83rd Running Of The Le Mans 24 Hours - 13/14 June 2015.

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Nº 4 EXCLUDED FROM RACE DUE TO STEWARDS DECISION Nº 65. 7' 1.322"

The Murphy 48 has a post race penalty too.

Article 7 of the LMP1 regs covers the oil lines.
 
To us, they may have nothing to show for it, but to them they have 24 hours of data and experience that they can use to make the car better. And that's all that matters at this point.
Sorry but Nissan gathering endurance race data and experience is like a complete greenhorn competing in a strongmen competition, lifting the heaviest weight in the most uncommon way, utterly failing and getting his skull crushed in the process. Then in the intensive care station he tells everyone he is so happy about all the data and experience and that everything went as expected.

There must be a better way, like more practice and development before going Kamikaze like that. :P
 
To us, they may have nothing to show for it, but to them they have 24 hours of data and experience that they can use to make the car better. And that's all that matters at this point.

To my mind, this. I may not agree with all the technical decisions by the team... honestly, you're experimenting with a layout with massive challenges, you want to use as many off-the-shelf components (hybrid system, for one) as you can at the start, because you can only effectively tackle one major issue at a time... but I love what they're doing, overall.

As with the McLaren-Honda debacle, sometimes the best way to test a system is in actual combat... errh... racing. Sure, it's not as impressive as Porsche winning, and it's possible they will only get as far next year as Toyota did this year (or slightly worse), but LeMans is one of the few places where they will allow a crazy idea like this to run.

But from the perspective of the big picture... it's still a yes for me. Go ahead. Keep fielding weird cars that may or may not suck. It's the one point of interest that has called out to me and many other people who've not paid attention to the WEC before, and who are now seriously looking at the technical diversity of the LMP1 field and saying: "Wow, that's cool."

As with GTAcademy and the DeltaWing, Nissan is doing motorsports right. Doing things to get uninterested people involved and invested in motorsports. In the end, whether they win or lose, racing itself wins.
 
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As I said a page or two ago, I'm incredibly impressed that they had one car finish, and two on track to finish barring a few unfortunate incidents. There have been a lot of LMP1 teams that show up and barely last an hour before retiring (admittedly not factory efforts like Nissan's), even Aston Martin a few years ago with their AMR-One did miserably, and that was a team that was coming off a recent and successful campaign with their DBR1-2.

On that note, I'm impressed at most of the debuting Prototype's performances at this race. The BR01, Oreca 05, Rebellion R-One and ByKolles CLM P1/01 all completed significant distances and avoided early withdrawals. It's a shame about the CLM's exclusion, though.
 
I have to give thanks to Foxtel. The last time I watched a Le Mans race almost in its entirety was when Speed Channel broadcast years back. I was struck by the closing speeds and the surgical precision of the LMP drivers through the esses when passing. This series has made me put F1 on the back burner.

Nissan are looking at winning the big races. They're happy to race sprints and 300km races but, they want the world class big races. Porsche pretty much won on sheer speed. When Nissan get the HY system working in full effect, Godzilla will be stomping through France at the head of the field.
 
I still have significant doubts over how much useful data Nissan could have collected about the car. Missing such a fundamental aspect of the car (half it's power and drivetrain) had knock on effects such as a different weight balance, different suspension load, different brake load, different tyre pressures and they even had to change from the custom tyres and wheels that were designed and built for the car. With everything so far removed from the cars design specs there wont be much data that's relevant.

Getting the drivers and team as a whole familiar with working together and experience in the race is vital and will on it's own bring massive performance gains but other then that? Seems a waste of fuel and brake material.
 
I still have significant doubts over how much useful data Nissan could have collected about the car. Missing such a fundamental aspect of the car (half it's power and drivetrain) had knock on effects such as a different weight balance, different suspension load, different brake load, different tyre pressures and they even had to change from the custom tyres and wheels that were designed and built for the car. With everything so far removed from the cars design specs there wont be much data that's relevant.

Getting the drivers and team as a whole familiar with working together and experience in the race is vital and will on it's own bring massive performance gains but other then that? Seems a waste of fuel and brake material.
It gives alot of track information as well, keep in mind LeMans is a street circuit mostly and the only time they touch the track is in june.
 
That's an entire pre-season's worth of testing for many formula teams, crammed into a single day.

-

Also, as regards to "marketing exercises"...

Toyota doesn't suck, and they're hardly ever mentioned. Nissan has tons of teething issues, comes to LeMans with no chance in hell of winning, and guess what:

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Both Porsche and Nissan were trending on social media after the race, with more reach for Nissan, though Porsche is getting more positive vibes. I expect, however, Porsche will come out a big winner by the end of the week due to their win.
 
I still have significant doubts over how much useful data Nissan could have collected about the car. Missing such a fundamental aspect of the car (half it's power and drivetrain) had knock on effects such as a different weight balance, different suspension load, different brake load, different tyre pressures and they even had to change from the custom tyres and wheels that were designed and built for the car. With everything so far removed from the cars design specs there wont be much data that's relevant.

