USCC (leave your axe outside)

[Fogelhund]

Except of course that GT's ran with GTP's at many races, and PSCR had mixed classes, including GT's are many races as well.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

Except of course that GT's ran with GTP's at many races, and PSCR had mixed classes, including GT's are many races as well.

I think we can agree that the ideal in the 85 to 98 period was a separation of prototypes and GTs for all races except the major enduros. Whenever that didn't happen, it was merely a sign of weak grids... it was only Panoz that made shared races a core concept again.

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by Speed-King

I think we can agree that the ideal in the 85 to 98 period was a separation of prototypes and GTs for all races except the major enduros. Whenever that didn't happen, it was merely a sign of weak grids... it was only Panoz that made shared races a core concept again.

No, I don't think history supports that at all for much of PSCR.

[jasonjessica09]

What have been the races in TUSC you enjoyed watching the most this year? Don't factor in commercials please. On track only.

1. Laguna Seca (P/GTLM)
2. VIR
3. Mosport
4. COTA
5. Long Beach

Too bad I can't include any of the 3 NAEC races so far on that list. Watkins Glen was ok but not my on my top five.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

No, I don't think history supports that at all for much of PSCR.

Let's look at the data, then.

1994: 9 race weekends - 3 shared, 6 split.
1995 11 race weekends - 7 shared - 4 split.
1996: 10 race weekends - 6 shared - 4 split
1997: 11 race weekends - 3 shared - 8 split
1998: 9 race weekends - 8 shared - 1 split, but most with pathetic grids, so that isn't saying much anymore.

So it actually was a bit of a back and forth, with the last prw split season very much in favor of split races.

[Fogelhund]

So 27 Shared, 23 split? Of course I did look at the data in advance of my post. But more shared than split hardly suggests a period was a separation of prototypes and GTs for all races except the major enduros.

[jasonjessica09]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

So 27 Shared, 23 split? Of course I did look at the data in advance of my post. But more shared than split hardly suggests a period was a separation of prototypes and GTs for all races except the major enduros.

I think you can make a case that the split races from this year have been more enjoyable from a spectator standpoint. I feel that way.

[Ephaeton]

Originally Posted by jasonjessica09

What have been the races in TUSC you enjoyed watching the most this year? Don't factor in commercials please. On track only.

1. COTA
2. VIR
3.
4.
5.

beginning at somewhere between position 1 and 2, joy is beginning being overshadowed by negative emotions leading to termination of watching.
All of NAEC was trumped by fckups so no 'joy' in watching remained.

[Rcz]

That GT1 class died too young IMHO.

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by Rcz

That GT1 class died too young IMHO.

Which GT1 are you referring to? The one that morphed into LM-GTP, or the one that basically was Corvette last man standing in the ALMS?

[Rcz]

The ones of the late 90s, the second incarnation of GT1 was awesome too in its own way.

[canamman]

[QUOTE=Maelochs;3457241]canamman, I had to hit Google to even start to answer your question. QUOTE]

Thanks Maelochs and all others who chimed in. That will get me started
in getting my thoughts organized . Sorry it was a bit off topic.

[jasonjessica09]

Originally Posted by Rcz

The ones of the late 90s, the second incarnation of GT1 was awesome too in its own way.

As far as I am concerned the late 90's GT1 cars were the predecessors of the prototype coupes we see today. You had the McLaren, Mercedes, Porsche, Nissan, Panoz GTR and Toyota's that ran at Le Mans those years. That was followed by the Bentley, the Peugoet, and now all them are coupes. I think instead of LMP1, GTP1 is a better name for the category now.

The GT1 cars that had the Corvette C5, C6, Ferrari 550, Aston Martin DBR9, Saleen. That category is dead.

GTE/GTLM can probably trace themselves all the way back to IMSA GTU.

GT3 is a brand new since about 8 years ago now?

The open topped cars we see run now: The remaining LMP2 cars that are open and the LMPC's go back to the WSC cars of the 90's. Of course we had great open cars in between like the Audi's, Porsche RS, and the Acuras/HPD. This class will be gone by the end of 2016.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

So 27 Shared, 23 split? Of course I did look at the data in advance of my post. But more shared than split hardly suggests a period was a separation of prototypes and GTs for all races except the major enduros.

