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Old 16 Apr 2018, 19:26 (Ref:3816046)   #242
FormulaFox
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FormulaFox is heading for a stewards' enquiry!
On big long tracks like Road America, sure, you'd likely have that problem. On twistier tracks, well... the ALMS and IMSA have shown in recent years that such things are far from guaranteed. Even when the DP's torque advantage was guaranteeing them half the races, the twistier the track, the worse they did relative to the LMP2s - and there's ample evidence that the problem wasn't simply that the DPs had mroe pwoer, it was thef act that the LMP2s weren't given tires that they could use properly(something I doubt Pirelli would allow to happen).

But there something that I think is being easily forgotten here; The GT3 cars are made as light as they can be - they're very dependent on ballast to get up to their pre-BoP baselines. So there's room to drop weight to make up for the power loss, which can make up for a LOT. And the pre-BoP baselines for GT3 cars are actually close to 300 pounds heavier than TA1 cars - most still come out of BoP around 100 pounds heavier than most of today's TA1 cars.

Power can't overcome EVERYTHING. And since the only series where this lineup would be viable anyway, PWC, is a BoP series this is even MORE true. To make the battle fair, either the GT3 cars would have to give up their driver aids, or TA1 would have to add such(it CAN be done, and though it wouldn't be cheaper, the result would still cost far less than a GT3 car). And that's only the start of it - lightening the BoP weights of a GT3 car and a mild restrictor on the TA1's engines would solve the issues of the power imbalance enough that the scenario you find concerning wouldn't be a serious issue at most tracks.

This of course does require the series to balance it properly, but PWC has shown they're much better about managing that than IMSA is.

Honestly, we keep talking about TA1 like this, but even in this scenario I think the upgraded TA2 concept would be the better option. There's much more room to work with before the cars get too expensive than there is with the TA1 cars, but they DO have an extreme weight disadvantage that needs to be worked around.
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