WEC LMP1-H Preseason Rankings

The WEC LMP1-H teams have been doing private testing for some time now.  With the exception of Nissan, who has been surprisingly open about their car's development, I think it might be easier to break into NORAD then it is to to find hard testing data for LMP1 cars.  That being said, the teams have homologated their cars for the season, and we have a little bit of test data from Paul Ricard to look at, so just like we did for the Formula 1 teams a couple of weeks ago, let's do some uneducated guess work and see if we can rank the LMP1-H teams from best to worst. 

1).  Porsche
If you don't love the Porsche 917, please stop reading and leave right now.  As you can probably guess then, I was pretty excited to here that Porsche was returning to Le Mans with a factory LMP1 effort last year.  Porsche obviously had a good year with the 919 in 2014, winning the race Brazil and claiming a number of pole positions.  The car obviously had speed, but it's major flaw was that the car had midturn understear problems.  As a result, the 919 chewed through tires at a pretty good clip.  I'm just a guy with a blog, but I'm pretty sure that in endurance racing you want a car that's good on the long run.  While Porsche had speed, their tire wear problems hurt their finishing position.  The lap times at Paul Ricard again suggest that the 919 is going to be one of the fastest cars on the track, and earlier in the year Porsche claimed that they fixed the car's balance problems.  If Porsche really can manage their tires better in 2015, then they will have the car to beat.

2).  Toyota
Picking the strongest car for this list was fairly easy, as was picking the weakest car (five bucks says that the most common words we hear during this year's WEC championship will be "and Nissan continues having problems as they bring their car back into the garage").  The middle positions are bit of a toss up however.  Based on lap times at Paul Ricard, Audi had the faster car, but Toyota is the defending WEC champion.  Plus, even though Toyota was slower at Paul Ricard, they still have a 6MJ hybrid system, while Audi has a 4MJ hybrid system.  As I explained in excruciating detail yesterday, 2014 race results indicate that the key to speed with the LMP1-H cars is running in the higher hybrid sub-classes.  Granted, my analysis is completely neglecting aerodynamics, and essentially every other part of the car that isn't the powertrain, but the Toyota looks like it could be the better car on paper.

3).  Audi
While Toyota may have the stronger car on paper, races are won and lost on the track.  As the great Yogi Bera said, in theory, theory and practice are the same but in practice they are different.  Thank Yogi.  As I said earlier, Audi appears to be at a disadvantage using only a 4MJ hybrid system.  That being said, you don't win at Le Mans 13 times by accident.  All the great endurance teams have one thing in common, their race craft is second to none.  I'm not saying that Toyota doesn't know how to run a team, but Team Joest is probably the best in the business.  Even if they don't have the fastest car on the track, they stay competitive by capitalizing on any mistake the opposing teams makes.  This means that regardless of the car they are fielding, Audi can't be completely counted out from any race.  Oh, and they were also faster then Toyota at Paul Ricard, so that may help as well.  Although Audi is only ranked third on this list, I wouldn't be surprised one bit to see them race their way around Toyota once the season starts.

4).  Nissan
When Nissan first announced the specs on their GT-R LMP1 car, a lot of people were getting ready to hand over the first place trophy at Le Mans, the WEC constructors championship, the WEC drivers championship and their virgin daughters to Nissan before the cars even took to the grid.  If Nissan could have built a car to the originally advertised specifications, that might not have been a bad call (except for the virgin daughter part).  Then reality hit with the force of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. 

Okay, so the asteroid bit is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but Nissan is definitely the kid from high school who is failing to live up to his potential.  Nissan isn't going to debut the car until to Le Mans, and has limited testing miles on it.  By itself, that usually spells a recipe for disaster, but that's doubly true for Nissan given the cars unusual engineering.  While I salute Nissan for building the weirdest car in recent WEC history, they are going to have more bugs to work out of the car then a team building a conventional layout car would.  Also, the car is going to run in a strict FWD setup.  Nissan says that their traction control system and superior down force are going to make front wheel drive viable, but I still think they are going to have handling problems because of it.

