IMSA DPi Discussion

[MagVanisher]

In an ideal world, both LMP1 and LMP2 will have the same chassis tub.

By the way, will Penske Racing race in either GM, Ford, or Porsche engine? While the Cadillac is the only one available other than Mazda, it'll be great to see Porsche or Ford bringing their a-game to DPi.

[HORNDAWG]

Originally Posted by joeb

It also remains to be seen how IMSA will balance the dpi's with the stock P2's. Will they truly be level or will the dpi machinery be given a boost?

I find it hard to believe it will be anything other than a single class. Not some copy of the ACO's P-1 multi tier class.







L.P.

[TzeiTzei]

If ACO become desperate with the lack of entries in Lmp1-P, then they might allow DPis there. I'm sure they would rather see manufacturer money go to the hybrid class than let the manufacturers have a cheap option.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by MagVanisher

In an ideal world, both LMP1 and LMP2 will have the same chassis tub.

The ACO's intention as things stand now is that the P1 and P2 tub specs will be the same going forward. To the point where someone could buy just a tub off of a P2 manufacturer around which they can build their own P1 car.

Whether or not it goes that far remains to be seen, but it seems a near certainty at this point that the identical tub specs will happen.

[JLGarcia]

Originally Posted by FormulaFox

The ACO's intention

That's a pretty funny phrase. The ACO's intention seems to be to wait until things are just starting to hit their stride, then change the rules.

By 2020, they'll have P1-Manufacturer, P1-Privateer and P1-Privateer-Light (which is actually what we today consider P2), P2 Pro-Am, P2 Am (which will be basically today's P3 but OAK & Oreca chassis only) and P3, which will be the P2 OAK tub with a Formula Renault engine, with a proposal on the table to split P3 into Pro-Am and Am.

And we'll still be arguing where DPi fits in this scheme.

[Coach Ep]

I can see Penske jumping on the Caddy DPi bandwagon next year if GM provides them the car(s) and one of their sponsors (PPG, Shell/Pennzoil, HP, DeVillbiss, etc.) covers the running costs.

Also, Dallara will probable be willing to work together with another manufacterer as long as the foot the bill (unless GM has an exclusive DPi deal with chassis constructor - which wouldn't be a shock tbh).

Next year I'd expect the new DPi and ACO P2 to be as similar in performance as possible (just because of the limited amount of DPi cars on the grid) but if more manufacturers join IMSA's "party" for 2018 that might change.

[Starfish Primer]

So if Rebellion pulls the plug in their P1 program, the DPi become the P1 privateer by absence of P1 entries ?

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by JLGarcia

That's a pretty funny phrase. The ACO's intention seems to be to wait until things are just starting to hit their stride, then change the rules.

By 2020, they'll have P1-Manufacturer, P1-Privateer and P1-Privateer-Light (which is actually what we today consider P2), P2 Pro-Am, P2 Am (which will be basically today's P3 but OAK & Oreca chassis only) and P3, which will be the P2 OAK tub with a Formula Renault engine, with a proposal on the table to split P3 into Pro-Am and Am.

And we'll still be arguing where DPi fits in this scheme.

Lol

And the sad thing it's probably gonna be just that. Sub-trophy-challenge-micro-class-extravaganza.

[Coach Ep]

No Beamer DPi in the short run:

http://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/bm...now-marquardt/

Also confirmation of no Ford and Bentley is unlikely too. However it contains the snippet that Panoz intents to develop/run a Ligier (if IMSA lets them).

[MaskedRacer]

Originally Posted by Coach Ep

No Beamer DPi in the short run:

http://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/bm...now-marquardt/

Also confirmation of no Ford and Bentley is unlikely too. However it contains the snippet that Panoz intents to develop/run a Ligier (if IMSA lets them).

Its an interesting article because he hints that the trend now is that the manufacturers find racing in GT more appealing that prototypes going into the future. In my opinion that is a great thing!

[BrentJackson]

Originally Posted by seanyb505

Good old imsa. Been running make it or break it since 2014.

I've come to the view that the merger may have been a mistake, and what definitely has been a mistake was dealing with the ACO on the prototype rules.

What happened with the merger tossed away the cost-effective racing which was Grand Am's bread and butter, and while the ACO's prototype classes were on life support, the ALMS could have lived on by abandoning them. Instead, what we got was a massive increase in costs that ruined Grand Am's bread and butter and the prototype class has become even more of a mess. My hope that we could turn the two classes of prototypes into a friendly rivalry got crapped on within weeks of the merged series starting, and now the DPi has bounced from one epic screwup to another.

