IMSA Classes & Divisions

[Joel_W]

   Next week is the final race of the season for the IMSA WeatherTech  Championship. I'm assuming that all 4 of the classes will be running: Prototypes: DPI, & LP2, and the production based classes: GT LeMans & GT Daytona. I understand that within each of the two divisions they use Green & Red mirrors, and electronic number boards so the fans can actually tell one class from another, which is a big help even for us TV fans. 
  
  What I don't understand is the need for other divisions in IMSA for basically the same cars that race separately.  Just makes no sense, and the few races I've seen on late night tv where the coverage was at best, so so as the number of cameras varied more times then not, you couldn't follow a car around the entire track for a full lap.  

   My personal feelings is that IMSA should just concentrate on building the Weather Tech series, and every race has the 4 classes running. If anything, drop the P2 class as I've seen way to many races when the entire field was just two cars!! If they feel that the Porsche Cup is so popular that it should have it's own series as well, then combine both, not keep the GT3 cars separate. If I'm having a hard time following all their classes and divisions, then I'm willing to bet that many a race car fan is having the same issues.

Joel

[robhart]

I'm wondering how much longer the GTLM class will exist. By my count it will only have a six car grid in 2020. I think they should consider combining GTLM and GTD and replacing LMP2 with something like the old Camel lights series.

[vintagerpm]

I agree that maybe LMP2 has run its course, at least in the US. All the classes (and their seperate races) outside of DPI/LMP2/GTLM/GTD are developmental or feeder series. Just GP2, Indy Lites, Xfinity etc.

[Ben_B]

I went back and found an article from Grassroots Motorsports from a couple of years ago that explained some of the reasons for changes to what eventually became the current classes (LINK). The GTLM (same specs as GTE) was intended to be the top GT class, with pro divers and factory support. GTD (GT3) was supposed to be a pro/am class to try to encourage privateers to run. I saw another article where the GTD cars have been getting faster and coming closer to the GTLM cars' performance, so they were trying to figure out how to slow them down without hurting the racing. I think the single-make series, like the Porsche GT3 series, Lamborghini Super Trofeo, and Mazda's MX-5 Cup, are more of an advertising thing, but are still great fun to watch. The Miata and Lamborghini drivers could teach the NASCAR guys a thing or two about "tradin' paint." 

I agree that LMP2 is almost not worth running. What's the point if you're only going to have just two cars running? Personally, I'm not unhappy when it's just the GT cars running. The modern prototypes just don't do anything for me. 

Ben

[robhart]

I recall that the old ALM series had GT1 and GT2 classes that eventually morphed into a single GT class due to lack of entries.

[Joel_W]

Ben,
My feeling about those support separate classes are exactly the opposite. I've yet to be able to watch an entire race for the same reasons time and time again. The broadcast is usually sub par at best. The least number of camera positions used, makes it impossible to follow a car or group of cars for a full lap. Races at Mosport and Road America were just plain unwatchable.

these races are only on cable TV/paid TV for one reason: the need for constantly more cheap sports programs no matter what they are to cover hours and hours of empty slot time. On any given night most of this sub par less then 1% Nelson rating shows the same coverage over and over again, and many times on several nights as well. We'd be hard pressed to find more then a few list members who've watched several of these feeder series races, and I'd love to have anyone post that they actually follow one or more of these series unless they have some personal involvement with driver, car, team, and or sponsor. Yet, great world class racing like the Australian Super Cars Series, DTM, and WTTC is helter skelter at best if at all. Again, the reason why is that you need to actually pay a fair price for the TV rights.

All this excess sports including auto racing isn't helping to boost their market share. Yesterday as an example, the sports channels on my cable service had 3 soccer matches, the Field and Track US National Championships (constant replays of what I've seen over and over again), a Ruby match ( no one in the USA watches or could even explain what the game is about), two golf tournaments, A tennis match, 3 or 4 hockey games where half were from years past, college football replays from Saturday, and if you were looking for the MLB playoff games, good luck finding it buried on the MLB network, or some secondary sports station from a major network. \

This all brings me to my next rant, the Nascar race from Dover. My God, the stands were half empty! Clearly the days of Nascar being a National sport is over. They just continue to bang their heads against the NFL wall. Someone in their boardroom really needs to turn on the lights and face reality.

 Oh, and for those wondering how I can watch so much tv, well, I'm retired for one, and I'm able to literally record everything I want to, to watch at a later time. I can even record up to 12 programs at once, and watch something else at the same time.  I only watch 6 tv series and then most on Free on Demand, so I have the time throughout the week to watch what I record, or just delete it.  

