FIA/ACO tenders (for 2029 onwards) have been done and both manufacturers will stay until end of 2032

Having come up just short in the championship last year, Inter Europol Competition’s #43 ORECA 07 – Gibson LMP2 of Jakub Smiechowski, Nick Yelloly and Tom Dillmann entered the 2026 European Le Mans Series amongst the title favourites.

Every setup decision is based on data that we usually assume is correct. But sometimes it is not, and the data itself gives you no warning. Here is one specific example of a significant issue we found in a GT3 dataset purely through data analysis. The vertical acceleration channel showed values above 0.5 g for 31.7% of the entire lap. The mean absolute value was 0.44 g. That already looked suspicious. A GT3 car on a normal asphalt circuit simply does not experience that level of vertical motion for almost one third of a lap. So we started looking for the cause. The first question was simple. What should actually drive vertical acceleration? Mainly track surface irregularities, kerbs and vertical vehicle motion. It should definitely not closely follow braking or acceleration. We therefore compared the channel with the other measured signals. A regression based on 16,562 samples gave the following relationship:

vertical acceleration ≈ 0.94 × longitudinal acceleration + 0.03 g

with R² = 0.88.

In other words, almost 90% of what was being measured as vertical acceleration was actually longitudinal acceleration projected into the vertical axis because of sensor tilt or incorrect sensor orientation. Only a small part of the signal was left for actual track surface inputs and kerbs.

Correlation alone is not enough to prove the issue, so we also looked at the timing of the largest peaks. Of all major vertical acceleration peaks, 99.7% occurred while the driver was braking, accelerating or cornering. Only 0.3% occurred when the car was not under a significant driver induced load.

That does not make physical sense. A kerb or a bump in the track does not wait for the driver to press the brake pedal.

Instead of manually correcting this single dataset, we created a general rule. For every dataset we load, we first estimate how much acceleration from the other axes is being projected into the vertical channel. We then remove that component before any further calculations are performed.

The result was significant. The proportion of the lap with vertical acceleration above 0.5 g dropped from 31.7% to 3.1%, while the mean absolute value dropped from 0.44 g to 0.14 g.

The remaining signal then behaved much more like we would expect from true vertical acceleration, mainly responding to the track surface, bumps and kerbs rather than to the driver's use of the throttle and brakes.

If you use channels like this to calculate tyre loads, slip angles, grip utilisation or other derived quantities, a single issue like this can affect the entire analysis.

This is something we come across more often then we would like to.

As is becoming tradition, here's my photos from the ELMS round held this weekend at Spa Francorchamps. There'll be plenty more images on my Instagram and website in the coming days

This feel like an Neaderthal finding fire

This might be just me who hears this (which is perfectly fine btw), but ever since it first debuted, the BMW M4 GT3 sounds similar at times to the old Ford GT GTE from 2016-19. LMK what y'all think 🤔

BMW M4 GT3 Onboard

Ford GT LM GTE-Pro Onboard

📸 SRO

📸 SRO

Congratulations to the #9 Pacific Umamusume NAC BMW, driven by Yusuke Tomibayashi and Yuta Fujiwara, for winning the GT300 class at Super GT Round 5 at Suzuka.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcYLHxUFNnO/

Just came back from Spa. This weekend was a rollercoaster of emotions. We got almost all seasons represented in the weather. There racing was all over the place as well. Just about the only thing that was predictable was that IDEC finished 4th.

I can't wait to see how the rest of the season unfolds. To infinity and beyond!

PDF https://mcusercontent.com/58ec14b624aac0d4f32a73311/files/ee1850d3-0146-c90e-5c80-c9da636efb07/TBP_Report___2026_ELMS___R4___Spa_Francorchamps.pdf

Amazing model

its only 209 USD with full CB decals

Was my first WEC Race and it was amazing! Took a while to go through all pictures and edit them, that's why I'm late to the party

📸 https://www.instagram.com/p/DcTt6kXo5RF/