alms merger saying goodbye to audi

Pete Guthrie · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2013 3:51 pm

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/15/gran ... acing-ser/

now the prototype classes will be boring daytona prototypes. and gt class will be boring as well. pretty much killing the alms series really.i think they have lost a viewer now in me.the audi is the reason i watch it. not anymore.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2013 4:19 pm

Pete Guthrie wrote:

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/15/grand-am-alms-merger-results-in-new-united-sportscar-racing-ser/

now the prototype classes will be boring daytona prototypes. and gt class will be boring as well. pretty much killing the alms series really.i think they have lost a viewer now in me.the audi is the reason i watch it. not anymore.

I know Audi isn't in ALMS this year (last year prior to series unification). And did they participate last year? I might be wrong, but don't think so. In short... this is finalizing the way things have been for awhile. ALMS has not really had much of any European participation in awhile. I guess Audi and Peugeot might have participated in some races (such as Petit Lemans), but in general they left years ago. I am a big ALMS fan and time will tell if the NASCARization of prototype racing will fly. I am not a fan at all of DP racing, but I hope it works because the alternative (from a US prototype racing perspective) is pretty much... nothing.

Richard

steve remchak · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:43 pm

There were R8s at the 24 in Daytona I believe and the factory guru Dr. Whathisknutts was there too if memory serves me correctly.

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2013 5:49 pm

P1 has been a dying class for a long time and it was a fairly obvious move to kill it.

There were what, 2 teams last year?

I actually wish they killed/combined more classes, 5 classes is too damn many for me to keep track of. In a similar vein, has anyone heard what is going on with CTSCC?

JohnByers · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:34 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

P1 has been a dying class for a long time and it was a fairly obvious move to kill it.

There were what, 2 teams last year?

I actually wish they killed/combined more classes, 5 classes is too damn many for me to keep track of. In a similar vein, has anyone heard what is going on with CTSCC?

Absolutely. Enjoying P1 because of two cars, get a grip Pete! Audi only ran two races a year with ALMS, they went away a long time ago and DP racing isn't good, not quite sure what you guys watch but they are always right there lap after lap with good hard racing. Always many more cars in DP than P1, always.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:25 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

P1 has been a dying class for a long time and it was a fairly obvious move to kill it.

There were what, 2 teams last year?

I actually wish they killed/combined more classes, 5 classes is too damn many for me to keep track of. In a similar vein, has anyone heard what is going on with CTSCC?

Yeah, we can debate this to death. Not a simple topic. First, you have the global economic crisis. So "technology" based classes have suffered. P1 and P2 are technology classes and they are expensive. This has caused manufactures such as Peugeot to drop out of prototype racing and others to not enter. Then you have a combo of other series sucking money elsewhere. Globally the WEC has mostly torpedoed regional or national prototype series such as ALMS by pulling the manufactures and top teams away. Locally you have organizations such as NASCAR who created the rival Grand-Am series. Any split in not good and Grand-Am heavily subsidized teams in an effort to suck sponsorship and teams away from ALMS. I am biased, but I doubt anyone can in their heart say that Grand-Am puts on as good of a show as ALMS.

In the end, ALMS had the fans, but lost the money war. With the unification there was nearly zero chance that Grand-Am was going to ask the DP teams to make significant changes. I think the DP cars run times between P2 and PC and there was also no way that Grand-Am was going to allow two other prototype classes upstage their bread and butter DP class. It would have required significant changes to DP to get them to run as fast as P1 and that wasn't going to happen. Even then, they would have likely balanced performance using regular ALMS P1 competitors, but that would not have prevented a strong European team (think Audi) who doesn't run regularly in North America from showing up and clobbering the "balanced" DP/P1 teams. Again, another potential for embarrassment to Grand-Am and the DP teams. So in short, while they would have had North American P1 teams and even increased the likelyhood of European teams coming over occasionally (think Sebring), they killed off P1 to make things easier. The plan is to balance out DP and P2. Time will tell if that works out. I hope it does, but don't really see it working very well in practice. And lastly, I think the merger has scared (or driven away) some away as well. I saw a report recently that Porsche had planned to race the all new 2014 P1 car here in the US, but... they decided to go elsewhere. Likely as they really just don't have a place to race given Grand-Am's direction. We will get a chance to see Porsche, Toyota, Audi and likely some other factory P1 teams in 2014 in the US for the WEC race(s) that will take place here in the US. I know of at least the Austin WEC race. Maybe there will be another (Mexico or Canada? I can't remember).