I think I said "ideal" for the period. That's important here. It simply wasn't always feasible to go for split events.

Here's a closer look:

They seemed to be trying to carry on with a GTP-style calender of mostly split races in 1994, but ended up with an average of 15,5 prototypes for the WSC standalone races, which was somehow considered not acceptable.

So for 1995 they tried to consolidate the series and increased the number of shared grid races. When they did split, they split GTS-2 from the main field rather than the prototypes from the GTs. Either way, shared grids were definitely needed that year with an average of 11,88 WSC-cars showing up for the races outside Florida

This concept was continued into 1996. Which saw a slightly better average of 12,71 prototypes outside Florida.

Now in comes Andy Evans and with him a considerable increase in prototypes over 1995 and 1996 now with an average of 17,375 cars for the split events in 1997.

So what we have are separate prototype races when the grid figures are >15 and shared races when they are below that. Coincidence or corelation?

[CyberMotor]

It doesn't really matter what was done in the past. That's history.

What is really important is that prototype endurance racing retains its unique place in the world as being a testbed for advanced automotive technologies that can be transferred to road-going cars when tested, proven and ready for prime time.

The advanced hybrid technology of the WEC represents this philosophy. The TUSC philosophy of given a favored set of teams huge advances in power with a directly related decrease in efficiency does not represent the mantra of increased efficiency and a test bed of advancement.

It is my opinion, that TUSC must regain that advance in progress in efficiency in all classes that was present in the ALMS and now present in the WEC. The old ideas of pack racing, power at any cost, and favored teams have passed. It's time to move into the 21st century and be responsible about it. It's about a lot more than just entertainment.

[BrentJackson]

^ I can see your point, but how does IMSA do that now? The owners can't afford P1 cars. P2s aren't exactly efficiency focused. I know better than to think anybody here will think of DPs as fit for anything other than scrap. So, what is the options open?

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by canamman

Maelochs- Back in the 70's and early 80's it was the heyday
of CamelGT. When did America start running Gt's and
prototypes in the same race. More importantly why?
Was it a LeMans thing or just combining small fields to
fill a grid?

A compressed abstract.

When international racing stopped running at Daytona in the early seventies, the IMSA ran its GT series there.
In time, some European teams contacted John Bishop and Bill France Sr. to see if they could not create some manner in which they could run at Daytona.
As Bill France Sr. owned the track, and he helped John Bishop get the IMSA going, he could do as he pleases and he pleased to let some run there; at the same time he went to France and spoke with the boys there that run the LeMans 24 hours about them creating a class for the IMSA cars.

Porsche put the time and money into the GT cars that Bishop and France had hoped Detroit would but they could see that a Porsche parade was not going to survive very long so they created an IMSA prototype class which for a time Detroit did put some effort into.
The IMSA morphed from AAGT into GTX and then full on prototypes in the late seventies to early eighties.

[Maelochs]

Another direction: Sports car racing was always mixed-class, because there were so many sports/GT car and organizers were way too smart to BoP cars with 1-liter engines and three-inch-wide wheels weighing 750 lbs with cars with 450-bhp engines, nine-inch wheels weighing 4000 lbs. (way too smart to BoP cars at all, pretty much.)

Lots of cars were "prototypes" or more actually one-off or limited -run "specials"; whateevr motor stuffed into whatever modified or cobbled-together frame (Cad-Allard, Cobra, Jag-Lister, Chevy-Lister—the list is endless .... )

Somewhere at the very end of the '50s (I forget which year than actual class was created) the reigning Euro sports car consortium recognized a class of purpose-built racing machines that were still both sports- (or GT) cars and also full-on racing cars. Jag D, Ferrari I think P-675 which begat the P2/P3/P4/512S/512M (Not using Google or notes here, just my porous and dishonest memory) leading to the Lola GT which begat the Ford GT-40 in its three or so variations, while Porsche built the RSK, then the 904, 907, 910, 908 ....

