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JHS18

Sports Car Racing Thread

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Audi and Porsche will race each other. VWAG confirmed that Audi will be the diesel entry, and Porsche the petrol entry. The original plan had been to run the Porsche in ALMS, the Audi in the WEC, and meet at Le Mans, but they will run both in the WEC in 2014.

As for GT drivers, they did promote Patrick Long to the LMP2, if you recall, and it didn't go very well. Obviously, he's not the best-of-the-best Porsche guy, but still, I wonder if that deterred them. I'd like to see Bergmeister have a go; he is a champion in Daytona Prototypes as well.

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RE: Rockenfeller.

He was a Porsche factory driver. He is now an Audi factory driver. So I guess it goes either way. He drove the Penske LMP2 as a third driver; he also drove the Audi LMP1 (maybe that same year, I think). Penske said him by name, though, so I assume it's pretty definite.

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That's good to hear. I know people within VWAG have said quite a few times that there's no issues with the two racing each other, because there was that speculation a while back that Audi would simply transform into Porsche by 2014. But whatever.

Hopefully Toyota will still be there in 2014 too. I know they're being quite careful with the budget, which is understandable given what the economy is like in Japan at the moment. But hopefully the view it as a long term thing rather than just a two year deal.

My dream scenario would be for Toyota to sell a couple of customer cars to Rebellion in 2014, given the Toyota links Rebellion has. But I guess that's probably unlikely.

Any word/speculation on what Nick Wirth is involved with? I recall at Le Mans when RLM interviewed him, he gave some indication that he was working on something or with somebody for 2014. Be interesting to see if that's a new HPD or something else, whether with Lotus or Glickenhaus or whatever.

Thanks for clearing that Rockenfeller thing up. It is interesting, and could potentially mean he won't be in DTM next year then. After Green was confirmed, I was wondering who of the current Audi crop may end up losing a drive, and that'd explain it potentially. Rockenfeller rejoins Porsche and does a year of testing with the new car instead of doing DTM with Audi.

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Watched the FIA GT1 from Slovakia (the Motherland...or one of the many...I'm a mutt :P), which aired tonight on American TV. Great racing! Wow, those cars are really cool. They look fast, they are fast, and there was some really close racing going on at various points. A bit tense at the end, though not excessively thrilling, with the BMW Z4 holding off the lovely McLaren MP4-12C.

I just love auto racing so much. Fun stuff. Sports cars are so cool.

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Given a proper look to the Rolex 24 entry list for the first time today. I already know I'll watch it, mostly out of the appeal of round-the-clock (twice) racing. The cars don't impress me much, and the officiating/amount of safety cars can be frustrating, but can you really be picky about racing in January? I don't think so, and besides, watching racing into the night is so cool. Endurance racing is just so great to me because it really pushes the motor vehicular limits, which is what we all like to see as car fans, but it also pushes the human limits and the emotion that goes into this is pretty neat. Is it Le Mans? No. But it's a nice race, and there's something comforting about seeing warm Florida on TV when it's below 0°C here.

(Speaking of Grand-Am, Aston Martin will make a DP engine soon).

Anyway, some highlights:

Daytona Prototype

Ganassi has a pair of BMW/Riley entries. The 02 features Scott Pruett, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Joey Hand, and Jamie McMurray. That has to be a favorite to win.

Equally impressive is the Starworks Ford/Riley. Sébastien Bourdais, Allan McNish, and Ryan Dalziel carry the team for pro-am racer Alex Popow.

8Star has a Corvette DP (Coyote chassis); they'll also field an HPD ARX-03b in WEC's LMP2. Enzo Potolicchio, the team owner, is joined by Stéphane Sarrazin, Nicolas Minassian, Anthony Davidson, and Pedro Lamy. I don't think I've seen anything that impressive in a DP in a long time. Also hints that Lamy will be joining him in the WEC.

Action Express has new drivers for their Corvette, as well. Christian Fittipaldi, João Barbosa, Nelson Piquet, Jr., Mike Rockenfeller, Burt Frisselle, and Brian Frisselle will be split amongst the two cars. Rockenfeller in a Chevrolet...bizarre.

