Le Tour de France en Automobile (Idea)

[warp9engage]

Before I begin, I apologize if this is the wrong location for this thread, I was divided between the Motorsport forum and Rumble-Strip. I hope I settled for the correct one. If not, I’m sorry and would be thankful if the moderators could move it to the most appropriate area of the forum.

With the famous, yearly, cycling race coming to an end, I’ve been thinking how awesome it would be to do a cross-country race with cars.

To that purpose, I propose the Tour de France en Automobile. Organized by the FIA, together with the Automobile Club d’Ouest (ACO), the Tour de France en Automobile would be a motor race run in tandem with the regular, cycling, Tour de France. It would be an event open to endurance machinery (Prototypes and GT) and would be run in a format not dissimilar to rallying, the driver with the fastest time at the end of all the stages being awarded victory.

The event would be run as follows: the cars would be the first on the road before the cyclists. The first car would start the stage at around 9 AM with subsequent cars starting on 2 minute intervals. At around the midway point of each stage, there would be a pit-stop location intended, primarily, for refueling. Other services such as a tire change, in case of puncture, can be performed, but nothing more. Considering endurance race cars can do, roughly, 12 laps of the Le Mans circuit per tank of fuel, which equates to covering 160 km on one tank. Since the length of any Tour de France stage never exceeds 300 km, only one refueling should be more than enough for the cars to make it to the end. As for tires, they can last for as much as 700 km a piece. No problem there.

At the end of each day, the cars, much like the riders, have the right to a full service for repairs. The only things that cannot be replaced are the engine and chassis, if any of those two components are damaged beyond repair, you must retire.

There will be a prize for overall victory, as well as prizes per class for the GTs.

Now I’m definitely not good with logistics and know that this is, most likely, a logistical nightmare, not feasible, but ideas are free, right?

What are your thoughts on this? What am I missing (a lot, for sure)? Discuss below.

 

[RACECAR]

Funny enough, this idea has actually happened before. Ferrari even had a car named after it

 

[mustafur]

Tour De France was originally with Cars, I'm not sure how you would be able to have both done in tandem it would be a logistics nightmare considering the cars would be soo much faster and a danger to the bikes.

 

[warp9engage]

Tour De France was originally with Cars, I'm not sure how you would be able to have both done in tandem it would be a logistics nightmare considering the cars would be soo much faster and a danger to the bikes.

That's why I said they would start before the bikes. They should be done running the stage by the time the bikes usually start rolling. It's in the OP.

 

[daan]

So you propose racing up this,

With this amount of spectators on it?

People would die.

You also don't seem to realise how many vehicles come through the road before the tour does.

Multiply that image by at least 25.

 

[mustafur]

That's why I said they would start before the bikes. They should be done running the stage by the time the bikes usually start rolling. It's in the OP.

Yeah but you don't count for punctures or what not, if they back Into the bikes then what.

 

[warp9engage]

So you propose racing up this,

View attachment 570092

With this amount of spectators on it?

View attachment 570093

People would die.

You also don't seem to realise how many vehicles come through the road before the tour does.

View attachment 570094
Multiply that image by at least 25.

On the last image, are you referring to the Tour de France caravan? The cars would hit the road before that.

As for the spectators, I already think their behavior is quite irresponsible the way it is, narrowing the road to the point cyclists almost can't breath. Perhaps if the possibility of actually dying because of that behavior would be introduced, they would finally watch more responsibly. We've already had many instances, in the past, of spectators knocking down riders during climbs because they got way too close. Let's seem them try that with GTs and LMP2 prototypes going past them in excess of 150 kph. At the very least, spectator control would be improved. Then again this is just an idea, the logistics of it would be complicated. I just felt like sharing it.

Yeah but you don't count for punctures or what not, if they back Into the bikes then what.

Since it's clear the bikes and cars won't race together, are you referring to bits of rubber or carbon-fiber left behind? Just so that I understand better your concern.

 

[mustafur]

I'm saying cars have mechanical failures and they could easily be stopped some might even get going again but what if by the time this happens there is bicycles in the way.

 

[warp9engage]

I'm saying cars have mechanical failures and they could easily be stopped some might even get going again but what if by the time this happens there is bicycles in the way.

It's very simple: just like the riders have a time limit to reach the end of each stage before they are disqualified, same goes for the cars. Stay stopped too long, you're out, just park it and watch the rest of the show go by.