The DP cars are quick for sure, but in the grand scheme, not really that fast. They early cars were beyond ugly and the newer Corvette bodied cars are just now starting to look OK. But they are flat bottomed tub frame cars. Generally 1960's and 70's racing tech and for the most part, it is a spec class that operates on a "balance of power" style of invisible hand than "build to spec" rules. They may put on a ok show, but it is spec racing and spec racing is all about teams and driver drama. The cars really mean very little in the grand scheme. And that is actually the root of the problem. I think most racing fans fall into one of two camps. They enjoy the drivers, or they enjoy the technology (cars are the stars). ALMS was the home of technology and it will be gone at the end of this year. For those fans (like me) who enjoy technology advancements, they have to look overseas for true prototype racing. DP cars do absolutely nothing for me. I would love to own one personally as a track toy, and watch Grand-Am when nothing else is on, but they generally generate little excitement in me (just like the other national spec series NASCAR and IRL)

On the plus side, it can be argued that ALMS GTE racing over the past few years has been some of the best racing anywhere (US or otherwise). And in fact, GTE is probably the main thing that Grand-Am wanted out of the merge. So it will be interesting to see how things play out in top level GT racing. I do follow top level GT racing and expect it to do relatively well in Grand-Am.

Richard

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:53 am

JamesMilko wrote:

In a similar vein, has anyone heard what is going on with CTSCC?

To more directly answer you question (and less moaning from me)...

IMSA is sanctioning the new unified Grand-Am (renamed Unified Sportscar Racing - USCR). I believe that IMSA will continue to sanction the supporting series such as CTSCC, Ferrari Challenge, GT3 Cup, Proto Lites and Porsche GT3 Cup. I haven't heard much, but I wonder if there might be a bit of a glut of supporting series due to the overall shrinking of race weekends via the combo of ALMS and Grand-Am. In addition to the above IMSA sanctioned series, you also have SCCA stuff such as World Challenge. I guess between USCR and IRL they will find homes as support races for the main events.

Richard

steve remchak · **Posted:** Tue Mar 19, 2013 10:14 am

Optima Battery Chump Car World Series is claiming that they too will be running support races. No dates have been announced as of yet.

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

I think that DP is boring, and would much rather see it replaced with something like Formula 3.

CTSCC is by far the most entertaining class, and probably the closest thing we have to BTCC.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:40 pm

Nice opinion piece from John Dagys...

http://www.racer.com/opinion-back-to-th ... le/285560/

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:07 pm

My opinion is that car racing in general did hurt itself with all the many trends toward spec racing to help control costs. It had to be done to some degree, but it could have been done much better.

Now the damage is done. On top of that, I really just don't think as many people care about racing or even WILL care about it if it were much better. So many social trends toward environmental friendliness on so many levels means things like auto racing just aren't going to be as appealing any more. I think people are doing all sorts of hand-wringing over what are ultimately minor details in the grand scheme.

Yes, high tech racing could possibly bring some people back. But it costs too much. And gains too little. Why? Because at the end of the day we've figured everything out. F1 is so advanced that the tech part only appears to the serious nerd (of which I am one, so don't think I'm picking on anyone).

Otherwise, people just don't care as much. You could put on the best show the world has seen before on a race track and I don't think you'd see fans like we had 15 years ago. If you watch some of the last lap in-car videos from guys like Danny Steyn in Spec Miata I am constantly amazed that nobody cares to go sit and watch those guys. At COTA they had 80 car fields, insanely tight racing, and nobody watching.

Racing in the US peaked, contracted back to the hard core types, and until something new or interesting happens, isn't going to grow again any time soon. Let's face it, road racing just isn't conducive to in-person spectating unless you're hard core. And endurance racing on TV? That's too much time commitment to get anyone sucked in. Plus it isn't conducive to a good long-term *show*. Spreads the fields out too much for most, not enough racing. People don't care about fuel or pit strategy much. And NOBODY likes to watch their sports on tape delay all edited up. *shrug*

In short, enjoy what you've got. It ain't going to get much better for a long time. If ever.

--Donnie

JamesShort · **Posted:** Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:23 pm

Honestly I agree with Donnie. Most F1 watchers don't get the significance of Kimi getting those shitty Pirellis to last as long as he did on 2 stops or the significance of tire management or 2.4s pit stops or separate dampers for individual tire movements and pitch/heave movements independently etc etc.

