doing any extra work.

The way to kill racing is to allow it to become 'one class', the public have no interest in watching a field full of Pcars, they do want to see Ferraris and Porsches scrapping it out to the line, if this happens more often, there will be a bigger proportion of the field made up by the GT2 entrants. Quite honestly an awful lot of what goes on in LMP2 is pretty boring, ugly cars braking down all too often.

Contrast this with GT1, where we have variously seen Aston Martins, Ferrari 550/575s and Corvettes going at it hammer and tongs over the years, its really exciting, that these cars only look like what is on the street is neither here nor ther, they are what racing is all about as far as Joe Public is concerned.

All those people who complain that the GT2 trophies no longer arrive with Porsche pre-engraved on them should remember that if this were still the case, there might not be a GT2 class any longer.

R+C

Congo

so is that how Oreca was so successful with the Viper GTS-Rs they raced?

Jarez Mifkin

Too much time has passed so we will never know...