2014 SCCA World Challenge

[Nick Woodbury]

Originally Posted by TRspitfirefan

I also like having the GTS cars running with the GT/GTA classes.
Lots of cool cars and great racing. What's not to like?

Maybe Jeff Lepper....but that is just me.

[PointDSM]

Thank goodness the track is on the East side of Birmingham! Lots of rain coming, but they should get the 1st race in before it hits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E7PsVIXpeg

[Maelochs]

Pirelli World Challenge--the best thirty-minute sprint series in North America.

[PointDSM]

Does anybody know what happened to Hedlund (Mike)? He qualified, but didn't run in Race 1 or 2, and hasn't been on Twitter.

[J Jay]

Well that was a little silly from Lazarro. Couldn't see Palmer going past so he didn't need to run up the curb so high.

Edit: Good race though, not seen yesterday's yet.

[JoeMaters]

Great race, specially that end lol.

[Nick Woodbury]

What.....a......race!!!!!

[Hendrix]

Both races this weekend were pretty good, granted I would like to see them speed up the caution periods.

The best thing is that the series is only going to get better with Acura and Bentley joining later in the season.

[Rcz]

Pretty good racing in both race 1 and 2

Much better then the Long Beach race

[Rodger Davies]

That might be the best, non-artificial ending to a sportscar race so far this year.

[ttdriver2009]

Stream worked for 30 minutes and then it shut off. Couldn't get back on. Gave up and watched timing and scoring. Those GTS drivers need to figure out how to race. Again, it was another shortened race. Would be nice to get some more green flag time as the GT cars are great but only seeing them for such a short period is disappointing. Since these GT3 cars run races up to 24 hours in Europe, why cant PWC start doing 6 or 12 hour races? I'd love to camp out for a 24hr PWC race.

[PointDSM]

Originally Posted by ttdriver2009

Stream worked for 30 minutes and then it shut off. Couldn't get back on. Gave up and watched timing and scoring. Those GTS drivers need to figure out how to race. Again, it was another shortened race. Would be nice to get some more green flag time as the GT cars are great but only seeing them for such a short period is disappointing. Since these GT3 cars run races up to 24 hours in Europe, why cant PWC start doing 6 or 12 hour races? I'd love to camp out for a 24hr PWC race.

The complaint is getting as old as the "bring prototypes to PWC" chant....

This is Pirelli World Challenge! It is a GT sprint race series, period. The shear amount of money a team needs to run a 6 hour race versus a 1 hour race is incredible. Also, most teams don't have enough staff to run a a basic pit crew.

[PointDSM]

Originally Posted by Rodger Davies

That might be the best, non-artificial ending to a sportscar race so far this year.

Agreed!^^

The camera work to find the other on-track battles in other classes was superb. Great race to watch.

[Maelochs]

To expand on a PointDSM's point: the directing was superb.there was almost always good action on screen and the director caught all the really important moves. Even when there were four good battles (lead and second in each class) I felt like I could follow everything important about all four contests.
A shame to see Lazarro crack under pressure but great to see an Audi beat a Ferrari

[jasonjessica09]

Where can the series get better at this point? I think standing starts is not the best thing for the PWC series.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by jasonjessica09

Where can the series get better at this point? I think standing starts is not the best thing for the PWC series.

Could this be down to relative inexperience in standing starts? I imagine if they stick with it (for certain tracks maybe), it won't be such a big problem.

[jasonjessica09]

Originally Posted by J Jay

Could this be down to relative inexperience in standing starts? I imagine if they stick with it (for certain tracks maybe), it won't be such a big problem.

I just don't think it suits GT3 cars very well. Standing starts are great for open wheel single seaters though.

[ttdriver2009]

It makes sense. PWC is just a sprint series. It's just a shame to see GT3 cars not utilized to their full potential. I really like these cars but just don't understand why there is not an endurance series in the states for these cars? Maybe a separate PWC enduro series? Use the existing cars but if you want to run the endurance races you can, in it's own championship. The Blancpain North American Endurance Series Presented by Pirelli World Challenge, would be a great series.

[Rodger Davies]

At the moment, there are probably somewhere between 20 and 30 GT3 (and semi-GT3) cars in the States. Whilst I'm sure many of us would agree with the sentiment, these things won't happen overnight. After those races at Barber, each a fantastic example of multi-class GT racing, can't you/we just enjoy what we have for now.

[ttdriver2009]

I see that the PWC TC race today was cancelled at Barber. Didn't they cancel a GT race at St. Pete? Why do they keep cancelling races? Doesn't that cost the teams money?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by ttdriver2009

Stream worked for 30 minutes and then it shut off. Couldn't get back on. Gave up and watched timing and scoring. Those GTS drivers need to figure out how to race. Again, it was another shortened race. Would be nice to get some more green flag time as the GT cars are great but only seeing them for such a short period is disappointing. Since these GT3 cars run races up to 24 hours in Europe, why cant PWC start doing 6 or 12 hour races? I'd love to camp out for a 24hr PWC race.

Erm, no it wasn't. Ended after the scheduled 50 minutes.

[Maelochs]

@ttdriver2009: In both cases the races were cancelled because sever weather made racing impossible. Thunderstorms, water flowing across the track, tornado warnings ...

However much it costs teams not to race, it costs them a whole lot more to rebuild wrecked cars.

[MitchZ06]

Watched both races on youtube a bit after they were held, top work PWC for getting them up so fast.

-Can people just stop suggesting prototypes need to be added? This series is far and away better as it is than if it were made into some sort of ALMS wannabe, please, it's over, ALMS is gone.

-Same with wanting this to become an endurance series or add endurance races, the series isn't meant to be anything other than sprint races and with the structure it uses it's also cheap, hence the pretty good grids the series has gotten for nearly it's entire history. If it ain't broke don't mess with it!

Now for the race, can't say enough of how entertaining these races have been! As has been said already the directing of the streams is absolutely brilliant, there's no focus on just the GT leaders but on almost all battles between all cars. Only thing I've not enjoyed is K-Pax being a tad rubbish (McLaren fanatic right here) but I guess they've got to get up to speed with the car. Standing starts? Might be worth doing away with them if the fields continue to grow, the crash at the start of the Sunday race looks like it wouldn't have been avoided if it was a standing or rolling start.

Either way, great stuff and again I'm looking forward to the next round.

[Lagunaseca_4life]

Yea I really want to see kpax and the mclaren's up front, seeing them struggle with launching isn't fun.i sure miss seeing those volvo's quick launch.

[TF110]

People like prototypes. They probably want them in this series to have an elms type feel to it. That and they could set a trend. But then itd be weird since lmp's are geared more toward endurance not the sprint races that WC is doing. GT3's are more than enough, itd be good to get more teams involved and that would elevate the series with some high profile names joining.