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Old 8 May 2011, 17:36 (Ref:2876941)   #1507
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 the Pugs had to dial in more downforce to get their car to work (as both were in LM trim!), that shows that the Pug doesn't have the aero balance where they need it when they want to run their LM package. Remember, the Pugs were significantly slower than the R18s in the Porsche Curves at the LM test day, but the rest of the sector times were dead equal.

And at Spa last year, Peugeot ran their sprint package, and that was a deciding factor in their win last year.

In the end, I think that both cars are far from exactly where either camps want them. If either Audi or Peugeot want to run their LM packages else where, they'll need to add downforce, which if that's what Peugeot did, that's a card that they played which might bite them, especially with the 2:03s that Simon ran late.

That doesn't preclude Audi from sandbagging, either, as they ran a couple of 27 lap stints. Only thing that tells me is that either Audi got some help with cautions, or they dialed down the engines--one post in the Spa thread said that neither the R18s or the 908s smoked much at all compared to the test day, which means that they weren't running at full power.

My biggest grip is that I though that the ILMC being instituted and making LM a championship round would preclude any sandbagging, but if anything, it may've made such mind games worse.

If Audi are sandbagging, they'd better step up the pace and show some cards, because Peugeot did at Spa. If they can improve their cars, they'd better do so. Otherwise, all I can say is that I'm running out of patience with Audi developing race cars, putting out all the PR fluff, and not backing it up on raceday.

Last edited by chernaudi; 8 May 2011 at 17:59.
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