Fisichella!!

[nome66]

he is less of a reject in my eyes now that he has won the Petit LeMans race in the GT class!
thoughts?

[Klon]

he is less of a reject in my eyes now that he has won the Petit LeMans race in the GT class!
thoughts?

Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't he already won the actual Le Mans this year in said category?

[IdeFan]

he is less of a reject in my eyes now that he has won the Petit LeMans race in the GT class!
thoughts?

Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn't he already won the actual Le Mans this year in said category?

I'm afraid you are, Corvette won the GT class at Le Mans this year, Fisi's Ferrari was 2nd.

Nice to see ex F1 drivers doing well in other series, especially the rejects (Montagny and Sarrazin won overall, Gene 2nd, Davidson and Bourdais on pole...)

Edit: I have done a grave disservice naming Marc Gene as a reject, he escaped reject status with a fine drive to 5th place subbing for Ralf Schumacher in the Williams at Monza 2003.

[nome66]

he was an ultra mega super reject to me at least after italy.

[Alianora La Canta]

OK, this is where it gets slightly complicated.

Giancarlo hasn't won the actual Le Mans in any category yet. He got 4th last year after the brakes went AWOL at the fastest part of the track. This year he would have won the GTE-Pro class had the electrics not malfunctioned. He still managed 2nd-in-class, but a Corvette took the 24 Hours victory.

What Giancarlo has won is the Le Mans Series (LMS). Basically, it's the European version of ALMS. He and fellow F1 Reject Gianmaria Bruni took the LMS title (2 wins at Spa and Silverstone, 2 second places) with a round to spare at Silverstone early last month. (One day I might talk about what happened in the round left over - suffice to say Perry McCarthy is no longer the only driver who's had a race decided by a rogue tail-lift).

Giancarlo is now attempting to win championships in another series. This one is called ILMC (Intercontinental Le Mans Cup) and it's supposed to be a worldwide version of LMS and ALMS. Most of the races in it are parts of other series - apart from Spa Silverstone and Petit Le Mans, it also has Imola (in the LMS) and Sebring (in the ALMS). The 24H Le Mans is there too, along with a standalone event in Zhuhai (which is the one remaining round for this year). Giancarlo can't win the ILMC drivers' title mainly because there isn't one. However, it's now very close to AF Corse (Giancarlo's team) and Ferrari (Giancarlo's marque) securing the team and manufacturer titles respectively.

Next year the ILMC becomes the WEC (World Endurance Championship), complete with FIA seal of approval and a driver's championship.

Returning to "thoughts?", I stayed up all night to watch the Petit and it was a really good race. Though Fisico probably wasn't inclined to agree at the 40-minute stage, when he'd just been given a stop/go penalty because someone on his team broke the rules governing pit stops the first time his car wanted fuel. He came out of that 2 laps behind the GTE-Pro class leader and at that point I was somewhat dubious as to his podium prospects. Over the course of the next 5 hours he and his team-mates Gianmaria and one-time extra driver Pierre Kaffer got back into the fight for the lead. The rest of the time was a matter of trying to overcome a very tenacious BMW and, later, a particularly feisty Flying Lizard Porsche too.

Just when it was 7 laps to go and victory finally looked assured for Giancarlo, somebody decided to go to the beach (or, at least, the gravel trap). There was a Safety Car, the tenth of the 10-hour race... ...which pitted 3 laps before the end, leading to a huge scrap for the podium places. The YouTube video of it is incredible if it's still there.

It was a spectacular fightback and the performance was absolute vindication for Fisico moving series, however reluctant he might have been initially. At this rate he may become a world champion, if not perhaps in the discipline he originally had in mind...

Finally, I'm glad I can now admit to having been following Fisico's progress in sportscars, and cheering him on there, since the start of last year without getting pelted with papayas!

[nome66]

so it's the good ol' world sportscar championship minus the 24 at daytona, targa florio, and tourist trophy, right?

[IdeFan]

so it's the good ol' world sportscar championship minus the 24 at daytona, targa florio, and tourist trophy, right?

Pretty much, while the actual Tourist Trophy is part of the FIA GT1 World Championship, they do at least have a race at Silverstone. Going back to the Targa Florio is of course out of the question, and the Daytona 24 hours is the flagship event of the NASCAR sanctioned Grand Am series, which seems to be doing quite well with the low cost and highly competitive Daytona Prototypes.

[nome66]

there is a race in Cerda, Sicily called "Targa Florio" but the name is strictly traditional. it's actually a multi-stage tarmac rally.
imagine the original 44-52 mile layouts used by the World Sportscars, but cut up into 12 or 13 pieces and over run with Pug 207s. the one part of the track they don't actually use is the old pit straight with the grandstands.
i kinda hope the world sportscar championship makes a return, but with the safety we have now. imagine the grand-am prototypes going toe to toe with the LMP1s! also the GTs of all the FIA series against the GTs of the LMS!

