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Old 18 Oct 2013, 22:50 (Ref:3319642)   #71
chernaudi
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chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!
If I'm Toyota, I'd be praying for a dry race, and even at that I'd also be hoping that Audi doesn't find another 4-5 tenths of a second between now and race day.

As it stands now, Toyota do, on paper at least, stand a reasonable chance to challenge, but if Audi find more speed, that'll damage Toyota's chances. And if it's a rain race, that could be the nail in the coffin for Toyota. We know that when Audi set up the R18 right, it should be better in the rain/mixed conditions than the Toyota.

The biggest issue that Toyota may have, though, is that they'll likely lose their fuel mileage advantage. Diesel engines are more economical on fuel at part throttle/no throttle. In the rain, you'll have a lot more of that than in the dry. We saw this at LM where Audi could eat into Toyota's fuel mileage advantage under the pace car periods and rainy/damp periods because of them being able to stretch their fuel out more than Toyota could under the same conditions.

Problem is that the probability of rain has increased since yesterday. TWC now says 90% chance of rain Sunday afternoon/evening.

If there's any dry running on Sunday, Toyota needs to take advantage of it, because if it rains, Audi will probably benefit from it a lot more than Toyota will.
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