[LouisTheShark]

I just had an interesting conversation with someone in the import tuner business and we discussed the merits of marketing sports car racing to that group. Both ALMS and Grand Am are trying to market to this demographic but I am starting to wonder if it is really the right path to success?

The import tuner market's roots are in drag racing and drifting. Magazines that cover the import tuner market follow domestic drag racing series like NHRA Sports Compact Series and NOPI. Most of the drifting coverage is for events in Japan as drifting is just starting up in the U.S.

The poignant point made to me about this was that drag racing and drifting are short attention span sports and unfortunately marketing research shows that today's youth has a very short attention span. Even the video games that are such a big part of the import tuner market are all based on short races.

Sports car racing, even in its simplest form as a 45 minute one class sprint race still requires a much longer attention span. Forget the complexity of multiclass endurance racing and maybe we all need to really rethink this path. If the import tuner group is not the future fan base of sports car racing, how does sports car racing find a new younger future?