Porsche wins the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans

[BoostBumps]

http://www.autoblog.com/2015/06/14/porsche-wins-24-hours-of-le-mans/



The question going into this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans was whether or not the Porsche 919 Hybrid would be able to combine its qualifying pace with race reliability. After battling neck-and-neck with Audi's R18 for most of the race, the answer is a resounding yes. Not only did Porsche drivers climb the first two spots on the podium, they did so without any major mishaps on track. This win is the first overall trophy for Porsche since 1998. Audi previously won the last five races, and 13 of the last 15...

 

[Brick]

Pretty wild to see Porsche get the win. Pre-race, the chit chat was about Audi ready to set the all time distance record. It's amazing with the 3.5 factory efforts (I'm counting nissan as .5 while they get their hybrid system bugs worked out)..... so much technology. I love it. That and seeing the single corvette lead a lot of the race and get the win..... too good!

 

[Ken34]

this was like more of a trial run for nissan imo, switching to FWD and all, they had problems all day long. and then near the end car #23 went up in flames, it was crazy seeing that from the in car camera live on nismo's stream.

 

[Brick]

I applaud the wackiness of the Nissan. I absolutely LOVE outside the box thinking. Yes, poorly executed, but.. this is what happens when you don't get the budget to do the Research and Development to execute a program. The schedule slides to the right and before you know it, you're at Le Mans with an idea that is half-baked with a non functioning hybrid system I hope they stick with the plan and I really really hope 2016 they have their ducks in a row, this car can have the potential to be an absolute beast.

 

[Sourskittle]

Are they limiting the audi's fuel tank size to be smaller than than the other cars ? I don't follow it much, but I heard someone say once that in order for the other teams to compete with the diesel audi's, they forced them to use smaller fuel tanks because if not, the extremely reduced amount of pit stops made audi almost impossible to beat..

 

[OEFvet11]

Yes, Audi runs a smaller tank than the rest to keep it competitive over the course of 24hrs. Also they have a smaller filler neck so it slows their refueling times down. There is a lot of chit-chat within the VW group about shutting down the Audi program since the Porsche Program is fully operational. Doesn't make sense to have two programs in the same family so to speak. Toyota was painful to watch as they will probably withdrawal from the sport again here shortly since they are no longer competitive and it may cost to much to develop a faster car from what I have heard. There budget was cut down, and well we know what no budget looks like when it comes to Nissan. I get what Nissan is doing, but in the same respect why not at least try. You can tell they had the budget to build the cars, but cant afford the R&D needed to run a proper factory program. Basically its a F1 type of budget for the WEC P1 cars so I would think Nissan would have known this all along when they came back into the sport. When a GTE Am car is passing you and your in a P1. It says a lot for the program. I am a huge endurance racing fan and study the sport. I would like to see BMW get back into endurance racing again in GTE Pro, or turn the maybe the WEC turn the GTE classes into a GT3 spec classes so the various manufacturers could more easily accesses the GTE ranks. Tudor should take note in the US as well and convert to GT3 spec to improve its racing as well. That's what I think is hurting American interested in the Endurance racing world. Is the limited cross over between Europe 24hr of Le Mans, Spa, and us here. Sorry for my little rant. LE Mans was awesome this year, but want to see more American teams there and more European teams here in the future.