r/wec • u/BadPronunciation • 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 🤦🏿‍♂️) - 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!?

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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 it’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.

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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

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u/DomenicoFPS Jul 02 '24

Silly mistakes can happen. That’s what I like about endurance racing, the drivers don’t have to be absolutely perfect like in F1. Also the amount of time they gain, if any, from cutting is so minimal I don’t think it’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.

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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