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Old 4 Jun 2012, 08:21 (Ref:3084954)   #10
Speed-King
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I think it's becoming apparent now that the last decade and a half has seen a monumental shift in prototype racing.

Whereas up to the late 90s prototypes were mostly* just GT-cars without a road model (and about as expensive and complicated to run), we have moved to 'F1 cars with a roof' now, with the budgets of factory teams exceeding those of the best funded privateer efforts by more than a magnitude.

Audi and Peugeot have raised the bar to such an extent that privateers have no hope in hell to compete with the manufacturer efforts and the cars have become so complicated that customer cars are no longer a real possibility.

Maybe it's time to drastically reduce the complexity of prototype machinery, back to a more GT-ish level.

I am not quite sure how to do it, but maybe going back to a fairly high number of cars produced before homologation like in the 70s would help. Add a price cap at - say twice that of LMP2 -,manufacturers would be forced to built cheaper and simpler cars and privateers would actually get access to competitive equipment.

*The final years of IMSA GTP and Gr.C being the notable exception.

Last edited by Speed-King; 4 Jun 2012 at 08:27.
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