Re-introduction of multi-class GT structure in ACO-style racing?

[MitchZ06]

But then what will you have to complain about and use for an excuse when your precious pony cart gets beaten?!?

[arakis]

Originally Posted by MitchZ06

But then what will you have to complain about and use for an excuse when your precious pony cart gets beaten?!?

drivers, tires, teams never underestimate the ability of a diluted man to make up excuses
P.S. never gonna happen though...
P.S.S. Let me answer that with a question, What will you?

[MitchZ06]

Only excuses I've been able to make have been "we screwed up", "we crashed", etc not "OH THE DAMN RULES!"

[arakis]

Originally Posted by MitchZ06

Only excuses I've been able to make have been "we screwed up", "we crashed", etc not "OH THE DAMN RULES!"

easy to do since the rules have been favorable to you

[MitchZ06]

Oh god not this crap again....

[NaBUru38]

There's too little entries and models, so I wouldn't split LMGT. The Pandamesque proposal is interesting, until cars start to bang each other. Then, heavier cars get an unfair advantage. So I'd keep one class only.

[Jonerz]

Originally Posted by Speed-King

I'd actually go for three classes:

GTX: Start with a production shell, then go nuts. Any engine from a manufacturers range is good, reposition it however you like and do whatever you want with your suspension pick up points. I.e. built RACECARS and no whatsoever BoP.

GTO: Closer to production, no waivers of any kind, for cars over 4 litres of displacement

GTU: The counterpart to GTO, for cars under 4 liters.

With a X-class format, guys like BMW can compete for top-GT honors, but everybody will know that these cars have very little in common with the street cars. The O and U classes would be a real test for roadcars.

As usual, I like your idea a lot Speedy. Only change I'd consider is to make the GTO limit more like 5.0 or 5.5L. Of course, with the current trend of smaller, forced induction motors that would thin out the top class pretty good.

If Sebring kicked of an IMSA season with those three classes as the only cars on track, I'd be very enthused so long as a goodly number of teams had picked up the challenge.

Chris

[Francesco]

i think that the basic GTE base is good... like the Pro-Am format too! but you have to cut costs... GTE are way too expensive to run for a privateer in this kind of racing, you need higher mileage for the engine, less electronics and maybe some performance with less weight/more power to attract people from GT3, let's be honest, GTE's real problem is BES and all the GT3 series, that's where all the Am guys are.

You need to find why they decided to switch to GT3 but i think the main reason was "same fun, less money"

[Asa]

JAF asked ACO if they could let GT500 cars race at Le Mans in garage 56. So actually, if DTM and Super-GT tech reg do merge as they seem to be on track to do so, then the new DTM/Super GT type cars should be a ready made class for Le Mans.

They are slower than LMP2 and faster than GTE as far as I know and with six manufacturers there won't be a lack of available cars.

[MagVanisher]

Originally Posted by Asa

JAF asked ACO if they could let GT500 cars race at Le Mans in garage 56. So actually, if DTM and Super-GT tech reg do merge as they seem to be on track to do so, then the new DTM/Super GT type cars should be a ready made class for Le Mans.

They are slower than LMP2 and faster than GTE as far as I know and with six manufacturers there won't be a lack of available cars.

And Corvette Racing and SRT Viper Team will complain of being beaten by GT500/DTM cars... Man, if they want to beat them, just join them!

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by Asa

JAF asked ACO if they could let GT500 cars race at Le Mans in garage 56. So actually, if DTM and Super-GT tech reg do merge as they seem to be on track to do so, then the new DTM/Super GT type cars should be a ready made class for Le Mans.

They are slower than LMP2 and faster than GTE as far as I know and with six manufacturers there won't be a lack of available cars.

No thanks. The GT fields are adequate, it is LMP1 that needs support.

[Deleted]

Okay I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this since the main idea of this thread wasn't about GTE and it'a sub categories specifically, but whatever:

Regarding GTE-PRO and AM - most people know where I stand with the primary concept of it but let's not go there - instead let's look at the current situation... one of the yearly commentary highlights for me has been at Le Mans where the Eurosport gang attempts to explain the differences between classes, which goes along the lines of "well in PRO you have professionals and amateurs, and in AM you have professionals and amateurs too so..."

With the recent rule change over car eglibility in AM (models don't have to be year old anymore, to Larbre's frustration I'm sure) what we have is

GTE-PRO can have factory teams and private teams
GTE-AM can have factory teams (why...) and private teams
GTE-PRO can have professional drivers and amateur drivers
GTE-AM can have professional drivers and amateur drivers
GTE-PRO can have new GTE models and old GTE models
GTE-AM can have new GTE models and old GTE models
GTE-PRO uses BoP to adjust the field
GTE-AM uses BoP to adjust the field

How on Earth do you explain that to anybody????

So in practice the ONLY difference is:
- In AM you need one bronze + bronze/silver driver
- PRO BoP is different from AM BoP (funny... even in SRO GT3 formulae it tends to be the same)

Do people still like the concept? Again, I'm not going into my personal displeasure over the "meaningless sub classes awarding for mediocrity" again, but generally speaking it is kinda silly looking concept on paper too.

