Why do they measure energy and not fuel during IMSA broadcasts?

Purple Frog said:

Show business. Period.  I think the main reason it looks like close racing is the stupid process of re-aligning the cars in their classes with each yellow flag.  As a competitor I work for an hour to get a 20 second lead with 5 backmarkers between me and the person in my class that is chasing... then a yellow flag comes out and my advantage is wiped out.  The 24Hour has become a Crashcar race that is just show for 23 hours, then there is a one hour sprint race at the end.

BOP is the opposite of meritocracy.

How would you suggest how a yellow is dealt with?

The old way, if you passed the pit entry just as a car crashed, and the yellow was thrown within the next 20 seconds, every single car behind you got an advantage of a free pit stop.  You can decide to stop, but you will end up way down in the field as the rest of the cars catch up while you are going around, or you can keep position and have less fuel or tires.  Is that better than making sure nobody gets an advantage?  

 This is still an issue in top racing if you get a lucky crash, and the flag timed right, you get an advantage just from luck.  Luck of timing of crashes should not be that kind of advantage.  Just ask Hamilton if luck of a well timed crash is fair. 

Seems to me that bunching the cars to eliminate a crash timing advantage is better.

Over 60 cars took the green flag and something like 40 of them finished the race.  A decent number of the cars that were classified as DNFs went behind the wall for the final time because of crash damage, as opposed to mechanical failures -- I'm not sure of the exact numerical breakdown, but it seemed like there was more than one or two.  Three cars from two manufacturers finished on the lead lap in GTP.  In LMP2 the entire podium was on the same lap.  GTD Pro had the top 7 cars on the same lap, and 9 GTD cars were on the same lap at the finish.  Throughout the whole event, there were battles across the field to watch.  On Sunday morning and afternoon, I was sitting in the stands so I could see the whole course and even with that view, I missed at least one pass for the class lead because I was watching a battle somewhere else on the track for a different class lead.

I don't give a damned how contrived BoP and torque sensors make the cars and if it's "fair" that a Mustang can keep up with a Corvette.  Give me this kind of racing on the track with so many different teams and manufacturers and I will be back every single year.  In fact, I have to agree with the conversation that they were having on IMSA Radio during the race:  If McLaren, Genesis, and Ford all jump into GTP that would be awesome, but my biggest fear is that there wouldn't be room for them and we'd have to cut someone else out!  I'll admit that I'm a relatively new fan to sportscar racing like this having only really paid any attention since my first Rolex in 2015, but this just seems to me like the way it should be.

I like how the different teams implement the energy usage. You have the Acuras with it's tiny 2.4L turbo V6 all the way up to the Cadillacs with these big brutal 5.5L naturally aspirated V8's. The Cadillac hybrids actually shut down the engine below a certain speed when entering and exiting the pits. Pretty wild to see it silently pull away from the pits doing an EV burnout, then that V8 jarringly roars to life. There's nothing like IMSA and I'm happy with their direction, especially aligning with WEC where you can have two specs in the same class. Counting down to Petit Le Man already.

alfadriver said:

Purple Frog said:

Show business. Period.  I think the main reason it looks like close racing is the stupid process of re-aligning the cars in their classes with each yellow flag.  As a competitor I work for an hour to get a 20 second lead with 5 backmarkers between me and the person in my class that is chasing... then a yellow flag comes out and my advantage is wiped out.  The 24Hour has become a Crashcar race that is just show for 23 hours, then there is a one hour sprint race at the end.

BOP is the opposite of meritocracy.

How would you suggest how a yellow is dealt with?

The old way, if you passed the pit entry just as a car crashed, and the yellow was thrown within the next 20 seconds, every single car behind you got an advantage of a free pit stop.  You can decide to stop, but you will end up way down in the field as the rest of the cars catch up while you are going around, or you can keep position and have less fuel or tires.  Is that better than making sure nobody gets an advantage?  

 This is still an issue in top racing if you get a lucky crash, and the flag timed right, you get an advantage just from luck.  Luck of timing of crashes should not be that kind of advantage.  Just ask Hamilton if luck of a well timed crash is fair. 

Seems to me that bunching the cars to eliminate a crash timing advantage is better.

Agreed, and I'll add to that:  What would the carnage look like if you had all the classes jumbled together and they attempted a restart?  What if you had 2 GTD cars between the top 2 GTP cars when the green was thrown?  Talk about cautions breeding cautions!  The other issue is that they have to split up the pit stops by class because there's just not enough room to jockey the whole field in and out of pit boxes at once.  So the alternative would be an F1-style response of "no new teams because we only have 10 pit stalls".  You're always going to have an element of chance out on the track and it's going to be tough to adjudicate that to make it "fair" other than just realizing that a FCY will provide the same opportunity to every team, but sometimes you're in a position to take advantage of it and sometimes you're not.

