World Endurance Championship 2015

[Xwang]

Is there any live coverage of the event (in Italy or via internet)?

[tomislavp4]

Is there any live coverage of the event (in Italy or via internet)?

You can register on their website, for a fee, and stream the race.

[Artur Craft]

LMP1's improvement in just one year is staggering. Up to 5s and that's way more than I remember F1 ever doing

With just one day of dry running, they brought it to 1.54s and are now over 2s faster than GP2's pole from last year. At Silverstone, LMP1s were only 1s faster than GP2 pole but the track was completely green for qualifying after rain on FP3

If they keep improving at this rate, which I highly doubt, they will almost catch F1 next year and surpass them in 2017. Obviously, FIA/FOM wouldn't let that happen but, still, impressive stuff from, specially, the VAG teams. =D>

[SectorOne]

Bought a race pass for SPA. Take note Formula 1, this is how you do things in the year 2015.
And their app seems to actually work properly.

[AnthonyG]

Is there any live coverage of the event (in Italy or via internet)?

A belgian TV station (LaDeux) does coverage of the first and last hour on tv, but on their website there is also a livestream. (I think for the whole 6 houres)

http://www.rtbf.be/tv/thematique/sport/ ... id=8256985

[SectorOne]

Divebomb of the year candidate.

Stream works great as well, really good quality and lots of camera angles.
watching some onboard and man it´s good to see cars going flat out
Watching Audi onboard chasing the Porsche atm.

[aleks_ader]

Is there any live coverage of the event (in Italy or via internet)?

A belgian TV station (LaDeux) does coverage of the first and last hour on tv, but on their website there is also a livestream. (I think for the whole 6 houres)

http://www.rtbf.be/tv/thematique/sport/ ... id=8256985

But it doesn't work for non-belgians.

[SectorOne]

But it doesn't work for non-belgians.

Well you can buy the stream at WEC site. It´s 5 euro, will hardly break anyone´s bank.

[mrluke]

Its on freeview, motors tv.

[F1NAC]

What a stupid penalty for AF corse

[SectorOne]

Watching the Audi and Porsche navigate corners at SPA this NISMO thing needs to be one hell of a rocket to keep up with them.

Wonder what happened to Toyota, they´re not even a threat right now but maybe they put all their eggs in the Le Mans basket.

[aleks_ader]

Watching the Audi and Porsche navigate corners at SPA this NISMO thing needs to be one hell of a rocket to keep up with them.

Wonder what happened to Toyota, they´re not even a threat right now but maybe they put all their eggs in the Le Mans basket.

a) Maybe they simply overrate the last years tire and pure speed advantage.

Therefore they decide "to not" push as hell toward updates like VAG teams did. Maybe they thought that the realizability is key to win in 2015 again. So clearly normal evolution of couple bids and pieces of aero is not enough. I m pretty sure that the core of the car is pretty the same as last years.

b) Or their capacitor 6MJ tech reach its budget vs. performance limits. Limmits between energy and weight density to achieve same the performance leap gain as competitors (that diminishing returns logic). Remember there were rumors about Toyota to ditch the capacitors for Li-Po batteries before this season already. Strangely or logical due success in WEC championship and its pure domination it appeared that they pull the wrong move at the moment.

c) And even BAN the moving rear wing could cost them quite chunk of performance. ot only on any strait and even it compromise last years setup work in high-speed corner also. I assume that could be worth up to 0.5s atleast on each track. Even more on longish or more "speedy (non max corner grip demands)" layouts.

d)Sandbagging is very unlikely. More likely is that they need heads together and just throw some money on next updates or they could forget the "Satre" triumf. At the moment SPA shows problem that they are not so close to steal the "win" due reliability issues of the leader. To wait on failure for at-least 5 car ahead is very unlikely.

And at end of the day they also doesn't have bullet proff car to do that on constant basis (yes you cold argue that #1 in SPA was quickly assembled over night, but that could happen at any moment so you need to be prepare to deliver at any time or circumstances).

[Jonnycraig]

Watching the Audi and Porsche navigate corners at SPA this NISMO thing needs to be one hell of a rocket to keep up with them.

Wonder what happened to Toyota, they´re not even a threat right now but maybe they put all their eggs in the Le Mans basket.

They were running a high downforce setup compared to Audi in their LeMans spec low downforce trim and Porsche in their Silverstone car but trimmed out fully. Not to say that they could've challenged regardless of course as they seem to have been caught standing still.

On a sidenote it was mighty impressive watching the Porsche using its 8MJ up the hill. Disappearing into the distance when leading the Audis and stalking the Audis up Eau Rouge before deploying the full beans.

At the risk of mentioning the dirty word in here, there's a lot F1 could learn. The WEC cars are far more advanced and impressive, the series is open and accessible to fans, the drivers realise they aren't the main attraction and so aren't badmouthing each other, and most importantly at Silverstone & now Spa, 6 hours of flat out racing in all 4 classes.

[Cold Fussion]

This flat out racing thing is a myth. LMP1 has become so reliable now that they are now completely tire limited just like F1 is. The final hour and half of racing between the #17 Porsche and #7 was dominated by the tyre strategy and tyre performance dropoff. The only difference is that the tyre drop off for F1 is much more extreme , but both series are only going as fast as the tyres allow across a race stint.

[SectorOne]

This flat out racing thing is a myth. LMP1 has become so reliable now that they are now completely tire limited just like F1 is. The final hour and half of racing between the #17 Porsche and #7 was dominated by the tyre strategy and tyre performance dropoff. The only difference is that the tyre drop off for F1 is much more extreme , but both series are only going as fast as the tyres allow across a race stint.

It´s not. The only real tire management that happened at SPA was when they had to double stint the tires.
They were going flat out for the majority of the race, no holds barred at all.

The only time we see that in F1 is just before a pit stop and in Qualifying.
The two series can´t even be compared with the amount they push while in the race.