Scoop, would you care to explain why there is no added ballast for the fzr?
I believe moe 24h is enough to demonstrate that the 15kg of added weight is more than suitable. With that ballast cars were somewhat equal, as xrr gained time by having 2 or 3 pitstops less during the whole race.
Now as we only have a 3 hour race and 2 stops, the ballast is essential in my oppinion.
Well let's say the fzr uses about 20-30% more fuel on a stint then the XRR and i think that is somewhere around 15-20kg, and also considering you with an XRR are faster after the first qual session then the fzr i don't see the point. I consider the balance we have now to be very good, just because 15kg of penalty weight was used in MoE it does in no way obligate me to do the same here. If i do see huge difference on track for this race, it will be reconsider until then no change.
Don't confuse the car with the drivers, Mercury dominated Westhill and not the XRR - The FZR had the pace a few weeks later in the eTM (even faster in some places) - However the XRR had the tyre advantage because Jonesy had worked day and night on a setup to allow for us to get 2 more laps then the FZR.
The FZR will slaughter the XRR @ ASGP with no added weight, feel free to disagree but without a weight penality the FZR will easily be 2 seconds a lap faster maybe even 3 with faster drivers.
I was watching the quali and saw n1 and Inferno drivers do a lot of mistakes. They will be a lot faster in the second quali as they will do some practising. Lehto's time was already quite good for XRR, under 1s away from Mooney's MoE qualifying time. And you know Mooney, his pace is quite... well... bawbaggish. In MoE the FZRs could do same times even with the ballast.
I have to say that you probably shouldn't compare this situation to the old balance. The tires have changed, the gearboxes have changed and indeed, the ballasts have changed. If I recall correctly you FZRs had 50kg more bonus weight onboard than we XRRs did.
I haven't driven this combo myself so I can't tell about my experiences on XRR or FZR. I've just read a lot about MoE balancing and watched the 24h race and the 15kg didn't seem to put FZR into shame. I also understand the FZR teams. You don't want to give the others any free advantage on the track. Neither would we want to.
sorry profi i completely forgot we got patch Y you guys saw that fzr was still faster in MoE. It just depends on the Track. Every Patch the same: uuuhh XRR too fast, uhhh Fzr too fast. there is really no balacing possible which fits to every track
For this track the 15kg penalty on the FZR seems very good! The XRR has a slight advantage with it being able to keep on racing for 28 - 29 laps (iirc), but the FZR was faster during the 25 laps it could be driven. Also, to make the XRR go (nearly) as fast as the other car, you really have to polish your driving to the limit, as it's nowhere near as rewarding as the FZR..
The MoE admins did lots of work with this, and in the end i think most teams were happy with the outcome
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