Getting the drivers and team as a whole familiar with working together and experience in the race is vital and will on it's own bring massive performance gains but other then that? Seems a waste of fuel and brake material.
You have to think of their timescale - a large part of the team will never have done a Le Mans as part of a P1 team before. If you're aiming to win next year, time is against you completely - you have just one year for the entire team to be bulletproof. Letting up the one opportunity you're given to have the most realistic 24 hour race run possible would be extremely unprofessional of NISMO.
 
I have to give thanks to Foxtel. The last time I watched a Le Mans race almost in its entirety was when Speed Channel broadcast years back. I was struck by the closing speeds and the surgical precision of the LMP drivers through the esses when passing. This series has made me put F1 on the back burner.

Nissan are looking at winning the big races. They're happy to race sprints and 300km races but, they want the world class big races. Porsche pretty much won on sheer speed. When Nissan get the HY system working in full effect, Godzilla will be stomping through France at the head of the field.
Yeah, the head of the field as they get lapped by the field.
 
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A key difference was that when Brabham ran Indy there was obvious potential with the concept - he was competitive even when the engine was giving away 170HP to the rest of the field. Nissan have a lot to prove.
He qualified 17th and finsihed 9th, out of 12. I wouldn't say that was competitive.

But the GTR-LM is also giving away power, and drive, that it will have next year. Despite that, it was pretty much keeping up with the other LMP1s on the straights, and only losing out on corner exit (which will be help by hybrid power to the rear) and on braking (which will also be helped by the hybrid harvesting power.)
 
Considering a car with a broken setup, less power than a P2 and more weight than a P2 was able to set laps quicker than the KCMG, I would love to see a FWD G56 car built around LMP2 regs.
 
But the GTR-LM is also giving away power, and drive, that it will have next year. Despite that, it was pretty much keeping up with the other LMP1s on the straights, and only losing out on corner exit (which will be help by hybrid power to the rear) and on braking (which will also be helped by the hybrid harvesting power.)
I agree about the car needing the hybrid power to the rear wheels, but until the car is running in that configuration they will not be competitive and the data they gather will be somewhat useless even if they do get an hybrid system running on the front wheels.
 
Anyway, there was an entire 24hr race that happened without Datsuns, moving on...

Was a great race, as usual, though I do believe the pit building is in need of a drastic update, specially to cater for 3 car teams, I think that all garages should be able to cater for 3 cars inside and pose as 2 cars simultaneously parallel in front of the garage in the lane itself, I also believe the building needs to be extended and cater for 70+ cars, and the lane exit needs to be moved to come out prior to the Dunlop bridge past the chicane, with the price caps coming into play for the future and the potential for LMP3 cars 5 odd years down the track the field can grow,

Besides that, the announcements made regarding manufacturers and class regulations for the future are making this quite an exciting prospect in years to come, and hopefully the event can get itself back to the status it once had a long time ago,
 
Anyway, there was an entire 24hr race that happened without Datsuns, moving on...

Was a great race, as usual, though I do believe the pit building is in need of a drastic update, specially to cater for 3 car teams, I think that all garages should be able to cater for 3 cars inside and pose as 2 cars simultaneously parallel in front of the garage in the lane itself, I also believe the building needs to be extended and cater for 70+ cars, and the lane exit needs to be moved to come out prior to the Dunlop bridge past the chicane, with the price caps coming into play for the future and the potential for LMP3 cars 5 odd years down the track the field can grow,

Besides that, the announcements made regarding manufacturers and class regulations for the future are making this quite an exciting prospect in years to come, and hopefully the event can get itself back to the status it once had a long time ago,

Field is growing to 57 next year and 60 the year after with pit overhauls.

Translation I am told for this is "Porsche Win The Race, You Have Our Respect"
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Say what you want about Audi, but that is a classy gesture.
 
Data is never useless. Data about brake longevity and heat issues. Data about engine durability, fuel consumption, heat, changes over race distance and long stints. Data about tire longevity (which should actually improve once the hybrid system balances it out)... all of this can be carried forward.

It's a big loss that they don't have hybrid data, but whatever else they gather is nowhere near useless.


Anyway, there was an entire 24hr race that happened without Datsuns, moving on...

Marketing exercise successful! :lol:

Must admit, Porsche's performance was incredible... very glad they've rebalanced the formula. Keep it like this for the LMP1s, and we should see very tight racing again next year. :lol:
 
Also Nissan have done something they could not do by skipping the race - they got hours and hours of data from Le Mans. As much as they can test at Sebring, back of the Corvette museum, do the WEC, nothing beats testing and running at the place you aim to win one day. Best form of data acquisition there is.
 