[Alianora La Canta]

There will be a World Endurance Championship in 2012, which is meant to be the spiritual successor to the world sportscar championship, filling the same niche. It's being jointly organised by the ACO and FIA, so we probably won't see much involvement from Grand-Am, but expect to see quite a few cars from the other series in it (though the GT1s and GT3s from the FIA series will need to be significantly modified because the GT classes in WEC are GT2s - a class the FIA stopped using in its own series at the start of last season).

[nome66]

sounds pretty cool! wait, back to an earlier intrigue.
so do the Pug prototypes and Audi R18s only run the ILMC compatible races in america and what they do doesn't count toward the american series title that the ALMS regulars are fighting for?
basically can they come into Sebring or Road Atlanta and totally own it, score loads of points and gain positions in the title chase?
like the Nascar Nationwde series with cup drivers?

[Alianora La Canta]

The Audis and Peugeots, at this point in time, only do the ILMC, so only do those ALMS rounds that are designated combined ALMS/ILMC rounds. They can't score ALMS points because they're not signed up for a full season of ALMS and never intended to do so for 2011.

They can go to Sebring and Road Atlanta and score a massive number of points... ...but only the same as they'd likely get anywhere else unless they crash into an ALMS competitor or something. The ALMS ignores positions held by ILMC-only competitors when awarding points (if Peugeot and Audi secure the top 3 positions between them, the best ALMS competitor gets ALMS points for victory despite actually finishing fourth on the road) but not vice versa (if an ALMS driver wins, then the ILMC prototype finishing in second only gets ILMC points for second).

Just to make things confusing, some of the cars are doing both ILMC and ALMS. The BMWs, for example, are in both series and they get points accordingly. Fisichella and Bruni are in ILMC and LMS, so when they raced in Europe they were subject to the same effect.

I'm not sure if this makes it like the Nationwide Series because I'm unfamiliar with that one.

[IdeFan]

Grand Am vs. LMP would be a no contest, the Daytona Prototypes produce little downforce and are quite a bit heavier (900kg LMP1 vs 1010kg DP) power outputs for the petrols are pretty similar (both around 500BHP) though the diesels are a fair bit more.

Grand AM and ALMS share 4 circuits, here are the 2011 quali times:

Road America
LMP1 - 1m51.828
LMP2 - 1m56.664
LMPC - 1m59.262
DP - 2m01.050

Lime Rock Park
LMP1 - 45.708
LMPC - 48.105
DP - 49.583

Laguna Seca
LMP1 - 1m13.927
LMP2 - 1m16.688
LMPC - 1m18.844
DP - 1m20.429

Mid-Ohio
LMP1 - 1m12.727
LMPC - 1m17.281
DP - 1m18.281

Obviously one can never fully account for specific conditions (I don't know if they run in the wet, US series often don't.), but it looks like Daytona Prototypes are about halfway between LMPCs (a spec "baby le mans car" built by Oreca) and the LMGTEs, who are usually around 3-5s behind the LMPCs.

Edit: Thats just the petrols, the diesels are usually a good 2-5s in front of the best petrol LMP1s.

[nome66]

I'm not sure if this makes it like the Nationwide Series because I'm unfamiliar with that one.

The nationwide series is a nascar championship that is just below the main sprint cup series. there are a load of independant teams and upper level owned teams like stewart-haas and penske. Many people say that the points system is unfair because the famous drivers that have multiple wins and loads of money from the sprint cup come into the nationwide series and totally own close to all the races they enter and take positions in the points chase that should have actually gone to the indie teams or rookie drivers(usually in the junior cup teams running the nationwide series).

[dr-baker]

I'm not sure if this makes it like the Nationwide Series because I'm unfamiliar with that one.

The nationwide series is a nascar championship that is just below the main sprint cup series. there are a load of independant teams and upper level owned teams like stewart-haas and penske. Many people say that the points system is unfair because the famous drivers that have multiple wins and loads of money from the sprint cup come into the nationwide series and totally own close to all the races they enter and take positions in the points chase that should have actually gone to the indie teams or rookie drivers(usually in the junior cup teams running the nationwide series).

Isn't it the case this year that drivers can only score points in one series OR the other, to prevent this from happening? Used to be known as Buschwhacking, after the previous title sponser of the lower championship (Nationwide series used to be the Busch Series). Correct me if any of that is wrong.

[Wizzie]

I'm not sure if this makes it like the Nationwide Series because I'm unfamiliar with that one.

The nationwide series is a nascar championship that is just below the main sprint cup series. there are a load of independant teams and upper level owned teams like stewart-haas and penske. Many people say that the points system is unfair because the famous drivers that have multiple wins and loads of money from the sprint cup come into the nationwide series and totally own close to all the races they enter and take positions in the points chase that should have actually gone to the indie teams or rookie drivers(usually in the junior cup teams running the nationwide series).

Isn't it the case this year that drivers can only score points in one series OR the other, to prevent this from happening? Used to be known as Buschwhacking, after the previous title sponser of the lower championship (Nationwide series used to be the Busch Series). Correct me if any of that is wrong.

You're right on the money with that. Which is why sadly Trevor Bayne's win at the Daytona 500 counts for nothing

[nome66]

counts for the history books for sure.