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Theres only one decent sporting event in France, and it aint cycling
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| Trance Nutter |
Le Mans 24 Hour on this weekend. awesome.
Peugeot are looking good, qualified 1-2-3 and blitzed the Audi's quali times. With luck they're be able to break the Audi stranglehold on the race in recent times. The car certainly looked bloody quick when i saw it last year, this year its a large step forward according to my sources in terms of speed and reliability. Will be interesting to see how Marc Gene drives in the race, he had a massive crash a couple of weeks ago in the Porsche Curves, he admitted afterward he thought he was about to die. Was quite incredible he got away with only a broken toe.
You can never rule out Audi though, they have owned this event over the last 8 years (7 wins, the only time they didn't was when the Bentley Speed 8 won, but that car was based on the Audi anyway). Qualified 4,5,7.
Its interesting to see the differing philosophies between Audi and Peugeot in driver lineup, Audi are sticking with their usual lineup of experienced sportscar drivers while Peugeot seem to favour ex-Formula 1 drivers.
The silence of those diesel cars is somewhat disconcerting, compared to the petrol LMP's they really are phenomenally quiet. Just doesn't sound right.
The Charouz-Aston Martin LMP1 is the fastest petrol car, qualified in 6. Could well throw up a few surprises managing to get up amongst the diesel cars, splitting the Audi's in quali. But it would be a surprise as the fuel economy of the diesels wil have a much greater effect over the race distance, but would be great to see them up fighting the big boys.
You also can't rule out Pescarolo, they always seem to be the next best after the dominant team of the year. Pescarolo vs Charouz could be a good battle. Throw the all-Japanese Dome team in the works and it coud be a real ding-dong.
The best battle should be the GT1 category though. Aston Martin DBR9 vs Corvette. Aston won it last year but the Corvettes lost their own races and are back determined to take it to the Astons. The Aston's look amazing this year in Gulf Oil colours, definitely the sexiest car in the field. Brilliant. The Corvettes have qualified 31 and 35, while the Astons are in 36 and 37. Definitely going to be a mega race between those two teams. In 34th is a Saleen S7-R, so it could well pan out to be a 3-way battle which will be great to follow.
As for Australians, well David Brabham is up in one of the Aston DBR9s, a sesoned veteran of Le Mans he's in with a great chance to repeat his win last year in GT1. Alex Davison is driving in GT2 in a Porsche GT3-RSR for a German team (number 77, Felbermayr-Proton). Adopted Aussie Allan Simonsen has moved up in the world, out of the GT classes and into an LMP2 Lola-Mazda for another German team (number 44, Kruse Schiller).
Just gotta find someone who has Eurosport on Foxtel so i can watch it.:whip: |
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| Simon00 |
| Wow thats so fukcing interesting.:o |
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| Beat Blog |
| Car racing is a sport? |
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| Trance Nutter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Simon00
Wow thats so fukcing interesting.:o |
You know what, I didn't give a about some tosser with two first names having a cry, so i didn't post in your thread.
Considering I know theres at least a few people here who like motorsport I thought I'd start a Le Mans thread.
If you don't care, whats the point of posting other than to make a of yourself? |
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| Simon00 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trance Nutter
You know what, I didn't give a about some tosser with two first names having a cry, so i didn't post in your thread.
Considering I know theres at least a few people here who like motorsport I thought I'd start a Le Mans thread.
If you don't care, whats the point of posting other than to make a of yourself? |
Cause i am a and its the common beahaviour on here. I liked your original post better, why did you change it? |
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| Philby |
peugot? wtf!
any dodge vipers still going?
not sure if we have eurosport on our foxtel, there is a eurosport news and some other european sports thing called sentano or something but we don't have that. |
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| Trance Nutter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Philby
peugot? wtf!
any dodge vipers still going?
not sure if we have eurosport on our foxtel, there is a eurosport news and some other european sports thing called sentano or something but we don't have that. |
nah no Vipers anymore.
GT1 is dominated by Corvettes and DBR9s. Theres also a Saleen and a Lambo.
GT2 is mainly Porsche GT3-RSR's and Ferrari F430's with a couple of Spykers as well.
I think there may be a Viper or two still doing the rounds in the Le Mans series or American Le Mans Series.
