Today's VLN race was red flagged after the death ofr two time VLN winner Wolff Silvester. The driver was found motionless in his car, which seemed to be out of control before coming to a stop. It is believed, intern health problems were the cause.
PS: I'm posting this for the sake of information and for Nö other reason.
Last year Porsche announced the 991 RSR and their general strategy around the LMP1 program on Eurosport Germany. This year the head of Porsche Motorsport is not that direct. He confirms Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas as drivers for the LMP1 and that there will be a press release tomorrow with more details about the staff and drivers. He also compares the new LMP1 engine to the one in the Cayenne without being precise.
I guess there will be a bit of shuffeling with engines next year. is there anywhere to compare this years and next years regs? I remember the new ones focussing more on energy spent rather than displacement etc.
Porsche may use more or less every engine the VAG group has to offer as baseline. The Cayenne S Hybrids 3.0 VR6 may be a good basis for a single turbo 2.0 unit. The VR6s layout may make packaging easier, as all the "hot stuff" is on one side. And its a compact proofen engine.
I read about a V8 being favoured, but that was years ago.
Think them as Group C-like, but instead of fuel allocation there is energy allocation and fuel flow limits. Since these will limit the power outputs, there will be no max displacements, cylinder limits and no air restrictors at all.
The "No ERS" option is basically for privateers.
This will probably not completely solve the diesel vs petrol thing, but as a base is much better than the current mess and it is more theoretical and should I say... scientific?
Of course it will be purpose built, but I guess the sense behind the comment was to say it won't be an engine formula you cannot find in one of their road cars.
Most LMP engines are somewhat based on production engines. Judd engines have a BMW basis, Austin Martins AMR-One was half a V12, Zytek-Nissan should be clear, the AER turbo shares a lot with the Duratecs and so on. With Peugeots and Audis diesels its different of course, but they do it the other way round and give a lot of development data back into production engineering.
And given that these engines are build for endurance it just makes sense
(Toyotas RV8 is a pure race engine with no base that I know of (its not related to the UZ or UR -series) - but it's used in a number of series (Super GT, Formular Nippon etc.))
Porsche does not need to show off that it makes great petrol engines - everyone knows that. The Hybrid system on the other hand is what people look upon nowadays.
edit: "production based" is a very loose word here of course. They might mill the complete engine from a block of forget aluminium and used whatever exotic material you can think of.
A fourth FLM09, coming from Portugal and run by the Algarve Pro Racing Team, will make its debut in the European Le Mans Series. The driver pairing will be made up of Briton C O Jones and German Nick Catsburg.