Category: Racing

917 in old photos

Without a doubt, the 917, in all it’s iterations, is my favorite race car of all times. In my mind it’s intermingled with Le Mans and all things that makes motorsports interesting for me. With that, I’m always looking around for info and shots of the car. And to my delight, Petrolicious has a very nice article with old photos of the 917.

I’m a big fan of Petrolicius, and I do follow their Facebook page, since they’re always showing interesting stuff. But some how I missed this article from last year. Most of those photos I’ve seen before, but a few were totally new to me. So if you want to see some very cool shots of the 917s in 1970 and 1971, click on the link.

Equivalence of Technology for 2020

Last night WEC announced new “Equivalence of Technology” (EoT) rules for LMP1:

-Weight: The Toyota TS050 HYBRIDS will each carry an additional 14kg compared to the TOTAL 6 Hours of Spa 2019, thus +40kg compared to the car’s minimum regulation weight;

-Fuel tank capacity:  The fuel tank capacity will be adjusted to ensure an equal number of laps per stint for both LMP1 H and LMP1 NH for every round including Le Mans;

-Refuelling time:  At each pit stop LMP1 H cars will refuel 1 second slower than LMP1 NH cars to compensate for the advantage they have restarting in electric mode;

-Success handicap:  A success handicap will be introduced whereby the performance of all cars – hybrid or non-hybrid – will be adjusted before each race to take into consideration points scored in the Championship.

At Lemans.org you can find the whole article. So does that mean that for 202o Toyota will have some serious competition?

2020: Hypercars at Le Mans

It started out as a rumor early this year but some time before Le Mans both ACO and FIA confirmed. We’re really going to have hypercars at La Sarthe and other WEC races! So from 2020 onward, we won’t have LMP1 as the top WEC class. The video above succinctly explains what this new class is about.

I’m really excited about this because this new category kind of reminds me of the glorious Group 5 (“silhouette racing”) era and all the g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s cars that we had.