I was going to wait until after the first race to post this, but then it would be hindsight. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the RSR's will kick some butt this year.



So Ferrari and "race the cayman" fanboys take your best shot.


This can be the official ALMS bench racing thread.

 

I had the chance to speak with Darren Law (Flying Lizard) about the new cars one on one and in a group setting this past Sunday. Though they ran ~1 second faster with a 2007 RSR outfitted with as much of the 2008 car parts as possible about a month ago, I think the Ferraris were 2 seconds faster? The RSR was already a second off the Ferrari last year. Flying Lizard is at Sebring right now testing full blown 2008 RSRs and even if they gain another second in the "real" 2008 car, they're still 1 second behind the Ferraris.

As Darren put it, without Ferrari mishaps last year, Porsche would not have won a race in GT2. He thinks the RSR will be more competitive this year, but still hard pressed to get a "clean" win. He attributes the relative poor performance of the RSR to Porsche's focus on the Spyder.

 

Porsche told them to stop testing the 07's due to the whole new suspension geometries correct? Hopefully the the difference is in there somewhere, but 1 second is a long ways.

 

I think Porsche needs to put Thomas Enge in an RSR to take out the Ferraris

 

Oh, I'm back to emphasize Darren't point that the RSRs lack of competitiveness is a result of poor development and focus by Porsche, not the inherent platform. I asked him if he thought the 997 should be dumped in favor of a Cayman "RSR" and he said, "no". He thought the 911 platform could be competitive with the Ferraris given the right development focus...

 

Now that was funny. Was it limerock last year when he and Salo got into the bumper cars with the two Ferrari's....

 

I would have to say that Porsche was more interested in overall wins last year with the Spyder that the RSR winning GT2 class. I do hope that they do put more emphasis on the RSR development during the year. I do not hold out much hope for a good running at Sebring this year due to the lack of seat time and testing in the 2008's. Hope for the best and see what happens, going to be an interesting year. I would also have to say no to the Cayman as well.

 

So why doesn't ALMS step in like Grand AM does and do some weight/hp adjustments? Having Ferrari win every race can't be good for ALMS much like watching those f-ing yellow corvettes drive around in GT1 isn't good for ALMS.....

 

For the same reason that they don't step in and make the required changes to LMP1 so that Porsche and other gasoline powered cars stand a chance of competing with the diesels at Le Mans.
Porsche is not the ACO's most "popular" flavor of the month.

 

Although I'm saddened to hear this, I can't say that it is unexpected.

 

Although I'm a mid engine fan I hope you're right as I truly would like to see porsche come away with some "clean" wins this year.

Charlie, your comments from Darren are interesting as I would have expected the majority of development to have already taken place with that car (this is the third year) and only minor tweaking is being done to refine the car. Particularly in light of the ACO's restrictions on LMP2... Is Porsches racing staff at Weiscach really that small?? They just built a new facility twice the size of the old one...

 

Yes, I must confess that I am not at all convinced by Darrens "defense" of the current platform.
The real question is whether the current platform would be able to keep up with the advances from the opposition after it managed to catch up.

 

He was a bit put-out by not winning the Porsche Cup last year, so I'm sure he's not going to bite the hand that ultimately feeds him so to speak since he'll probably be back in the running for the Cup this year. That said, I did receive the impression that he was hopeful Porsche would just spend developing what they have rather than running off and trying something new. As with any race driver, I imagine he wants to win NOW not two years from now once a Cayman RSR has been worked out...

 

Thanks Doc!
I hope that we don't see a repetition of last years GT2 "fiasco".

 

Charlie, are you holding out on us brotha? Spill it !