Bill32

And dead on comments about Nascar

http://www.autoextremist.com/fumes1/

ROBMARZ

and Tony George destroyed open wheel racing in America and the Tudor series has strange combinations of cars in the same class.

Bill32

Yea, I just mentioned Nascar first because it's the biggest joke of them all.

jcsperson

I skipped down past all his self-indulgent autobiographical bits until I got to his discussion of sports car racing. He makes some good points, but ruins them by making accusations that can't be supported by evidence like, "...keeping the Viper team in the GTLM class mix – making sure they won the championship." This is whacko tin-foil hat conspiracy theory nonsense and just cheapened the article.

He makes no sense at all. If TUSC was all about politics as he claims, and the powers that be are concerned about the viability of the series, they wouldn't reward the team that is least likely to stay involved in racing. You'd reward the stalwarts like Corvette or Porsche who are in it for the long haul.

And the whole nonsense about propping up "France’s beloved Daytona Prototypes" seems ridiculous to me. The lone P2 entry at Petit LeMans that he speaks of, the Ligier, was also the fastest car on the track. If there had been two or three of them instead of the one that found the tire barrier, it would have won the race.

P2's problems stem in part from the fact that the open-cockpit HPD ARX dates from 2008. The new closed-cockpit HPD ARX-04b should be much more competitive next season. Between those and the Ligiers, the P2s should be much more competitive.

Bill32

He was asked to give a talk to the 100 MPH Club, and giving his history in the sport verified that he's not just a journalist or an internet race fan.
I'd rather hear the opinion of someone involved in racing than a fan.

And his comments about "France’s beloved Daytona Prototypes" are correct. The France's attempt to turn roadracing into the politically correct, cookie cutter version of Nascar were pathetic. And yes, they were slow.

VetteDrmr

So it's *all* NASCAR's fault? IIRC ALMS had virtually zero attendance in the prototype classes and Corvette became so dominant in GTS that they became the only cars in the class; no one else would play other than maybe at Sebring, which they used as a shakedown for LeMans.

IMO ALMS was another in a series of hopeless attempts to bring "superior European racing" to the US, and let's face it: sports car racing has ALWAYS been chaotic in the US, from an organizational standpoint.

Have a good one,
Mike

LateBreak

While I don't disagree with the author's gripes on professional auto sports, racing is hardly dying in this country. While NASCAR continues to thunder on in boring repetitive circles of political malaise, and professional sports car racing wallows in chaotic obscurity, grassroots racing is on the rise.

Arguably, this began with the GRM $2001 Challenge and spurred the current Budget Endurance racing movement with crapcan series like Lemons and Chump. Now, after a few very successful years with these series, we see several other series popping up and looking quite promising with a focus on keeping the racing cheap, rather than the cars. Enter World Racing League (WRL) and American Endurance Racing (AER), two series with a focus on affordable endurance racing for everyone. WRL has been running and growing for a year now, drawing solid car-counts to every race in its rookie year. Looking at 2015, the schedules will grow and and the car-counts right with them.

Along with that, HPDE's continue to draw the attention of more and more people, as well as manufacturers who are building to meet the demands of this crowd. Frankly, at 28 years old, I feel better about the future of racing and high-performance cars now than I have in my whole life. Not only is there a whole crop of factory performance cars available, but there are new road courses being built across the country and the old ones are seeing updates and reinvestment.

Regardless of what's happening in the glitz-n-glamour world of Napcar, sports-car, and F(ail)1 racing, the industry is growing and there are a lot of newcomers who never really had an opportunity before....

rfn026

I've been reading Peter's rants for at least a decade. He's quite possibly the most negative person in Detroit. Nothing is good. Unless of course it's something that was done in 1960.

He's wrong on so many points it's hard to even begin. Racing has a lot of problems - it always has. We stumble through the mistakes and keep going.

The biggest problem in racing today is the cost. The participants have to pay to play. Owners in the NFL don't have to write huge checks to keep the team going. Not a single QB in the NFL has to bring money to the table so he can suit up.

