Alonso's quest for the Triple Crown

Will be a nice story.

 

They're moving an entire race weekend to accommodate Alonso!!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/43009816

WTF!?

 

It's a Toyota owned track and he's a Toyota driver, which helps make sense of why, even if you ignore the benefit to ticket sales of having realistically "the world's most popular driver" at your race.

Toyota wanted it moved as it suits them on and off the track, that the series caved is a bit of a concern though.

 

$$$

 

Congrats Alonso winning his debut race at the 6 hours of spa. Finally some success

 

LMP1 looked pretty terrible as a category, to be honest. Absolutely no competition for the Toyota's and I'm pretty sure they gave team orders not to battle each other as well.

 

Towards the end they did.

Also the gearbox on the Toyota was badly overheating and that's only after 6 hours.

 

I did enjoy Alonos complaints about the other LMP1 cars being too fast and it wasn't fair on Toyota.

 

Congrats to Alonso for winning the le man 24! I know it wasn't hard as they were only racing against the sister car in effect but in a 24 hour race anything can happen... Button

 

Time for him to move to Indy full-time now.

 

Good job this wasn't an 'undeserved' trophy.............

Oh wait, all they had to do was finish.


A win is a win, and Le Mans win is something special, however without Audi, Porsche etc in LMP1 it was only ever going to be a mechanical issue or crash that was going to defeat the #8 Toyota.

 

I'm not sure how he would get on. I think he may become a bit of a Mansell. i.e. great 1st season, but then whinge his way out of popularity quite quickly. I don't think he'd take too well to losing races because of safety cars, alternative strategies etc that do seem to rob people of deserving victories at some races when they were otherwise head and shoulders ahead of everyone else.

I don't think his speed would be in doubt against most of the Indycar crop.

 

Baaah. Mansell's second season was basically halted by the three car Penske team train. Those b'stards!

I hear what you're saying about small things potentially robbing him of wins here and there, especially on ovals, but that can work in his favor too. Swings and roundabouts and all that. Plus he'd be in with a chance of winning every race he competes in, unlike his position now where he has absolutely zero chance.

 

Wonder if Alonso will get a Penske special for his next attempt at Indy 500 like they turned up with in 1994!?

One-off Merc pushrod, engine, what pushrod engine? Oh, the 1000bhp one.............

 

As far as the question of Fernando deserving it goes. He, Buemi and Nakajima were clearly the faster Toyota drivers, so i guess he deserves it as much as say Hamilton deserves his 2014 and 2015 titles.

The WEC really does seem a little lost at the moment though. What are they even trying to achieve with these BoP regulations? Either make it a Engineering competition like F1 and accept dominance occasionally, or balance the cars to ensure close racing. This half and half measure where they try and make the Non-Hybrids closer, but still nowhere near competitive surely pleases nobody? Not to mention they remove all strategy by doing it. I mean one of the Toyotas got a penalty for doing 12 consecutive laps, in an endurance race... Hopefully the next era they are planning will attract some competition, but its a shame if it can be fixed whilst preserving the current prototype shape and pace.

Jenson's race was as unpredictable as ever. Will the car be A) too slow, B) too on fire, or C) too slow and then on fire? You never can tell.

 

WEC Has been a one team series for a long time even with multiple manufacturers. Its like what F1 is turning into.

 

Maybe true, but Hamilton didn't talk about having 'underserved' trophies.

Toyota had no competition in its class. F1 has10 teams all racing to the same regulations, LMP1 just had Toyota and a privateer effort in Rebellion. That was it.

History will show that he won it, and congratulations to him of course, but there was no competition for them at all. Surely he would get more pride if they had genuinely beaten some rivals who were at least their equal, rather than the only other team in LMP! by 11 laps?

If he hadn't come out with all this 'underserved trophies' nonsense, I would be congratulating him a lot more.

 

Yes, effectively the privateers in both series don't stand a chance against the works teams.

 

It was a stupid comment i agree. Unfortunately Fernando's irrational hatred of Vettel gets the better of him fairly often.

Toyota say outpacing a Porsche by miles is still pretty different to what we have right now though. If the Rebellion cars did manage to get within half a second of Toyota they'd get a penalty for lying about how quick they could go... which hardly seems like racing to me.

Plenty of series use ballast and the like to contrive good racing, WEC right now is contriving boredom. If it's going to be a procession anyway, at least let them off the hook so we can marvel at what the cars can do, or allow for an interesting strategic battle in LMP1.5

 

This format is being ditched by 2020 anyway, so only one more season in which drivers can get an easy win with Toyota.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www..../le-mans-new-rules-hypercar-2020-1046182/amp/

That's not to say Alonso and his teammates did nothing to earn their win, but it's a shame there's no real competition.