Despite all the cheer leading about how this merger is the salvation of sports car racing in the U.S., and maybe it is, I expect the outcome to piss off a lot of the current participants. My guess is they'll all be upset about something or other, no one completely happy.
The most vocal of those quoted in that article, Wayne Taylor, seems to be arguing that all of the ALMS prototypes should go away, leaving just DP. That's the way I read it. I saw a quote today that said since P1 is already going away a new series without both DP and P2 isn't a merger. But there's a camp that agrees with Taylor, sort of, saying that keeping the best from both series' (all things considered, including economics) means keeping just the Grand-Am prototypes and the ALMS GTs.
There's no version of this merger that will make everyone happy. I suspect what it looks like in the end isn't going to be about the best solution for the greatest number of players.
I predict at some point the discussions will break down and whoever is really in charge will simply rule in his own favor.....or maybe I'm just a cynic.
It's going to be tough. The P2 guys won't want to slow their cars down because they'll want to race in Le Mans. But I agree with Shank after spending a bunch for new cars 2 years ago I would want to have to do it again.
Kind of like the new cart cars being trashed for the IRL cars which were junk.
However this plays out some folks are not going to be happy. Wonder if they could use a easily reversible restricter for the ALMS cars. Getting parity between the ALMS & Gran Am cars will be tough.
(Yup, and I was actually thinking of Shank's comments when I wrote Taylor.)
I think they should just keep P2 and DP as they are and let it ride for a year or two, see how it plays out on the track. Then get interested parties together to discuss the parity issue again after the 2014 season.
Here's the latest. It's certainly not clear there's a lot of movement yet. I'd say just call this another pulse check.
I like the hint that they finally understand just slowing down the P2 cars to make the DP runners happy will mean insufficient gap between the P-cars and the GTs, though hopefully it implies a need for changes other than slowing both the P2s and the leading GTs (also from ALMS) as well.
I especially like Level 5's proposal to run "... their HPD P2 cars in the upcoming Rolex Series race at Kansas Speedway to help gain real-world data for the balancing process." Considering France's admitted aim to never let an ALMS P-car beat a DP car (I won't use his language here), I don't expect it to happen, but I like the idea.
USCR: ALMS Prototype Teams Weigh In On 2014 Regulations (auto-racing.speedtv.com)
Yup, speeding up the DP cars isn't about giving them more power, they already significantly out power the P2s. It's about everything else that makes cars fast on road courses, and that tends to be expensive. DP owners seem to think there aren't enough full time P2s in the game to justify making expensive changes to the DPs to accommodate them.
Interesting comments from Peter Baron of Starworks Motorsport (a Grand-Am DP team) posted today:
Looks like there's still a LONG way to go.
Also looks like the bulk of the DP crowd are still pushing to slow down both LMP2 and GTE; LMP2 so no one will be able to consistently beat the DPs and GTE so they won't be biting at the DPs' heels.
