2012 FIA World Endurance Championship

[Georg Peklo]

Nice. Minassian and Bourdais behind the wheel is a great driver combo, let's see what the car is capable of..

 

[Richard Sobolewski]

Aston Martin has two V8 Vantages on the grid and one reserve, all three are factory teams.

 

[William Levesque]

I'm still wondering how it's gonna take a corner properly

 

[Kol Bailey]

Has anyone seen how skinny the front tires are?

I'm not kidding. Those are the tires Michelin has made for the car.

 

[Juen-Jen Wang]

WHOA.... what? I think it's going to burn it's front tyres quicker than a FWD prototype car xD

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Yeah but their beautiful LMP1 is missing out

 

[Richard Sobolewski]

This is true, I'm going to Le Mans this year and had high hopes of hearing that V12 howl, but I guess not

I had expected a privater team to get one, like 2011 and 2010, but maybe it was going to be too expensive to get them to conform to current regs.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Did I miss an announcement or have both brands withdrawn from the WEC/24H of Le Mans 2012? I was shocked when seeing this news yesterday and not finding both manufacturers on the list

BMW will focus everything on DTM. And after they dominated ALMS last year they will do one more season until it´s time for the M3 to be written off and put in a museum.

I think they might be running Nurgburgring 24H, not sure.

 

[Christopher Vrettos]

I really don't see how the Delta Wing will work... But I am intrigued

Imagine if similar designs were allowed in F1. At least they'd be prettier than the new F1s...

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Juen-Jen Wang]

I really don't see how the Delta Wing will work... But I am intrigued

Imagine if similar designs were allowed in F1. At least they'd be prettier than the new F1s...

Cheers,
Chris

Atleast we know that the DeltaWing isn't another USF1. I'm looking forward to seeing it on the grid. Also, is it just or or does that car look a little unsafe? Imagine if it got t-boned by a prototype

 

[Kol Bailey]

This is a bit lame...................I loved Aston in the GT class. now there's only one team. The Aston-Corvette battles were great. Hopefully BMW will defend their Nurburgring 24 hour crown.

 

[Eric Estes]

Oddly enough, there were two Aston's in the Grand Sport (GS) division at the 2.5 hour race before Daytona (thought it odd that they were there, and not GT Class), and some BMW's in the GT Class of Daytona 24hr race itself, as well as the BMW powered Riley's.

 

[Richard Sobolewski]

They weren't factory cars though, although, the Turner car had factory "blessing"

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Hopefully BMW will defend their Nurburgring 24 hour crown.

If i´m not mistaken BMW won the 24H in 2010, then Manthey Porsche took it back in 2011?

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Oddly enough, there were two Aston's in the Grand Sport (GS) division at the 2.5 hour race before Daytona (thought it odd that they were there, and not GT Class), and some BMW's in the GT Class of Daytona 24hr race itself, as well as the BMW powered Riley's.

The M3 in Daytona is a GT4 spec machine if i´m not mistaken. The Riley team is just getting supplied with BMW engines.
Like Richard said, no works teams in any class for Daytona 2.4 or Grand Am.

Only ALMS and DTM for next year i believe.

 

[Eric Estes]

Definitely not works cars, here are the specs on the M3's (note that the GT M3 also rides on a Riley-built chassis):

http://www.turnermotorsport.com/race-cars.aspx

 

[Kol Bailey]

If i´m not mistaken BMW won the 24H in 2010, then Manthey Porsche took it back in 2011?

Yeah, but there is no more Manthey Porsche

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Definitely not works cars, here are the specs on the M3's (note that the GT M3 also rides on a Riley-built chassis):

http://www.turnermotorsport.com/race-cars.aspx

Wow that was more extreme then i thought, good find!

Kol, ok had no idea about that I guess it´s open goal for BMW then if they pursue it

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Full on WEC entry from Toyota and not some handful of races

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

He was hopeless in Formula 1, I'm expecting more of the same. In 2009 Nakajima only managed to break into the top 10 on three occasions, whereas Rosberg consistently had the car in the top 10 and even up in the top 5. Nakajima's was just as bad in 2008.

I really hope that now Toyota is running two cars Nakajima gets stuck in all Japanese team, and then hire Davidson to take over and partner Alexander Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre.

If Toyota are wanting to have a successful campaign in their first year they should not have hired Nakajima, if he wasn't Japanese he wouldn't have gotten the seat.

Well history has proved that the hopeless F1 drivers can be quite good in sportscar. Giovanni Lavaggi did get an overall win in Daytona 24hrs and the fabolous (erhm) Jean-Denis Deletraz, who made the good catchphrase what is Deletraz doing (after 36 sec, volume UP). He got two classwins (LMP 675) in Le Mans, and two fifth places overall in Le Mans. I mean, Nakajima can hardly be worse than those guys... One named Johnny Carwash, and the other, making Murray Walker wonder what he is doing