[FIA GT] FIA/ACO GT regulations

[ger80]

I have a little problem with the GT regs and the performance adjustments which are done in FIA GT and ALMS mostly at the moment.
Is it realy the best way to have regs that make much development on the cars necsesary but adjust them after that?
The adjustments are nescesary because the GT regs define the permitted difference between a road and race car mostly.
Thats all ok, but if there are adjustments which are based on race results or whatever at the end, why the teams have to use such expensive cars?
Think we need regs which are based on technical facts or adjustments only, but not a mix of technical facts, difference road/race car and adjustmensts
Look at GT3, many different cars are racing there. Super GT is another example, there rules are based on technical facts mostly.

[JAG]

There isn't a need for such expensive cars, but thats what we have, and most seem happy with them.

The ACO/FIA simply want to see all GT cars on an equal performance level, which is harder to achieve when road car design varies so widely, as opposed to prototypes built to a strict set of regulations.

In fact at Le Mans the ACO urged Corvette an Aston not to develop their cars any further (in terms of extra pace) as they were already at the performance limit the ACO wish to see.

You could argue the GT1 regs should be changed as a whole, rather than adjustments to individual cars, but then again, a new set of GT1 regs would be more complicate than LMP regs.

The worldwide trend is to equalise GT's, if you wish to spend big bucks and show your technical expertise, go down the LMP route.

BTW, Super GT are similar to the ACO/FIA, individual cars have success ballast, plus, if say the NSX's are off the pace as a whole, this model is allowed performance breaks to even up the competition.

As for GT3, they are simply Cup cars of various descriptions, balanced so they are all competitive.

[ger80]

ok, but if you look at alms for example. who knows if the car C6R is faster or only the team is doing a better job? nobody i think.
why not taking the car key parameters into a simulation tool to get the differences which are caused by the road car on one level and let the teams do there best.
adjustments based on race reults makes me asking if it is a technical competition or only show (not ACO/FIA GT racing only)
if they use the key parameters, we maybe dont need special homologations cars any more (Z06,997GT3RS, ...)

[JAG]

You need to make a distinction, FIA GT and the ALMS are sprint races so have to put on a show, hence ballast and tech changes every so often.

At Le Mans and the LMS, the endurance aspect enables you to tolerate dominent cars without negatively affecting the 'show'.

The performance of the C6-R in the LMS indicates the cars advantage in the ALMS is primarily down to the team, but the end result is still dominance and a poorer show.

The ACO are bringing in black boxes to monitor cars performance, enabling them to better balance restrictors etc. and see exactly were a particular cars advantage is.

Once they can categorically say the regs don't give one particular car a techincal or power advantage, they can leave the cars well alone, leaving it upto race organisors whether they punish a particular teams car in order to improve the 'show'.

[Danske]

You can look at the problem a bit mathematically and say that you have the set of all possible production cars which are transformed into the set of all possible race cars given the rules and how the teams implement/take advantage of the rules.

The problem is that while you don't necessarily want a set of rules which allow a team to take just any car and make it into one just as fast as one based on a million-dollar supercar, it's also desirable if the set of production cars that can be made into potentially winning race cars is not restricted to just supercar clones nearly indistinguishable from each other. You want the set of optimum production cars to have a range of members, not just one. But you also don't want rules which allow you to take any old production car and make something that can hit the target GT lap times.

OTOH, the rules may also have a wider range of "optimum" production cars associated with them, but only one manufacturer may be producing a car near an optimum or even actively *trying* to produce a car near an optimum. So you may have to skew your rules to take into account what the set of actual production cars are instead of all theoretical production cars.