It may just be a misperception on my part, but it seemed like they were willing to use local yellows for a little bit longer before pressing the big yellow button this year.  It's also worth thinking about if a Code 60 rule would be of use to cut down on the need for FCYs.  It's kind of tricky, though, because even if you slow everyone down a bit, eventually 60+ cars will expand to fill basically the whole course, so you don't gain a whole lot of open space to be able to retrieve debris or push a car or something.

One final note to add - The amount of reliability in the cars now really seems to have changed the racing.  It really used to be about driving for 23 hours focusing on not breaking the car and then sprinting for an hour.  There were moves for position on the track for most of the 1,440 minutes of racing.  It does not give the appearance of a 23 hour show leading to 60 minutes of actual racing.

Oh.  And all that said:  If you're pouring a combustible liquid into the car, I don't give a hoot about all the torque sensors and hybrid and BoP and bippity-boppity-boo that you want to talk about.  They're stopping for fuel, get off my lawn.

In reply to alfadriver :

Honestly, if diesel is faster because it never pits, then it's the better car, isn't it? 

This guy comes to mind. It not only had long stints, but it was fast and dominant.

And what was the sanctioning body's response? To punish the winner for being too fast. Like kids at the playground complaining it's not fair. 

Racing is when you build the fastest car and beat your competitors. When you build a car that fits some obscure rule set, beat everyone, and then get limited so your competitors don't have to put forth the effort or money to beat you, that's not racing, that's a show. And that's fine, but call it what it is. 

Super glad you enjoy the current form of automotive racing. I know I'm in the minority in this group, but I don't enjoy it so I generally don't watch it. Knowing the 3rd or 4th place car could have won by removing a restrictor or 400 pounds of ballast kind of takes the racing aspect out of it for me.

Imagine if the Olympics added 25 pounds to the winner of the 100m to make the race more even, or only let a competitor eat 2000 calories instead of 4000 the night before and he/she finished 2nd or 3rd. Would we still consider it a race? Would we still think the best person won? I wouldn't.  

To each their own. I just thought I would throw my .02 in the pot knowing there would be pushback. 

Enjoy your racing. 

In reply to Toyman! :

When they were winning, who even bothered to be their competition?  Especially when the rules were very much tilted towards diesels.  That Audi didn't get to a winning for because of some kind of development Audi did, it got there because the rules favored diesels, because the EU was trying to push that technology.  That specific car is a pretty bad example of "technology" winning as I see it.

IIRC, there was a french car sometimes trying, and but one year, Bently got a brief advantage- but other than that, nobody bothered.  Compare that with the number of makers making supercars trying to compete.  

I'm glad you are entertained by seeing one car win every race, with very little competition.  To each their own.

There is considerably more money spent in endurance racing now than when one or two dominated.  These rules came about specifically because nobody wanted to bother- but now the rules are so open that a big variety of motors are available to try- as was pointed out earlier.

Racing has ALWAYS been a show and advertising.  Win on Sunday, sell on Monday is a really old idea.  

I'll admit BOP is clunky and sloppy.  But at the same time, because of BOP, there are more teams, more different cars, and more people trying to win.  So there's something good about it.  Unless you think that it's bad that more people are trying to win races than in the past.  How many different kinds of engines are in the highest class now?  And different ways to deploy the hybrid part?  And different areo?  Fogive me for pointing this out, this very unique and tight rules that are being complained about have a pretty big range of chassis and engines available.

Using the term 'maximum energy' is what is keeping all these cars from being 5000 lb hybrids.

If they just allowed a certain amount of fuel, then they'd all have some big old hybrid system attached because for sure battery and charging tech have reached a point where having that in addition to the allowed amount of fuel would give a big advantage.

But only being allowed a certain amount of overall energy (no matter what form it takes) means that gas is still king.

Fuel is an input to a powertrain.  Energy is an input or an output. 

In this case they are measuring the output.  The term fits.

 

TravisTheHuman said:

Fuel is an input to a powertrain.  Energy is an input or an output. 

In this case they are measuring the output.  The term fits.
 

This is the best summary of the point the original article is trying to make.

In reply to alfadriver :

So what you are saying is your way is only the right way. 

Got it. I'll save my fingers in the future. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to alfadriver :

So what you are saying is your way is only the right way. 

Got it. I'll save my fingers in the future. 

 

 

LOL, no I didn't.  I said that it's apparently working for the competitors, far better than the old way when only a handful of teams competed.  I even said BOP is clunkly.  But I do suggest that it's better than it has been.

The old "unlimited" way had a handful of cars, and were generally won by big margins.  The current way has quite a few makers and designers and it was pretty close at the end.

