"It's about the amount of oxygen it takes," added Laudenbach, "That's what you have to live with. It sounds easy, but it's difficult for the engineers. I think it's a very difficult approach."
Porsche's primary dispute with the ALMS regulations is the amount of power a turbo diesel LMP1 car is allowed to produce.
"The only thing from our point of view that is not in balance at the moment is the maximum amount of power that is allowed by a diesel engine and a gasoline engine in LMP1," Walliser said. "There is a big difference. We guess it's approximately one hundred horsepower. We see no reason why one particular solution should be given such a big advantage. We see it in the race in traffic on fast tracks. The [Audi] cars have so much power that they just go off on their own."
Beyond that complaint, Porsche would like to see the ACO and ALMS tackle the job of bringing the equivalency formulae together under a single formula determined by energy use.
"The next step," Walliser commented, "should be we have this baseline of the energy content and we have turbos, diesels, V10s, blends, whatever, and we have different weights for each. Perhaps for the future it should bring them all together, balance the power properly so the weight to power ratios are approximately the same.
"I think the tyres at fourteen and sixteen inches are quite nice because it compensates the different weights of the cars with the lateral acceleration. If that is balanced we have the perfect formula that shows the fans and the consumer something about weight, engine efficiency and the engineering knowledge of the engineers of the company behind it. For me, that is the energy efficient motorsports formula. We are that close."
"I agree with Frank that we are not really far away from a series that we can say is green racing," Laudenbach added, before claiming that it's imperative for racing and the manufacturers to move to alternate fuels.
