Oh yes, the 88th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is coming! This Saturday! Due to the pandemic it will be closed to the public, but at least everyone can watch it online. Head over to 24h-Le Mans.com for the latest news and full grid.
🤩🤩🤩
Back in October last year I wrote about Bentley making a brand new 1929 Bentley Blower. The plan was to produce 12 new cars that are exact replicas of the original model. For that, a specialized team at Crewe, in the UK, took apart the second car of the 1929 “Team Blower” and laser-scanned every single part of the car. Recently Bentley showed photos of some of the new parts already made for the prototype model.
From the images that Bentley released, the new “Continuation Series” car will look absolutely fantastic. The cars are expected to be available by 2021, and all 12 are already spoken for. As I said before, sometimes it’s really nice to be rich…
Rebel Williams Esports #1 won the first 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual! 🏆
Piloted by Raffaele Marciello (factory Mercedes GT driver), Louis Deletraz (Haas Formula 1 reserve), Nikodem Wisniewski (sim racer) and Kuba Brzezinski (sim racer), it started eighth in the grid. But slowly the team climbed up and finished in first.
In GTE, the #93 Porsche dominated the race. Piloted by Nick Tandy (Le Mans winner), Ayhancan Guven (Porsche Supercup), Joshua Rogers (Porsche Esports Supercup champion) and Tommy Ostgaard (sim racer), they took the flag. Pretty nice, since this weekend was Porsche’s 50th anniversary of their first overall Le Mans win.
Not the real thing, of course, but you know? It was cool to watch. Graphics were fantastic and the inboard filming looked like you were seeing it from a real race car.
Made me want to fire up Forza 7 on the Xbox One…
Well, in e-form we can watch something at least. The 24 Heures du Mans Facebook page is streaming the race simulation live now. The whole 24 hours 😲! Of course it’s not the same as a real race, but I’m extremely impressed with the graphics. This will sure be interesting to watch.
⭐09/17/1929
🏁04/12/2020
We lost one of the greatest this morning 😥
RIP
According to Motorsport.com, that might be a possibility. If so, Porsche is considering the new LMDh class, that supposedly should start in 2021. Nobody knows much about this new class, but basically it will allow the same car to compete both in WEC and IMSA races. Everything is on hold right now because of the pandemic, but if Porsche is actually thinking about it, maybe there’s hope for the future of endurance racing.
So far no pics, only a rendering, and not much to see. But Gordon Murray (yes, that Gordon Murray) is working on a new supercar. Not much has been revealed, it’s called T.50 and will be powered by a ground-breaking V12 from Cosworth. According to their website it will be naturally aspirated and deliver 650 hp. It will also be the “highest-revving engine ever in a production car”. From their website you can see the engine actually being tested, so I think the T.50 will actually come to life. Très cool! 😎
What can I say? This was a given 😷. According to WEC’s website the race will occur on September 19th and 20th. I think it’s pretty logical to assume that by June the COVID-19 epidemic will be dying down, but it will take longer for the world to get back to normal again. So September is probably a safe bet.
ACO released this afternoon (02/28) the entry list for the 24 Heures du Mans of 2020. We will only have six LMP1 cars – two Toyota, two Ginetta and two Rebellion. The grid will consist of 62 cars in total, and the other 56 are 24 LMP2, 11 GTE-Pro and 20 GTE-Am cars.
This year will be the last hurrah of the LMP1 class, and I’m sad to see only six cars. The class has been around since 1994 and I thought they deserved a grander going-away party 😥.
Motorsport.com has the full list here.
Earlier this week we heard that Aston Martin is pulling out of the new Hypercar class, and therefore the Valkyrie project was put on hold (canceled?). So far only Toyota has what looks to be a “working project”, but nothing yet from McLaren, Peugeot or Glickenhause. Well, the later, on Tweeter, said they do have something in the oven. We’re almost in March now, and Le Mans is in June, so with all that (lack of) news I’m worried.
Jalopnik has a much better story on this. And unfortunately, it’s a troublesome read.