All is not doom and gloom for Nissan however.  If their flow through aero concept lives up to it's promise, they should have really good down force numbers for relatively little drag.  The end result is higher top speed on the on the Mulsanne straight.  If Nissan can get their other problems sorted out, I think the GT-R LMP1 is going to be a real weapon on the track.  The question is will Nissan back the program long enough for the car to develop, or, if the first two years are completely unsuccessful, will Nissan just run away, bury the car in a salt mine and pretend this never existed.

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Do you notice a little fun fact about this list.  The car ranking also matches the hybrid subclass ranking of each teams.  That wasn't just laziness on my part, for once.  This list was developed based on what we know about the cars plus a little speculation.  It just so happens that the cars in the higher hybrid subclasses appear to have a speed advantage.  If we see the higher hybrid subclass cars having a distinct speed advantage in 2015, then that will deliver a simple message to all the teams.  Get your car to 8MJ's, or race for second place.

1.21 Gigawatts?

Buckle in guys, here's the long promised article on LMP1 hybrid subclasses.  Sort of.  All four LMP1-H manufacturers have declared which hybrid subclass they will be running in this year, and official preseason testing is underway at Paul Ricard, meaning for the first time (that I'm aware of), we have some hard data that we  can judge the 2015 LMP1-H cars by.  For 2015 we have the full range of hybrid subclasses covered.  Nissan's car will run in the 2 megajoule class (the lowest hybrid subclass), Audi's car increases from 2MJ in 2014 to 4MJ for 2015, Toyota remains a 6MJ car, and Porsche increases from 6MJ to 8MJ, making it the first 8MJ car entered in WEC competition.

At this point your asking what the heck is all this megajoule stuff and why do I care?  I won't go into a ton of technical detail (this isn't Mulsanne's Corner, and I couldn't explain what a supercapacitor is if my life depended on it), but I do feel that a very basic understanding of the hybrid systems on these cars is important to understanding the strengths and weakness of the various machines.  Like I've said before, I'm not an automotive engineer, and I don't have any insider information, so this article might contain a few (or many) technical errors, but I do the best I can.

Okay, so what is the deal with these hybrid subclasses.  The FIA rulebook for the LMP1-H cars has four hybrid subclasses based on how much electric energy the car is allowed to use per lap to supplement the power produced by the internal combustion engine.  (In case any engineers are reading this, I know I know a Joule is technically a unit of work, not energy, but frankly I can't be bothered to care about unit consistency at the moment, so just deal with it).  The FIA rulebook contains equivalency rules that attempt to balance out the performance of the various subclasses.  Specifically, if your car is in a lower class (like Nissan and Audi), you are allowed a higher fuel flow per lap, meaning you should get more horsepower from the internal combustion engine, while the higher hybrid subclasses (Toyota and Porsche) are allowed to use more electric power, giving them a stronger boost out of the corners from the car's electric motors, but they have a lower fuel flow per lap.  What this means that in theory, each car is given the same amount of potential energy per lap either in the form of gasoline (or diesel if your Audi and insist on using the same basic engine you find in a Caterpillar D7 dozer) or stored electric energy.

In the world of the WEC though, some hybrid subclasses or more equivalent then others.  Just looking at car performance in 2014 for a second, it is easy to see that the 6MJ Porsche and Toyota performed better then the 2MJ Audi.  No one has ever confused me for being a mechanical engineer, but if we look at some general performance numbers for internal combustion engines and electric motors, you can see some basics reasons why a higher hybrid subclass (done properly) is a better design.  According to my technical sources (okay, I went to Wikipedia), internal combustion engines have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 25% to 30%.  This means that of the energy released by the burning fuel, only 25% to 30% of that energy actually moves the car forward.  Electric motors on the other hand have a theoretical efficiency of 100%, with a practical efficiency of around 90%.  Let's put that perspective for a second.  The real world efficiency of an electric motor is three times greater then the theoretical efficiency of an internal combustion engine.  Now let's logically think about how this applies to racecars.  Each car is (basically) allowed to use the same amount of energy per lap, but if more of the energy is electric, a greater percentage of that energy will be used for actually moving the car, instead of making heat and noise.

