I think that's because that's the way most teams thought about it. I say on the next generation of vehicles it will be more integrated (Audi at least ran it into the wing support).
I still think the 'big honking fin' was the wrong move by the ACO. Sure, it'll help keep the car in line in some situations, but the event that the car does get sideways it will only make the flipping problem worse. What they should have done was mandated a horizontal fin (like an air splitter) down the side of the car between the front and rear wheels. That would create a high pressure zone above the fin (when the car is sliding), keeping the car down. All the big fin will do is act as a lever (high on the car) to let the air roll the body enough to flip the car over.
I guess the ACO just wanted to mask billboards as a safety feature...
Nice field ! Peugeot, Audi, AMR, Toyota, Honda, Pescarolo in P1; Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Corvette, Ford, AMR, Lotus in GT ! What a nice grid. A bit surprise not to see BMS Scuderia in that list...btw they have won 24h of Spa and finished 3rd in Le Mans in 2010.
Rumours say that Toyota provides a version of their Super GT V8, the one from the SC340, the LMP2 entry from Zytek is said to be based on a 4.5 V8 from Nissan
And german Sportauto wrote that Aston Martin will run a turbo engine, any info on that?
Aesthetically best option would to be to consult army camouflage experts.
And there have been suggestions that Peugeot's testing shunt had something to do with this fin. Very little info on this incident and according to Peugeot itself, it probably never happened but Gene talked about it... sideways+airborne and "It was the biggest accident I have ever had in my career", considering that the his test day crash from 2008 was pretty big already...
"You don't get ESPN3? Have no fear. The same incredible live qualifying and race coverage will be available on this website. No matter where you're located in the world, you'll be able to watch."
ALMS.com will cover all races online? That's great.
But what about 24h of Le Mans, will this be viewable anywhere online? Last year I found Speed partial coverage online, partial was on TV, but we don't have Speed.
yeah, last year i was able o watch the whole race on MotorsTV, but my pay-TV provider cancelled MotorTVs broadcast for no apparent reason some month ago
Assuming Eurosport still has the rights: checkout Eurosport Player. It costs 4.90 € / one-month subscription. With that you get both the Eurosport main channel and Eurosport 2, which is nice since the coverage is likely once again split 60-50 on both channels. Last year the streams used Silverlight (unfortunately, I would prefer Flash/x264) and highest bitrate option was around 1.2 Mbps. I've used this twice (2009 & 2010) and I am planning to do it again. Peace of mind, instead of relying on some random justin.tv streams that might or might not show the race and the price is quite negligible if divided by 24 hours*, imho.
* + practices/qualies + warmup + classic race, Eurosport's coverage is actually decent excluding the terrible French pit interviewers.
Yeah well, that is an option, unfortunately I found it too late as I thought our local TV will be streaming full 24h online again like it did in 2009.
If they wont do it this year, Imma write a hate mail to them. They can stream all those MotoGP, F1 and other road sports just fine, but when it comes to the queen of all racing they kinda back down. Not to mention all those football/basketball/etcball matches in xyz league.