Never cut it off, but nothing obvious to see in there when you peak through the pass-through holes for getting to the manifold nuts.
Yea, it's on vintage car. When they campaigned these cars the manifolds would have been lifed-out and tossed in a dumpster, I guess they weren't worried about the poor bastards wanting them to look good 20 years later when there were no new manifolds left
But to me that's a testament to how tough the wrap is, these manifolds may well be ~20 years old and have 15k KM on them. Definitely a way harder life than any LS/ultra 4, etc will ever be on them, at least in terms of heat. Rock strikes, mud etc I can't speak too obviously. I could post pics of the same wrap on a new V10 manifold, but you can look at the sales brochure to see pics of it new. Haha
As far as the manifold on the LMP car, the flanges get inspected for cracks regularly. Sure, they could be sent out to get rewrapped, but the wrap still does its job of protecting the components around it. It would be a different story if the goal was to squeeze every bit of thermal potential out of the turbo system, but for an old guy to go out and run 45 minute races and wax the field, they work just fine. Vintage stuff is a whole different world for better or worse.