Team Sahlen moves up to DP; a pair of BMW/Riley cars for them. The 42 has a nice lineup: Simon Pagenaud, Dane Cameron, Bruno Junqueira, and Wayne Nonnamaker.

You also have the "factory" Corvette from Spirit of Daytona. That's Oliver Gavin, Antonio García, Ricky Taylor, and Richard Westbrook at the wheel.

Grand Touring

Racing are versions (some of these are tube-frame cars) of the Ferrari F458, Audi R8, Chevrolet Corvette, Chevrolet Camaro, Porsche 911, Dodge Viper, BMW M3, and Mazda RX-8.

Extreme Speed Motorsports will have their Ferrari. Johannes van Overbeek and Scott Sharp lead gentleman drivers Mike Hedlund and Ed Brown.

Audi will have a real assault with the R8s. Alex Job Racing (a Porsche team) will have an R8 for Oliver Jarvis, Edoardo Mortara, Filipe Albuquerque, and Dion von Moltke. The Rum Bum entry features Frank Biela, Christopher Haase, and Markus Winkelhock. APR will have a pair of R8s; one of them has Marc Basseng, René Rast, and Frank Stippler driving. Very neat to see Audi getting more involved here.

Alex Job Racing's other entry is a Porsche. Jeroen Bleekemolen, Damien Faulkner, Marco Holzer, and Cooper MacNeil make a handy lineup.

Defending winners Magnus Racing get the help of Richard Lietz and Nicolas Armindo with regulars Andy Lally and John Potter.

Stevenson's Camaro gets some help from Chevrolet factory racers Tommy Milner and Jan Magnussen. Robin Liddell, John Edwards, and Daniel Graeff also on-board. That will be a threat.

Brumos Porsche is without Hurley Haywood this year; he's retired again. Leh Keen and Andrew Davis are joined by Bryan Sellers and Marc Lieb; look out for those guys. That's a good lineup.

A new Ferrari debuts with Max Papis and Jeff Segal, last year's champion. Follow that to see who else joins; looks good so far.

No Astons yet for TRG, so just three Porsches. No drivers yet.

Park Place gets the assistance of Porsche factory driver Patrick Long this year.

Grand Touring Experimental

The new GX class features tube-frame Mazda 6 entries and production-based Porsche Cayman and Lotus Evora entries. Alternative fuels must be used, like the brave new world of diesel. :P

mazda6-grand-am-gx-c_600x0w.jpg

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Glickenhaus LMP1? Probably not.

Glickenhaus DP? Maybe.

Glickenhaus says he'll make a DP, and says that Audi is going to have a DP in 2014. Whether any of that is real, I don't know. According to him, DP will be the top class in 2014. I wouldn't think that would preclude inclusion of LMP2 or LMPC, so that's not really a surprise.

I have no idea if Glickenhaus knows what he's talking about. I don't really expect a Glickenhaus anything in 2014, personally. :P

The Audi DP might make some sense, since Grand-Am's GT class will be at the bottom tier, overshadowed by ALMS GTE. So I could see them, with their increased involvement in the series, wanting to be at the top. Maybe they'll follow Corvette and make it a warped, bloated version of an Audi R8 with a massive greenhouse. ;)

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Thanks for the Daytona information. I enjoyed this year's race, so will definitely tune in again this January. Nice to see a couple more DPs entered too. A lot of good drivers in lots of different teams as well, so should be plenty to look out for in all three classes.

Yeah, have to say, I'm very cynical about Glickenhaus. But then I'm cynical about the Lotus too, given what a disaster the Indycar engine programme was. Of course, the two aren't related in any way, but it makes me lose confidence in a manufacturer/team when they plan big things but have a history of getting things spectacularly wrong.

Interesting to see more manufacturers looking at Grand Am. Suppose it is no real surprise given what will be happening in 2014, and it is always nice to see new combinations of engines and chassis entering any form of racing. I have to say that whilst there's a long way before it happens, I'm quietly optimistic about how the new series will be in 2014. I know it is a shame to lose LMP1 cars from America, particularly when Porsche were always going to do ALMS in '14...but if they get the class structure and equivalence between the cars right, I doubt it will be long before people really even notice/care that LMP1s are missing. I know that's a dangerous thing to say in this thread of all threads, so feel free to ban me. tongue.png

I do think there is the potential to make the DPs more interesting. As I've said before, and probably will say again before the Daytona 24 hours, they now look brilliant. You know what they remind me of? Le Mans EVO cars. The Corvette in particular is an identical to what ACO were suggesting the regulations would be like before they got scrapped:

corvette_lmp1_jalopnik-topshot.jpg

Tune them up a little bit, give them some more performance, and if more manufacturers enter, then I say great. I can't see too much wrong with it if that is how it is going to be.

