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.
On Friday Petrolicious aired a fantastic story about a 911 GT3 sporting a Herbie, The Love Bug livery. And even cooler, not just the paint scheme, but with various bodywork details to make a 911 look similar to a vintage VW bug. And as the cherry on top of the cake, the car actually raced at Spa!
I’m REALLY wanting to see this in 1:43… 😍
Mercedes has a HUGE (and fantastic!) museum at Stuttgart. The museum counts with around 1100 cars, and for a gearhead it’s basically paradise. And to maintain all those cars, they have a team of highly specialized technicians and mechanics exclusively dedicated to the museum’s cars. Last Tuesday Petrolicious aired a very nice article about the museum’s workshop.
Interestingly though, the director of Mercedes-Benz Classic recounted the story about why the paint was scraped off the W25 to get the car at the maximum 750 kg limit. However, that’s a confirmed fairy tale made up by Alfred Neubauer in his autobiography. Nothing against a little embellishing of an historical event, but I would expect that the head of such an endeavor as the Mercedes-Benz Classic department would be more factual.
Fairy tales aside, Petrolicious’ article (full of photos!!) is a treat.
⭐09/17/1929
🏁04/12/2020
We lost one of the greatest this morning 😥
RIP
Interestingly, this morning I found an article at Petrolicious about the 1955 race. Not about the crash and tragedy, but some interesting facts about the race per se. A short read with some VERY cool (non-crash) period photos.
😎😎😎
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! 😎
Some years ago Petrolicious published a story about five of the most fantastic pilots to race at La Sarthe. I read this story on their site when it came out, but Einstein here didn’t bookmark it. And of course, afterwards, for the life of me I couldn’t remember where I read it 😣. Last night, from nowhere, the story appeared again in my Facebook feed. But this time I’m sharing it.
Not a long article, but with some terrific photography of the era. So, if like me you’re into the stories that make Le Mans THE greatest race on Earth, click here.
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.
