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Old 3 Nov 2010, 16:41 (Ref:2784487)   #10
Speed-King
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Join Date: Jan 2007
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Wuerzburg,Germany
Posts: 7,325
Speed-King has a real shot at the podium!Speed-King has a real shot at the podium!Speed-King has a real shot at the podium!Speed-King has a real shot at the podium!
You didn't offend me, I just think it's bad taste, just like the "rat"-thing. Maybe that's culture-specific and it's me who should adapt to the "host"-culture of this board, but then, sportscar racing often prides itself for its upper-class demographics and I think it should be possible for us to discuss these matters in a civilized and respectful manner...

But anyway:
- There's nothing indicating an appliance of success ballast in the new GT endurance series in either article at Speedweek and planetlemans so I can only comment on that in a wider sense: The big question is: What's the alternative? To me there are two: Tampering with the rules all season long or having boring races. This year they have applied rules-tampering and success-ballast, and I am more than ready to agree that they have been rather heavy-handed at times, especially in the GT1-series during the first half of the season.
Few series can survive on all out competition without any regards to parity anymore since that's too hard to sell to spectators, sponsors and funded drivers. So a transparent system of success-ballast is something I'd definitely prefer over arbitratry technical regulation changes during the season.

- as for driver ratings: I think what they are trying to do in this case is rather smart if they do it right: This time, they'll allow full-pro-lineups. There are plenty of series out there that have a "Gentleman's Trophy" or something like that, so this isn't like the approach taken here is anything radically new.
The important thing to me is, that they have a kind of upwards-compatability in the series, i.e. all teams and drivers in the pro-am-class should be allowed to score points towards the overall "Pro-Cup"-championship, but not the other way around. If they handle it that way, I am all for it. If they want to have truly separate classes it's not all that bright, as it will result in very small numbers of cars per class...
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