Thoroughly confused yet?  Yes?  Good.  At this point, you're also probably asking, who let me on the internet?  Good question.  You're also probably asking if the larger megajoule subclass cars are faster, why don't all the manufacturers just run in the 8MJ subclass?  Two reasons.  First, storing energy for an internal combustion engine is as simple as adding fuel to the tank, but to the teams can't add extra electricity to the cars during pit stops.  If they could, Formula E would be a lot more interesting.  Instead, teams have to recover waste energy over the course of the lap and store it as electric energy (think Toyota Prius on steroids).  The higher your subclass the more energy your recovery system needs to able to scavenge per lap.  It's easy to claim that you have an 8MJ car, but that's only true if your energy recovery system can scavenge 8MJ's worth of power.  If you declare your car into a subclass were you can't recover enough energy, not only are you not taking full benefit of the hybrid system, your internal combustion engine will be down on power compared to a car in a lower subclass using the same amount of electric power due to lower fuel flow number for the higher hybrid subclasses.

Assuming your head hasn't completely exploded yet (or you left to watch cat videos on Youtube), there's even more things for teams to think about.  All this equipment to scavenge and store the electric energy, plus drive the wheels, weighs a lot.  So, not only do you need to make sure that your hybrid system is efficient enough to generate the amount of electric energy needed for your subclass, you need to make sure that car isn't too heavy.  Kind of hard to go fast through the Mulsanne chicane when your effectively giving a baby elephant a piggy back ride.

I'm guessing that none of you are still reading at this point, and those that have are yelling at their computer at all the technical mistakes I've made.  To summarize though, performance of the 2014 LMP1-H cars suggest that the higher hybrid subclasses have a speed advantage, but only if the energy recovery system can scavenge enough electric energy, and do so without turning a svelte racecar into a porker.  Team's who can't overcome these two technical challenges are better of entering their car in a lower hybrid subclass.

I'm leaving out some of the fine details of the hybrid systems on these cars, but this article is too long as is, and I think I've hit the high points.  Tune in tomorrow for a trade mark Racing Nerd uninformed analysis of the 2015 WEC LMP1-H competitors.

That New Prototype Car Smell

After this year's 12 Hours of Sebring, I've been thinking a lot about prototype sports car racing in America.  As I said in my article on the 12 Hours of Sebring (if you haven't read that, go do it now), I talked about how the current Daytona Prototypes, whatever their virtues (and there are virtues to DP's), they need to leave.  The question is what should replace them?

Let's get one thing strait right here, right now, if you love sports car racing in America, do not suggest that IMSA adopt the WEC's LMP1-Hybrid rules. The hybrid prototypes built by Audi, Porsche, Toyota and Nissan (to a lesser extent) are fire breathing beasts of racecars.  They would also single handedly kill the Tudor United Sports Car Series in a heart beat.  While I'm sure that teams like Action Express and Chip Ganassi could successfully run these cars, they just don't have the budget.  All of the LMP1-H teams running in the WEC are factory works teams while the prototype teams in TUSC (with the exception of Mazda's P2 cars and Chip Ganassi in a sort of, kind of, not really, kind of way) are privateers.  Point is that the LMP1-H cars require a level of technological sophistication that only a factory supported team has the budget for, and Audi and Toyota aren't going to be running North American teams any time soon.  So let's stop pretending that LMP1 hybrids are going to happen.

Now that we've left crazy town, the two options left are LMP1-Light, or P2.  IMSA has decided to back the P2 cars, which theoretically should end the conversation right here and now, but I have space to fill, so let's go ahead and pretend IMSA reads Racing Nerd and have a discussion on the merits between the two.

In one very important way, LMP1-L and P2 have one thing in common.  They are both raced at Le Mans.  As much as I love Daytona and Sebring (and the 24 Hours of Daytona may be my favorite race of them all) the most significant sports car race in the world is Le Mans, and if the TUSC teams don't have a chance to race at Circuit de la Sarthe, then TUSC will always limit itself to being a second class racing series. 

