[duke_toaster]

(I wasn't thinking of the who was playing better football side, I was thinking on the need for merger side)

Car counts aren't as high as they could be (60 cars for IGTO I heard somewhere, 35 for FIA GT), the GT specifications are a mess (Mazza MC12 is 3cm to wide for LM24, FIA allows ACO cars but not vice versa ... now they are bickering on what restriction to put on it), FIA are limiting brake discs and engines in an attempt to scythe costs and both are getting 1 bloke that was looking for the wrong meeting in terms of crowds - and there isn't much coverage of either (some FIA GT teams are calling it FBI GT because no-one has heard of the drivers or the championship!) - and GT3 is getting bigger grid counts than FIA GT.

They need a merger before they both implode - like the NFL and AFL would have done if they didn't merge.

There are some big differences (FIA's 2 hour races versus LMES 1000km format, no LMP's in FIA) - but a merged series is possible.

The contracts with tracks would be an issue, and so would the game rights (SimBin aren't even making that year!) and broadcasting rights - but that was overcame for the NFL-AFL merger.

On the classes front, IMO LMP2's should be given bigger holes in their air restrictor and (as AFAIK they were designed to do) become part of an LMP class with both LMP1 and LMP2.

The car count for the combined series would be much larger, the only way of overcoming it in my opinion is having Qualifying on saturday morning and heats in the afternoon. Even numbers of each class in each heat, the 4 cars in each class in qualifying go straight in to the race on Sunday.