I was watching the 12 hrs at Sebring this weekend and had to laugh. Apparently the other drivers refer to the Corvette team's garage as the "Garage Mahal". Nice to know that GM is taking the Americal LeMans series seriously. Of course Roger Penske's motorhome has always been knows as the Rog Mahal, but from the results of his team's Porsche Spyders, perhaps they should spend more money in the cars and test track time instead of team owner creature comforts.

Yet again in GT1, the Vipers were absent, the Vettes were almost trouble free, and the Aston Martins look DAMN nice following 10 laps behind the crossed flags. In GT2, Spyker looked awesome for the first 11.5 hrs, sitting in 4th until a broken brake rotor and a cracked cooling line knocked them back to 10th. Not bad for a young team with a new car up against the Ferrari's and 911's.

Audi's R10 was amazing, held together really well, and cleaned clocks in the P1 division (and the overall win). Extra bonus points for a 1.8 litre turbo deisel (!!). The race series even limited the size of their fuel tanks because they get such great mileage while racing, and messed with the fuel delivery systems so that the refueling time is equal to the gas/ethanol cars! The drivers were complaining that in 4th gear and up, you can't hear the engine, all you could hear was the wind noise. Wow.

Oh yeah, and for the american racing fans... Acura/Honda and Andretti racing kicked some major butt in their debut, with Herta, Kanaan, and Dario Fanchitti sliding into the driver's seat in the P2 class. I love LeMans racing, lots of drivers from IRL, Champ cars, Formula One... Driving cars in 4 classes all at the same time on the same track. Lots of duct tape and baling wire by the end of the race.

bill.

 

Lots of duct tape and baling wire by the end of the race.
Kept my stock car on the track many times! And let's not forget coat hangers, zip ties, and wires from extention cords.

.....Corvette team's garage as the "Garage Mahal".
I LOVE IT!!!! [sm=icon_rock.gif]

 

Best hack of the race didn't include duct tape or bungee cords. The Audi turbo-deisels had trouble starting early in the race. Lots of teams were having hot-starter and battery problems, using the same lightweight component suppliers across cars. In Lemans, you have to turn the car off in the pits, and the car must start on its own before leaving. You can use jump-packs for testing, but you have to turn it off and on with no one touching the car in order to race. Lots of teams were replacing batteries on every pitstop, and most P1 and P2 teams were turning off chunks of the cars' electronics to save power.

So Audi has hot starters, sitting right under the R10's headers. A little head scratching, and all of a sudden one of the mechanics jumps over the wall with a CO2 fire extinguisher. He blasts the starter, the driver hits the button and voila, it starts. He was standing by on every pitstop for the rest of the race. I can just picture about 20 teams running out to Walmart to buy up all the CO2 extinguishers they could find. Chemical and foam are still great for fuel spills, but nothing beats a good blast of 220 psi CO2 to drop the temps under the hood. Instant dry ice.

bill.