The real defining difference between these two cars then is speed.  Reviewing 2014 WEC qualifying times, the LMP1-L cars are approximately two to four seconds then the LMP1-H cars (depending on the track), while the P2 cars are about another two to four seconds back.  At first, I was in favor of TUSC adopting the LMP1-L specifications.  The cars are faster and technically the LMP1-L cars are designed to compete directly with the LMP1-H cars, meaning we could see the TUSC teams squaring off against the factory backed European teams, just like the good old days of the American Le Mans Series.  While that's a great theory, the reality is that the factory backed LMP1-H teams always stomp the LMP1-L teams into the ground, and that's not going to change just because Wayne Taylor Racing is the team being stomped.

Quick side note, I keep referring to LMP1-L like it's a thing that is seriously raced.  In reality, only one team, Rebellion Racing, is campaigning an LMP1-L car at the moment, so don't let this discussion make you think that the class is well supported.  Which is another good reason IMSA should run away from LMP1-L specifications like the plague

If the TUDOR privateers have about as much chance of winning Le Mans as Pastor Maldonado has of keeping his car on the track, P2 suddenly becomes a lot more attractive option.  Yes, the cars are slower, but the class appears to be much better supported with a number of different chassis manufacturers and growing class popularity from the teams.  I'm a big believer that as a class of cars becomes more popular with the racers, and as the class matures, the racing becomes much better, which is great for us fans.  Yes, P2 cars are slower then LMP1 cars, but the quality of racing (the thing we actually care about) doesn't necessarily require super sonic cars.  The fact that P2 is better supported by both the manufacturers and the teams makes the class a better choice for a racing series like IMSA to buy into.

IMSA, I salute you for making P2 the top prototype class in the TUSC championship.  Now all you Tudor teams go give the Europeans hell at Le Mans.

Dear Nissan, Different Doesn't Always Mean Better

I'll be honest, I'm not a huge Nissan fan, but I might be a GTR LMP1 fan.  I'm kind of a sucker for weird, slow, race cars.  While few people would disagree with me that no one is going to confuse the Nissan with any other car in the paddock, some people might be claiming that it is too early to say that the GTR LMP1 is going to get it's lunch money stolen by Audi, Porsche and Toyota.  Those people don't read racing news.

Thing's haven't been going well for Nissan lately.  The exceptional Mulsanne's Corner has been following and speculating on the development of the GTR LMP1 since the beginning of the project.  The latest news from the guys over at Mulsanne's is that Nissan will not be racing either at the WEC season opener at Silverstone, or the following race at Spa.  The reason for this is that Nissan failed their FIA crash test.  Specifically, they need to have the car homologated 30 days before they can race it.  This puts Silverstone completely out of the question, and Spa (if Nissan had chosen to run Spa), extremely difficult.  That means that the car will make it's debut at Le Mans.  In addition to the Nissan's shake down run being the most important race on the calendar, Nissan has limited testing miles under their belt.  According to the cover story in the March issue of Racecar Engineering, Nissan has only 2,000 kilometers of testing on the car, compared to 40,000 kilometers of testing that Toyota had when they debuted their car.  Unconventional car, limited testing, and late debut to the race season, I don't possibly see anything that could go wrong here.

Of course, if the Nissan could live up to the car's original billing, then they still might be a force to be reckoned with.  According to RACER's March cover story however, Nissan has slowly been adjusting everyone's expectations downward.  Originally, Nissan was shooting for 2,000 horse power with all wheel drive (internal combustion engine driving the front wheels and hybrid drive system driving the back wheels).  This has been adjusted downwards to 1,250 horsepower.  Also troubling is that originally the car was supposed to run in the 8MJ hybrid subclass, but Nissan is now anticipating running in the 4MJ or even 2MJ subclass.  The speed comparison of the 2MJ Audi to the 6MJ Toyota and Porsche last year showed that when it comes to hybrid LMP1 cars, you want all the megajoules you can get.  But wait, it gets worse.  Nissan designed the original concept of the car assuming an 8MJ hybrid system driving the rear wheels.  With the smaller hybrid system, Nissan has decided to lighten the car by getting rid of the heavy drivelines that send power to the back wheels and send all of the power to the front wheels.  You read that right.  The GTR LMP1, Nissan's flagship racing car, is front wheel drive.  Just like an Altima.  Nissan claims that they feel they can make this concept work with a combination of high downforce (which is Nissan is to be believed is the car's true strength), and advanced traction control.  Personally I'm still not buying it.  Nissan is asking the front tires to do all of the work, and no matter how advanced the engineering, there are certain laws of physics that Nissan can't change.  

