Lexus Racing Megathread

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CIF

CIF

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I barely watch the WEC anymore due to the farce of the BOP era, like many of you as well.

I will say this; if Toyota decides to continue participating in this farce of a series and wants to be successful, then they need to build a hypercar that is so good that no amount of arbitrary or biased BOP changes can cripple it. A car so good that no amount of other drivers trying to run the car off the road or ram it into terminal failure can cripple it. A car so good that it can absorb multiple mistakes by Toyota's own drivers and still come out on top. No excuses.
 
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carguy420

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CIF said:
I barely watch the WEC anymore due to the farce of the BOP era, like many of you as well.

I will say this; if Toyota decides to continue participating in this farce of a series and wants to be successful, then they need to build a hypercar that is so good that no amount of arbitrary or biased BOP changes can cripple it. A car so good that no amount of other drivers trying to run the car off the road or ram it into terminal failure can cripple it. A car so good that it can absorb multiple mistakes by Toyota's own drivers and still come out on top. No excuses.
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Don't bother with the WEC anymore, those euro trash companies (like Ferrari and Porsche) and organizations (like the FIA) can all go throw themselves off a cliff for all I care. I find Super Taikyu's ST-Q class to be a million times more interesting, seeing all these car manufacturers testing and experimenting with various technologies and features on their production based race cars.
 
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ssun30

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Isn't the very definition of BOP that no matter how good the car is, it will be crippled to have similar pace as other cars?

The LMH ruleset is so restrictive that it's almost impossible to build an over performing car (but possible to build an under performing car). They directly limit the amount of energy that can be used per lap and control the torque curve to always produce a 500kW max power. This makes reliability the only distinguishing factor for the powertrain. This is in contrast with series that only limit fuel flow (F1) or air flow (WRC/IndyCar) where you can gain extra power by improving the efficiency and optimize the torque curve for better corner exist. The down force of the aero package is also heavily regulated so it's really a test of the team's ability to dial in the tuning during practice sessions. LMH is a non-spec series but is functionally a spec series.
 
F1 Silver Arrows

F1 Silver Arrows

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ssun30 said:
Isn't the very definition of BOP that no matter how good the car is, it will be crippled to have similar pace as other cars?

The LMH ruleset is so restrictive that it's almost impossible to build an over performing car (but possible to build an under performing car). They directly limit the amount of energy that can be used per lap and control the torque curve to always produce a 500kW max power. This makes reliability the only distinguishing factor for the powertrain. This is in contrast with series that only limit fuel flow (F1) or air flow (WRC/IndyCar) where you can gain extra power by improving the efficiency and optimize the torque curve for better corner exist. The down force of the aero package is also heavily regulated so it's really a test of the team's ability to dial in the tuning during practice sessions. LMH is a non-spec series but is functionally a spec series.
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This is mostly correct. However it must be said that you can still build a good car that distinguishes itself from the others in spite of BoP, but it shows itself in more underhanded ways.

For example, in 2023, a lot of the other cars (A.K.A. NOT the Toyota) experienced issues with getting the tires up to temp or keeping them in the ideal window. They also dealt with a lot of issues concerning vibration, weight distribution, aerodynamics, or general car setup/handling. This is due to their lack of ability to understand the car they've built and being able to create the ultimate setup. It is also harder to strategize during a race when the car starts exhibiting weird behavior. Toyota never had these issues.

My point is, with Toyota not having these issues, no level of BoP could bring the car down, because it was easy and predictable to work with during the races. Once Porsche, Ferrari, and Cadillac began to figure out their cars better over the past year, the BoP began to hurt Toyota more.
 
qtb007

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carguy420 said:

The hybrid system has caused way too many problems for all 3 teams, and some disconnected from reality people are still asking for EV rally cars lol.
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That isn't how I read that. Toyota and Hyundai seem to like the hybrid unit, but the new regulation for repairs of the hybrid system if certain G shock thresholds are met will add significant cost and prevent competition from entering. So they are saying that given the choice of hybrid and the high repair cost (again, due to new regs) or no hybrid, they choose no hybrid.
 
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Sulu

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qtb007 said:
That isn't how I read that. Toyota and Hyundai seem to like the hybrid unit, but the new regulation for repairs of the hybrid system if certain G shock thresholds are met will add significant cost and prevent competition from entering. So they are saying that given the choice of hybrid and the high repair cost (again, due to new regs) or no hybrid, they choose no hybrid.
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From the article:
“It is not a request to remove it for what it is, it is a request to remove it because we can’t actually repair and run them at an economic price for M-Sport,” team principal Richard Millener told Autosport at last month’s Central European Rally.
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Speaking at last month’s penultimate round of the championship, Toyota and Hyundai bosses both admitted they would support measures to remove hybrid if it meant it would ensure the current level of participants for the future.

“We will never actively or proactively request to remove the hybrid from WRC,” said Hyundai’s team principal Cyril Abiteboul [i.e. Hyundai does not want it removed].

