Originally Posted by Maelochs
" U.S. racing does not need anyone or thing from Europe any more than Europe needs the U.S. The only makes the average U.S. fan knows are Ferrari and Porsche; while if they do not show, no one truly cares, nor do or will they save, or destroy, U.S. racing."
I'd say that a brief perusal of historical records show otherwise. In sports car racing, Porsche, Jaguar, Ferrari, BMW, and Alfa Romeo have long been important players. -- I do not know how old you are but Alfa Romeo, BMW are bit players at very best with Alfa Romeo being a a foot note and BMW being a make that shows up for a bit and then leaves.
To an average U.S. racing fan, not just sport car fanatics, they are nothing.
Tracks and sanctions need more that hard core fans. Without the average fan, who will, and they used to, attend most any auto related event that is interesting, tracks lose money and series die.
Australia? Well, I guess—but only if you count the complete domination of Can-Am by McLaren—until Porsche arrived. -- Who mentioned Australia?
McLaren was from New Zealand.
Also, Sports Car fans (I don't know who you think "average" fans are, but I know who I have spoken and corresponded with) are very aware of Porsche, Audi, Ferrari and their impact on U.S. sports car racing ... and there is this race, Le mans? You might have heard of it. Pretty much every sports car fan I have every communicated with seems to think it is the premier sports car race on the planet. -- Go to a U.S. gearhead based car event, these draw thousands of people who love cars, and ask them what they know about Audi racing cars, or LeMans.
Most will know of the 24 hrs of LeMans. A small minority will know much beyond that is where Ford won with the GT.
Some will remember that John Greenwood was there with his radical Corvette.
Beyond that some many will know the 24 hrs of Daytona and possibly Sebring.
Ask what the Petit LeMans is and few will know, or care.
These are the people who love cars, work on their own cars, not just changing oil, that used to flock to U.S. road races en masse but quit when the series became pointless boring parades with no real competition, or had cars that mean nothing to them.
When was it that sports car racing was bigger than everything else? The Indy 500, the Daytona 500, and the Monaco Grand Prix were for a decade about the only races shown on TV. Sports car racing might have had a sizeable community, but the Indy 500 and Daytona 500 got a quarter of a million fans showing up at the track every year. I doubt 250,000 people showed up at every sports car event combined in 1961 or 1963. -- So what.
Neither U.S race is a road race and Indy draws tens of thousands of fewer paying spectators now than it once did.
What is your point?
The Trans-Am was the reason that all four U.S. auto corporations produced cars just for homologation for the series.
SCCA road racing used to draw 30,000 , or more, (Road America drew 30,000 fans to the Trans-Am in 1975 when the race had become a glorified A-B prod./sedan race) to road races at small tracks out in the boonies during its hay days for the Trans-Am and Can-Am when each series had eight to ten races.
SCCA road racing was a national series drawing national attention when NASCAR was still a regional series with only its two very high speed tracks, owned by the France family, that got much more than regional attention.
However, when the sports car scene really started growing in the U.S. after WW II ... it was European cars entirely, because American cars were obese, over-cushioned, underperforming boats. Except for the motors, which were put in hand-crafted or European chassis, there were no American anything except drivers in sports car racing. -- That is because most U.S. drivers were busting the butts, and often dying, on half-mile dirt tracks to get to Indy.
Road racing was non-paying elitist cult for the most part till USAC got into the fray for awhile.
Your examples of how well North American sports car racing works without any international relevance: ALMS after 2009, Rolex, and TUSC. Yahoo. -- Audi had not had real, non-bop bs, competition for years by then, neither did Chevrolet.
Boring parades do not bring fans. Tracks do not run races that do not make them money.
Only Penske money and the IMSA ignoring the ACO contrived competition rules for a bit, even kept it interesting that long.
IMSA/ALMS had a pretty good run up to 2003, especially when GARRA cut off its nose to spite its face with it DP rules, but it was slowly going down-hill from the get-go and after 2003 it started to snowball.
As for getting Detroit involved again ... you mean like Corvette and Viper? or are you referring to the GTP era, when Ford and Chevy raced ... Porsche and Toyota. As for taking out all the stupid BoP—I am right there with you on that. Thing is, it is the manufacturers who want the BoP, so I don't see that going away. Sadly.
|