Time for managed competition!?

[Speed-King]

Inspired by various comments made on this board lately about BoP on the one hand and good or bad management on the other, here are some highly random ramblings about the future of North American Sportscar Racing or actually the future of sportcar racing in general.

I say what North American Sportscar Racing needs is managed competition. Before you proceed to excommunicate me, givale me a moment to explain: I don't mean the NASCAR way of spec-cars and competition FCYs, but rather the DTM-way.

In my opinion, the only way to get out of the vicious cycle of boom-and-bust, is to have the manufacturers heavily involved in the everyday running of a series.

As the example of DTM shows us, this would address a number of major issues that plague sportscar racing today:

- Fickle manufacturer participation: Once it is the manufacturers' series and they have sunken considerable money in it, they are highly unlikely to ever leave it again. DTM has survived several scandal races that could very well have destroyed other series. Especially after the Barcelona race in 2008 when Audi withdrew all their cars mid-race, there were a lot of speculations about this being the end for DTM. But since Audi and Mercedes had invested so much money in DTM as a marketing platform, abandoning it was never really a possibility for them.

- BoP: When you have all the manufacturers on one table and they have invested heavily in a series as a marketing tool, there is no point for them running out the competition by dominating race after race. Rather, the point becomes to win on the track and win the championship, but to give the oppossition the chance to at least look good while losing. This means that there is no longer an incentive for expensive arms races, as all you'll ever achieve with that is to ruin your precious marketing platform. Rumor has it that there is a gentlemen's agreement to that point between the manufacturers in DTM and something similar is suppossed to have been in place for quite a bit between Porsche and Ferrari in GT2.

- Lack of ROI: When it is a manufacturer series it is the manufacturers job to solve that. They can do it, after all they are humungous international corporations with multi-billion dollar budgets, rather than the paltry couple of millions of revenue at today's sportscar sanctioning bodies might or might not generate.

This approach has worked surprisingly well for DTM and I am wondering, what ALMS would look like today if they had managed to fully bring Caddy on board in the early 2000s and then forged a gentlemen's agreement between them and Audi, about not humilating each other.

Unfortunately the ship for this - as far as ALMS is concerned - has sailed long ago and the best hope for this ever coming to fruition is probably that the manufacturers themselves realize that there is no point in randomly spreading out their budgets between ALMS, GA and WC, but that they should rather work together on creating one badass series with a long term plan for future growth. If a series like this can survive the first 4 or 5 years, it'll probably become too big to fail, simply by the virtue of the money the manufacturers have sunken into it...

[DS"]

This would completely go against the American philosophy* of having private teams compete equally against manufacturer teams. What American sportscar racing really needs, is an unified series, which encompasses all major American sportscar races, plus cheap regulations for prototypes and GTs. Something like the new DPs would be good, only lighter and faster. As for GTs, make one class for production-based GTs and one for tube-frame GTs. If the series performs decently, international interest will certainly come back.

*Judging by the old IMSA series, CART or NASCAR. I mean, something like NASCAR would sadly never be possible in a series like DTM.

[AGD]

The big secret to American racing is that the car manufacturers aren't the ones who pay for it. At least they aren't the ones who pay for most of it. It's companies like Proctor and Gamble, Wal-Mart, Shell Oil Products, Valvoline, Mac Tools, Pepsi, McDonald's, and so forth that actually fund American racing. What NASCAR has taught us, and even Indycar back in the day, is that big companies are willing to spend a lot of money to put their name on a car that has almost no chance of winning races. Of course, they are only willing to do that if a series has a commercial platform that is conducive to good business. I think the key is to figure out how to get to that point. I don't think BoP or any stuff like that is the answer. It might work here or there, but there are a lot more failed or failing series using BoP/spec racing/whatever than there are ones that are succeeding with it.

Obviously reducing unnecessary costs are a positive and stable rules are generally a positive as well. The ACO has failed in many ways on that latter point. Perhaps the ALMS can create classes with some financial balance and stable rules. Perhaps then they can get some manufacturer support and some 3rd party sponsorship support without having to cripple the spirit of competition.

[Tim the Grey]

You still think that Fred Chuckles, from Backwoods Arkansas, is going to pop up, and beat Audi into the weeds with his homebrew special? Get real.
Manufacturers will NOT stand for a bunch of Good Ole Boys humiliating them. It's NOT good marketing.
If you want 'tube frame silhouettes', that can run the engine out of an old school bus, fine, go play in your own sandbox, and stop annoying the Grown Ups...

[gregtummer]

Originally Posted by Tim the Grey

You still think that Fred Chuckles, from Backwoods Arkansas, is going to pop up, and beat Audi into the weeds with his homebrew special? Get real.

John Paul Jr. and Sr. would disagree with you.

[Tim the Grey]

Didn't the Pauls run Porsches???

[skycafe]

They built their own 935's

[Tim the Grey]

Based on what? Oh, yes, a Porsche. Developed by Kremer.
THEN they tweaked it.
And, well, forgive me, but they weren't exactly backwood types?

[skycafe]

well, no, they weren't backwoods types. I don't recall them having a Kremer car, but maybe I am not remembering well. They did build their own tube chassis, which I believe was JLP2.

[skycafe]

Originally Posted by skycafe

well, no, they weren't backwoods types. I don't recall them having a Kremer car, but maybe I am not remembering well. They did build their own tube chassis, which I believe was JLP2.

Sorry, correcting, the chassis was built by Fabcar!

[AGD]

Does Charles Morgan count as someone from backwoods Arkansas? Acxiom is eagerly awaiting to archive your answer.