r/wec Jul 01 '24

24hr Series I watched my first 24 hour race

Hey guys, I've always been interested in cars & Motorsport. My parents cut the TV subscrption in 2013 so I unfortunately didn't have any way to watch racing.

In 2018 I got into F1 (thanks to pirate streams) then stopped around 2022 because there were things I didn't like about F1. Anyways, I watched the 2023 Le Mans 24 hours replay over the past week and I was honestly impressed.

In F1 races would have died down by hour 1 but in Le Mans the racing was engaging from race start till midnight. I thought the leaders would be spread by minutes by then. Even the last hour was super interesting.

The commentary was also relatively engaging even when nothing was going on on-track. Big props to the commentators

Here's what I liked: - great racing. It's nice to see drivers respect each other when driving side by side (unlike Verdtappen in F1 2021) - good commentary. I found it odd how calm they sounded compared to crofty, but I ended up appreciating it

Here's what I disliked: - the graphics aren't as informative as F1 and they honestly look really bad - there was too much focus on hyper cars. There was great racing in the other cats but they only showed it near the end of the race when hyper car was spread out - the camera crews love to cut away at the worst time (I wanted to see the Nascar pit stop but they cut away before it started and then cut back when it was already done šŸ¤¦šŸæā€ā™‚ļø) - they never show on-board replays from crashed cars. In F1 they will show it once they know the driver is ok - why are the drivers allowed to cut corners so much and not get penalties!?

34 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

17

u/DomenicoFPS Jul 01 '24

They do show onboard replays of crashes, but usually only when another car is involved to try to figure out who is at fault. I agree with most of your points, though!

And the drivers are allowed to cut corners so much because itā€™s multiclass racing and it can get messy. If a car has to cut to avoid an incident with a slower class, why should they be penalised. Also, this is endurance racing, so drivers get tired, mistakes can be made quite a lot. Penalising them for every single corner cut or off-track would probably destroy half the competition. They do get warned, though, and will be penalised for repeat offences.

1

u/BadPronunciation Jul 01 '24

Yeah. I was just surprised at how often they cut the Daytona chicane at Lemans '23 even when there weren't any cars nearby

1

u/DomenicoFPS Jul 02 '24

Silly mistakes can happen. Thatā€™s what I like about endurance racing, the drivers donā€™t have to be absolutely perfect like in F1. Also the amount of time they gain, if any, from cutting is so minimal I donā€™t think itā€™s a big issue. Most of the time when a car cuts a corner, their minimum speed is slower than their minimum speed usually is if they took the corner correctly, so they now have more acceleration to do and therefore lose time.

2

u/BadPronunciation Jul 02 '24

i guess so. With how long these races are (and the reduced dirty air compared to F1) the mistakes have a lower impact

16

u/OlasNah Jul 01 '24

The race with the absolute best coverage is the Bathhurst 12 hours. They show the action, talk about all the cars, and have great action footage where they capture the speed and sounds of the carsā€¦ and thereā€™s nothing like how they start the race in the dark and end at sunset.

2

u/msturty Jul 01 '24

100% agree on the Bathurst 12 hours/supercars coverage. I wish every endurance series approached the broadcast the way they do.

1

u/BadPronunciation Jul 01 '24

Sounds interesting. I usually catch the rcae when it's like halfway through haha. Let me check the date so I know when it's happening

1

u/OlasNah Jul 02 '24

The 2024 one already happened but many of the previous editions are on YT in full

5

u/Rizzu_96 ByKolles Enso CLM P1.01 #4 Jul 01 '24

Last year was the first year of many new hypercars, so there was a big focus on them. This year instead we had a big focus on the hypercars, because there were a lot of them and always som sort of battle

4

u/IcarusG Jul 01 '24

Hey, Iā€™m in a similar boat. Got into F1 may 2022. And have been following it since, but this year gave Le Mans a go and yeh loved it.

Always sorta been into motorsports and cars but have never given it much of a go until recently.

I LOVE IT

1

u/blxglt Jul 01 '24

I feel like giving the graphics some leeway simply because there is just too much to cover, but there can be improvements for sure. I feel like endurance racing broadcasters expect viewers to have multiple screens open at all times, one for the main signal, one for live timings (maybe two for multiple classes) and a few more for the onboards of their favourite cars. Displaying all class positions (maybe top 5 like IMSA) plus real-time gaps would help but there's just too much to choose from sometimes, and everyone will have a different focus

1

u/blxglt Jul 01 '24

By the way I find the track map in the WEC app really useful for visualizing gaps and who's on the lead lap etc

1

u/BadPronunciation Jul 01 '24

If I was watching live I definitely would have made use of the app

1

u/figgs87 Jul 01 '24

Speaking of graphics does anyone else miss the ā€œexplodingā€ transitional graphic in a different color for each class? Idk why I even thought of that but I think they killed it off when LMH replaced LMP1 give or take a year