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The good thing with Lotus' LMP1 project is that it's not actually Lotus building it or paying for it; Kodewa is doing everything and the work already began. Otherwise, I'd doubt that, too. I can say with some confidence that the Lotus money did come through for Alex Job Racing last year, and they made the Evora an infinitely better car (still slow, but getting somewhere better).

Old DPs looked a bit like the Chevrolet GTP.

2558904021_25898f944e_z.jpg

My beef with the DP isn't the looks; it's the near-spec-ness of it, and the lack of any interesting technology. Underneath the fancy bodywork, a DP is hardly different from a Camping World Truck, and nearly every chassis is identical. I think they still run steel brakes, too. The engines are essentially all the same. It's the mentality of it, that the top-class should be dumbed down so it is "fair," that bothers me about DP racing.

Another concern I have is how Grand-Am races always go, where there's a convenient full course yellow right when the final pit stops need to take place, and it just so happens to conveniently get everyone on the lead lap and back together, and just so happens to always set up a "thrilling" shootout to the end. There's no strategy involved, and you can run an absolute w#nker as your first driver because the late-race yellow will always negate any time lost and let your pro driver win.

Again, this concept stems from the idea that the race should be 100% in the driver's hands, and that the car and the strategy should play no role in determining the race's outcome. I think that's a load of manure, personally.

Nothing wrong with your optimism, though. There are positives to it and I wouldn't deny that. ALMS isn't exactly a flawless series, either.

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I can definitely see why you feel that way, although I guess some people would've taken issue with the LMPC and GTC cars in the ALMS, all being spec cars. It would've been nice to have seen the GTC class opened to more types of cars than just the Porsche, but I guess there's a valid reason why they didn't do that. And besides, they weren't racing for the overall victory.

Hopefully the new series is run to ALMS style rules regarding the officiating, but that does seem pretty odd. But what can you expect from the NASCAR family when things like green-white-checker finishes exist? I also admit I didn't really understand the "lucky dog" pass at this year's Daytona 24 hours, you certainly wouldn't see something like that happen at Le Mans. But then, as you say, this isn't Le Mans, so perhaps I am being too harsh.

Also, given the DPs are pretty much identical to each other, presumably that's the only way you can get back on the lead lap, given you don't have a big enough car advantage over the others to use!

But hey, let's wait and see. It is far too early to write something off when we don't even know how the class structure is going work yet.

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Good post; can't disagree with you.

You nailed it on LMPC/GTC...didn't like having either class there, but they were pretty harmless since the focus was always on P1/P2/GT.

As for allowing other cars in GTC, the entire class was paid for by Porsche, hence other cars (i.e. a Ferrari Challenge F458) weren't allowed. Porsche is one of the few partners (Corvette, Michelin) who buys the ALMS' (horrid) TV deal. In the U.S., we get the races shown next day in a two hour package, which shows about 30 minutes of racing, 30 minutes of pit stops/caution flags, 40 minutes of commercials, and 20 minutes of "in-program" commercials (special features on Porsche, Corvette, Michelin, and the support series...every week). The TV time in the U.S. is paid for; it's a time-buy, and Porsche helps to pay for that. So, the GTC class is their own little way of advertising Porsche's Motorsport program, which actually makes a profit selling to customers (like the gentleman drivers in GTC).

GTC was going to disappear in 2014, though, with Porsche moving to LMP1 and deciding that was enough. It would have been replaced in full by GTE-Am, which was supposed to debut in 2013, but will not make an appearance at all now.

The thing I like about DPs? The potential they could have with some new ideas from the ALMS management/teams/drivers/fans coming into the picture.

There will be freedom in engines coming; Ford will debut a turbocharged V6 (3.2L), which is essentially the LMP2 engine that ran in the Radical at Laguna Seca this past season.

