Is the Am class a bad idea?

[JayBMS]

No: when we had a larger GT2 field they wernt all 'pro' cars. the Gents are what keep the race going. Remove P2 & GTE-AM and ACO racing would look very weak

[Japanese Samurai]

Ama class?
Is it the class in which Kazuki Nakajima participated?

[FIRE]

Originally Posted by Japanese Samurai

Ama class?
Is it the class in which Kazuki Nakajima participated?

This is why you can't say pro drivers are good and amateur drivers are bad.
Since the beginning of Le Mans and sports car racing in general amateur drivers are part of the sport.

[mythoughtsareracing]

Originally Posted by Thaw Daggerslash

Yes, and watch someone die on track if we don't. :P

Racing is dangerous and drivers are killed participating in it.
It's an unfortunate fact of racing. Professional vs amateur has nothing to do with it.

Originally Posted by FIRE

This is why you can't say pro drivers are good and amateur drivers are bad.
Since the beginning of Le Mans and sports car racing in general amateur drivers are part of the sport.

Thank you.

[Adam43]

I am not going to make a great long post because all my rationale has been said by others above.

The Am class is fine.

Actually one point. I see no reason to have the Am class, but gentleman drivers should be welcomed whatever.

Pants, I'm not good at this. Second point. Do we apply this to the N24 too?

[Fogelhund]

I'm not a fan of the AM class, because I think it is a consolation prize, which I am not particularly interested in. Having said that, if the AM class was just rolled back into the GTE single category, I don't think the number of actual amateurs in the race would decrease any, they would just be bankrolling the single GTE category. PRO drivers have shown themselves to make errors as well, just see Audi mistakes last year, and the above mentioned Toyota vs. DW incident.

[tux]

No, its not a bad idea and i don't think its a problem having them have their own sub class, after all the amount they pay they want something for their investment.

Its just unfortunate that two years in a row that a GTE AM class car has caused a big accident to one of the factory LMP1 cars.

There should be a rule introduced though that says for an AM driver to compete at Le Mans they must have had say 6 races in LMS or WEC and the stewards must be satisfied they can handle traffic correctly. However driving standards in the class weren't really that bad in my opinion, very few incidents of contact between GTE cars and LMP cars.

To be honest i dont know what the answer is, what i do know is that the GTE class as a whole is excellent and the opening few hours of the race was excellent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWOfyq-5ztE

[Purist]

I think the Am class is an unnecessary complication of the class system. A "Gentlemen's Cup", if there is a call for one, can be awarded for Le Mans.

What is clear is that a re-work is needed in the driver categorization, because it sure sounds like things are fouled up in terms of who is rated Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The rankings NEED to more accurately reflect a driver's real ability. In addition though, there must be some sort of proper rookie/gentlemen orientation program. Those who can't meet a minimum standard simply are not cleared to race in the 24 Hours.

Le Mans certainly is a special case, and needs to be treated as such. In particular, the speeds attained, and the narrowness of much of the track, are unprecedented elsewhere in the sport today. The closest to it would be the Nordschleife, but they don't have the prototypes in the N24, bringing with them their incredible cornering speeds relative to the GTs/TCs.

Yes, racing is dangerous, but I'd rather avoid the ACO getting sued heavily for negligence, or having something really bad happen with the sport at large because people other than the drivers or pit crews get caught up in an incident.

[W.A Trichlorostyrene]

Originally Posted by Thaw Daggerslash

You wouldn't have "gentlemen" drivers racing in the Indy 500 or the Monaco GP in this day and age.

Sorry for the off topic, but... Marty Roth would pretty much fit the definition of "gentleman driver". He made a couple Indy 500 starts in the mid/late 2000s. It took IndyCar a few years before they decided to park him for good(too slow and erratic).

[Peat]

A: Gentlemen drivers are what bankroll sportscar racing in the main.

B: Perazinni is hardly and 'amateur'. He has quite an impressive CV.

What we saw this year and last was an accident. The modern fascination with apportioning absolute blame is what will kill motorsport.

[tux]

I found this list of FIA WEC drivers from the last 2 seasons which shows who is classed platinum, silver, bronze. http://www.lemans.org/wpphpFichiers/...tification.pdf

Keiko Ihara who couldnt do a lap under 4 mins in an LMP2 is classed silver, the same level as nick leventis....

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Peat

A: Gentlemen drivers are what bankroll sportscar racing in the main.

B: Perazinni is hardly and 'amateur'. He has quite an impressive CV.

What we saw this year and last was an accident. The modern fascination with apportioning absolute blame is what will kill motorsport.

True.

We are to blame for this.

And, as you hint, what is Am?

Most of us here are Am, but not Gentlemen, when it comes to offering an opinion.

[Purist]

It is an unfortunate cultural shift that so much that goes wrong anymore "has to be somebody's fault". Sometimes there is reasonable blame to be doled out, and at other times, accidents just happen.

The trouble is, so much of sport anymore is driven by media and commercial interests, which fund so much of it. If you want a "successful" product as a sport, you have to appease the wider audience, and that wider audience seems to want somebody to blame when something isn't "right".

As to the topic at hand, there MUST be a balance struck. We need the teams to have funding, so having drivers who aren't the quickest is an acceptable price to pay for that. However, there are those, thankfully rather few of them, who are just too much of a hazard to be allowed to run around out on track. It would be most preferable to identify and cull those individuals from the driver pool BEFORE something really bad happens on-track.

[johntt]

The Am class is wholly necessary for many of the reasons mentioned above.

One thing I did realise this weekend was the impact that LMP2/GTE-Am has for professional drivers. It creates more opportunities for pro drivers to be paid to race.

If a rich amateur has a team and wants to be competitive (as they all do) in LMP2 he'll need to hire 2x pro drivers (1x in the case of GTE-Am).

[KA]

Originally Posted by tux

There should be a rule introduced though that says for an AM driver to compete at Le Mans they must have had say 6 races in LMS or WEC and the stewards must be satisfied they can handle traffic correctly. However driving standards in the class weren't really that bad in my opinion, very few incidents of contact between GTE cars and LMP cars.

Originally Posted by Peat

A: Gentlemen drivers are what bankroll sportscar racing in the main.

B: Perazinni is hardly and 'amateur'. He has quite an impressive CV.

What we saw this year and last was an accident. The modern fascination with apportioning absolute blame is what will kill motorsport.

As Peat suggests, a tightening-up of the level of experience needed for an 'Am' driver to get a run at Le Mans wouldn't filter out someone like Perazzini who's got no shortage of mileage in ACO races under his belt- and I don't recall him having much of a history of being a hazard in traffic before this weekend?.
Basically, it comes down to the fact that when you've got cars with a big performance differential on the same track, as we have with LMPs and GTs, and cars lapping each other, no matter what you do to increase safety, occasionally it will all go wrong and stuff will happen...

I see no problem with making sure that rookies at Le Mans have got a minimum amount of ELMS/ALMS/WEC track time behind them before they get a start at Le Mans, and have proven they're both capable of racing at this level without wandering around the track getting in the way of faster cars, and can turn in a laptime that isn't light years off the pace, but beyond that I really don't see what more can be done, other than looking at the driver grading system to iron out some of the more obvious eccentricities in it (like the Leventis/Ihara comparison tux mentioned), and maybe weeding out any repeat offenders and telling them they won't be accepted for Le Mans in future unless they can prove in other ACO races that they've got their act together in traffic