|
Well, the early Peugeot 908s were heavy cars that were made light, and that didn't help their reliablity, especially the first couple of years.
For an aircraft anaology, the DeHavilland Mosquito, Lavochkin La-5 and La-7, and the Yakovlev Yak-9 and Yak-3 were lightweight aircraft of their type, in small part because they were basically varnished caskets. In other words, they were made largely out of wood, a non-strategic material and usually fairly light weight.
The Yak-3 was one of the smallest fighter aircraft or World War II, and it had it's defects--it's Hispano Suiza 12Y derived Klimov M-105 engine was being pushed to it's limits as far as a favorable power/reliablity ratio (due to the Russians not having western aluminum alloys available to make improved engine internals, and indifferent wartime production standards) and wing skins tended to break off if the plane had a few too many 500mph+ dives (due to indifferent wartime production standards), but it was as manuverable under combat situaltions as the Mitsubishi A6M Zero (an other lightweight fighter), but was better protected and armed, more durable, easier to repair, and not to mention that it outperformed the Zero in every other field.
As Gwyllion pointed out, F1 teams have used a lot of the this technology for years, and as the 908 proved, it's easier to beef things up than to pare off weight. I believe that most of the 908's problems though out it's life was because of the team trying to pare off weight off the rather overweight 908s, and reliablity only really improved when the extra 30kgs of ballast was added to the diesel LMP1s--the Pugs had trouble getting much below 925kgs at Sebring '09, and they had reliablity issues there.
The R18 survived 2 30 hour tests at Sebring--probably the most demanding track on cars that sportscars race at--and the photos that Audi released were from a Paul Ricard test that was probably a 30 hour test, and aside from Monza, Paul Ricard because of that 3/4 of a mile Mistral Straight, is about as close to LM as you're gonna get nowadays with the old Hockenheim GP track being largely gone (a favorite Joest test ground because of it's resemblance to LM).
If the R18 can survived the worst that these two test circuits can throw at it, it'll probably survive LM, but that's not gurentee. Peugeot did 12 30 hour tests last year, but none of their cars finished because of unproven parts being added at the last minute.
As I said, Audi are playing it smart by designing a lightweight car first, as it's easier to add weight than to pare it off.
|