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Originally Posted by cmk
While I totally agree with you that PLM will be a mountain to climb for Porsche, you do the Joest team a great (and frankly surprising) disservice by rating them so much lower than the ALMS teams. Joest basically wrote the book for Audi, for one thing, and the rest of the P2 brigade has had Audi as their yardstick from the start. Furthermore, there is substantial overlap between the Audi operations on both sides of the Atlantic at the upper levels - we can expect to see Dr. Ulrich and Ralf Juttner, among others, present at all major races. The Audi organization is pure class on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Remember how bad Audi screwed up at Sebring this year with Joest at the helm? Granted, he's been with Audi since the beginning, and no one is perfect, but he and his boys screwed the pooch at Sebring-a race that Audi easily should've won.
And remember late '03 in the ALMS-Joest's last full season in the ALMS. He may've laid the ground work for Champion's dominance there after, but Champion did the same as Joest-hire the best people for the job, and let do the job. And I'm not the only one who says that Champion can take on Joest and win-ask anyone who saw what happened in '03, or saw what Champion has done to the present.
Also, might I ask, if it's true that Joest is still the benchmark, why hasn't he done a full season anything with Audi's LMP program from '04-'07? I believe that Audi not having Joest do more with the R10 program aside from Le Mans until this year(you know-"if you don't use it, you lose it") caused a lot of the Joest teams' early problems this year, namely at Sebring and Monza. Those races-and Champion's dominance in the ALMS-were probably a wake up call for Joest and Audi to get back on the same page, and get there fast if they wanted to beat Peugeot in the LMS and at Le Mans.
Granted, the man and his men aren't perfect, and neither is Champion or Audi Sport itself, but I just find what happened at Sebring and Monza inexcusable given the standard the Reinhold Joest has set for himself. Though as I've said, that's probably the fault of Audi Sport as much if not more for simply not letting him do more races until this year. The errors made in those races were relatively minor, but by Joest standards those races(especially Sebring) were disasters.