Peugeot have been working on their LMP1 for a little while now, last year was its first year in competition. They pretty much dominated the Le Mans Series (I saw them at the 1000km of Nurburgring) last year and are doing it again this year. Think they came second in the 24 hours last year. Its good cos Audi have dominated sports car racing in recent times so I'm glad theres someone else taking it to them.
Peugeot 908
Audi R10
Aston Martin DBR9
^^^Such a pretty car in Gulf colours. |
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| sunrise3500 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trance Nutter
I saw them at the 1000km of Nurburgring |
:O nurburgring!!
can't wait to get a lap around the nurburgring myself
not long to go now
i hope sabine schmidt is there :O~ o yea |
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| Trance Nutter |
| quote: | Originally posted by sunrise3500
:O nurburgring!!
can't wait to get a lap around the nurburgring myself
not long to go now
i hope sabine schmidt is there :O~ o yea |
If you've got a Ring Taxi ticket - it's crazy.
According to the guy who owned the hotel I was staying in, Sabine is certifiably mad when she's in a car. I had a BMW development test driver for my lap, he was saying he'd just finished doing the development for the M3 (this was before it came out, obviously), but tell you what no matter which driver you get it is definitely worth the money, its certainly not a let down not having Sabine or Claudia. Bloody good fun and impressive whoever it is.
(Where are you staying?). |
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| sunrise3500 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trance Nutter
If you've got a Ring Taxi ticket - it's crazy.
According to the guy who owned the hotel I was staying in, Sabine is certifiably mad when she's in a car. I had a BMW development test driver for my lap, he was saying he'd just finished doing the development for the M3 (this was before it came out, obviously), but tell you what no matter which driver you get it is definitely worth the money, its certainly not a let down not having Sabine or Claudia. Bloody good fun and impressive whoever it is.
(Where are you staying?). |
don't have a ring taxi ticket. I did look at getting one a few weeks ago, then just from reading around people say don't bother, just show up at the day, you can probably find a spare seat in a taxi if you really really want to go in one. otherwise there'll be lots of other cars and there'll be people that'll let you jump in (I'm gonna go when it's open to public for the whole day.. so that'll be funzo :) )
as for where i'm staying there, dunno yet, i just emailed a place the other night, and they're booked out that weekend grrrrr
plenty of other places for me to check with, just gotta get around to it |
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| sunrise3500 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trance Nutter
its certainly not a let down not having Sabine or Claudia. |
oh oh and I heard of someone getting a lap with Sabine.. in the wet... there's crazy, then there's Sabine :)
atleast you know you're 100% perfectly safe :) |
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| Trance Nutter |
Yeah you can generally talk people into giving you pax laps. I got a bunch of pax laps out of a British guy I talked to in my hotel bar.
Make sure you have a look at the castle (at the top of the hill, you can't miss it), it produces some nice photographs.
Also make your way to the corner straight after Hatzenbach (called Hocheichen), its the final corner before you come up to Flugplatz. Its a diving left and if you stand on the outside of the corner (inside of the track) you can get some really good photos. You have to walk a little bit to get there. I then walked all the way down to Arenberg, but there aren't that many really good photo spots there, except flugplatz but you really need the cars to be going for it to get air nowadays and you need great timing to get the right photo.
Pflanzgarten is also a good photo spot (about km 16 I think, it accessible from the carpark as you drive towards Nurburg from the autobahn, you'll pass 2 carparks, both are rally good spots, the first (closest to autobarn) is Brunnchen, second Pflanzgarten)
Obviously this is the stuff you do if theres a VLN race on.
If theres an event on on the GP-Strecke (which I doubt, it wouldn't be worth going to unless its Le Mans Series, DTM or Formula 1) go down to Mullenbach, its the bottom end of the track. If you sit at the top of the hill you can see from the entry to Mullenbach, the first hairpin, the run down the hill to the second hairpin, and a little bit of the run back up the hill. Really good for photos again.
Zakspeed usually have their Viper there for pax laps. They're quite expensive but I saw it going around and it looks incredible. The guy who owns the hotel I stayed at said it'd be nearly a minute faster than the BMWs, and when i saw it going around it looked very very fun indeed (plenty of drift, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenty of drift:haha: ). Think its about 250 Euro, but I'm pretty sure you can walk up and buy a lap on the day, just look out for the Zakspeed caravan near the cafe. |
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