THE OTHER QUARTER OF BATTLE - 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans recap (part 2)

As the dawn came, one rule to come in mind is that even the worst runner of the race would never give up until the race finished. In this case, the #23 Nissan, as pictured, driven by Oliver Pla, Jann Mardenborough and Max Chilton was this. (Image: Club Nissan Elite)

Previously, the sixteen hours of 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans were filled by GTEs engulfed in flames, LMP2s spinning around, and certain LMP1s having too much problem. But at the same time, the battles within these different classes were all burning hard; you have a three-way bout between works efforts of Corvette, Aston Martin and Ferrari in the GTE-Pro category, then there were GTE-Am cars bopping their buns rear bumpers off for survival, LMP2 cars trying to stop KCMG's dominant run, and, of course, the cat-and-mouse duel between Audi and Porsche for the Le Mans wins this year, which will determine either Audi will continue its dominance or that Porsche broke its streak in its own home, avenging their last year's loss.

It has been one sleep and one breakfast for the past sixteen hours racing, now here goes the recap for the other eight which took place in a time where the moment was right: lunch.

THE FINEST SPORTSCAR SUPREMACY - 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans recap (part 1)

(Image: Auto Express)

The Sportscar battle of supremacy has come again! 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans has delivered some of the notable actions, which included crazy overtakes, some get togethers, and other kinds of miracles. This year marks the French classic's 83rd edition, and is the first time we see the absence of an innovative machine in the Garage 56 and Tom Kristensen. Also for this year, the crop of talents include the three NISMO GT-R LMs, SMP BR01s, Gibson 015Ss, Oreca 05s, and a Riley Viper as some of the new names, and for the drivers, we have quite a crop of F1 drivers, active and former, including Nico Hulkenberg, who drove the #19 Porsche 919 Hybrid alongside Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy. There were so many headliners for this year's race, which includes Audi's bid to strengthen its Le Mans dominance amidst Porsche's threatening FIA WEC performance, Toyota's awakening, and the eventual victor of both GTE categories, Pro and Am.

This post is my most special post for the past three years in writing this stuff. The first year was kind of trainwreck even though it was posted right after the race ended, and the second was really long overdue due to final test affairs despite the article being a proper recap. This year, unfortunately, was also long overdue due to finals, but fret not though, it's not a total trainwreck time-wise like the second though. Also, this doesn't hide the fact that this year is the first year I live and breathe Le Mans without watching it via cable as I lost my subscription to all sports channels, though in exchange I have Radio Le Mans, some live video streams, FIA WEC Official Live Timing, Motorsport.com's live text feed and of course Twitter so nothing is lost even though I have to face the fact that my internet doesn't stream live videos very well with lags a plenty. This is also the first time I spent ALMOST my whole life listening to RLM, either using my main internet or my smartphone internet, sans the net café visit where I spent the last 30 minutes of the race. And then I realized that my cable no longer has Eurosport so cue the Carrie Mathison cry face, NOT!

Due to how TL;DR this recap is, I split this into two parts: this part will cover the race start to the sixteenth hour, while the rest will be covered in part two, along with some "extra spice" at the end of the part 2 post.

Endurance Racing and Turbo Sliders

While the work for my new site's look is still in progress, the new season of FIA World Endurance Championship has just kickstarted with the 6 Hours of Silverstone race with the #7 Audi driven by Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer won the race, but the six-hour race also did deliver its set of actions including the battle between the race-winning Audi and #18 Porsche mid-race. Tension rised in other classes too as position fights took place many times especially in the GTE classes. The downside however was the #77 GTE-Am Porsche to which I had to address as "Team Dempsey" for that matter as the team didn't seem to get their pace in the race. Technical-wise, John Hindhaugh pointed out that, in LMP1, the Audi tops the "twisties" (read: tight turns) while the Porsche aces the straights.

Sometime in the middle of the race I left the Twitter-verse for awhile for what I can call as "The Experiment". The experiment in question was replicating 6 Hours of Silverstone race in Turbo Sliders, using the new F1 Speed League mod featuring cars from FIA WEC, 24 Hours of Le Mans and European Le Mans, among others, which I showed on Twitter as the race was still going on. Of course, the track is also F1SL-made, and, you guess it, it is indeed F1SL's Silverstone I raced. Despite the execution, I have prepared the AI lines long before this experiment is started, but with only the AI lines, cars and track required to run the experiment, one question prevailed: Is it enough to replicate the said race?

March is (Always) Madness!

Throughout March, I have been made busy with several activities that put my blogging activity here on hiatus, aside from college assignments and stuffs. The first one is Fandom March Madness which is the March Madness-style tournament with television and movie characters, exclusive on LiveJournal (note the "Steel Cage" in its name), and the second one is the Fall/Winter 2015 Fashion Week. Okay, so I can sense your questions why I had to take a look at such a very seemingly-unimportant thing that is fashion week, to the point that I sweated myself only to count how many shows a model has done, but all I know is that the March Madness atmosphere was there all along, not just merely because the last weeks of the Fashion Week coincide with FMM, with so many close races in every moment as exciting as Bathurst 12 Hour! If you will, you can check both actions of the FMM and Fashion Week on my LiveJournal blog!

However, as much as I enjoy all these "March Madness" stuffs this month, I always remember that I still have this blog and that I still have a site to take care of, plus some contents for God-knows games I play. Looking back, all these activities cost me very much of my blogging activity as I spent my days updating things on Twitter and via Excel, especially those related to fashion week. As a result, my 2015 Bathurst 12 Hour blog post was really late, but it was also because I was at loss at what to post. Remember that I tried to write a Nissan-themed post in light of Nismo's Bathurst 12 Hour victory and its GT-R LM unveiling in the Superbowl, but at the last minute, I ditched it and go back to square one for the B12hr post. In the end, this post entails the updates I had throughout my AWOL due to the March Madness.