[chernaudi]

For me, racing used to be an escape from my everyday life, which is a life that I at times largely despise. I suffer big time from depression, I'm not a very social person, and I was raised into a family that, even if only on a small, local level, was involved in motorsports.

I was interested in mechanical devices and cars from a young age. So it would seem that I should be interested in motorsports. But everywhere I turned, I eventually soured on it, mostly because of politics (I hate politics in real life, so why would I want to have anything do to with it in something that I try to enjoy and use as an escape from real life) and sanctioning body owners doing stuff that alienated their fans.

I started out a NASCAR fan, but politics and many actions that the sanctioning body have done solely with aim to line it's pockets at the expense of why I became a fan pushed me away. Many of Brian France's actions have largely kept me away. I almost never watch NASCAR on TV and only bother to keep up with it on forums.

So I went into road racing, knowing that such things in F1 were (and largely still are) worse and that Indy Car racing wasn't my cup of tea, either. And I initially loved it. The ALMS had interesting cars, and even when Audi dominated (I became a big fan of them after Panoz left and Champion was the main American based team in the LMP900/LMP1 category), there were other things to look at, because every car was different, and if you did the best job of designing and building it, and running a team, you usually won.

I was never a Grand Am fan because of it's NASCAR mentality of performance balancing and what some have called "socialized racing" by trying to artificially create an equal playing field. But by 2006 the ALMS got into that game, followed by the ACO. I dealt with it, as long as the best cars weren't the ones getting penalized. And the ALMS by 2008 had has many manufacturers involved in it as the WEC ever had.

But that's where IMO things overall in racing took a turn for the worst. NASCAR and F1 started playing gimmicks, Audi wanted a World Sportscar Championship and seemed with the departure of Max Mosley from the FIA that they were getting their way, and the ALMS no longer suited a lot of teams ROI desires. Hence, no more Audi LMP1s and no more Porsche factory LMP2s on a weekly basis in the series.

It wasn't so bad by 2010, because IMSA was managing such a power vacuum. But then came more ACO rules changes after a series of changes starting in 2009. The frequent rules changes on the part of the ACO destabilized road racing in general, but really sucked the wind out of the sails of the ALMS and LMS. The LMS is fine now, but that was only after series promoter Patrick Peter reorganized the series into a huge pro-am championship. The ALMS gave up, as did Grand Am, who wanted the ALMS's fan base and manufacturer involvement, and merged in 2013.

And of course, there was the ACO's take on what LMP1 should become. They invested in hugely expensive and complex cars because that's what it seemed that the manufacturers wanted at the time. And over the past couple of years, we've seen the dangers emerge of such a tactic. ALMS had a similar problem with all the OEMs in LMP1 and LMP2 especially. Once a car maker wants to leave the sport and does, it leaves a huge financial hole and can create a power vacuum. Nissan was one and done at LM in '15. That wasn't a big deal because they really screwed up a lot of things, not just with car design, but over-hyping things and delivering almost nothing for it.

But when Audi Sport left, that created a power vacuum. It wasn't really even them taking two entries for LM and the WEC and going home. They took their advertising dollars, promotion, and fan activation with them. As an Audi fan, I've tried to carry on in their absence, in part believing that's what they guys at Audi Sport would want me to do, and because I was fan of racing long before they came along. We have to do so in real life when a relative or a friend dies. So it stands to reason I should at least give it a shot in racing.

But then came Le Mans, where all the factory LMP1s had issues to an extent not seen in years, and the winning Porsche was barely a lap head of an Oreca LMP2 car at the finish after the Porsche spent an hour in the garage. I was trying to pull for Toyota, but then LM showed why I rarely pulled for them in the past to the extent that I tried to.

So then I decided to pull for Porsche, knowing that doing so might be in vain, as since before LM there's been rumors of them leaving the WEC in favor of something else, hence following corporate brother Audi out of the WEC and LM within a year. Now I feel that the WEC is falling apart, especially it's top class. Unless some of the LMP1 privateer efforts that have been rumored do materialize, LMP1 might be a snoozer next season.

I know, some of will argue that it was largely that way when Audi Sport were in LMP900. But at least outside of LM, privateer teams had a chance to compete with Audi on equal terms, provided that the race was shorter than 1000km/6 hours.

Sadly, I feel that racing has become a microcosm of my life. In my life right now, there's not a lot of bright spots. I'm trying really hard to make new friends and hang out with old ones, and struggling to do both. My grandma died the morning of Le Mans this year after battling long illnesses. I also recently quit my job, but I don't think that one should be happy with quitting their job, no matter how much they came to dislike it. But I had to let go for my own good.

Maybe, perhaps, I should do the same with racing if I can't consistently find happiness being a fan anymore. I've struggled with this to some extent for nearly a decade, but especially since about 2013 I've had a harder time getting hugely giddy about being a racing fan.