Paul Jeffrey

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WEC Spa.jpg

The World Endurance Championship Six Hours of Spa was a thrilling spectacle this weekend, with a surprise sprinkling of snow and plenty of bad weather for the drivers to endure.


Despite far from ideal conditions at the famous Belgian Spa-Francorchamps circuit, it would once again be Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima who took top honours in the LMP1 category of the series, the #8 Toyota crew overcoming their rivals and the weather to take a commanding lead in the drivers championship, and help secure a well deserved manufacturers victory their Toyota team.

The race to the chequered flag wouldn't be all plain sailing for the #8 however, the team lucking in somewhat as the sister TS050 would be delayed by four laps thanks to a sensor failure whilst leading by almost a full minute just short of the half distance marker - opening the way for the #8 to power into a lead they would never look likely to surrender.

With the #7 left to fight back to an eventual sixth place, Spa would be a good opportunity for the smaller privateer teams to have a moment in the spotlight, and it would be the Rebellion and SMP racing outfits who made the most of the opportunity afforded to them - with Berthon, Laurent and Menezes rounding out the day in second overall, and Aleshin, Petrov and debutant Stoffel Vandoorne (replacing former McLaren team-mate Jenson Button for the remainder of the season) taking the final LMP1 rostrum position for SMP.

Thanks to the delays encountered by the #7 Toyota, Alonso and Co. now hold a healthy 31-point advantage with only 39 left to play for at the season ending Le Mans 24 Hours next month.

"It was a difficult race with the changeable conditions, so you needed to be ready for anything that may happen," commented race winner Fernando Alonso. "Also the tyre selection was quite difficult. You never knew what tyres to put on with dry, the inters, the full wets.

"But overall it was quite extreme conditions for everyone, and on the personal side, extremely happy with the points for the championship today". added the Spanish star.​

In LMP2, victory would go to another ex-Grand Prix driver, with Pastor Maldonado performing perfectly in difficult conditions to secure victory for himself and teammates Anthony Davidson and Roberto Gonzalez. LMGTE PRO honours would go to the Aston Martin Vantage AMR of Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin, with LMGTE AM victory going to Porsche and Christian Reid, Riccardo Pera and Matt Campbell.

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Stuff like this is exactly why I cant race a sim without rain and 24h cycle anymore
Snow is not necessary tho, well if u add yellow flag for that and red flags too maybe yeah, but I think it makes no sense to red flag a sim race for weather
 
The race was amazing specially in GTE class , great results for Astons
also i was like wtf is happening when Giedo van der Garde(lmp2) punted Nicki Thiim's Aston Martin, it could be a better race for Nicki without that drama as he was only 15-16 seconds off the lead in the final result
 
It was a chilly day at Spa but the drivers were on fire and I am sure they didnt freeze in the icy conditions, they just melted their way through the conditions and to them it was a bone dry track while us mortals saw it as the track was under 5 feet of snow!
 
The race was amazing specially in GTE class , great results for Astons
also i was like wtf is happening when Giedo van der Garde(lmp2) punted Nicki Thiim's Aston Martin, it could be a better race for Nicki without that drama as he was only 15-16 seconds off the lead in the final result
It was Van Erd, the guy that owns the team, he is a terrible driver.
 
Exactly. Funny how (some) simracers prefer the most minute physics details over something that happens in every other race.
Exactly. Funny how some simracers care for a bit of rain that happens occasionally over physics details that happen every single race..

Seriously though, some awesome photos and scenes from this race.
 
I guess climate change is still a myth, isn't it?
I don't think it's a myth personally, but what I find interesting, is they never mention all the nuclear bomb testing for decades, and rockets punching through our atmosphere...but be sure to give us a "carbon tax", as that will fix everything.
 
funny, I thought climate change was global warming which would mean warmer temps. Unless it isn't...then it IS climate change. Which was happening both before and after somebody thought of a way to monetize the weather. Also, our USA climate folks have suddenly started talking about only 12 years left, 12 years left to fix things. 12 years also co-incides with an expected 12 year low in Solar Activity which could mean lower temps(climate change!!!) for many years. I think it THEY think it will be difficult to get approval for social engineering based on colder rather than hotter temperatures.
 
@Paul Jeffrey I think it would be really cool if RD had a Calendar of real-life racing events, just like we have the calendar for online sim events.

I visit RD at least once nearly every day now, and sometimes I hear about a good race that just happened that I wish I had known about. I just think it would make things easier, to know what televised events are coming up in the racing world all in one place, plus it would introduce many of us to series we probably haven't heard of (with maybe a link to the series' website if there isn't an RD article about that particular race). You do a good job with the F1 articles...but I'd imagine there's at least 1 race going on every weekend somewhere, so a consolidation of dates and times would be awesome.
 
The race was amazing specially in GTE class , great results for Astons
also i was like wtf is happening when Giedo van der Garde(lmp2) punted Nicki Thiim's Aston Martin, it could be a better race for Nicki without that drama as he was only 15-16 seconds off the lead in the final result
Ahh Giedo was checking his Twitter, he really likes memeing F1
 
funny, I thought climate change was global warming which would mean warmer temps. Unless it isn't...then it IS climate change. Which was happening both before and after somebody thought of a way to monetize the weather. Also, our USA climate folks have suddenly started talking about only 12 years left, 12 years left to fix things. 12 years also co-incides with an expected 12 year low in Solar Activity which could mean lower temps(climate change!!!) for many years. I think it THEY think it will be difficult to get approval for social engineering based on colder rather than hotter temperatures.
Hey Dave there are so many false/goofy presumptions in your comment that Im close to consider it ironic.
One of the things climate scientists have been saying for years is that global warming both ‎raises the possibility of extreme weather + local weather anomalities that "before" was considered as only socalled "100 years events".
Your US climate folks connecting 12 year Solar Activity cycles to forecast of 12 year to the point of no return is only saying something about their scientific credibility.:roflmao:
Because a lot of scientists are saying that we have passed this point and some others are saying that we are only 8-10 years reaching it.
So...:whistling:

But I agree with you that you are funny:thumbsup:
 

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