Well, Lads, I've kinda been busy the last couple weeks. God Forbid, we actually might be discussing racing, here.
The story is that HPD found the cheat and busted Shank. That's possible, but unlikely. I think that's just how HPD spun it to save any face possible. My guess is that someone at Wayne Taylor Racing found some sort of discrepancy in the setup of the data system and then Wayne gave HPD the choice of whether they were going to say something or whether he was. WTR and Shank are stablemates and share data, so they would have access to all the data. More importantly, they would have access to the setup files. I don't know how exactly it was done. There are any number of ways which the telemetry going to IMSA could have been altered. The easy-to-catch method would be to create some sort of math channel. I doubt if it was that. The next would be to alter the CAN template from the TPS system. That seems more likely. If I were doing it, I think I would have gone to the hardware level, but I tend to over-kill things.
Michelin gives minimum stabilized average pressures to respect. At Daytona, it's quite high (2.1b) because of the banking loads, and it definitely hurts performance in the infield. At lower load tracks, that number drops to 1.9b. If I were to guess, I'd say the cheat was relatively small, probably 0.05 to 0.1b. That's enough to give a meaningful deg & grip advantage without being obvious when the Michelin guys take their own pressures. Is the pressure cheat the reason they won Daytona? No. Would they have won running legal pressures? I believe they would have. Was the cheat advantage? You bet your a$s.
There seems to be a bit of confusion around here as to the definition of the word 'scapegoat.' To me, Ryan McCarthy, the now unemployed race engineer, is both the villian and the scapegoat in this one. He was the race engineer, so he was responsible for this choice. However, are we meant to believe he was the only one in on it? Man, I find that tough to believe. Should he be fired and banned for cheating as a first infraction? I find that to be a pretty tough pill to swallow. If anyone had to be actually fired, then Ryan was definitely _not_ the highest ranking engineer at Shank's. I'm curious if this retribution was put forth by IMSA or HPD, but we'll never know.
I do have a question for all you calling for Shank's head on a stick. WTF is it to you? How does it affect any of your lives one way or the other? The dancing bears went out and had a parade and you were entertained. Accept it for what it is, entertainment. We're not curing cancer here, folks, and the guilty party had to eat their S4!t sandwich. The penalty was not a minor one. You got your pound of flesh. Are you the same people who hate Tom Brady? At the end of the day, IMSA is a NASCAR organization and when the fans leave the track, they know who won and that won't change. I can tell you that any possible benefit from the win has been lost.
Cheating happens in everything. It's part of the human condition. The American road-race culture in general is less accepting of cheating than that of, say, Stock Car world. In IMSA, it's a big deal to have something on the car which you know is a blatant no-no. Not that tech would necessarily find it, but there is enough cross-pollination among teams that it would be sure to get out sooner or later. The teams that play a lot of game are generally not respected or successful. At least it used to be, in NASCAR, if you _didn't_ have 1/2 a dozen things on the car that could get you pitched, you weren't trying hard enough (We need to return to this one, BTW). I'm not trying to make the Road Race racers to be anything they're not. If the line of the rule doesn't form a _complete_ circle, then it's fair game to color outside of that line. (Eg. My Qual tires might not have made it all the way up to stabilized pressures when the tire was at it's peak, even though I could have raised the pressures to make it happen. We all accept this as OK.)
Why is the rule there? Marketing. Michelin makes a hell of a good tire. I'm not kidding; they're spectacular. As soon as they came in the series, they gave recommended minimums, but the rule had no teeth. At the end of Daytona a couple years ago, ('21, I think?) Ganassi lost a couple tires right in a row and lost the race because of the stops. I don't know how low they were running, but when they put the 3rd RR on the car, a guy came out and stuck some pressure in before the car left the lane, which is a pretty absurd thing to do during a stop unless you're running _REAL_ low. Anyway, Michelin felt they ended up with egg on their face and the minimum pressures became law. They have penalize teams in races, but they've been completely cool about the rule. If you make an honest mistake and are running a 0.05b low (easy to do as you go from day to night), then they'll say something and come by on the next set to make sure you rectified the issue. They've only penalized teams who repeatedly run afoul set after set.
The crime wasn't running too low of tire pressures as much as it was the cover-up and the intentional nature of the deal. Honestly, I think this one was a bit artless. It's not like everyone in the paddock hadn't considered the exact same thing. We all know how to do it. I've just always stuck to the number because I know I can make the car work there and I accept the risk of someone else fudging it. It's a juice/squeeze thing for me, and it appears this has been a reasonable choice. Sometimes I don't understand the whole cheating thing, because there is always more work to be done on the stuff which is actually legal. I don't know where people get all the time.
P.S. I think some of you should know there are also camber limits, unless you want to get up in arms about that as well.
P.P.S. Don't be so naive about Sastre.
Edited by Fat Boy, 21 March 2023 - 15:58.