Racecar Engineering reported that the GTR is running sub-two minute lap times at Circuit of the Americas.  Pole time at COTA last year was 1:49.  Depending on what is mean't by "sub 2 minutes" Nissan could either be a few seconds of the pace (still significant), to almost ten seconds off the pace. Either way, they have work to do.

To be fair, lots of cars have significant issues their first year, but with Nissan it seams like the hits just keep on coming. If Nissan can build a car that matches the GTR LMP1's original specifications, they will have a car that is the class of the field.  The real question is can they sort out the car's problems before Nissan decides to cut their losses. 

Mario Kart or Mario Andretti?

This weekend's Daytona 500 means that the worst of the racing duldrums are over, and we can expect to watch fast cars from now until November (except for IndyCar and their six month schedule, but we've covered that ground before).  Still, most of the major racing series, at least that we watch in North America, are still getting up to full speed, meaning there isn't a lot to talk about yet.  So, I was looking over some back stories I missed the first time around when I reread an article that at least one of Nissan's LMP1 drivers at Le Mans will be a GT Academy graduate.  For those of you who aren't aware, GT Academy is a program where Nissan cherry picks the best Grand Turismo players (yes, the PlayStation game) and tries to turn them into race car drivers, and I think this is a much bigger deal then most people give it credit for.

Before we get too far along, I want to talk about the development of my own interest in racing, because I think it applies here.  When I was about 14 years old, I had two interests, cars and video games, but not racing.  I couldn't drive the Corvettes, Porsches and Ferraris I read about in Motortrend, but I could pretend to drive them in games like Need for Speed.  So I did.  While I had a lot of fun pretending to be Sunny Crocket in my virtual Ferrari 355, it ultimately left me wanting.  I knew this wasn't really how these cars drove.  I wanted an experience that was more authentic, so slowly my interest started to drift to the more realistic racing simulations by Papyrus, famous for their hyper realistic NASCAR simulations and their brutally challenging Grand Prix Legends.  These games got me interested in real world racing, so I started watching NASCAR, and then things spiraled out of control.  I started watching other forms of racing, like F1 and the now defunct American Le Mans series.  This got me interested in different kinds of racing sims, which got me interested in even more racing series.  Next thing you knew, I was watching DTM racing and the Isle of Man TT coverage on Speed Vision.

Since I was thoroughly obsessed with racing, I obviously wanted to be a race car driver.  I started trying to learn about how one becomes a race car driver, and was crest fallen when I learned that it all comes down to money.  Which I didn't have.  I was watching Formula 1 drivers, the youngest of whom were only a few years older then me, who had been racing carts for years.  A season of serious carting may cost $10,000 or more,  and I didn't have $10.  It didn't take a genius to figure out that pursuing a career in racing wasn't the best use of my time.

And here in lies the problem with traditional driver development.  To get your foot in the door, you need the money to buy yourself a ride, because no one's going to give you a car to wrap around the Armco.  So, unless you come from a family that can financially support your early racing efforts, with no guarantee of success, you'll never be a professional driver.  Now enter GT Academy.  Suddenly, the highest barrier to entry for trying to be a race car driver, the financial barrier, has been removed.

I'm convinced that professional drivers getting their start in simulation racing (as us enthusiasts like to call it, because these aren't games, their "sims") are going to be the exception rather then the rule for at least the foreseeable future.  Until we start seeing GT Academy graduates win races at the highest levels, the pro teams are going to be skeptical of drafting racers from the sim world, but I think the importance of GT Academy goes beyond driver discovery and development.  It gets a new generation of fans interested in racing.