If they could go to carbon brakes, allow some technology (I'm of the opinion that confining alternative fuels to the lowest class, GX, sends the wrong message...it says that alternative fuel is for the slowest, plainest vehicles out there, and that innovation doesn't belong in the top classes), allow freedom in the chassis design, and bring on tire competition, we'd have something interesting.

You can see where DP could start to mirror GTP in a way. The Corvette bodykit is a good start; now let's go underneath the skin. A Ford bodykit, Audi bodykit, Aston Martin engine, Glickenhaus model, a new Lola chassis in 2014, etc. are all planned or rumored. You can see where, with GT1 gone, "bigger" supercars like a Corvette or like a Porsche 918 would make really neat looking DPs...but there needs to be something neat about them underneath, and I hope that the merger brings a unification of ideas that can make the DP progressively more interesting.

I am by no means against a series that has a unique prototype class; if I want LMP1 or LMP2, the WEC is actually easier for me to watch legally online than the ALMS is. But they have to be prototypes, and not Camping World Trucks. :P

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Had an errant thought about Lotus, the LMP2 team. It's one shady place to be...

You have Colin Kolles, who is a dentist, which alone is horrifying. He always seems to be portrayed in an unfavorable light.

Vitantonio Liuzzi had some trouble with not paying his taxes a few years back.

Luca Moro was suspended for failing a drug test.

James Rossiter isn't shady, but he was the second driver confirmed at Team US F1, who sure as hell were.

Lotus? The number of teams they promised to pay and then stiffed seems to be pretty high. Plus you had some management fraud there.

Beautiful car, that T128 LMP2, but I wouldn't trust that team.

(Of course, if you want to find people you can trust, don't go looking around a race track).

In news, Alexander Sims will join Hexis Racing to drive their McLarens. Sounds like he's replacing Frédéric Makowiecki, who Autosport (and the Internet) expects to see at Aston Martin in GTE. Sounds good to me.

I suspect that could leave an opening at the HVM/Status GP LMP2 team in WEC, since Sims drove for them last year. Perhaps there won't be many conflicts, though, with Sims' Blancpain running (and whatever else...FIA GT Sprint Series is it, now?).

Speaking of FIA GT series, really enjoying the 2012 FIA GT1 season. Such cool cars!

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Yeah, I don't know why, but I've just felt uneasy about the Lotus project since it was announced. As you say it is actually Kodewa...but I don't know. I just wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if for some reason it didn't happen. I hope it does, the more cars in LMP1 the better, and the more competitive LMP1 cars the better too. But let's just wait and see.

Reading that the entries for both the WEC and the Le Mans 24 hours will be announced on February 1st. Should be a big news day, and hopefully we get a few surprises. Certainly hoping to hear of at least one Viper on the grid at Le Mans. Guess it is a bit too early to have a strong guess of who might be on the entry though.

Yeah, it is FIA GT Sprint, but I really haven't heard a lot about that to be honest. It seems like Sebastien Loeb's the only one who has committed to that series with his McLaren, but I've no idea about anyone else. All Inkl who run the Mercs this year I think have already said they're doing WTCC next year...Vitaphone, probably Blancpain, Hexis most likely the same, and I believe AF Corse has said they won't be doing it either, so...that championship may be a non-starter.

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Kodewa is paying for the entire thing. No Lotus money involved, which is good, because even when Lotus does fund the entire thing, there is still no Lotus money. :P

I heard the LMP2 was finished and work had begun on the LMP1. I feel better about it than a few of the other supposed programs because the LMP1 is just an upgrade of the LMP2; if we see the P2 on track in 2013 (and we will), there's no reason we couldn't see the P1 in 2014.

You may hear of a Viper, though you won't hear one with that restrictor they have on it. ;)

Would like as many in GTE-Pro as possible, of course, so an SRT Viper GTS-R is certainly welcome.

Hexis confirmed they will not do GT Sprint, so that's too bad. As I said on Twitter, endurance racing is great, but I really can't watch 6 hour or 12 hour or 24 races all the time (I can pretty much never watch a race start to finish if it exceeds 3 hours, and as fun as endurance races are, there's always that frustration of missing the middle chunk of the race and losing the continuity and flow of it). So, having a GT series with shorter races is something I really appreciate, and I absolutely love the cars. I hope they can find some entries.

