Of course the [piston] engines are reliable.
The minimum car weight combined with a combustion air
restrictor leads to a lightly stressed engine.

Take away the air restrictor and go back to a displacement limit
and see what happens to [piston] engine reliability.

The P1 class is a joke. It highly favors diesel engines to an extraordinary
degree.  Without the black smoke filters you would choke everybody
watching the race. Go to a tractor pull sometime and see what
it looks like without smoke filters. God know what the NOX is like.

Quit insulting people's intelligence with this stupid "race".

Paul Lamar

I remember watching a Acura LMP1 documentary on Speed a few weeks ago and
the team manager (I think) asked the team engineers if their gas engine
could beat the diesels. They said no.
On that note, correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't their a rumor about Audi
going throught transmissions when they first introduced the R10 because of
the large torque numbers?
I never really liked the prototype classes. It's hard to really relate to
them when compared to the GT classes. Shame that most of the TV coverage is
LMP focused.
Vlad


They have similar silly rules equalizing the cars in the GT classes.

Last year Henri Pescarolo was a very vocal critic of the diesel
overwhelming advantage. This year he was pacified by being handed a
Peugeot diesel car to race. If it were me I would have told then
to stuff their stupid "race". Henri Pescarolo must be addicted to
Lemans.

He is also racing a so called Mazda powered P2 car but it is not a
rotary. Mazda hired a race car engine builder
in the UK to build an out and out turbo 4 cylinder race car engine.
Those are the engines being used in the P2 class by several teams.
The Pescarolo team is probably running as many as  one third of the
prototype cars that are in the race.

I know nothing about the Audi transmissions.

----------------------------------------------
A Mazda 4 cylinder turbo racing piston engine finished 3rd because a Porsche which had
many laps on it inexplicably crashed in the last hour. Another racing
engine called the Judd would have been 3rd and beaten the Mazda. Mazda have had a lot
trouble with this engine with little success so far. They are up against some heavy
hitters in the piston engine field world wide like Porsche and several other
of the world largest automotive companies.
These companies have ten times the engine R&D budget Mazda has.

http://www.gomazdaracing.com/car-and-engine/

"MAZDASPEED engineers in the U.S. and Japan, in conjunction with U.K. based
Advanced Engine Research Ltd (AER), will debut an all-new MZR-R prototype
engine at the 2007 12 Hours of Sebring. The new engine, a clean sheet design,
is a turbocharged 2.0 liter in-line four cylinder. The performance goals for
the engine are 500hp and 400 lb-ft, with the durability to succeed in such
grueling races as the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans.
The engineering team is working to incorporate the production-based Mazda
been non-stop in preparation for the season-opener at Sebring."

Mazda made their reputation by racing the rotary engine. Not once
during the 2009 24 hour race did I hear the announcers mention the rotary
engine. They did mention that Jakie Icx won the race for Mazda over all but
they did not mention the fact he was driving a four rotor. The only
Japanese car maker to ever win Lemans outright. I would like to know
why. Perhaps John Doonan can it explain it to us when he gets back
from France.

This fact is why the rotary is far superior to any piston engine in heavy
duty use like racing:

"(1) Every moving part, including the timing mechanism, should
make a rotating motion. A mechanism having a reciprocating
inertia will increase mechanical noise and vibration, and will
work against high speed and high revolution.  [In addition
mechanisms that reciprocate generate reversing loads. Reversing
loads lead to reversing stresses. Reversing stresses lead to
metal fatigue and limited life. The Wankel rotary engine has no
reversing stresses therefor the life of the major parts such as the
eccentric shaft and rotor are unlimited unlike, crankshafts, connecting
rods, pistons and poppet valves. Paul Lamar] <<<< Accordingly, structures
that require intake and exhaust valves and mechanisms using the rotors
oscillatory motion are not desirable."

If Mazda had put the money they put into developing the turbo 4 cylinder racing
engine into a turbo compound version of the rotary it would have lower fuel
burn than a diesel engine without adding any of the disadvantages of the diesel
like weight, cost and smoke.

Paul Lamar


Paul Lamar Wrote --

If Mazda had put the money they put into developing the turbo 4 cylinder
racing engine into a turbo compound version of the rotary it would have
lower fuel burn than a diesel engine without adding any of the
disadvantages of the diesel like weight, cost and smoke.

Are Rotary's banned from Lemans? I thought I read that a long while back on
this list.

Cheers,
Brian
___________

Brian Feeney
DreamSpace Group

I am not sure now but it would not surprise me one bit if they were.
The rules are changed each year.

It appears to be a sin to mention them in the same context :)
You might as well try to run a rocket powered car :)

Paul Lamar