Can Caddy keep their pace over a stint?
Cadillac have grabbed pole and it was great to see. Pole isn’t everything in endurance racing (although you do get a point nowadays). They are looking for their first win and it seems that they have the pace across a stint…
#15 BMW leads the practice lappery
Peugeot, on the other hand…
Their one car hasn’t got as many laps in as others. #15 BMW led the way there. Alpine with their two cars have a good combined total in that team, but as normal Porsche scores high here across several teams.
Different ways to achieve the same lap time
The different approaches we’ve seen all year continues. this can be confusing for those trying to decipher BoP and it remains an intriguing part of this rule set.
The pole sitting Cadillac1 owns sector 2 and sector 3, but doesn’t have the speed trap speed.
This is similar for Toyota. The spread of the speed trap data hints that they are using the lift and coast for energy use. As we’ve seen before they are concentrating on the race.
Looking at lap time consistency Cadillac leads the way. Just.
As is the way in this era it is super close. Alex Lynn said that the car was great over one lap:
“It feels so good. This car is amazing over one lap, massive congrats to Cadillac. I just wanted to give the team a pole position this year as we’ve come close so many times. I’ve proud we’ve done it.”
It is more than one lap. Fastest one lap, 10, 25, 50 averages show it is quick. Alpine up there too, with Porsche and Toyota following closely. Even Peugeot, who are slightly ahead of Lamborghini, are within one second with their fastest Top 50 lap average.
The spread chart shows these cars all got 50 or more fast laps in. With BMW getting close to the 100 lap mark before we see slow running or in and out laps impacting this.
Can Cadillac maintain this consistency in the race?2
How did the teams approach practice and qualifying?
It doesn’t look like the average above are influenced by short stints or anything. They don’t have unlimited practice, and in the context of that there is generally a good mix of long stints thrown in.
Continuing the can the Caddy keep a good pace for a stint. It’s looking OK. The averages are good and it did a decent stint in FP2. These charts shows all the running (in order) so far. Blue lines are end of sessions, grey lines are when they pitted.
You can see some of the difference in approaches through practice. A lot of teams went for a qualifying run at the beginning of FP2. Alpine #35 went for this at the beginning of FP3. Some did both.
Some went for a long stint, like the BMW and Cadillac shown here.
I don’t know if they did, but it looks like Toyota might have done pit stops and changed, but kept the same tyres on in FP2.
For completeness here are the fastest cars from the other makes.
