Friday, June 8, 2012

WEEKLY QUESTION: Those other endurance racers

We asked last week what kind of oil you put in your crapcan and the results are pretty definitive. Sixty-seven percent of you said you use synthetic oil and the remaining 33 percent said high-weight stuff help keeps the engine parts in their approximately correct places. But, as commenter Greg pointed out, this is probably a trick question since the likely assumption to make is that heavy synthetics are the ideal stuff.

It should be noted that two other, polar-opposite comments were added: Alan said that the "blood of infant dinosaurs" keeps his motor turning while Bob simply replied with "Love." So there you have it: Maniacal fervor or unfading devotion will keep your engine turning over if you believe what you read on the Internet.

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This week, we'll have you take a peek at the Big Endurance Race in that country whose name ruined toast, fries, and Buick Rivieras. That's right, we want your predictions for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which will take place next weekend in France.

But there's a catch: We don't want to know who will win the thing overall, since that seems very likely to come down to which of the four Audi R18s will take the checkered flag. The real race is shaping up to come from the LMP2 class, where more than a 20 entries from 16 teams will vie for the win in the slightly-slower prototype class. And within that class are six different chassis types and four different powerplants. So we ask the probably historically insignificant question:

Who will the LMP2 class at this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans?

At the top of the right-hand column, all 16 teams will be listed along with chassis/engine combination and a note if the team is running two entries. And if you don't know much about sportscar racing, here is the beauty part: These cars are all pretty much even, so you have about the same odds if you guess as you do if pretend to know what you're talking about.

2 comments:

  1. The car I'm more interested to see how it runs is the Delta wing. If it does well it may actually make a new class.

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  2. Yeah, I'm excited to see how it performs in the actual race. Rumor is that the ACO has asked them not to run laps faster than 3:47 (putting them the equivalent of the bottom third of LMP2) for fear of embarrassing most of the prototype field. If you find the practice timing sheets, you'll notice their fastest lap was a 3:47.1.

    So it's also rumored that the the car can easily knock a few more seconds off its lap time. Nobody's really saying how fast the car actually IS. I'm not sure if you listen to "Midweek Motorsports" on Radio Le Mans, but it's mentioned briefly on this week's episode. And if you don't listen to it, you should; John Hindhaugh is hilarious and there's oodles of British wit on there.

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