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Yeah, I know what you mean when you say that. I think there is very much the potential to have a GT Sprint series, for reasons I've mentioned before. It just needs the organiser not to make a complete mess out of it. I can't blame the teams being perhaps a bit cautious to another Stephane Ratel idea, given how disastrous his vision for a World GT1 championship was.

Talking of which, came across this which may give us something to debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnOvdGdPnhE

It is an interesting concept, although I don't fully agree. To me, the LMP1 cars will always be the ones I prefer. I love GT racing obviously, but to me, part of the appeal about racing cars is that...they are not something you could ever imagine seeing drive down a normal road. They're so...I don't know...unique and extreme in every aspect, that they don't really need to look like conventional production cars. Saying that, it would be cool to see some of those cars race, although the McLaren P1 in particular looks hideous.

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It's a neat idea, but until it's on the table, it isn't worth too much thought. The 2014 LMP1s are very, very, very similar to the current breed. Slightly altered dimensions and "open" engine rules that seem to be negated by other regulations that give smaller ones an advantage. GTE is staying the same until 2015/16, when it will be merged with GT3.

The point being, the line of thinking in sports cars right now isn't change.

Now, do I think it would be cool if Grand-Am scrapped DP and became a GT series with things like this at the very top, GTE/3 below that, and GT4 below that? Yes. That would be awesome. It'd give the American series its own unique niche that could really appeal to people because these are cars they dream about, while allowing things like LMP1s to stay in existence in the WEC.

Maybe there'd be an "IMSA" class at Le Mans (wasn't there back in the day?) to allow them to run, too.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), it won't come to that, as Grand-Am, too, isn't ready to take a step in a new direction.

I will present on downside to GT racing: it requires manufacturer involvement of some kind. I know a private team can get a GT car, but first, that GT car must actually exist, and few are going to make it on their own. If Porsche said tomorrow "we don't want to supply GT cars," the world would stop turning. Luckily, Porsche profits on their motorsports arm because of this, so they'll be giving us 991s soon. A private GT effort can't work, since some number of production units must exist. A private LMP1 or LMP2 effort can work; if Audi and Toyota both left tomorrow, you'd lose World Championship status, but you could still have a series with Lolas and HPDs (part of Honda but not really Honda) and OAKs and Orecas and whatever else you can find.

It wouldn't be much good, of course, because I think all racing of all kinds needs both manufacturers and independents to be successful. One without the other categorically sucks in most instances. But, if you invest too heavily in GT racing, you really lose out as soon as the manufacturers decide they don't want to be there anymore.

So much for "not worth too much thought..." :P

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Rumor is that the ACO will invite four Daytona Prototypes to Le Mans in 2014. Not sure if that's just auto-invites, and the class would be open, or if it would literally just be four there.

The less I say about this the better, so I'll say nothing at all and just report it as is.

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If anyone is looking for some racing, the Dubai 24 Hour starts tomorrow at 10:00 AM UTC. Streaming on YouTube and live.24hdubai.com. It's a race headlined by GT3 cars but featuring pretty much everything.

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Caught quite a bit of Dubai. Enjoyed it, despite the fact that the annoying locked-off camera periods. Is it really hard to film an endurance race these days? Spa and Nurburgring are the same. Can't they find camera men to share shifts or something?

Some good battles for the lead, particularly at one stage between Claudia Hurtgen and Lorenzo Case. Really brilliant racing.

The amount of code 60s got a bit annoying too, plus I didn't really understand the point of the Am category cars having a lap time limit. What's the point of racing if you can't go flat out?

Anyway, as I say, good to watch, a good way to open the circuit racing season. I love GT racing too. It really is among the best in the world at the moment.

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I enjoyed the Dubai 24 Hour a lot. I guess the next sports car race is the same series, with the Bathurst 12 Hour in early February.

The timing and scoring was really the best I've ever seen. It was sortable by every column, so you could have it open in multiple tabs sorted by different things to keep track of developing battles or different classes or fastest laps. I found that really cool. You can't survive an endurance race as a fan without T&S, in my opinion. Sometimes I enjoy watching the scoring as much as I enjoy watching the video.