Read through RACER's "IndyCar 2018" series of articles.  In that series, a topic that keeps being brought up is that the millennial generation of fans might like motorsport, but they like the fast paced, instant gratification style of racing found in Formula Drift and Global Rally Cross.  Traditional circuit racing like NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula 1 just looks like guys going in circles for hours on end to these kids, but these same millennials who wouldn't dream of watching a two hour Grand Prix, will watch a NFL game that is at least as long.  I think the reason for this is that a lot of people have first hand experience with traditional stick and ball sports in school (ie, they played stick and ball sports in school).  Because of the high financial barrier to entry in motor racing that prevents gaining first hand experience, kids don't get to learn about the subtle strategies and race craft which makes watching a race exciting.  Sim racing is the analogy of playing high school football.  If sim racing gave a teen a chance to be a future Indy 500 winner, or Formula 1 champion, especially if they wouldn't have that opportunity anywhere else, don't you think that would make more teens interested in sim racing?  I do, and I know from my own experience that an interest in sim racing can make a person a life long fan of real racing.

For racing to have a bright future, we need to have a new generation of fans.  If no one is watching the races, racing is eventually going to whither and die.  If things like GT Academy can democratize the entry into professional racing, and in turn broaden the base of people who are interested in racing, then I'm all for it.  Having more people watching the races can only be a good thing.

Best Super Bowl Commercial Ever?

So did you see Nissan's Super Bowl commercial?  You know, this one.  The one with all the race cars.  If you haven't heard why this is a big deal already (and if you haven't, what WEC hating rock have you been living under), it's because this is the official unveiling of Nissan's new LMP1 car.

RACER has a four page write up on the new car here.  I'm still digesting all the information that's come out in the last couple of hours (ie, it's Sunday night and I'm getting ready for work on Monday), but even based a cursory glance, this car is...interesting.  First, it's front engine, like the old ALMS Panoz prototypes (technically the car is mid engine, it just puts the engine in front of the driver, instead of behind the driver like every other mid engine car).  Second, the car uses a five speed transmission.  Let's just sit and marvel at those last couple of sentences for a second.  Modern F1 cars all have eight speed gearboxes.  Furthermore, A front engine car hasn't won an F1 race since 1960, while the last front engine car to win the Indianapolis 500 was 1964.  A front engine car with a five speed transmission sounds like it should run on coal.

Now make sure your sitting down for this next part, because after you get passed the engine and the gearbox, things start getting really weird.  This car is front wheel drive.  Okay, that part is actually a bit of lie (sort of).  Like all modern LMP1 prototypes, the Nissan is a hybrid (seriously, why are you listening to me say this, go read that RACER article, they're smarter then I am).  The power from the car's internal combustion engine goes to the front wheels, while the electric power can go to either the front or the rear wheels.  This means that the car can be run as an AWD car, but here's where things start getting confusing.  Although the design of the car allows it to be run in an AWD fashion, Nissan can run it as a strict FWD car, if they choose.  It's not particularly clear at this time if car is actually FWD, AWD or some weird crime-against-nature combination of the two.  So, if this is all as clear as mud for you, good, we're on the same page.  In all honestly, these guys are shooting for a car with somewhere between 1,250 and 1,500 horse power.  Does anyone honestly think that the engineers are going to try and send all that power through the front wheels, and let the rear wheels just chill out and do nothing?  I can't help but think that when Nissan goes to race this thing, some amount of power is going to be sent to the back wheels.

As I understand it, Nissan plans on campaigning the car this year in the World in Endurance Championship.  When this thing shows up for the first race, there's no doubt it's going to be the most interesting thing on the grid.  Which is what worries me.  Sometimes, guys who innovate and try something new go on to curb stomp the competition.  The other possibility (which I think is the more realistic scenario for the 2015 season) is that Audi, Toyota and Porsche focus on the business of winning races, while Nissan sits in the garage trying to figure out what's wrong with their Rube Goldberg Machine of a drivetrain today.  The point I'm driving at is that Nissan deliberately built this thing so that it would be completely different from anything else currently on the grid.  Judging on that criteria, mission accomplished Nissan, but building something completely different, just because you can, isn't necessarily the best way to build a race car.  Don't believe me?  Allow me to present exhibit A, the Delta Wing.

My Johnny Rain Cloud analysis aside, I'm really looking forward to seeing this car on the track.  I'm planning on heading down to Austin this September for the WEC race at Circuit of the Americas, so hopefully we'll have some exclusive out of focus pictures of Nissan's brand new LMP1 car on The Racing Nerd before the year is out.