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Tuesday 2 May 2017

WEC Spa (city, not a spa) and some other stuff.

Hi everyone.

I'll be writing a bit about the WEC Spa 6 Hours event that's coming up.  For those who did or didn't see Silverstone, Toyota won after having a pace advantage at a track that favors cornering speed over top speed.  That was advantage Toyota, as Porsche ran with an aerodynamic set up that favored top speed, which is desirable for a place like Le Mans, which is the big race coming up in June.

At Spa, though, the track layout tends to favor straight line speed more than cornering speeds.  So Porsche's aero set up should be better suited for this weekend's race.  Toyota will be continuing to run their high downforce set up from Silverstone, but they'll be entering a third car to Porsche's two.  Their third car will debut their full Le Mans aero package, which is believed to be similar to what Toyota ran in the WEC Prologue at Monza in early April.

Even with Audi not being there, the WEC season has proven to be entertaining with Toyota and Porsche seemingly overall evenly matched right now.  Toyota it seems have a pace advantage, while Porsche's strategy and rock solid pit stops got them a good result at Silverstone.  Toyota will need to slightly speed up their pit stops to maximize their gap to Porsche, especially as Spa should see Porsche more than likely at least on even footing.

Just for the sake of comparison, here's Spa's lay out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_de_Spa-Francorchamps

Compare to Silverstone:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverstone_Circuit

Monza:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodromo_Nazionale_Monza

And Le Mans:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_de_la_Sarthe

For a little preview of Spa, though they're not racing there this year, Audi Sport do have a couple of videos that they made that'll show what racing at Spa is like:

2013:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T59TmaATszE

2016:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2br-Hlv-fY&t=585s

Even though the bulk of this post so far has been about racing, I've been up to other things.  Namely, this weekend, I went to the bird sanctuary, and got drenched.  However, I did get to see a barn owl that normally is on display in an enclosure.  She's normally not presented on a glove, but she was this weekend.

I also went to an event held by OSU that was a musical performance.  I went there mostly to try and meet some people and I did accomplish that.  I've met some people that I've been talking to online and been having some fun doing that.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to this weekend, and maybe watching the Spa WEC round on our new TV.  That's about the only plans I have for this weekend.

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