There were some cool cars, some cool shots, and some great battles. I was amazed at how quickly a huge gap could be erased by some of the cars, and the traffic was tenacious. Also, I liked how dark it got, and there's no cooler sight than racecars at sunrise (I'm a big fan of early mornings in real life...the world is so beautiful early in the morning...and peaceful...)

GT3 racing is just excellent and needs to be incorporated in Le Mans as soon as possible. The ACO's apparently going to be challenged greatly in its way of thinking by a short WEC grid and the loss of America (Level 5 closed the LMP2 program in the ALMS, so there won't be any LMP2s to do Grand-Am in 2014, I'd think. Level 5 will do Le Mans, but said that if the top class in Grand-Am isn't pro-am, there's no point). I love prototypes, but I'm just not sure the market is going to allow for this model to stay forever. Major automakers aren't attracted to LMP, and niche automakers can't afford it. If the WEC grid is as weak as John Dagys indicates, yikes. It does sound like JRM will abandon LMP1 for the Nissan GT-R GT3, to be run in British GT, perhaps.

As I say, I want prototypes, and it's not all negative with Audi and Toyota there, as well as Porsche in 2014. I still wonder how GT3 can be so healthy and ALMS/ELMS/Asian Le Mans/WEC so anemic.

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You've definitely made an interesting point.

You could make a list as long as your arm when it comes to the number of makes and models that are currently available in GT3 racing, or those that will soon be available, like the Jaguar F-Type, Bentley Continental etc. In some ways, what we have now reminds me of what was one of the best, if not the best, time for GT racing at Le Mans. In the early 60s you had cars like the Ferrari 250 and many others besides and the grid was full essentially of racing road cars.

Nothing lasts forever, and whilst prototypes are for a more a fundamental part of Le Mans, there will be a time where naturally demand to build or race them will come to an end. We've seen this already with GT1 for instance - despite the SRO's best efforts, they were technically flogging a dead horse, particularly after the ACO said they wouldn't accept them at Le Mans any more. Even Group C came to a natural conclusion after several great years.

Maybe, like what that video suggested that I posted a while ago, there will come a time where GT cars are, in some form perhaps once again seen as the most important class at Le Mans. I don't know.

I think what is perhaps hurting the WEC is the uncertainty everywhere at the moment. I mean, look at LMP1. From 2014 you won't be able to race them in the new merged American series, you can't race them in ELMS, and I believe from memory, they won't be eligible in the Asian series either. The only place you can race them is the WEC, which, understandably, may put manufacturers off, because they won't be able to sell too many of them and have their cars racing in all the regional series around the world.

P2 is only marginally better off.

The thing that is crucial to the WEC and Le Mans is that the regional series in Europe, America and Asia are healthy. But at the moment, none of them really are. ELMS was an absolute disaster last year, we know what is going on in the ALMS already, and who knows if the Asian series is going to work? I wouldn't put much money on it, that's for sure.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I do think that the ACO definitely has to be prepared to look to a future post LMPs in however many years time that is.

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That's a great point, James.

What would sports car racing look like if the ACO had found a model where Audi, Peugeot, Toyota, etc. could sell customer cars to the ALMS, ELMS, and Asian Le Mans Series to offset the cost of racing? That's how GT racing ultimately works; Porsche profits on their motorsport division outright, while others offset the loss by the advertising and image gains they get. Was there a way they could have done that for LMP1? You'd have manufacturers who could do the WEC as factory teams, and healthier fields in the regional series where private teams wouldn't need huge travel budgets to run competitive cars.

Perhaps, though, the LMP1 cost level is just too high, and the GT model can't be applied. In that case, run GTs.

And I say that because I don't want to see them become Americans and run a "prototype" that isn't a prototype at all. I'd much rather see GT as the top class at Le Mans than some cost-restricted, technically-universal crapper like a DP. The name prototype implies development for a future model of something, i.e. a road car from the racing car, and let me tell you, you're not exploring anything new in a DP...

Of course, the ACO isn't going to do anything. The ACO keeps bringing the ELMS back, making no changes at all even though it keeps dying. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results...

I don't mean to be down on the WEC; I'm excited for both it and the ALMS in 2013. I just don't know if I trust the ACO going forward. The WEC is starting to reflect trends we've seen in ALMS, ELMS, and Asian Le Mans. That's worrying.