[Victor_RO]

Originally Posted by Chiana

With the recent rule change over car eglibility in AM (models don't have to be year old anymore, to Larbre's frustration I'm sure)

What rule change? As far as I know, the fact that we have 2014-spec 991 RSR cars in GTE-Am is because Porsche homologated the "2014-spec" during 2013, and basically worked their way around the rule by pushing the homologation to before the last WEC race last year.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Victor_RO

What rule change? As far as I know, the fact that we have 2014-spec 991 RSR cars in GTE-Am is because Porsche homologated the "2014-spec" during 2013, and basically worked their way around the rule by pushing the homologation to before the last WEC race last year.

http://www.dailysportscar.com/?p=26937
GTE AM this season sees the teams able to opt to use current spec machinery, and all bar two have opted to do just that. That should mean that the Pro drivers in the class should mix it with the GTE Pros at times, and that could prove to be very entertaining.

Also made clear in the RLM comms today

[Ginaro Zukovsky]

Yes but has the rule actually changed, or is it just the case that there are no 2014-spec cars, thus everything is one year old?

[Aysedasi]

I must admit, I've never quite fathomed the idea of having pros in an am class. OK, you need to have pretty good ams so they don't get in the way of the pros, but to my simple mind it has always seemed quite a strange concept....

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

I must admit, I've never quite fathomed the idea of having pros in an am class. OK, you need to have pretty good ams so they don't get in the way of the pros, but to my simple mind it has always seemed quite a strange concept....

The even stranger concept is having full blown factory cars in AMATEUR category, as most obviously AMR is doing... Even Ratel has more sense in this matter.

[TF110]

The factory cars for AM are 2013 models. The same as this years car. I dont think theres any difference.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by TF110

The factory cars for AM are 2013 models. The same as this years car. I dont think theres any difference.

Yup

http://www.motorsport.com/wec/news/y...ia-wec-season/
The machinery in the GTE-Am-class might look unchanged for the 2014 season, but on a second look, many details are new. The Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin GTE has been upgraded during the off-season to the latest specification and is now in the same spec to works cars in the Pro-class.

[NaBUru38]

Privateer teams don't always have amateur drivers, especially in the United States.

The point of the proposed GT+ is to allow manufacturers to develop extreme machines every year. Then let privateers buy the regular customer GT cars, which would be cheaper, well balanced and competitive for several seasons.

[Dead-Eye]

Originally Posted by Ginaro Zukovsky

Yes but has the rule actually changed, or is it just the case that there are no 2014-spec cars, thus everything is one year old?

That. GTE was frozen at the end of 2013, which is why Porsche had to race the evolution 991 in Bahrain or stick with the old one.

I'd just get rid of GTE AM. Have a separate podium like we had for P1 privateers for teams fulfilling certain criteria (Bronze or Silver drivers in the squad or something like that), but don't make it a distinct class.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Dead-Eye

That. GTE was frozen at the end of 2013, which is why Porsche had to race the evolution 991 in Bahrain or stick with the old one.

Graham Goodwin and Sam Collins might've confused me with their wordings if that's the case

But do you mean GTE-AM was frozen or GTE in general? If PRO as well, how was GM able to introduce C7.R since it only debuted this year?

[carbon_titanium]

There is not any regoulamentar frozen specs for GTE cars, there is only for DTM (not total frozen specs, cars can have little updates like new mirrors) and already produced 2013 GT3 models. Simply cars like 458 and vantage are very old and basicly reachead already the edge of development, michelotto and prodrive have little to develope further. About porsche 991 is a different story, they introduced the "2014 specs" during the 2013 bahrein race, making available this package also for GT-AM teams for 2014 season! this basicly means that work teams (manthey in wec and porsche NA/core in TUSC) and private gt-am teams (proton and falken in TUSC) use exactly the same package.
If P&M were able to homologate and make debut the C7R in 2013 (also only for one race as porsche did), this year team larbre could use it in wec gt-am or elms gt class.

[Deleted]

But why then DSC (and RLM when on air) mentioned that GTE-AM teams can now use most up-to-date machinery, as clearly C7.R is not eglible... again, maybe just bad wording, I don't know

C7.R doesn't appear on the BoP tables as of yet, btw. Usually in recent years they performance balance the cars in advance even if they haven't run a mile in ACO trim

[Dead-Eye]

From the GTE rules (http://www.24h-lemans.com/wpphpFichi...s-lm-gte.pdf):

Except for safety or reliability reasons, only one evolution per period of 2 years is permitted before the first event of the season in which the homologated model is entered. This evolution will have the current year of the manufacture and will not be allowed on the cars from previous periods if a competitor wants to run in LMGTE-AM.

The period of restriction will begin for 2013 models for LMGTE-PRO cars, it will be the same for every car.

So, you can only do one update within two years. The rule came in starting from 2013, and obviously all cars were updated in 2013. That sounds to me like an effective development freeze for 2014 (although probably badly translated from French ). New cars for 2014 like the C7R aren't affected because they aren't homologated yet. The Porsches were upgraded because of this sentence:

For the new cars homologated, 1 evolution during the season will be allowed the first year.