I think you need to better explain how small gids with no real competition is better than it is now.  Back when having the most money was the real competition.

BA5 said:

Using the term 'maximum energy' is what is keeping all these cars from being 5000 lb hybrids.

If they just allowed a certain amount of fuel, then they'd all have some big old hybrid system attached because for sure battery and charging tech have reached a point where having that in addition to the allowed amount of fuel would give a big advantage.

But only being allowed a certain amount of overall energy (no matter what form it takes) means that gas is still king.

Care to explain how you come to all of those conclusions?  

I can't really see a path where calling it "energy" keeps the cars from being 5000lb hybrids, or why it makes sure gas is king.  And are you suggesting that the cars be able to plug in during a pit stop?  

Gas is king because it's the the most effective race fuel.

I see this as leading to more convergence since the FIA WEC has been doing this. The LM Hypercars don't have a set power limit for the electric drive, just a 500kw max combined output. So monitoring energy use rather than fuel makes sense .

Hopefully with regulation sharing that means we'll see them (Toyota & Ferrari especially) in IMSA or IMSA and FIA sharing races.

Toyman! said:

The only economy a race car should consider is the economy that produces the most laps in a given period of time. 

That is probably why I mostly don't watch any racing anymore. Speed isn't the goal unless there are a bunch of arbitrary rules to make sure everyone is equally handicapped.

For almost as long as races have been sanctioned there have been a bunch of arbitrary rules, delivered by the sanctioning body rather than the race teams, attempting to make sure everyone is equally handicapped. It only slightly predates cheating, as there had to be rules before they could be cheated. Even in the 'glory days' of the the most revered series' it was always about the economy that produces the most laps in a given time period from a given rule set. Measuring energy is just a new variation on one of the oldest principles of sanctioned racing. 

I enjoy seeing who can simply build the fastest car within a rule set as much as anybody, but that can only truly happen on a level playing field with purpose built race cars. So while BoP should not be at all necessary for purpose built race cars where the cars are all designed specifically to the rule set, the rule sets for production based race cars are necessarily written as an umbrella to cover a group of cars that were not at all designed to a (let alone the same) racing rule set. This will always inherently favor some over others. The more varied the cars, the more of a problem this becomes. So if the class is aimed at a very narrow corner of the market where the models from the few eligible manufacturers are already directly equivalent in mechanical and performance specs, then I still see trying to avoid any type of BoP there too. However, if the idea is to attract more manufacturers then a wider variety of models pretty much necessitates some type of BoP to not have it revert to a one or two make/model 'spec' series... The avoidance of which is the whole purpose of having a non-spec class in the first place.

Personally, I like seeing good racing from a wide variety of cars. So while not perfect, they do seem to be continuing to improve the BoP concept with the production based cars. Which I'd say is a good thing overall. I do like the idea of energy measurement, and some of the potential it offers as a limiting factor, flaws and all. I'd honestly like to see the idea of limiting 'energy' further expanded in a way that allows de-regulating other aspects of especially purpose built race cars.

If I need to lock this thread, just let me know. 

Rodan said:

You lost me at requiring a $60k additional cost to a race car to basically monitor fuel efficiency.

They aren't monitoring fuel efficiency.  It appears that the engines can be horribly inefficient with no penalty, because they have to pit in based on how much power/time they used.  If they used two liters or 200 liters, it doesn't matter.

I also found it interesting that by measuring energy output rather than (or in addition to) energy input, they're not giving any advantage to those who can convert the energy input the most efficiently to energy output.

It is kind of the opposite to the Group C rules in the 80s where you had to run a minimum number of laps before refueling and a set limit for the whole race.

alfadriver said:

BA5 said:

Using the term 'maximum energy' is what is keeping all these cars from being 5000 lb hybrids.

If they just allowed a certain amount of fuel, then they'd all have some big old hybrid system attached because for sure battery and charging tech have reached a point where having that in addition to the allowed amount of fuel would give a big advantage.

But only being allowed a certain amount of overall energy (no matter what form it takes) means that gas is still king.

Care to explain how you come to all of those conclusions?  

I can't really see a path where calling it "energy" keeps the cars from being 5000lb hybrids, or why it makes sure gas is king.  And are you suggesting that the cars be able to plug in during a pit stop?  

Gas is king because it's the the most effective race fuel.

Because if they said you can have X number of gallons of fuel, but didn't limit any other kind of energy, then you could have X gallons of fuel PLUS however much other type of energy you wanted.  And if everyone else is only limiting themselves to *just* X gallons of fuel, but then you also strap on a battery pack that lets your run farther, then you have a major advantage.

So by wording it as 'energy' and limiting total energy, they wind up ensuring that cars only use the most effective form of energy (which is currently gasoline).