Marketing exercise successful! :lol:

As a motoring and motor racing enthusiast I am aware of the manufacturer Nissan, no amount of advertising "innovation" exercises with millions of dollars invested will ever get me to purchase anything so overpriced, dreadful, boring, uncomfortable, unreliable and as unsafe as anything they have or have had in their range of vehicles for some time, about the only thing Nissan related I would purchase with my own money is anything Datsun, 120Y, 180B, Stanza etc, probably the most unsafe cars other then the Ford Pinto released to the world, but for under $400 AUD they are brilliant fun in a paddock,
 
As a motoring and motor racing enthusiast I am aware of the manufacturer Nissan, no amount of advertising "innovation" exercises with millions of dollars invested will ever get me to purchase anything so overpriced, dreadful, boring, uncomfortable, unreliable and as unsafe as anything they have or have had in their range of vehicles for some time, about the only thing Nissan related I would purchase with my own money is anything Datsun, 120Y, 180B, Stanza etc, probably the most unsafe cars other then the Ford Pinto released to the world, but for under $400 AUD they are brilliant fun in a paddock,
Unreliable?

I don't like Nissan that much either as I find their products to be bland and outdated outside the GT-R, but they have a strong reputation for reliability tbh.
 
Team Colin's penalty.

***The No. 4 ByKolles Racing CLM P1/01 AER has been excluded due to a driver weight infraction for Simon Trummer. A new-for-2015 rule mandates ballast to be added to LMP1 cars if the average declared weight of each lineup is under 176 pounds.
 


:crazy: Listen to the car coming out of the corners. It sounds like it's going to vomit out a piston. No wonder it was so slow.


I wonder if it's to do with the gearing of the gearbox being too long and the engine being peaky because it's on the low RPM corners it starts coughing like its about to stall.
 
Unreliable?

I don't like Nissan that much either as I find their products to be bland and outdated outside the GT-R, but they have a strong reputation for reliability tbh.

Back in 07 Dad got a brand new Navara for work, was in and out of Nissan service usually on the back of a tow truck with electrical issues, 60,000 odd Kms of pure misery, until Dad got rear ended by the car behind him in a roundabout, car rolled over at under 30kph and flattened the roof, both A and B pillars completely squashed, even with the chrome roll cage, Dad was very lucky to almost walk away with minor cuts after being extracted,

Aside from my brief adventure into the SSS Pulsar with an SR20 engine which was as comfortable as sitting on broken glass and had more blind spots that may as well have had roof tiles for windows, I had it for maybe 6-7 weeks before palming it off for another falcon,
 
Here's something to consider, that Nissan is sandbagging.

After this years LM they are doing the BOP for the remaining 12 months. So we have seen the speed of Porsche and Audi so if they are deemed to be too fast then they will be pegged back in line with Toyota.

As Nissan didn't do much bar turn up they might not get looked at too much in relation to bop.
 
Data is never useless. Data about brake longevity and heat issues. Data about engine durability, fuel consumption, heat, changes over race distance and long stints. Data about tire longevity (which should actually improve once the hybrid system balances it out)... all of this can be carried forward.

It's a big loss that they don't have hybrid data, but whatever else they gather is nowhere near useless.

Yes actually it will be useless. Not a single piece of data you mentioned will transfer over to the car when running in it's as designed specs, it will be too radically different to what they ran this year. I really don't see how this is so hard for people to see.
 
Here's something to consider, that Nissan is sandbagging.

After this years LM they are doing the BOP for the remaining 12 months. So we have seen the speed of Porsche and Audi so if they are deemed to be too fast then they will be pegged back in line with Toyota.

As Nissan didn't do much bar turn up they might not get looked at too much in relation to bop.
I don't think they needed to sandbag to be the slowest LMP1.

Even with a Working MJ hybrid system I think they still would of been comfortably the slowest as the car is very much under developed and a good 6 months minimum behind where Porsche started at in 2014.
 
Yes actually it will be useless. Not a single piece of data you mentioned will transfer over to the car when running in it's as designed specs, it will be too radically different to what they ran this year. I really don't see how this is so hard for people to see.

No actually it will not. You still have a LMP with 4 wheels, a cockpit, and the track data, temperature, wear, bumps etc won't be changed.
 
Here's something to consider, that Nissan is sandbagging.

After this years LM they are doing the BOP for the remaining 12 months. So we have seen the speed of Porsche and Audi so if they are deemed to be too fast then they will be pegged back in line with Toyota.

As Nissan didn't do much bar turn up they might not get looked at too much in relation to bop.

Nope.
 
No actually it will not. You still have a LMP with 4 wheels, a cockpit, and the track data, temperature, wear, bumps etc won't be changed.

So by that logic you could take the data acquisition from Audi and swap it for Toyota's? They are both LMP's with 4 wheels and a cockpit after all. Surely you can't be serious. Track data and weather aren't exactly static entities either, these are primarily public roads we are talking about that get used year round and the weather...of course it will be exactly the same :)
 
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