what if other chassis had audi/bentley's engine

[pirenzo]

Anyway, did you miss the IMO Rob?

[Tim Northcutt]

A Few Thoughts:

As a fan of the R&S operation and the approaches that Bob abd Bill Riley use to design their cars I would agree, to an extent, with RobweenerPI, but...

The R&S MkIIIA won a lot of races since its creation in the mid-1990s -- its record is among the most impressive in sportscar racing -- but it was specifically designed for American road courses that iseem to be tighter, slowers circuits with generally shorter straights that required lots of grip...road courses on ovals plus natural circuits that pretty much meet the above description, with the exception of Elkhart Lake, VIR and Road Atlanta...

The MkIIIA was totally out of its element on a circuit like Le Mans when it competed against the Ferrari chassis over there in the later 1990s (I can't recall the years)

I'm assuming that is the reason why Rafanelli did the major reconfiguration of their R&S MkIIIA chassis so that they could race and compete better on the European circuits....

As a general assessment, however, I don't see a lot of privateers lining up to buy either the R&S MkIIIC or the Dome chassis....

The hot item among privateers seems to be the MG-Lola in the 675 class

Maybe teams want to win their class, and at least have enough speed
to compete with the Audis in shorter runs (since the MG-Lola's reliability is still a big problem)as opposed to running an LMP 900 and racing for "best of the rest." Just a thought

[gttouring]

The Audi chassis i would say is the real key, so reconfigurealbe. High downforce and fast low downforce and faster. The Washington D.C. grandprix was a cracker race, that was a tight U.S. course But the Pulling power of the Audi wasn't matched by Panoz V8, It does have immense power, but not F1 or 2000Champcar power. A cosworth XFE champcar powerplant at proper boost netted into the 900 hp range on ovals, like in the Players cars and for Adrian Fernandez. try that motor in a Bentley/R8 chassis. or put it in the panoz, or the dome, or the Ferrari chassis, or ...

[Tim Northcutt]

But the Cosworth engine at that boost would only last for the 2 hr. 45 min. length races in the ALMS series....

No way that the CART configuration would make it 24 hrs. with that kind of boost...