We're much too late in the process to bail out on them, but when the DPi rollout becomes a complete mess - and I really do think it will - that IMSA will figure out that the ACO connection is hurting them and tell them "we're going our own way, and if you don't like it, tough cookies" and re-design the DPi rules. Hopefully this will also include sticking to one prototype class (and telling the LMP3s to not bother coming over), explicitly favoring North American builders (telling Oreca and Onroak to get lost is probably too much to hope for) and working with the PWC and SRO instead, because clearly working with other organizations is far easier for them.

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by BrentJackson

I've come to the view that the merger may have been a mistake, and what definitely has been a mistake was dealing with the ACO on the prototype rules.

What happened with the merger tossed away the cost-effective racing which was Grand Am's bread and butter, and while the ACO's prototype classes were on life support, the ALMS could have lived on by abandoning them. Instead, what we got was a massive increase in costs that ruined Grand Am's bread and butter and the prototype class has become even more of a mess. My hope that we could turn the two classes of prototypes into a friendly rivalry got crapped on within weeks of the merged series starting, and now the DPi has bounced from one epic screwup to another.

We're much too late in the process to bail out on them, but when the DPi rollout becomes a complete mess - and I really do think it will - that IMSA will figure out that the ACO connection is hurting them and tell them "we're going our own way, and if you don't like it, tough cookies" and re-design the DPi rules. Hopefully this will also include sticking to one prototype class (and telling the LMP3s to not bother coming over), explicitly favoring North American builders (telling Oreca and Onroak to get lost is probably too much to hope for) and working with the PWC and SRO instead, because clearly working with other organizations is far easier for them.

You have to be somewhat careful in not alienating them, to the point that they no longer let your GT cars run at the big race.

As far as the merger... DP numbers were dropping, and the fanbase wasn't of critical size. IMSA had already had the Prototype numbers drop, and while they had better at track numbers (save Daytona), the TV numbers sucked.

What was hoped for, was that the combined grids would fix the falling numbers of both series... which it did, and that all the IMSA fans would stick around... which has fallen a bit, but not huge.

Ultimately, when you combine two management groups, who each on their own have proven different levels of incompetence, and you put them together with opposing theologies, you don't suddenly get a good management group. This whole thing needed different and better management years ago.

[chernaudi]

And it's not like the ACO really gives too much of a crap about what IMSA does or doesn't do. With the WEC, the ACO have their own world sportscar championship. Yeah, the FIA have their branding on it and the WEC is described as a "partnership" between the ACO and FIA, but outside of promotion and travel/logistics, the FIA don't have much to do with the day to day operation of the WEC. That, the technical regs and most of the sporting regs are the ACO's business.

Let's face it, when the WEC was created, the ACO got their own series to run basically by themselves. What incentive do/did they have to continue to support IMSA or the European LMS aside from possible feeder series and to fill in the slots at Le Mans once the full season WEC entries were declared?

I also know that a lot of people like to blame Audi for letting the LMP1 class in the ALMS die due to them not running a full ALMS season since 2008. But with the focus being on Le Mans and the ACO and FIA creating the world championship that Audi campaigned for the establishment of for over a decade, you can't blame them for defecting when they got what they wanted for over 10 years.

[carbsmith]

The difference in cost between old DP and LMP2 is nothing compared to the difference between racing in Grand Am and WSC. Half the GTD guys kept their cars and their budgets still ballooned. Grand Am was a series that subsidized privateers to attract teams over IMSA. WSC is a series that gouges manufacturers' marketing accounts to try to make money. That attitude has applied to a lot of things in the new series, like the idiotic and expensive race weekend scheduling.

A new class with modern safety standards will always be more expensive than buying 10 year old used cars with a GT roll cage but there is no alternative new top class to LMP2 that is cheaper or will attract any chassis manufacturers. The only American companies to build prototypes in the last 10 years are already doing one. That DPi turns it from the cost effective privateer class it is in the rest of the world to an overspending exclusive manufacturer cluster**** is not on the ACO's hands.

[YZFrider]

BrentJackson, Fogelhound, Chernaudi, all three of your posts are spot on with the points you have made.

