,
The race viewing was held in the Bruce Meyer Family Gallery which was holding the Ferrari exhibit. Talk about a stunning collection. It’s a MUST see. If you live in LA or visiting LA, do it now.
It just so happened that when I walked by the screen showing the race, a Ferrari 488 GT car got taken out by a poorly driven LMP2 class car. That is the challenge of Le Mans, the speed differential between all the classes of cars and multiple battles occurring.
This 1958 Ferrari 250 TR Spyder was the show stopper for me. I stared at it for quite a while. What really caught my attention was the attention to aerodynamics and thermal management on a car from almost seventy years ago.
Check out the fins on the drum brake casing for cooling. Yeah, drum brakes. You can see this airflow tunnel and how the bodywork was carved out behind the front wheel to provide an escape path.
Like I said, there was quite an amazing collection of vehicles surrounding the race viewing area. A 1963 250 GTO was positioned front and center. Niki Lauda’s 1976 F1 car is off on the right with Michael Schumacher’s 2006 just behind.
There’s a lot of fascinating stuff going on at the rear of Niki Lauda’s car. The rear brakes are mounted inboard next to the diff, and they are cooled by the black ducts next to them which grab air from the upper surface of the bodywork. The exhaust headers are ceramic coated, and there’s nothing in the way of a diffuser. There’s nothing in the way of rear bodywork to reduce aero drag. The rear sway bar is nearly in the airflow! Check out how short the bodies are on the rear dampers. There are many more cool details that you’ll just have to see in person yourself.