“Having said that, we also need to be pragmatic and recognise the fact that the WRC community is a small community, and as any small community, we need to look after one another.
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Jezza819

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This past Sunday I attended Lexus Performance Driving School at Road Atlanta. The weather forecast leading up to Sunday looked terrible, rain showers in the morning and heavy thunderstorms in the afternoon. However as Sunday got closer it began to improve a little bit. Sunday ended up being mostly rain free so we got lucky.

When we got to the track Sunday morning and checked in former IMSA champion and Lexus ambassador Scott Pruett came in and checked in alongside us. The program was a morning session and an afternoon session of autocross in the parking lot using the IS 500 Sport Design, drifting lessons on the skid pad with the RC-F, and full track sessions with the LC 500.

Our first session was autocross. I thought I would do ok with that. I had done a little bit of it back many years ago. But that was many years ago and now I suck at it. Finished 9th out of 13 people. However my friend that went with me finished 1st. I think I was trying to left foot brake and it ended up confusing the ABS and TC and it caused the car to bog down a lot. I'm going with that excuse anyway because to me it felt fast just didn't end up that way on the timer. For the afternoon session of autocross we got a little screwed. The first two cars went out and then it started to lightly rain. It was more than enough to get the course slick and hurt all of our times. But towards the end the rain stopped. But it gave the other team the advantage as they would be coming back to a dry track. At the end of our session two of us at a time got to ride with Scott Pruett on the course. That was unreal. Ahead that he ran about 4 practice runs in a row so he got the track rubbered in, the tires nice and warm, everything a racer would do. However that also played into the other teams hands as they had a perfect track to set times on where we didn't. We were supposed to be competing against each other on average times but since we had a big disadvantage the hosts decided to award prizes to the fastest top 3 from each team.

The skid pad was very difficult as it's something I had never done before. And really no one from either team ever got the hang of it. A lot of spinning out or driving around too slow to get the car loose at all. That was the part of the class I really didn't care for.

The best part of course were the sessions on the track. Since I was in the bottom of autocross the hosts asked me if I would separate from my friend and let him go with the faster two and I would be in the next group. I agreed but I wasn't too happy about it because out on the track would be a different story as opposed to going around a bunch of cones. Each group had a pro driver as a pace car to go behind and ours was former F1 driver, Champ Car driver, and for a long time he held the track record at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Roberto Guerrero. He couldn't have been a nicer guy. For the morning session we went out and first did two braking exercises leading into turn 6 and then again at turn 10a coming down the hill. Full acceleration from a point the full on the brakes at the blue cones............continues below
 
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Jezza819

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Then it one full lap slower behind Roberto to show you the lines and how to take the curbs then three more laps at his pace which each of us took turns getting behind him. We did two full track sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon with a bonus 3 laps because the rain was getting closer. By the time that last session came around we were going pretty fast. Roberto had said earlier in the morning that in the afternoon he didn't expect to have to give us any instructions over the radio and he didn't, just when to switch places. But we had a little problem in that apparently the group that went out in front of us was a little slower than we were and we caught them twice at Turn 10a and had to back off and another time going into turn 6 so our two groups should have been flipped. But overall it was great. We were told not to put the car in manual and someone in another group apparently did it by mistake and got the car caught in 2nd and it went into limp mode and they had to let it sit at turn 3 until someone came by and got it restarted so we had to pit for that. I couldn't figure out how to get it into manual anyway. Roberto stuck his head in my car I guess to try and figure out how that person could have done it by mistake and he and I together couldn't figure it out. I got it in there once but put it back in regular drive as I figured with my luck something like that would happen to me. But I should have watched a Youtube video on it Saturday night because my friend said he ran in manual and several others did too even though the instructors said not to.

I had driven Road Atlanta once before back in 1985 or 1986 and I've driven probably thousands of laps in racing games on it. But the elevation changes are what you notice the most. Coming under the Fox Factory bridge and plunging downhill through turn 12 is something you won't forget. Also the little dip leading up to turn 6 isn't that pronounced in games.

Overall it was a great experience. Scott Pruett signed my metal ID badge so I'll hang on that as a memento.
 
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Jezza819

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CRSKTN said:
Excellent job and glad you got to do that!

Gecko sounds like you've got another community article here too!
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Thanks.

Looking back on it now I kind of wish there was a day 2 because I would like to go back and change the way I approached it and see if it would have been different. Not try to left foot brake on autocross, try it in manual shift on the race track etc. You would think I would have learned from morning session to afternoon session on what not to do but I just repeated the same things and of course I had the same results which is incredibly frustrating.

Also I think what has made me angry is that I had such high expectations for myself. I've been sim racing for almost 15 years now, although never online just against the game AI and I also don't have VR, but I figured I would do so much better and I wouldn't have been that nervous. My friend that went with me also sim races but he only plays in VR and he says it's helped him tremendously. The instructors kept repeating "Breathe, relax" but I was so afraid I was going to break something or be the one to miss a pedal and take out an entire line of cones. Once that LC stalled on course that really got me nervous because I didn't want it to happen to me.

So it was a mixed bag, glad for the experience, but extremely humiliating and embarrassing for the results.
 
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