Le Mans 2019

[Jonny69]

Been a while since I last logged on. I can’t see a thread for this year’s Le Mans 24 hrs which is this weekend. I’ll just kick off a thread to get things going and start posting resources for watching at home.

Uk times:

Free practice Wednesday 15:45 to 19:30
Q1 20:50 to 23:15

Q2 Thursday 17:50 to 20:50
Q3 20:50 to 23:15

Race Saturday 13:00 until finish


Coverage will be on Eurosport and through the FIA WEC app

Highest quality 24 hr commentary is through Radio Le Mans broadcast online. It’s usually best to watch one of the race feeds with the sound muted and Radio Le Mans playing over the top.

Will add links as I find them.

Main site: http://www.24h-lemans.com/en/

Background and entry list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_24_Hours_of_Le_Mans

Spotters Guide (to ID car entry numbers, liveries etc): http://www.spotterguides.com/portfolio/19_lm/

Best Le Mans commentary: listen live online, Radio Le Mans: http://www.radiolemans.co/

Watch online (not free to watch in the UK):

FIA site and app: https://www.fiawec.com/en/live (£9 for race weekend with what look like excellent resources)

Eurosport and Eurosport Player. Just a warning, I got the 7 day free trial of Eurosport Player last year and the feed was terrible and cut off every hour or something. When I paid for it a few years ago it was a bandwidth hog. Both times I’ve ended up using an illegal feed instead, to either get rid of the stuttering or whatever the other reasons were that I’ve forgotten about. The repetitive adverts become UNBEARABLE as well. I’m not sure I can recommend it.

MotorTrend On Demand (they do Roadkill etc on subscription) have a 14 day free trial running and are broadcasting the race. American viewers overnight said quali was included and looks like race won’t be blocked for the trial. Download the app and sign up; may also be broadcast direct on their website, though still behind the paywall. Don’t forget to cancel the trial...

There is always a feed on Race Department. I’m still not sure if this is legal or hooky, but they host it every year: https://www.racedepartment.com/

Most of the teams broadcast live onboards from their cars for free for the full 24 hrs and are well worth a look. Easiest ones to find are Porsche and Corvette. I’ll post some links if I have time to find them.

 

[GravyMonster]

Really looking forward to this year. Practice and qualifying is going to be interesting as it's looking like it's going to be wet up until Friday, although the race itself should be dry.

 

[Jonny69]

I have to hold my hand up and admit I haven’t been able to follow any of the WEC or ELMS this year, so Le Mans is going to be a stand-alone race for me.

Looks like we’ve got 5 teams in LMP1 - this is a good number. Toyota are continuing to campaign on their own with a hybrid car and the other 4 teams are privateers with conventional non-hybrids. There’s BOP/EOT thing in LMP1, but I’m not sure how well it’s working to balance things between the technologies, so I t’ll probably be an outright win for Toyota and hopefully we’ll have a proper race with the others.

20 cars in LMP2. LMP2 has been big for the last couple of years. They’re all quite closely matched, very fast and mostly reliable, so they’ll be a race worth watching. An LMP2 car almost took the outright win either last year or the year before!

GT is always a good race so I don’t need to say too much about that. Last year there was a bit of a mismatch between Aston and Porsche due to some unfair BOP rules. There’s a new Porsche this year I think (edit 1: yes, factory team). BMW I think pulled out (edit 2: no, not this year). Edit 3: Ford are still campaigning the GT. I need to look at GT a bit more closely to check what’s going on - this is just stuff I’ve skimmed past on Mulsanne’s Corner.

Edit 4: there is no Garage 56 team this year. I think there was one and it was going to be an all-electric car backed by Panoz, but I think I read it fell through after Don Panoz died.

 

[Jonny69]

Factory Porsche team, new 911 RSR: https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/201...est-fia-wec-super-season-gt-team-911-rsr.html

 

[Flibster]

I see that Rebellion have gone for a subtle paint job this year. They may have some trouble being seen at night...



Looked like a pretty big accident for the Dempsey Proton Porsche #99 earlier. Debris all over the track from a frontal impact. Krohn reportedly ok. Red flagged for about 45 minutes.

 

[SoliD]

Didn't even realise it was on this week. Will do my usual turning it on and watching and keeping an eye on what's going on. Hopefully the weather will spice it up a bit this year.

 

[Zirax]

Good to see this pop up. The last couple of years I have used the FIA app on the Ipad and the feed on the tv. It has come on a long way and the picture quality is much better. When they first started the picture suffered a lot and the feed cut out. It does beat the TV coverage as it does not have adverts.

If the weather remains changeable then it will be an interesting race.

 

[Flibster]

Dempsey Proton Porsche #99 has chassis damage after it's crash this afternoon. They have a spare chassis, but at the moment they don't know if they're going to build it up for the #99 car or withdraw from the race.

Given that one of their other cars was ~2seconds ahead of the next GTEAm, i'd be tempted to leave it in case one of the other cars smooshes it.

 

[Flibster]

#31 LMP2 just got t-boned while recovering from a spin by the #7 Toyota

Launched the #7 into the air and had pretty heavy damage on the front of both cars.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1138917928504573957

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1138918376254910464

Also they are both currently the pole LMP1 and LMP2 cars...
Just realised, that is Anthony Davidson's car, and it's taken out one of his paymasters cars... Oops.

 

[Flibster]

Both the #7 and #31 are back out on track....

 

[Jonny69]

Have purchased the £9 FIA WEC option. App is difficult to navigate but I feel like this is better than Eurosport.

1 hour of quali left and red flag...

 

[Jonny69]

Senna’s car sounded like engine and gearbox were consuming themselves.

 

[Flibster]

Seems like Rebellion have issues. Both the Rebellion cars were smoking and leading fluid at various points today.

 

[Jonny69]

Motor Trend (they do Roadkill etc on subscription) have a free trial running and are broadcasting the race. American viewers overnight said quali was included. Don’t forget to cancel the trial. I’ll add this to the OP.

 

[pacegod]

Have purchased the £9 FIA WEC option. App is difficult to navigate but I feel like this is better than Eurosport.

1 hour of quali left and red flag...

Does this work on a fire stick?

 

[Jonny69]

Does this work on a fire stick?

Can’t say, sorry. I’m casting it to the TV from iPhone to Chromecast.

I think there were some additional (legit) streams on fire sticks, because I think you have access to some TV channels online that aren’t geo blocked.

 

[Zirax]

With the FIA feed, I'll stream laptop -> TV. With the ipad app monitoring the timings.

 

[Jonny69]

I can’t work out what’s being broadcast on Radio Le Mans. They have three channels now and all of them have just been re-runs whenever I’ve tuned in, not the usual pre-Le Mans chat the week before the race. I can’t tell if I’m doing something wrong or if they’ve just cut their coverage right back.

 

[Zirax]

I can’t work out what’s being broadcast on Radio Le Mans. They have three channels now and all of them have just been re-runs whenever I’ve tuned in, not the usual pre-Le Mans chat the week before the race. I can’t tell if I’m doing something wrong or if they’ve just cut their coverage right back.

Just tuned in and that is weird. Repeats on channel's. But to be fair it is the concert thing tonight.

I'll try #1 in the morning and hope that is the right one.

 

[JRS]

Watching the build-up on MToD. GT40 parading around. Ver' nice