Prologue 2018

[lofty]

Wow. Great to get an early hit.Camped behind the track in wild scrub land.Sitting out in the dark listening to LM cars beltting all through the night drinking beer wiv a great mate.What more could i ask for.

[lofty]

Ginetta was very quiet but looked fast,the team rushed down a third chassis as we understood.Ran straight out the box.New shape Vantage was nice.

[Landy_Jon]

Great photos.

Not so sure about the 3-5 second lap time delta between LMP1/LMP1H though.

[lofty]

Bykolles awsome paddock quad made us giggle.

[Kristof]

Rundown of our coverage at the CA blog during the prologue:

First four hours: http://clubarnage.blogspot.fr/2018/04/fia-wec-toyota-on-top-after-four-hours.html
After 14 hours: http://clubarnage.blogspot.fr/2018/04/fia-wec-14-hours-into-prologue.html
Five hours to go: http://clubarnage.blogspot.fr/2018/04/fia-wec-five-hours-to-end-of-prologue.html
Final results: http://clubarnage.blogspot.fr/2018/04/fia-wec-final-results-of-prologue-at-le.html

I'll put up a gallery sometime next week.  
After the rain, now drowning in pictures from 10 days at Paul Ricard (although I sat out the second day of the ELMS test due to getting sick of the weather down here).

That ByKolles quad is great btw, they've been using it for several years now.

[lofty]

10 days! what other stuff did you get up to Kristoff? The changes to the circuit are moving on slowly and fences show where the "cheap seats" will be. Did you find out where the 2 new entrances will be? It was nice to get up the inside of the track at the west end to watch the cars turn left to start the wiggly section.When/if all the trackside is open to spectators it will be a bloody long walk.Do you know if Bernies lot has sold PR as the keep off the grass signs on the pit lane have gone.We wondered if he had the grass from Bigin hill dug up and moved .Lots of questions.Sorry.Lofty

[Kristof]

I was there for the WEC Prologue (set-up day & 2 test days), ELMS prologue (got seriously ill on day 2, didn't go trackside), testday for the Michelin Le Mans Cup (sat that one out too) and then the ELMS weekend started with set-up day & scrutineering on Thursday.  Was a bit of an equivalent to Le Mans week including scrutineering. Did miss a bit the feel of the previous WEC prologue though as there were no real team presentations.  Not from Toyota (who had only 3 of their full season drivers at PR), nothing at BMW (first "official" European roll-out of the M8, and even less from privateer teams (BR1, Manor/Ginetta, ...).

Work on the fences started already last year when the ELMS ran at Paul Ricard, the new bridge over the Mistral straight was also under construction then.
I guess there's 2 places where you really want to be with F1: either at the grandstand at the back of T4/T5, watching cars through T2 all the way up to the Mistral straight or at the cheap seats at Signes with the opposite view (Mistral straight, chicane and down to the long hairpin).  For us it's just another track ruined by F1: new fences take away a some good photo spots and temporary grandstands is not what you're looking for as a background.

Don't know anything about extra entrances.  Guess they'll make one which will be accessible through the industrial park in Signes and one coming down from Gemenos ? 
What I do know is that getting in and out of that track will be miserable all weekend long with F1.  There's basically one main road giving access to the track, no additional entrances will change that.  Good luck on those heading to PR in June, I'd got with a helicopter.  As for the ownership of the track: it's still Bernie's (hence why they got back to PR instead of Magny Cours).

[lofty]

Great photos.

Not so sure about the 3-5 second lap time delta between LMP1/LMP1H though.

Jon i wondered as well and found the answer(i think).
LMPH gets 124.9MJ/perlap of fuel energy
LMP   gets210.9MJ/perlap
LMPH gets 80kg fuel/hour
LMP   gets 110kg fuel/hour
Also the non hybrids weigh 45kg less
This works out roughly the non hybrid cars have 69%more fuel energy!
I hope this explains the lack of different times.The Toyotas don't have it that easy.