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On a bit of a lighter note, the British GT entry for this year continues to grow. Here's how things are now looking just in the GT3 category alone:

888Optimum - BMW Z4 (x2)

AF Corse - Ferrari F458 (x2)

FF Corse - Ferrari F458 (x2)

Apex Motorsport - McLaren MP4-12C

Barwell Motorsport - Aston Martin V8 Vantage

Beechdean Racing - Aston Martin V8 Vantage (x2)

PGF-Kinfaun AMR- Aston Martin V8 Vantage

Ecurie Ecosse - BMW Z4

Fortec Motorsport - Mercedes SLS (x2)

Ginetta Cars - Ginetta G55 (x2)

JMH Automotive - x1 Nissan GTR, x1 Ferrari 430 Scuderia

Motorbase Performance - Porsche 997 GT3-R (x2)

MTECH - Ferrari F458

Preci-Spark - Mercedes SLS

RJN Motorsport - Nissan GTR

Rosso Verde - Ferrari F458

Scuderia Vittoria - Ferrari F458

Speedworks Motorsport - Corvette C6

Stark by Hepworth - Ginetta G55

Trackspeed - Porsche 997 GT3-R (x3)

United Autosports - x1 Audi R8, x2 McLaren MP4-12C

Vita4One Italia - Ferrari F458/BMW Z4 (x2)

Von Ryan Racing - McLaren MP4-12C

IDL Racing with CWS - Ginetta G55

Leipert - Lamborghini Gallardo LP600 (x2)

Team Dynamics - McLaren MP4-12C

Blendini Motorsport - ?

AmD - ?

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Spectacular list. Dubai impressed me so much. I will definitely be catching any GT3 race streamed, so I hope someone will give the British GT a proper broadcast. You'd have to think there wouldn't be so many teams if there was no value in doing it, and part of the value is TV coverage, so there's got to be something in the works, no?

Sounds like the full-time WEC LMP1 car count is:

2 from Audi

1 from Toyota (with another part-time)

1 from Strakka

1 from Rebellion (with another for the first three rounds)

5 full-time, 2 part-time. JRM could do Le Mans. So could OAK.

On the bright side, that would be an outstanding grid in America! ;)

In LMP2, Lotus will field a pair of T128 LMP2s. Neat.

ELMS is gaining entries steadily, so maybe it works out better this time. I still like their schedule a lot (I think the Red Bull Ring and the Hungaroring will both be interesting tracks for sports car racing).

Asian Le Mans' GTC class will include Toyota Prius and Honda CR-Z GT300 cars. The Prius GT300 would have qualified second on the GTE-Pro grid for the WEC race at Fuji, just for reference.

It would take very, very little balancing of performance to make a class out of LMP2, Super GT500, DTM, and DeltaWing, with another class of DP, LMPC, GTE, GT3, and Super GT300. It'd be a very bizarre series if you could do that, but I might find it enjoyable and that's all that matters. Make it happen. :P

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Spectacular list. Dubai impressed me so much. I will definitely be catching any GT3 race streamed, so I hope someone will give the British GT a proper broadcast. You'd have to think there wouldn't be so many teams if there was no value in doing it, and part of the value is TV coverage, so there's got to be something in the works, no?

It really is. One magazine recently described the British GT as the hidden secret of motorsport in this country. It is just remarkable to think that only in 2010 was the series struggling to maintain even a ten car grid for the full year...it is an amazing recovery.

I'll try and keep that list as updated as possible. Another team was confirmed today. Leipert will run two Lamborghini Gallardos.

Things are improving on the TV side of things. I think that they've confirmed that two or three races will be broadcast live on Motors TV. As good as an improvement that is, it still isn't anything on the BTCC's deal, especially as not everyone can even get Motors, but everyone can get ITV4.

There continues to be whispers about online coverage. On Midweek Motorsport, Radio Le Mans saying they were willing to get involved and provide commentary should it be streamed on the championship's website. It'd be great to see, because the future for motorsport (or indeed any sport) is not on TV, but online. It would make sense too, especially considering that ALMS, WEC, ELMS and FIA GT (run by SRO, who happen to run British GT) will all stream their races online this year.

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