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There'll be two euro sportscar rounds in UK this weekend but won't draw 10,000 spectators combined, won't attract any coverage outside the motorsport regulars, have no major manufacturer or sponsor interest, they're club meetings with fancy cars. Combine forces and they'd provide an attractive package for competitors, sponsors and TV, they haven't and have even gone so far as to race on the same weekend in the same country.
The WEC isn't on the same page, at the head of the field manufacturers and corporate sponsors budgets are in competition with the Shaghai Masters, the big regional golf or football tournaments, ski-ing World Cup, a few thousand extra on the gates at Brands Hatch, Road Atlanta or Monza isn't going to sway things when you're looking to sell an extra 100k cars per years. Audi use these WEC rounds to forge relationships with dealers, they form a pleasant background to corporate business, get mainstream column inches and clip on the daily news.The ELMS's bread and butter are welathy amateurs funding teams and providing paid drives for pro's, their GT grid has fled to Blancpain, GT Open and FIA GT1/3, only BES is flourishing, the others are spread too thinly and need major reconstruction.
At one time Barth, Ratel and Peter combined forces and put together a great GT series, when the manufacturer money flowed in things got bitter, mismanagement ensued and everyon went in different directions. Today the WEC stands at teh top of the pile with a clear focus on big money technology and with a business closer to F1 than anything seen in sportscar racing in recent years. The ALMS is in competition with Grand-Am, their philosophies are so different it will be a fight to the bitter end or, in an ideal world, both build good grids and go about racing thier own way. In Europe you're tripping over lmp2, cn, GTE, GT3 and GT4's, there are that many about, but someone has to bang heads together and make these power broakers realise they'll be stronger if they join forces and cut the dead wood.
Sportscar racing has a great pyramid to develop teams and driver, but right now that middle regional tier is overcrowded and frankly in a complete mess. Where you can take hope is we're only in this situation because cars are being sold, people want to race and promotors see the potential, it happens this year they've stretched themselves too thinly, in theory the fix is simple if you leave the egos at the door.
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