On one hand IMSA has to do what is best for itself now that ACO/FIA have WEC (though for how much longer no one knows). On the other hand, GM, Ford, Ferrari, Porsche, all have stated of being in the GTLM class because of Le Mans. Although GTD has seen great racing and good numbes and diversity, to lose GTLM would be massive.

Then there is what DPi potential could bring: Glory back to the series or failure. What sucks is TIMING. Fingers are crossed that low entries for 2017 are what we have come to see in sportscar racing history whenever a new class is introduced: from WSC to DP (all first years were low, then grew later). But I won't deny that 2017 was not supposed to be a continuation of "transitional years" of 2014 (which was also severely mishandled.)

I'll bring back TIMING (directly tied with management). If DPi doesn't take off, then what? What is the alternative? Backup plan?

[Matt]

GTP cars.

[Danathar]

Originally Posted by BrentJackson

I've come to the view that the merger may have been a mistake, and what definitely has been a mistake was dealing with the ACO on the prototype rules.

What happened with the merger tossed away the cost-effective racing which was Grand Am's bread and butter, and while the ACO's prototype classes were on life support, the ALMS could have lived on by abandoning them. Instead, what we got was a massive increase in costs that ruined Grand Am's bread and butter and the prototype class has become even more of a mess. My hope that we could turn the two classes of prototypes into a friendly rivalry got crapped on within weeks of the merged series starting, and now the DPi has bounced from one epic screwup to another.

We're much too late in the process to bail out on them, but when the DPi rollout becomes a complete mess - and I really do think it will - that IMSA will figure out that the ACO connection is hurting them and tell them "we're going our own way, and if you don't like it, tough cookies" and re-design the DPi rules. Hopefully this will also include sticking to one prototype class (and telling the LMP3s to not bother coming over), explicitly favoring North American builders (telling Oreca and Onroak to get lost is probably too much to hope for) and working with the PWC and SRO instead, because clearly working with other organizations is far easier for them.

1. You are dreaming
2. Sounds like you were/are a classic DP fan.

[chernaudi]

The major problem with the ALMS/GA merger/buyouts was timing. To do things right it takes some time. You rush things, you're more than likely going to have errors and other issues. In hindsight, IMSA probably should've kept ALMS and GA as two separate series until a common prototype and GT platform was decided upon.

Problem was that both Jim France and Don Panoz wanted to keep the connection to the ACO for better or worse. The result was egos clashing that resulted in IMSA and the ACO not agreeing to all but the most basic aspects of the LMP2 regs, meaning that ACO LMP2 and IMSA DPI will be only distant relatives at the end of the day as far as being a common formula. A clear lack of give and take and enormous egos on both sides resulted in this.

Only plus side is that with more carmakers throwing feelers out into the GT racing world vs prototypes right now, we could maybe see a rebirth of late 1990s GT format. But that will only work if the rules makers and teams get it right this time and learn from the past. The same with prototype racing.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by YZFrider

If DPi doesn't take off, then what? What is the alternative? Backup plan?

The alternative is bleeding obvious, but IMSA management seems utterly blind to it: Drop the requirement that manufacturers pay the series a million dollars to participate, and drop the requirement that they create custom bodywork to use their own engine.

Matt simply said "GTP" and, well, the above is effectively GTP with a manufacturer limit. So yes. Not only is that the smart backup plan, it's what they SHOULD be doing right now, not as a backup.

The pay to participate issue has killed off a lot of manufacturer interest, and the bodywork requirement killed off most of the remaining interest. IMSA is on the back foot now, with PWC having huge forward momentum with THEIR international alliance being on much more stable ground, plans for a dedicated endurance in the works, and talks of a P2-based prototype class with no manufacturer limit now making the rounds.

IMSA needs to wake up and smell the world around them. PWC isn't some sub-series they can ignore anymore - it's their most direct threat.

IMSA has ALL the pieces on the board that they need to make things work and be successful. But they're arranged in such a haphazard way that they keep shooting down their own side instead of their competition.

[joeb]

Before we get too far down this wormhole for the hundredth time, I just want to remind you all this isn't a thread to talk about the ALMS/GRANDAM merger and the shortcomings of the series. Go find the original thread on that topic if that is what you want to discuss.

[JLGarcia]

Originally Posted by FormulaFox

IMSA needs to wake up and smell the world around them. PWC isn't some sub-series they can ignore anymore - it's their most direct threat.

IMSA's most direct threat is IMSA. Sic semper erat, et sic semper erit.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by JLGarcia

IMSA's most direct threat is IMSA. Sic semper erat, et sic semper erit.

