Aston Martin wins GT1. The Corvettes got a couple of bad breaks (blown right front rotor on the 3 car and damaged rear suspension on the 4 car) and came in 2nd and 3rd after losing time in the pits doing repairs. A Saleen looked like it would take 3rd, but started blowing oil and was black flagged, allowing the 4 car to move up into the money.

Audi R8s took 1 and 2 in P1. Courage AER took P2. And of course the Porsche RSR took 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in GT2.

It was a good race, and the Corvettes were running 1 and 2 all day until they had their problems.

 

How much faster (lap times) was the C6-R versus the C5-R that ran last year?

I think that in this race there was a C5-R also......

 

The C6-Rs will not receive any purse money because they're full factory-backed teams, therefore ineligible. Though the C6-Rs had a stint of bad luck, it was pretty clear to me that they're going to be clearly dominant in this season's races, both here and abroad. I watched the races and it was just amazing to see how dominant the vettes were.

 

 

Thanks for the news.

 

I watched about an hour of the race on TV and, at the time, the Corvettes looked very strong...sorry to hear that they didn't win. Isn't the Saleen a beautiful car?

 

I watched over an hour of the race and the Corvettes were blowing out the competition and giving the P1's hell also.....unfortunate about the problems.

 

Dog, How dod the LGM folks do?

 

 

They were turning lap times in the 1:57 range. The winning P1 was turning in the 1:51 range. What makes this interesting is that the winning P1 was pulling up to 2.6G lateral in the turns while the C6-Rs were only pulling about 1.6G. Top speeds on the straight were around 172 for the P1 and around 158 for the C6-R. It seems there should have been a larger lap time difference than there was. Perhaps the low end torque of the Vettes was allowing them to keep their average speed close to the peaky P1.

Over the course of the race the time difference added up, the 3 car was 24 laps behind the winner, and the 4 car was 38 laps behind the winner at the finish. (The GT1 winning Aston Martin was 23 laps behind the winning P1.) Realize that the 3 car had to replace a rotor, and the 4 car had to replace the right rear suspension arms, which cost them a lot of racing time. The Aston Martin ran without problems. If either of the C6-Rs had been able to run clean, it would have been a Corvette runaway in GT1, and they'd have been a lot closer to the P1 at the finish.

I don't know what the C5-Rs were turning last year, but the only C5-R in this race finished 46 laps back of the winners. In an interview, one of the C6-R drivers did say that the C6-R in its first race was running better than the fully developed C5-R did last year. They expect to get a lot more out of it.

The rotor failure was interesting. Before the failure, it was obvious that braking on the car was heavily biased forward. The front rotors were running almost yellow hot while the rears weren't glowing at all. Most of the other cars showed red front and rear. So they have some work to do balancing the braking.

Addendum. I just found the C5-R best lap time. It was 1:59.2.

 

The C5-R fastest qualifying time last year at Sebring was set by Ron Fellows: 157.052 @ 113.796mph - reference: PDF File. Hope this helps...

Lance

 

Qualifying laps are usually faster than race laps. Fellows turned a best of 1:56.90 during the race this year. I note that the fastest race lap last year was turned by Gavin in the old 4 car at 1:57.167.

 

The other C6-R best lap time was 1:56.812

 

I don't care much for the P1 or P2 class. To me they might as well be running in Malaysia with Indy cars. We would then see what the boys at Audi can do. For me the excitement is watching race cars that actually resemble the road going versions. GT1 and GT2 are sufficient in my opinion.

 

Well, Le Mans has let prototypes run for a long time, so ALMS has to too. Of course, the GT1 cars aren't really much like production cars either. They've become like NASCAR, the only resemblence between them and road cars is the approximate shape of the body.

If I were in charge (like that's going to happen), I'd require that they could only race cars sold for the street, like Bill France ran NASCAR in the old days. But those days are gone, and it'd probably be too dangerous to run street cars these days anyway. People have such a low tolerance for risk these days that they'd scream to have racing shut down.

 

I didn't get to watch but a couple of minutes and saw one of the C6-Rs do a couple of 360s and slam into a barrier.

 

That's when the rotor exploded and he lost all braking. He deliberately spun the car to slow it down.

 

I love to watch these cars race. Seems far more interesting than other forms of racing. I hope and believe this class of racing will grow in appeal. C6-R looks like a real winner.