[hcl123]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

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.

No, diesels are more economic at all throttle regimes... for crying out loud! the advantage of Toyotas for this is that they can carry ~20 more liters of fuel per stint(sure ppl are not reminded *of the fact* by the *journalitists* reporting ), the additional weight is insignificant... specially full throttle where the Audis don't pass the 4500rpm, while the Toyotas goes near the 10K -> the more the rpm the more fuel you burn(what the sleazy sleekly oil barons like) ... but you have a point on the other parts...

OTOH in wet conditions the Toyotas have a better change to keep up with the pace of Audis and even surpass it... we saw that on LM to... specially this Audis that are engineered to pace near the max power/torque in all gear ratios, and that can be very tricky in wet, carrying all that torque around all the time you must be extra careful specially in slower corners... (slower than norm perhaps except with McNish that might go crazy... )

So i think Toyota will be very happy with wet conditions.