Quote:
Originally Posted by chernaudi
Audi and Porsche didn't like having their sponsorship of the ALMS and their entries subsidizing the series, so they cut back severely at the end of '08.
One could say that as far as the Audi Sport, Porsche Motorsport and ultimately TMG LMP1 programs went, the damage was done though that and the formation of the WEC.
However, with the way that TUSCC ultimately has gone, that pretty much closed the door for the foreseeable future for any of those guys being willing to come back, and the entries that the ALMS and Grand Am had in one form or another threatened to leave the series, and some have.
I think that the management shake ups are IMSA/NASCAR/ISC's mea culpa admitting that they screwed up big time with anything not stock-car related, as well as DMG/ISC selling off the AMA.
The NASCAR stock car formula isn't a universal key to success in every field, just as the ACO/FIA formula probably wouldn't work for stock car racing. There are times where business and marketing strategies in all sports find a successful niche, and probably should just stay there where they are successful.
However, in the current state of TUSCC, one thing that I would find interesting is to denote the all-pro/pro-am classes, or maybe even prototype and GT classes not just with the leader lights system, but different colored highlight lights on the bodywork. Similar to what Audi have done with the R18 family for the past 3 or so years by running back-lit DRL strips in their headlights, though that's usually used to denote which car is on pit road at a given time.
But I think that the colored accent lighting would work well with the current leader lights system. Maybe also introduce two new colors to denote Prototype, LMPC GTLM/GTE and GTD instead of just the red for professional, and blue for pro-am.
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Given that everybody knew the bridge years were going to be strange and difficult I'd like to revisit a full evaluation at the end of 2018. By that time we should be back to a series with full ACO spec cars.
LMP1 will probably never come back unless the WEC folds. The only real reason we had them before is because there wasn't really a world endurance championship that the big P1 teams could concentrate on. With the U.S. being the biggest market P1 made sense as the biggest stage for those cars before the WEC and ILMC.