FIA GT or ALMS ?

[woodyracing]

which is best or most important ?
whats your views ?

Woody.

[pink69]

The ALMS is better as it has larger fields and 3 classes of cars than just the two in the FIA series. Also the ALMS is run to the Le Mans rules so it gives an idea for the La Sarthe race predictions. It would be better if the two combined then we would have fuller grids and more exciting racing!

[woodyracing]

i saw ALM at donington this year,
British GT at Oulton last year
and FIA GT at donington in 98.

ALM this year was awesome, but i would have liked to see more variety of cars, like Lister, TVR, Dodge, Corvette, Marcos, Lotus etc.

British GT last year had great variety but no GT1.

FIA GT in 98 was great with the GT1 cars battling it out.

bring back GT1 i say

Woody.

[McSlick]

i vote for ALMS
But if i could make the rules drop them both and go back to group C rules

[KC]

I love the look of the GTP/LMP/prototype cars, but the manufacturers cannot be relied upon to stick with them. We see companies make an all out attack on LeMans and then put their toys up for a year or forever. Or you see teams run their equipment in the ALMS like BMW did, and then give up after being trounced by Audi and go elsewhere. How long until Audi gets tired of spending money and quits the ALMS? I don't expect them to be there next year. Why bother beating up on Panoz or privateer efforts?

The GT or GTS type cars (ie: Viper, Corvette, Callaway, Saleen, and Mustang Cobra) usually make up the bulk of the field with the true production based cars (ie: Porsche 911 GT3). These cars are much cheaper to build and campaign and are more lucrative for manufacturers because it is their premier GT machine, their technology and performance sales leader. This is the same concept behind Trans Am. Ultra-exotic GTP/LMPs look great but are too expensive to build and run by most privateers. A few teams, like Champion Racing and Dyson Racing, manage to compete with the factories to some degree but usually rely on failures or crashes to regularly beat them.

So what do you do? Insist that someone runs GTP/LMP, even if it is only two teams like raced at the Dallas round of the ALMS with only 6 cars total? Or encourage privateer run GTS machines that a broader range of teams can run and a broader audience can support? I don't know. What I do know is that the ALMS LMP class is very weak right now. The Can Am class in the Grand Am is not very exciting to watch with a high attrition rate.

One of the suggestions I read from Brock Yates was to bring back the old style Can Am cars, 5 to 6 liter V8 machines in carbon-fiber/tube frame chassis. They are fast, loud and relatively inexpensive when compared to LMPs. Allow no turbos and require spring driven valvetrain to reduce reliance on pneumatic valvetrain and contain cost. The problem with this is it effecively eliminates most non-American manufacturers as they do not normally produce V8 engines in this displacement range. Why would the historic sportscar competitors, Porsche or Ferrari or Audi or Mercedes or BMW or Jaguar or Alfa Romeo and others, be interested in producing something they cannot use to benefit in their marketting scheme? Again there is little to keep the manufacturers interested and loyal to.

I don't know, and neither does any of the people and companies involved.