Joel

[Ben_B]

I haven't been too pleased with NBC Sports network's coverage of IMSA races. It was much better when Fox Sports was doing them. It's even worse when the prototypes are on the track. You'd almost never know there were other classes running, because all of their focus is on the prototypes. I've been watching other races streamed from Europe and Australia on Youtube. Sadly, their coverage doesn't seem to be much better. I gave up on the last GT3 race at Nurburgring because the camera coverage was so bad.

Edit: I forgot to mention, check out the GT4 races (Pirelli GT4 America and the IMSA Michelin series). Lots of good racing in those series. 

The only NASCAR races I find even remotely interesting are the road courses. I think their attendance is dropping because there are fewer and fewer "car people" these days. Most people see their cars as appliances, so "race on Sunday, sell on Monday" no longer works. I read they're painting the seats in the stands different colors, so it looks like there are more people there.

Ben

[Joel_W]

Ben,
you're a way more serious fan then I for sure to follow GT4 and the IMSA feeder series races. I guess that fact that I'm also a Yankee fan and I do watch the NY Giants loose on most Sundays, does eat into my TV race time. But I grew up in a Yankee household, and even my father's father was a diehard fan. Growing up in NYC and then the suburbs is all about ball sports, and not auto road racing. The only racing I saw growing up was on ABC's Wide World of Sports where they'd cut away from the Daytona 500 to jump back to a rodeo event or some such nonsense. How I ended up as a road racing fan still seems like a one in a million shot.

From what I've read, Nascar is at literally a cross roads. Their old fanatical fan base that drove the growth of the sport from regional to national levels, are older folks like me. They're in the 70-80s plus and just don't go to many if any races these days for multitude of reasons. Nascar was all about racing a car that was purchased from a car dealer, so win on Sunday, sell on Monday was more then a advertising phrase. The big brute American cars were really only suited for oval racing along with the ever growing CI of the engines. Today Nascar is a silhouette series where the car shells only look like Detroit or Japanese Iron. And the series has morphed into a virtual spec series as well. The final nail in the coffin is that they still think that they can compete with the NFL for both the fan in the stands and TV ratings. Clearly, they can't. No other sport can except the playoffs in Baseball, and this year the 1st round of the playoffs weren't on Sunday prime time football time.

Nascar needs to start to take a step back to a regional series, stop playing F1 and looking to expand to tracks all over the country where they can't fill the stands, and concentrate on their base. The season is long enough from Feb to lets say done by Sept, especially as the Daytona 500 is their center piece race, and it's the 1st race of the year.

Joel

[Joel_W]

I watched the Motul Petit Le Mans yesterday, and the racing was fantastic. I loved how there's just enough track lights so you can actually see the cars running at night. I did have to laugh when once again in the LMP2 class there were just two cars, and once one dropped out, the remaining car could have parked for Dinner, and still win by a mile. Congrats to Team Penske for winning the Championship in DPI.

Strange when you realize that Sebring is only 25 days from now. Nov 08 to Nov 10. So we'll have some 1st class racing to watch sooner then later.

Joel

[Ben_B]

Yes, it was a great race, especially the GTD class! The DPi Cadillac's brake failure was impressive. They need to either somehow combine LMP2 with DPi or just pull the plug on it. With just two cars in the class, what's the point. Technology demonstrators?

I'm looking forward to the Michelin Sportscar Encore at Sebring next month. The Michelin series has had some great racing all season. Wish I could attend. I got more interested in the GT4 series when I learned these cars are not too far removed from what you can get at the showroom. That makes it a little easier to build a model of some of the cars. One of my future projects will be to convert a Revell McLaren 570S to a GT4 car. 

Ben

[Joel_W]

Ben,
I don't live that far from Lime Rock Conn if I take the ferry out of Port Jefferson NY, which I live maybe 20 min from the dock. From the Conn dock it's all of an hours drive. Lime Rock does host all 4 IMSA classes for a super race weekend. So next year I'm going no matter the weather. I'm also planning on going to the historic races as well.

Joel

[Ben_B]

I’m an hour and a half from the VIR. They have the Pirelli Sports car races in the spring and IMSA in the fall. Plus they have two vintage series races. I haven’t been able to make it to the vintage races for a couple of years but I plan to change that next year.

I’m also only a couple of hours from Charlotte Motor Speedway, but I don’t care to go. The Roval race was interesting, though. The Daytona 24 is also on my list, but I don’t think I’d have much luck convincing my wife to go, unless there’s a NASA launch the same weekend.

Ben