First of all congratulations to Futch for the 2nd place and now leading GTE-AM standings.kiss

Then congratulations to Porsche. As already stated before, the win was well deserved, as the #2 kept out of trouble and was always on pace to put Toyota under pressure. The race was so tense and a real pleasure to watch. I'm extremely happy for Marc Lieb to win overall. It was a great team effort, though Lieb and Jani did most of the driving. 

By the way a little numbers game: Last years #18 car scored the 18th pole and the 18th win for Porsche, also being the 919 Hybrid's 2nd each, now with #2 on the car smiley

It's a shame though, Toyota didn't win. Seems like they should not, after all the trouble they had in all their past attempts. This was just the tip. They have by far made the biggest advantages from last year's LM24 on.

As for the rest of the season it will be a tough time for Porsche, with a now reliable (at least over the 6h distance) and pretty fast Toyota and Audi finding their gremlins. I'm sure there will be hard fights for the lead in the next races.

 

Now GTE: As valid for almost all other racing series' featuring it, BOP is a big issue at the moment IMO. FIA/ACO should definetly consider to fully adopt the IMSA BOP system - the one that tracks and analyzes all the data live and penalizes sandbaggers. I wouldn't accuse Ford or Ferrari of sandbagging in this case (Ford had trouble with reliability at the beginning of the season and Ferrari have clearly their shown performance before), but as long as BOP is not 100% based on data, I don't think all participants will be equal.

The battle for the lead was amazing to watch as well, so at least the turbos were balanced well against each other (sort of).

The future over the next years might be bright with the new turbo weapons and new cars incoming, but remember past days: There have been Porsches with inverted engine-gearbox layout and there has been a time when one manufacturer built a carbon tub car and suddenly cost exploded and the category was dead. As long as only works cars are affected this may not be the biggest issue, but what about GTE-AM? If all remains uncanged, which I seriously doubt, most of the cars will be red next year.