F1 Fanatic

The entry list was announced last friday.

http://www.24h-lemans.com/en/race/entry-list.html

Looking forward to this as i’m going this year for the first time.

So, the last dinosaur at Le Mans has gone extinct and it’s the end of Pescarolo Sports. It was bound to happen after last year’s disaster but somehow, I was still hoping to see the name somewhere in that list, with one single car at least. It’s just sad it had to end this way, on one of the most terrible appearences at Le Mans with a couple of blank, no-sponsor cars that ran for less than 100km and all on the verge of a huge legal dispute. I just feel it didn’t do justice to the Pescarolo name. Somehow, it all reminds me of Schlesser’s exit from Rally-Raid…

Except for this, the entry list looks brilliant. LMP2 is going to be absolutely mental this year. Can’t even begin to think about the battle we have on our hands here. Gulf Racing, the “pirate” Lotuses that aren’t actually Lotuses and Loeb will be extremely interesting to watch. And and so will GTE Pro. Factory teams battle between Ferrari, Corvette, Porsche, Viper, Aston Martin…if this isn’t going to be absolutely epic, I don’t know what will.

Too bad LMP1 looks rather scarce compared to the other classes (LMP2 especially) but it’s good to still see the Rebellions there. For me, they’ve been the highlight of 2011. And Strakka haven’t done a bad job either, in the past. They’ll all be there racing consistently and trying to snatch positions off Audi or Toyota’s misfortunes / mistakes.

I’ll stop writing as I’m already getting goosebumps here…

@bullfrog:

Now it’s Prost v. Senna, sort of, as Aston Martin Racing have announced Bruno Senna has joined their Le Mans & WEC line-up.

I’m hereby opening the bets as to when and how will Senna pluck his GT into a lapping Rebellion of his choice. Jokes aside, Senna has got himself into a serious battle there in the middle of the factory Porsches, Corvettes, AF Corses and Vipers. Aston doesn’t stand a chance if you ask me but it should be quite an entertaining season for him and that’s always a good thing to hear of a driver.

Is Buemi in the second Toyota all season

I don’t think so. They will probably run Wurz / Lapierre and Davidson / Sarrazin for most of the rounds with Buemi and Nakajima stepping up at Le Mans and on “special occasions”. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, though…

Anyone else hoping that Toyota was going to add a 3rd car?

Here! But, Audi have also reduced their entries back to 3 in 2013. And if Toyota keeps up the form they showed at the end of last season, they might not actually need a 3rd car… I’m sensing an epic battle there.

On a different note, the list on ACO’s site only shows the lead driver for each entry. Here’s an updated list of all the confirmed driver entries, per team: http://bit.ly/YT1k9W

I have to say, that’s a very strong line-up engaged by Porsche for their GTE Pro effort. Lieb, Bergmeister, Dumas, Lietz, Bernhard…all winners at Le Mans.

@frankus28 That entry is taken by a different car, which I believe is hydrogen powered this year.

It’s not what you’d call a looker..

Yeah, it does look a bit frightening, but then I’m sure the ACO wouldn’t allow anything on the track which wasn’t able to pass the crash tests etc. It’s such an obvious safety issue that I can’t imagine it hasn’t been addressed somehow.

Incidentally, you were saying about the DeltaWing, have you seen the most recent news? I’ve updated the thread about it in the forum.

I assume then that the issue behind trying to implement hydrogen commercial cars is re-fuelling them? I thought the issue was managing to keep it contained without it exploding.

They did show refuelling hydrogen cars in a Top Gear episode back in series 10, with the Honda FCX Clarity. My understanding is that the two main problems are storage of hydrogen and then getting a source of hydrogen. I believe the storage in the Honda FCX is just putting enough pressure on hydrogen gas to liquify it (like how propane is a liquid in the tank but releases as a gas). Honda managed to get it work, so I believe other manufacturers could do so as well. Getting a source of hydrogen efficiently, however, is the biggest hurdle.

Some suggest electrolysis of water to split hydrogen from water molecules, but that takes a heck of a lot of energy. Another potential method is bacterial production of hydrogen, but I think the problem is that yields are still too small to replace gasoline on a significant, meaningful scale. Then there’s the additional infrastructure required…

That’s what I know about hydrogen, but I’m not sure if everything I’ve regurgitated here is accurate. Any experts here?