The late '50s to early '60s saw the first factory efforts to design and build pure racing sports/GT designs using the latest racing technology, regardless of what was practical for the street. As it had been with the "specials," looks were secondary and clothing the mechanicals in minimal aluminum or fiberglass was all that mattered ... and then aero concerns grew as the noses of cars would lift right off the track on the faster bits.

There was no distinction between "GT" and "prototype" in races then—these were simply classes in multi-class races (Le Mans had about as many as the Nürburgring races have now, or more.)

I am not sure but I think Can-Am was the first single-class series conceived for the start just for Group 7, basically unlimited cars with no requirement for a spare wheel or an FIA-regulation suitcase bin, where pure (what we would call) prototypes raced each other.

In the sports car mainstream, there was never a thought of dividing "prototypes" from other classes because they were still all just different classes. Once Ford and Ferrari (and Porsche) hit the class hard, there was no way to win overall in a sports car race without a hyper-advanced pure-racing prototype.

By the late '60s prototypes had really captured the popular imagination, even though there were only very tenuously "sports cars" in the original sense—cars made to be driven aggressively on the street—or GT cars, cars designed to take a pair of rich people with minimal luggage on a long fast weekend getaway to a distant European resort.


So at least part of the answer to why we see mixed grids would be, because it had always been done that way.


It is way too early and I have things to do so I can't Google all this—it is quite possible that this entire post is a lie composed of falsehoods. My apologies in advance.

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by BrentJackson

^ I can see your point, but how does IMSA do that now? The owners can't afford P1 cars. P2s aren't exactly efficiency focused. I know better than to think anybody here will think of DPs as fit for anything other than scrap. So, what is the options open?

P2 chassis aren't too expensive...

You want manufacturers to either hire a boutique builder to build cars for them, or do it themselves, adhering to P2 cost restrictions.

Put whatever engines that make them the same speed as the factory P1's.

[Breitling24]

Originally Posted by Maelochs

Those GT1 cars were at the pinnacle of performance and engineering in their day.

When Rolex went to the Daytona Prototype (2003 I think?) it was a deliberate step backwards. There were no road-car styling cues, but the cars were ugly—but the worst thing was, they weren't even an attempt at "The Best" or even "close to the best." They were compromised designs built to a formula which didn't value performance, but rather (supposedly) low cost, low repair cost, and long service life.

Add to that, that the cars were basically clones, and there is every offensive item on the sports car fans' offensive check list. After GTP/GT1 offered cutting-edge machinery, engineering advancement, the quest for constantly improved performance, Rolex presented atavistic machinery, engineering stagnation, and the abandonment of the quest for improvement.

It was like asking NFL fans to get just as excited about Pop Warner football, when none of their kids were playing—all the stuff that made it what it was, had been removed, and what was being offered up was a cheap imitation, a surface representation of what had been.

Rolex with DPs looked like sports car racing, but underneath, it wasn't—it was spec, standardized, stagnant and was actually opposed to improvement.

Add to that, that Rolex was competing with ALMS, had a much bigger budget, and eventually squeezed ALMS off of Speed TV, ... and add to all that, that when Rolex was spending more and more money to capture market share, ALMS was arguably the best sports car racing series on the planet (Porsche, Audi, Acura, Aston, Corvette, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche plus a ton of privateers in real racing cars) but was being squeezed by five-year-old cars using 50-year-old technology but funded by NASCAR money ...

Pretty easy for a fan of sports car racing to dislike the slow and ugly pretender which was (apparently) winning the popularity battle. I think people had seen the mediocre product with the better marketing plan win way too often, and here it was happening is Sports car racing, a sport which seems to inspire strong emotional bonds.

Nowadays the DPs are actually a lot more modern—and al lot better looking—but the animosity runs so deep that fans cannot get over it. Even pointing out that P2 is no more open than DP to development and improvement doesn't matter, because DP is Bad.

Add to all that that real P2 machinery—the latest and greatest, like the new Oak-Ligier, the Oak-Morgan ... are getting beat and beat up by DPs ... fans of development and improvement are seeing the latest and greatest being handcuffed by the rules and hip-checked by the competition and Losing to cars which are tarted-up throwbacks to 50 years ago ...

