Re: Proud Of Ford Winning LeMans Today!
I confess I know nothing about racing but I thought this was interesting, and the response from someone even more interesting after some anti Ford pro Ferrari posts appeared.
Both the winning and runner-up cars in the GTE Pro division of the 24 Hours of Le Mans were both penalised post-race, after the Chip Ganassi Team USA and Risi Competizione teams protested each other.
The winning #68 Ford GT – driven by Dirk Muller, Joey Hand and Sebastien Bourdais – was given a 50s penalty after Risi alleged it had been speeding in a slow zone. Additionally, stewards also found that the #68’s wheel speed sensors were not working properly – and a further 20s penalty was added.
This would have handed the victory for the #82 Ferrari, driven by Giancarlo Fisichella, Toni Vilander and Mateo Malucelli.
Ganassi, meantime, had protested the Ferrari as one of its leader light panels was not working. The car had been shown a black and orange warning flag in the closing stages of the race to have this rectified, but failed to pit as instructed.
Stewards also gave this car a 20s penalty ¬– and a EUR5,000 fine.
The re-issued final result means that the #68 Ford GT wins the class by 10.2s from the #82 Ferrari.
The #69 Ford, which finished third, closes to just 4.6s behind the #82Ferrari. The top three cars were covered by 15s after 24 hours of racing.
The decision upholds Ford’s class victory 50 years on from its first Le Mans win, when it beat Ferrari for overall honours in 1966.
Biff Stenhouse14 hours ago
Contrived post-race hogwash! #82 Risi Competizione 20 seconds & $5K penalty after evading a repair that was seemingly identical to that which took #67 Ford +/- 15 minutes & cost them 3 laps? What a crock! This penalty should have been more like 20 minutes, NOT seconds! In Nascar, ignoring race control gets your scoring card pulled, yet WEC essentially screws-over the compliant team, then rewards & promotes the lawless cheaters? Nice precedent WEC!
Since the #69 Ford was only 25 seconds behind #82 & the #67 was only about 5 mins behind, after conducting the identical mandatory repair the #82 evaded... This goes as a FORD 1 - 2 - 3 in my books! No question! Thanks & congrats to Ford Performance, Chip Ganassi Racing Teams, Multimatic Motorsports & Roush Yates Engines on this epic slice of FoMoCo history!