24h Le Mans
Photo : Frédéric GAUDIN - ACO/NIKON
Regulation Changes after Spa. The original 2011 regulations were adjusted after Spa this year when the ACO had accurate ‘Race Data’ to work from. They had always planned to review the regulations after two races and they took the decision to adjust the performance between some of the cars in the same category. They took into account power, torque, aerodynamics, cornering speeds, pit stop times, fuel consumption and so on.
The decision was made to change the diameter of the refuelling hose nozzles. The petrol engined cars will be enlarged by 10mm and the diesel nozzles will be reduced by 3mm.
Next they looked at finely tuning the air restrictors for certain cars to equalise performance. If the restrictors could not be changed then additional weight would be added to the car.
So what will the impact of these seemingly quite small changes be? Looking at the fuel nozzles first . Firstly changing such a simple component is simple and inexpensive. The maximum quantity of fuel on board a diesel is 65 litres for the diesels and 75 litres for the petrol-engined cars. The number of laps between refuelling stops should now be the same for both petrol and diesel engines. But the diesels will be spending more time at their pits because the fuel flow will be slower. Overall, these adjustments will be more noticeable on the distance covered at the finish, rather than the seconds gained over a lap as we’re acting mainly on the pit stop times. It could translate into a gain of four or five laps during the Le Mans 24 Hours.”
Photo: refuelling 24 Hours of Le Mans 2011.