Not an inaccurate claim, but if IMSA had no competitor even the problems they've got right now would not necessarily kill them off. If PWC didn't exist, at least a few of them would deal with IMSA's crap just to have a place to race, and it'd probably be enough to keep IMSA going.

But the ball is definitely in IMSA's court for preventing their own demise. Like I said, they've got all the pieces they need on the board, they just need to place them properly.

[Rcz]

I agree with F. Fox, drop the limits!!!

They should just absorb P1-L and both the old and new P2 and make it their own.



I like ALMS, and I like Grand-Am. They both had problems but were both good racing series.

This why I like my IMSA Jr. idea which would bring back the Grand-am idea of cheap racing, while the main series can concentrate on tech. and manufacturers.

[Coach Ep]

Isn't Conti Challenge supposed to be the 'cheap' version of the main series?
Adding P3 to that line up would make sense from that perspective don't you think? (last Q. is rhetorical)

And how expensive do we think a DPi mnf. designed bodywork will be? Is it really that much of a stumbling block for a manufacturer? (no sarcasm this time)

[BrentJackson]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

You have to be somewhat careful in not alienating them, to the point that they no longer let your GT cars run at the big race.

Granted, but the DPi rollout has been nothing short of a debacle and while part of that is IMSA's desire to make the ACO's idiotic psuedo-spec P2s something they weren't, the ACO jerked IMSA around for the best part of a year before finally slamming the door on them, and nobody is gonna be able to convince me that that door slam wasn't because A) manufacturer interest in the DPi was real and B) plenty of existing P2 runners are not keen on spec engines and spec tires and choosing between four chassis, of which at least one is highly unlikely to get much traction in Europe. The ACO saw a threat to its master plans and reacted in a way that genuinely hurt IMSA.

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

As far as the merger... DP numbers were dropping, and the fanbase wasn't of critical size. IMSA had already had the Prototype numbers drop, and while they had better at track numbers (save Daytona), the TV numbers sucked.

DP numbers weren't all that bad, even if they were not what they had once been. The fanbase was small but loyal and the cost of competition was low enough that lots of small teams that otherwise could never have made a go at it managed to, and some really went places. (In a way, PC did the same for the ALMS for a couple teams, CORE Autosport most of all.) IMSA's prototype classes were a lost cause and they were too proud to admit it, but with GT3 on the way and GTE still strong, they could have shifted wholesale to LMP2 and replaced GTC with GT3 cars and probably lived on. Hard to say, and I certainly have no time machine to know for sure.

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

Ultimately, when you combine two management groups, who each on their own have proven different levels of incompetence, and you put them together with opposing theologies, you don't suddenly get a good management group. This whole thing needed different and better management years ago.

I'm not as harsh as you are with regards to the series' management.

What happened was that IMSA got overtaken by events and Grand Am got stagnant. Neither was so much the result of incompetence as the conditions the series lived under. The ACO's rules changes left a lot of good cars in garages and the Tohuku Earthquake and Tsunami ran Honda out of the series, which when combined with the WEC drawing away Audi left IMSA's prototype-dominated top categories, which had been dominated by factories since its inception over a decade earlier, without any factories but with extremely expensive cars that few could afford. Grand Am aimed to make a low-cost prototype series with the DP and succeeded better than I think they imagined they would, but that team base balked at cost increases, which meant the same cars over and over and ultimately caused the series to get stagnant.

IMO, the die was cast when the equalization process between the DP and LMP2 was way, way late. The original plan, don't forget, was to slow the LMP2 some and speed up the DP some, but once teams got testing the improved DPs they discovered something I had suspected for many years - the DP had a vast amount of potential, and unlocking it proved easier than many figured. This caused BoP problems in early rounds of IMSA, which when combined with Pickett's sale of Muscle Milk resulting in him exiting the series and the problems with one tire for all prototype cars resulted in a BoP gap. IMSA busted their balls to fix that, but the damage was done. ESM went to the WEC, Mazda had all kinds of problems with the diesel engines and only Shank's decision to run a Ligier kept P2s competitive in IMSA Prototype.

Now, three years later, the conversations among prototype racing has become a political football. There is much less here in GT racing, as the series has much better handled that move. Even with Ford's shenanigans this year, nobody is withdrawing or talking about it, and the conversation is focused on trying to fix the problems. Is that happening among prototypes?