On the other hand sports car racing has always been about rich guys. The legendary Scarabs were funded by Barbra Hutton and Revlon money. We won't even start to talk about all of those Ferrari guys. One year at Indy Goodyear owned all 33 cars that qualified for the race.

When Firestone entered Indy car racing the tires dropped off at your garage were stuffed with green money. Now that was a good deal.

Oval racers always got a cut of the gate. At one point they could even make a living. Not a great living but a good one. That simply can't be done today. One reason NASCAR is looking at an owner's union is the owners want a larger share of the TV money. Good luck on that.

Keep in mind that on any given Sunday the NASCAR race is the largest spectator sporting event in the country.

Richard Newton

Rexracer77

Cost to race is what keeps basically everyone I know from even considering something like Auto-racing. That's why affordable racing like the hornets class's at the local circle track and Chumpcar/Lemons are so important to the sport. At a typical Chumpcar event 10-25% of the participants have never raced. Thats 20-100 new "race car drivers" then there was before. Thats a lot of new people into the sport to then become fans of watching these other series.

rfn026

When I was running Chumps I started the Sebring event with 128 cars on the grid. Outstanding.

Richard Newton

Rexracer77

I heard that there was ~210 cars at the Thunder hill Lemons race, on the full 5 mile course a few weeks ago. Even with that many cars it wasn't overly crowded. 210 cars x 4-5 drivers....Lots more race fans.

63Corvette

Well Richard.......................
If you were very careful with your purchase of a VINTAGE race car, AND bought it many years ago, when it was just an old race car, THEN....you could look forward to MANY years of sportscar racing for FREE, because you could eventually sell your Vintage race car for enought to pay for
ALL of your years of racing, plus give you a very nice "return on investment". That's why Vintage Racing is the fastest growing form of Motorsport in the world! (Um.... Ferrari 250 GTO $7500 in 1970, $50,000 in 1980, $13 million in 2008, and $52 Million in 2013)
What's in YOUR garage?

VetteDrmr

Garrett, getting your mid-year back on the track?

ImHuntingWabbits

I think the official count was 209 cars. It was pretty crowded (in ~2.5 hours in the car I managed <10 clean laps without traffic). But damn is it fun.

For someone whose new to racing its a great way to get familiar with the sport and being on track with other competitive drivers (although in lemons the distribution of serious drivers is low).

rfn026

SVRA is drastically changing the face of vintage racing. They're pulling huge numbers and they doing a good job of standardizing the rules around the country.

Chumps is pulling huge numbers. I love the Chumps series. The amazing thing is how fast some of those cars are. People are hiding a ton of technology under some really bad body work. My favorite used to be the Riley Technology Ford Probe.

Richard Newton
Car Tech Stuff

hklvette

You can build a very fast Chumpcar out of an S10. I haven't been involved for a while, but it used to be that you were limited really by fuel range and tire grip.

"Cost controlled" series like Chump and Lemons are certainly helping to bring racing back down to earth.

LateBreak

I actually have a Dodge Dakota here with a 5.3 Vortec sitting in it. I had planned to build from an S10 that I used to race with a 2.5 Ford in it until I realized how easy it was to fit an LS in the Dakota with truck oil pan and accessories. I even got the 'Chump Math' to come out under $400 without any creative numbers

That said, I mostly abandoned those plans when WRL was formed and I built my 4.8 C5. You're 100% right though, budget racing is breathing a lot of new life into the sport and making it a lot more fun for everyone.

63Corvette

Hi.........Yeah, I ran Indy, Sebring, Monterey, and CoTA in this last year Neal was my crew.

VetteDrmr

Man that sounds like fun! One of the very few things I miss since retirement and moving to Arkansas is the racing, whether competitive like autox or just for fun like the DEs.

Have a good one!
Mike

Rexracer77

Yeah I remember having my doors blow off by that car at VIR. Not a lot can pull a LS down the straights, but that car could...