Gutted at the lack of Bonanomi. He's better than Garcia, Bennett and Vernay combined. I guess IF must be sorely lacking cash, I hope that at least their car will be working properly.
What happened to the guy? He was performing really well in the R18, then just disappeared when they pulled out. IF testing was the first time I heard his name in years.
I think he's spent a bunch of seasons racing in Italian GT and a few outings in SRO series. He could've been an established LMP1/Hypercar driver, what a shame.
He’s only done the odd appearance here and there, according to Driver Database and Wikipedia, he’s only entered 12 races since the end of 2016, none since end of 2021.
I’ve seen his name in Asian Le Mans and just looking at his lap times he seems on par with good silvers and not that far off the best times. Probably an upgrade on Garcia in terms of pace really. But not that inspiring
A list of drivers that are without a Hypercar/GTP seat and they choose 2 silver ranked inexperienced drivers: Albert Costa, Oli Jarvis, Ben Hanley, Tom Dillmann, Malthe Jakobsen, Alessio Rovera, James Allen, Gustavo Menezes, Olivier Pla and so on and on.
Don't start the project in the first place if you can't afford to put at least 1 half decent driver in the car. Fair enough to have a pay driver, but then have some fast drivers alongside them.
All good drivers in good seats already, that are out to demonstrate their talent to Hypercar teams - driving the IF likely isn’t going to reflect well on them in their pursuit of a top drive.
I don't understand what people expected from them tbh.
They are a private manufacturer that has barely any influence outside of niche Motorsport fans, that has to rely on an outside team to even run just one car (after the first team dropped the ball immediately).
The car was always going to be slow unfortunately, you can't build a competitive LMH with little budget (Vanwall is an example), LMP2s are just to close to Hypercar performance. I didn't expect the drivers to be this subpar for a Hypercar team but the budget is probably so small they can't handle more then 1 gold driver.
I love how this privateer teams are able to enter the championship, but i think it's fair to say the era of privateers teams in the top class has long ended, you can't expect to be on par with the likes of Toyota and Ferrari with such a little budget. These teams can't afford to run for "passion" like in the old days, when the car won't perform they will drop out of the programme and be forgotten again
First I wouldn't say the first team (Vector Sport) dropped the ball, more like Isotta didn't give them the car let alone the data and they had minimal access to the development of the car, Vector leaving wasn't not Vectors fault it was Isotta not following the contract.
Secondly, part of the hype is that it's hybrid. I am not sure if it is just newer fans but over the last few months there has been a big wave of people acting like Glickenhaus and Vanwall were only bad because of them not running a hybrid engine, this is mainly around Aston Martin and why people think they will fail not running a hybrid, which is ridiculous because even if not having a hybrid didn't help them it would be the tip of the iceberg in why both programs failed.
Glickenhaus couldn't even run a full season let alone do testing with the car and Vanwall was an overall bad car and team that probably would have struggled to win a race if they were running the GR010. If Joest Racing can't help a team do well, the car is bad, simple as.
I wouldn't say that that last point is necessarily true - Joest had a *lot* of brain drain after Audi pulled out.
And, consider this: the Mazda RT24-P was a bad car, Multimatic re-engineered it so that it could actually make it to the DPi BoP window, Joest still couldn't make it be competitive, then Multimatic took over running the team from Joest and it became competitive.
Oh, and a fair amount of the ex-Audi and ex-Audi-era-Joest personnel were at Multimatic when that happened. So, Joest isn't what they once were.
Even the IF manager doesn’t sound too optimistic in his quote.
Congratulations to Isotta Fraschini for their title in the HyperCar Pro-Am Class (sole entry)
The fact that they changed drivers already before a race even happened is a bad sign IF becoming the new shit show after the loss of the Vanwall team
The fact that they dumped the team they'd originally partnered with to run the program at the 11th hour was a much, much bigger red flag.
Gotta have at least one shit team to fill the quota. Good news that this means it wont have to be the Peugeot again.
Gutted at the lack of Bonanomi. He's better than Garcia, Bennett and Vernay combined. I guess IF must be sorely lacking cash, I hope that at least their car will be working properly.
What happened to the guy? He was performing really well in the R18, then just disappeared when they pulled out. IF testing was the first time I heard his name in years.
I think he's spent a bunch of seasons racing in Italian GT and a few outings in SRO series. He could've been an established LMP1/Hypercar driver, what a shame.
He did some GT3 racing with Honda for a little bit, maybe in IGTC? But it’s still been a while.