Just too many hot-button issues there for logic to gain a foothold.

I don't care about styling cues. They could be there or not, I just don't care. What I strongly dislike is when cars with styling cues but otherwise bad design (like the DP "Corvette") set the standard for the whole field—when "styling cues" trump performance. When the package is made more important than the contents—when I am being sold Show but not Go.

If DPs used modern technology (the whole P-class could weigh 875 kg and perform that much better with less if TUSC weren't trying to balance for the bad weight-to-strength ration of a 1035-kg steel tube frame) that would be a huge boost. Having a CF monocoque is far from "cutting edge" but it is "industry-wide best practice" and to use anything else is a deliberate step back.

Mandating simple aero wouldn't be a big deal, so long as the cars were absolutely as efficient as engineers could make them—unlike the DP "Corvette" which wasn't even as good as the then eight-year-old original DP shell.

Production-derived engines aren't a problem either—Can-Am was ruled by stock-block-baswed Chevies for several years. Camel GT was stock-block. What they weren't was hyper-managed, over-restricted, and sealed. Take away that are of development, and take away that much more appeal.

Basically, Daytona Prototype offers nothing but externals—it imitates a modern sports car. Naturally, fans don't want an imitation.

LMP2 was conceived as a substandard class. P1 was where the real stuff happened—P2 was the sub-class, the LMPC of sports car racing, the budget class. As P2 rules got more restrictive, it became even more of an underclass—limited development, limited advancement—but at least they started out as some of the best race cars of the day, using the latest and best tech. P2 was never intended to be the premier class—everyone could see it was too full of compromises to headline.

DP was always a step (or several) below that. Everything good about P2 was gone, and everything bad about P2 was maximized. And now, it is the Premier class of the continent's premier series. it is easy to see why fans are not thrilled to be getting fourth best, and are even more irritated when we are constantly told how great it is.

You aren't on Twitter, right?

[David Land]

How about we take the 2008-2010 P1 and P2 cars out of the mothballs until 2017?

Balance them like they were in the ALMS and go racing.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by David Land

How about we take the 2008-2010 P1 and P2 cars out of the mothballs until 2017?

Balance them like they were in the ALMS and go racing.

The best thing would be that even as dusted off museum display models by ACO & modern racing standards, their technology would still be brand new cutting edge to that of the DPG3, so it wouldn't even be backtracking...

Anyway we already have two Lolas from that period :P

[TRspitfirefan]

Originally Posted by CyberMotor

It doesn't really matter what was done in the past. That's history.

What is really important is that prototype endurance racing retains its unique place in the world as being a testbed for advanced automotive technologies that can be transferred to road-going cars when tested, proven and ready for prime time.

The advanced hybrid technology of the WEC represents this philosophy. The TUSC philosophy of given a favored set of teams huge advances in power with a directly related decrease in efficiency does not represent the mantra of increased efficiency and a test bed of advancement.

It is my opinion, that TUSC must regain that advance in progress in efficiency in all classes that was present in the ALMS and now present in the WEC. The old ideas of pack racing, power at any cost, and favored teams have passed. It's time to move into the 21st century and be responsible about it. It's about a lot more than just entertainment.

+1

[Rcz]

http://www.racer.com/imsa/item/10901...mericas-on-fox



Rating don't look too bad to me.


I hope more races are on FOX and not FS1 and FS2

And hopefully live.

[Danske]

Originally Posted by Rcz

Rating don't look too bad to me.

I think that works out to about a 0.7 rating, which isn't significantly better or worse than ALMS or Grand-Am did on network, or about what a test pattern gets if it's on after an NFL game.

I hope more races are on FOX and not FS1 and FS2

And hopefully live.

Yeah, we're not getting the whole of a three-hour race live on Fox-Fox. Some portion of it would have to be on FS1/2 if we get all of it televised. Now I don't mind it being on FS2 because I get that in HD, but my TV provider doesn't have an agreement with Fox for the FoxSportsGo streaming (just like my ISP didn't have an agreement with ESPN for the ALMS, which was blocked for me too). So I'd personally rather FS2 than online, since I get the former but not the latter.