r/wec • u/Christodej Toyota • Aug 16 '24

SuperGT/DTM End of year Super GT test times

For those who haven't seen it Kyle Larson has claimed that he is better than Max Verstappen and that Max Only drives open wheelers. I recall something about him doing the post season test in the NSX GT500. It could be 2022 and was wondering if the times were published somewhere.

0 Upvotes

42% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

-20

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

Most F1 drivers these days are pretty shit when they jump into other cars. We don't have any Jackie Stewarts these days. I always loved watching F1 stars getting beaten by rally and touring car drivers in the race of champions, and it used to be that F1 drivers would just bury their cars in the barriers at Le Mans.

As for that specific test though, it looks like they didn't actually do any hot laps and didn't put out any public numbers. It was probably more of a photo op than an actual testing thing since Verstappen and Perez showed up in a classic NSX and a new NSX.

28

u/SomewhereAggressive8 Aug 16 '24

I really don’t agree that F1 drivers are generally shit in other disciplines. A current or former F1 driver has won 8 of the last 10 Le Mans outright and 2 of the last 5 Indy 500s.

16

u/EgenulfVonHohenberg Aug 16 '24

Alonso, Hülkenberg, Kobayashi, Buemi, Giovinazzi, Hartley, Nakajima, Lotterer, Wurz, Gené, Lehto... Just going back through the list of Le Mans winners, it's hard to find a year where no former (or current, in Hulk's case) F1 driver was in the winning car.

-7

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

Alonso really was a good all-rounder and I'll give it up to him, but most of them were also-ran drivers and test drivers in F1 that weren't part of the conversation. I also will give credit to Button because he's very much in a fuck around part of his career and is just getting behind the wheel of anything he seems to think is fun.

I've long said that the greatest racing driver in the world is Sebastian Loeb, but in the eyes of most F1 fans, he just had a weird blip as an F1 test driver.

3

u/EgenulfVonHohenberg Aug 16 '24

Agree on Loeb, he's definitely one of the all-time greatest in terms of sheer skill. The man was/is fast in anything with wheels, and I really hope he gets that Dakar win sooner rather than later.

In general, rally drivers are probably the best drivers overall - most of them were great in whatever they drove. Ogier was pretty quick in an LMP2 car, and Rovanperä looked good in a GT car as well so far. Would love to see him give the Toyota LMH a shot.

As for the other aforementioned drivers - that kind of proves my point: Drivers who didn't make the cut in F1 (like Giovinazzi, Buemi or Nakajima) being ridiculously competitive in Le Mans just shows that the average or below-average F1 driver is still in the top-1% of racing drivers.

That's not an attack on Kyle Larson by the way - I'm fairly certain he could hold his own in an F1 car given the time to adapt to it, but I also think Verstappen is one of those crazy talents you could put in virtually any car and he'd be fast. When he finally has enough of F1 (soon), I think we'll see a lot of that.

-7

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

I'll never be a believer that F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport. It's a weird motorsport that almost requires lab perfect conditions and drivers to be grown in labs.

Really I think my point is that these guys you mentioned aren't F1 drivers who are in other fields of motorsport. They are sports car and touring car drivers who had a blip in F1.

As for Loeb, I'm glad I met another Loeb fan here. I'm also hoping he gets that Dakar win. I just like watching him do backflips on podiums.

As for Loeb and Ogier, this kind of makes me a little sad for Bourdais. He's doing a lot of great driving and he's got talent, but he's the only Frenchman named Seb not winning.

1

u/Competitive-Ad-498 Aug 16 '24

Alonso, Hülkenberg, Kobayashi, Buemi, Giovinazzi, Hartley, Nakajima, Lotterer, Wurz, Gené, Lehto... Just going back through the list of Le Mans winners

Alonso really was a good all-rounder and I'll give it up to him, but most of them were also-ran drivers and test drivers in F1 that weren't part of the conversation.

So the lesser F1 drivers are not part of the conversation?

0

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

In regard to F1, yeah.

Lotterer is one of the sportscar racing greats, but he had one F1 start for Caterham, an also-ran team.

Buemi is basically one of the biggest names for Formula E and is great in sports car racing, but he only ever gotten 29 points in F1.

Nakajima drove for the Toyota F1 effort, which is widely considered the most expensive failure in motorsports. He's great in SuperGT and endurance series though.

I'm not going to run through all of them, but all of them either had a blip of a career in F1 or wouldn't be missed if they were forgotten. These aren't F1 drivers in other series. These are sports car and touring car drivers who showed up for a bit in F1.

2

u/Competitive-Ad-498 Aug 16 '24

Buemi. In what car did he drive? Toro Rosso. Not a front running car. But he was still a Formula 1 driver.

I'm not going through all of them, but only a very few had a blip of a career in F1.

Only Lotterer had less than one season. The others had one or more seasons in F1.

1

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

I think it was 2 seasons with Toro Rosso for Buemi. But are we really going to say his top thing he's ever done is show up to F1 for 2 minutes when he's won Le Mans 4 times and was the Formula E champ for the 15-16 season?

Don't put F1 on that high of a pedestal. This is the defending billionaires of motorsports.

-1

u/Competitive-Ad-498 Aug 16 '24

I don't think that there is any use in trying to debate with you, when you come with these statements:

But are we really going to say his top thing he's ever done is show up to F1 for 2 minutes

Don't put F1 on that high of a pedestal. This is the defending billionaires of motorsports.

It is clear you hate F1. And that is fine. But don't bother us with that. I never considered American racing that much of a sport. Mostly it is just entertainment at first. And then when it is needed, they add a sports element to it.

1

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

Yeah, we definitely are in an immovable object unstoppable force moment here.

8

u/rolfrbdk Aug 16 '24

The hate for current F1 and F1 drivers in general seen especially around r/wec is pathetic

1

u/MrGazoo Toyota Aug 16 '24

Agree, and not just WEC, it's rampant in indycar other communities as well. It comes across as a jealousy of how popular F1 is compared to other series so therefore it's not good. F1 is and has always been the pinnacle of motorsport and is currently in a well deserved boom period where there are some truly incredible drivers and teams and the racing is absolute class. People need to realize they can either enjoy it as well as their favourite series or if they don't enjoy it then don't watch it if it's not your thing. But people would be hard pressed to find an objective reason for the series to not be good atm. People get way too tribal on their personal favorite series.

Not saying there are terrible fans on the F1 side as well tho. It works both ways.

1

u/rolfrbdk Aug 17 '24

Often I bet it's just down to "popular thing bad". I think F1 is one of the least interesting racing series to watch on average, but when it's occasionally got a good race, it's REALLY good. But the whole discarding the skills of especially the current crop of drivers as if they aren't worth a fuck in anything but their series is just embarassingly dumb.

-8

u/bangbangracer Aug 16 '24

I've been hating F1 off and on since the 90's when F1 and Indy/Cart had their weird rivalry.

7

u/rolfrbdk Aug 16 '24

Doesn't make it any less pathetic

2

u/No-Balance-9090 Aug 17 '24

the fact that you bother to hate a sport at all is quite pathetic