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The pole sitter was this factory works Audi R8 LMS car. There were hundreds of Falken tire umbrella girls or I guess flag girls. Falken was a major sponsor of the event.
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Manthey Racing’s number 2 car was the Haribo gummy bear car in GT3 class.
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This car is a Porsche RSR. It’s amazing, you can simply buy these cars, they are street legal in Europe and race them with just prep. You could race one of these in ALMS! The 911 platform is so developed and these cars are so awesome. In the US, you could get a GT3 cup car and option it out to be pretty close to one of these. You can actually buy the RSR and race it in ALMS GT2. Even the mighty RSR is not that different from an off the shelf GT3. We came away from the event with a new found respect for Porsche. A GTR would probably shit the bed after a sprint race around the ring, not to mention an endurance event.
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The amazing Porsche hybrid. I believe this is the first time that a Hybrid car has been raced in a major international event. There was a lot of buzz and speculation in the media about this car. Basically it uses a KERS system nearly identical to the one Williams used in F1 in 2009 except the size of the energy storage flywheel is doubled. It has programed modes to provide more fuel economy or around 120 more hp for up to 8 seconds via electric motors that drive the front wheels. The system adds around 150 lbs of weight to the car. The plan was to use the KERS system to save fuel to gain one extra lap for every fuel stop. Manthey was helping run it but there were plenty of Porsche engineers scurrying around and people were being kept away from it in the garages. The car was very fast and competitive until the gearbox failed just 2 hours before the end of the race!
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Boobies on a race car, I love it. Only in Europe. This car had a naked Asian chick on one side and a white chick on the other. Jeff prefers this side.
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Manthey racing’s #1 car was this Porsche RSR. It was favored to win. Manthey had won the race for the last 4 years straight.
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The works BMW’s were LMS spec, think of ALMS without the A for American. These cars were identical to the ones we featured last month.
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An LMS Audi R8 is being pushed into position. I was amazed with European fans. In the crush, they would get out of the way nice and smoothly. In America fans mill around like dumb cows and look incredulous when you rev or try to get them to move out of the way. If the public was allowed on pre-grid back home a lot of people would get hurt.
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The BMW M Coupe was pretty impressive as well. We have more pictures of this car later.
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Lexus had two of their LFA exotic cars racing. I believe they were built to LMS spec.
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More of the Lexus LFA.
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The Lexus team had a lot of technicians and staff to service the car.
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The Lexus team had an unusual umbrella girl, a Cougar! I guess she fits the Lexus demographic better.
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The lone American car was this Corvette Z06. Oh wait, there were a couple Vipers too come to think of it…
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Eri and Randyl were the hottest spokesmodels at the whole event, the USA’s best exports.
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| Hankook tires was racing this Ferrari F430 LMS car. |
