Petit LeMans

[Motor Sport Visions Photography]

In a message dated 10/3/2000 james accordino <ssgacc at yahoo.com> writes:

<< How about the luminescent side numerals that appear to
be lit at night?  That threw one announcer a curve on
Speedvisions coverage.
But my personal favorite is the "quickchange" rearend,
where they can change the entire transaxle and rear
suspension as a clip with an overhead gantry system. 
They changed TWO rearends at Lemans faster than BMW
was able to repair their rear wing at Road Atlanta. 
If others are unwilling or unable to match their
innovations, they are destined to fail. >>

Much as I would love to give Audi full credit for these inovations, one
must also include Joest racing who was an excellent choice by Audi to
run this team. I understand that there is some very serious competition
between the two cars as well where the #77 is the "Joest car" and the
#78 is the "Audi car" which could help make things a little more
interesting as the two go running off into the ALMS sunset (which also
explains why McNish was so upset watching his leading #77 block the
Panoz at the end of PLM).

I too thought that was funny when the speedvision announcer had to be
corrected for describing the number illumination as being like a
"license plate light" or something.

As far as BMW encountering difficulty in replacing the rear wing, that
was poorly commentated on by Speedvision when they made that comparison.
That was accident damage and it should be noted that the #78 Audi also
suffered from accident damage that was not repairable quickly...and in
fact they had to run for several hours to the finish with ~10% reduction
in total downforce as a result of not being able to replace the damaged
rear diffuser (which is why it was close for second at the end). The
Joest team simply knows how to win endurance races, Audi picked the best
and it was not a hard choice.

(Here's a shot of the now famous "cherry picker"
http://motorsportvisions.com/spalms00/pages/sp00_023.htm)
 
Mike Veglia
Motor Sport Visions Photography
http://www.motorsportvisions.com