[MulsanneMike]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

But after the #3 went out and Peugeot started to drop the hammer, that dropped down to 12 and then 11 when the #1 Pug tried to run down the two Audis in front of it, while the R15s were running 12-13 lap stints in that same period.

And as draggy as it was, the early R15s were capable of running 13 lap stints at LM in '09. So either Audi really cranked up the power (seeing what Peugeot was doing) or the drag reduction did little to improve fuel economy.

But as has been said, it's hard to use a fuel mileage advantage when the cars that you're running against are on the order of a couple of seconds a lap faster. I do believe that a poster in the LM test thread said that the R18s would have to average about .5-1.0 seconds a lap faster to nullify any fuel mileage advantage that Peugeot could have.

But what has me mystified is Truswell's claim that on long runs that the R18s were as much as 5 seconds a lap faster(!). I don't distrust the math used to come up with that figure, but there has to be an explanation. Either the Pug guys were experimenting with their two "fast" cars, or the Pugs caught some bad traffic on some of their laps.

If that's the case, and it was in the Porsche Curves (where the 908s seem to be struggling a bit), that could really kill their lap times, as when you're in a fight for position, Audi can have the advantage of taking it easy or using their superior grip to make some passes there. Meanwhile, the Pug drivers would probably like to make those moves, but might not be able to due to lack of confidence in their cars--Audi drivers had similar issue with the R15 last year.

You can't take any of the times from the test weekend as gospel, and no concrete conclusions can be made about future performance. The first time we'll see any hint of the performance difference between the R18 and 908 will be the first qualifying session. Everything is a shell game until then. Thus detailed analysis of relative performance is effectively meaningless at this time.