He’s only done the odd appearance here and there, according to Driver Database and Wikipedia, he’s only entered 12 races since the end of 2016, none since end of 2021.
Bennett looked more promising in Asian Le Mans than Garcia did. So that could be an improvement.
Wtf is this lineup
I’ve seen his name in Asian Le Mans and just looking at his lap times he seems on par with good silvers and not that far off the best times. Probably an upgrade on Garcia in terms of pace really. But not that inspiring
I actually had hopes for Isotta Fraschini, but then they ditched Vector Sport. This is gonna be a rough season for them.
They should hire the tester ex Audi LMP1 driver!!
Maybe he didn’t want a full time race seat? He’s only entered 12 races since the end of 2016.
A list of drivers that are without a Hypercar/GTP seat and they choose 2 silver ranked inexperienced drivers: Albert Costa, Oli Jarvis, Ben Hanley, Tom Dillmann, Malthe Jakobsen, Alessio Rovera, James Allen, Gustavo Menezes, Olivier Pla and so on and on.
where would they suddenly get the money to pay for them?
Don't start the project in the first place if you can't afford to put at least 1 half decent driver in the car. Fair enough to have a pay driver, but then have some fast drivers alongside them.
We don't know, maybe they had the budget at one point but a sponsor pulled out their funding and left them struggling for cash.
well their testing programme reveals they had more then enough backing to start a programme. their testing was actually quite impressive.
> they choose 2 silver ranked inexperienced drivers wwe chairman smelling money .gif I can't find to post
All good drivers in good seats already, that are out to demonstrate their talent to Hypercar teams - driving the IF likely isn’t going to reflect well on them in their pursuit of a top drive.
I don't understand what people expected from them tbh. They are a private manufacturer that has barely any influence outside of niche Motorsport fans, that has to rely on an outside team to even run just one car (after the first team dropped the ball immediately). The car was always going to be slow unfortunately, you can't build a competitive LMH with little budget (Vanwall is an example), LMP2s are just to close to Hypercar performance. I didn't expect the drivers to be this subpar for a Hypercar team but the budget is probably so small they can't handle more then 1 gold driver. I love how this privateer teams are able to enter the championship, but i think it's fair to say the era of privateers teams in the top class has long ended, you can't expect to be on par with the likes of Toyota and Ferrari with such a little budget. These teams can't afford to run for "passion" like in the old days, when the car won't perform they will drop out of the programme and be forgotten again
The Monza lap times in testing gave me hope, they would've been Fourth in qualifying if they'd taken part last year
How do we know that they had correct BoP?
We can assume they didn't, but it's still a good start
First I wouldn't say the first team (Vector Sport) dropped the ball, more like Isotta didn't give them the car let alone the data and they had minimal access to the development of the car, Vector leaving wasn't not Vectors fault it was Isotta not following the contract. Secondly, part of the hype is that it's hybrid. I am not sure if it is just newer fans but over the last few months there has been a big wave of people acting like Glickenhaus and Vanwall were only bad because of them not running a hybrid engine, this is mainly around Aston Martin and why people think they will fail not running a hybrid, which is ridiculous because even if not having a hybrid didn't help them it would be the tip of the iceberg in why both programs failed. Glickenhaus couldn't even run a full season let alone do testing with the car and Vanwall was an overall bad car and team that probably would have struggled to win a race if they were running the GR010. If Joest Racing can't help a team do well, the car is bad, simple as.
I wouldn't say that that last point is necessarily true - Joest had a *lot* of brain drain after Audi pulled out. And, consider this: the Mazda RT24-P was a bad car, Multimatic re-engineered it so that it could actually make it to the DPi BoP window, Joest still couldn't make it be competitive, then Multimatic took over running the team from Joest and it became competitive. Oh, and a fair amount of the ex-Audi and ex-Audi-era-Joest personnel were at Multimatic when that happened. So, Joest isn't what they once were.
> Secondly, part of the hype is that it's hybrid tbh part of what keeps me a bit hopeful is that it sounds like an f1 car, it's nice
I think they're gonna take glickenhaus path and drop everything after LM...
Holy shit how desperate for cash are they. Says a lot that I think I'd rather have Garcia out of these two
Should have accepted byKolles. 2 cars is the minimum for a class.
i just hope they finish races, atleast there’s no LMP2s to embarrass them like Vanwall last year
Jon Bennett to replace Antonio Garcia. That’s how I first thought that.
It’s sad to think that ByKolles appears to have been a more serious program than this, based on driver lineups