[miatanut]

Originally Posted by belt driven

We(US sports car fans) are a minority. A piddling 1.4 million viewers PEAK tuned in to the USGP..., SUNDAY NOON, BROADCAST CHANNEL, against NO FOOTBALL opposition. There are simply not enough of us to...

A. make the car manufacturers care
B. make sponsors care (and as a result of A and B)
C. get decent TV coverage
D. make Nascar care

...how the FIA and ACO do things.

Excepting Sebring and Petit(LeMans P & Q), Euro teams rarely showed up at ALMS races. From 2000-2006 it was practically a one-make series(Audi won 56 of 65 NA races). Nascar was having none of it at Daytona, and created the DP rules for 2003.

2 Doran, 3 Fabcar, 4 Mutimatic, and 1 Picchio chassis appeared at various races in 2003. Riley and Crawford built cars for 2004 and 17 DPs took the green at Daytona. Two years later there were 30, and 24 minimum at every other race. At its lowest point in 2012, there were 14 DPs at the Rolex and at least 9 at every race.

I don't know the max number of P2 cars that ever appeared at an ALMS race, but in 2011-12 there were races where they couldn't fill a podium. If you disregard the 2 development Mazdas and the chrome tricycle, there are 4 P2 teams(think OAK will be here after Sebring???) currently. USCR/IMSA is not likely to touch BoP until the Sebring test. I think the P2s will do better there with more medium speed corners plus the roughness in places favors a lighter car.

I think that's an argument for adopting the ACO spec. One car, you can race there or here. Before the sportscar racing civil war, IMSA was healthy, and that was even with the US spec being different from the ACO spec. The civil war did a lot of damage to the sport. It's rebuilding time now.