Anyway, I think about it every now and then and it's depressing to know that racing (both grassroots and professional) and just generally being a car nut is such a waning state of being and will likely be eliminated to a large degree in most of our lifetimes.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:25 pm

Donnie Barnes wrote:

Yes, high tech racing could possibly bring some people back. But it costs too much. And gains too little. Why? Because at the end of the day we've figured everything out. F1 is so advanced that the tech part only appears to the serious nerd (of which I am one, so don't think I'm picking on anyone).

I pretty much agree with everything you said, but have a slightly different point of view on F1,costs and technology.

I am a big F1 fan and as much as I hate to say it, it is also drifting toward spec racing as well.
Look at just the engine alone. Things like bore, stroke, cylinder count, crank height, v angle, minimum weight, center of gravity, number of valves, cylinder spacing, max rpm, materials and a few other things are pretty much defined by the rules. They are nearly spec engines.

What they can do is a multitude of aero tricks and the vast bulk of money spent is in areas that have little or no relevance to anything other than F1 (I.e. hard to link the technology to today's cars)

Sadly I think the teams are complicit in this. Because the last thing a team wants is open rules that allows someone to show up at the first race with an ultra radical new idea that works and will require time and money to replicate. If anything they love stability and predictability. What I do at least still find interesting about F1 is that they are all building to a very tight spec vs. everyone using the exact same chassis, etc.

The problem is just not in F1 either. If you follow prototype racing you may have hear about how Audi was recently testing a new system that was storing compressed air for what I believe was to be some type of energy recapturing system plus turbo anti-lag. It had very high relevance to production cars (something the manufactures want) as I believe there are some manufactures working on a production example of this. The FIA promptly banned the concept.

While many of the rules in F1 are design to keep thing stable, they are also to "try" to keep costs down. Things like material restrictions, limited gear ratios, and longevity of engines. But there are some who propose much more open rules, but with specific cost caps. Basically make as fast as a car as you can, but we will have the accountants watching. Could they still play games? Sure, but I would love to see a top level series run like this. You likely would have a few years of very wide performance (such as 1st place lapping most of the field), but that is how it was decades ago in earlier golden eras. Imagine lemons or chump car with 25 million limit on the car+team!

Richard

steve remchak · **Posted:** Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:27 pm

JamesShort wrote:

Honestly I agree with Donnie. Most F1 watchers don't get the significance of Kimi getting those shitty Pirellis to last as long as he did on 2 stops or the significance of tire management or 2.4s pit stops or separate dampers for individual tire movements and pitch/heave movements independently etc etc.

Anyway, I think about it every now and then and it's depressing to know that racing (both grassroots and professional) and just generally being a car nut is such a waning state of being and will likely be eliminated to a large degree in most of our lifetimes.

Nostalgic balderdash James.......... You need to get out more.

There will be 61 cars at VIR-S next weekend for a 10 hour enduro race. There will be 95 cars at Watkins Glen in three weeks and there were 85 cars at CMP last weekend. I think the grassroots aspect of all of this is fine, but as Donnie alluded to, Pro Racing is not going to do much more if anything for the foreseeable future.

Sponsors go where the TV money is and the money is still in NASCAR, maybe not what it once was but still more than open wheel and sports cars combined. We all know NASCAR is a puppet show but it draws viewers.

As for Green initiatives, who here wouldn't race hybrids or electrics if that was the only game in town? Hell, I'd race BigWheels if I still had the legs for it. :lol:

Donnie Barnes · **Posted:** Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:09 am

Sorry Steve, I'm gonna go the other way. The fact that LeChump even exists is a bad sign for grassroots racing. A lot of your competitors are SCCA or other club refugees where costs got too high. And sure, there are a lot of people in LeChump who never raced another series before, but I'd still contend that the big car clubs have lost 100x more members in the last 15 years than LeChump has created.

The SCCA alone used to be 65k members. Now it's around 40k.

And it won't be much longer before I fear insurance costs will kill LeChump anyway. Yeah, I know I'm a fatalist, but it's just the way I see it going, unfortunately. And if that doesn't kill it and it continues to gain popularity, then popularity and competition will turn it into the same kind of problems the bigger clubs have. It's inevitable.

That's part of why I now have a kart.

--Donnie

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