Everett Ogilvie

You are so clueless about racing I don't even know where to start, and you always have been. Let's price out a P2 car vs. a DP; my statement stands - the most race car for the money there is.

Get a clue - you gripe about NASCAR, Grand AM and how the cars are all the same - name ANY modern racing that is not a spec series including your boring F1.

TLGunman

A good chassis, and aero helps in NASCAR too. The engineering has to tweak tiny things, but all those little things add up. The top teams are there, because of the money they spend in R&D, along with having the best drivers.

Jason

I think the ALMS is about to go under and GM needed to get their foot in the door at Grand AM.

CorvetteZ51Racer

As a former Ford (Roush and Yates) DP R&D Engineer, cylinder head builder, and track support engineer, it is clear from this thread that most folks hear have been watching the DP races with the TV muted.

To say that all of the chassis are the same is flat out ignorant. I provided track support to the Riley Gen I, Crawford and Doran (now Dallara) all in the same year. They are LIGHT YEARS apart from one another. Ever wonder why the Crawford vanished? It was easily the most aerodynamic of the lot and had the stiffest chassis - problem? The tires sucked. Riley knew that and made a chassis that was more flexible to better deal with the crappy tires Grand Am runs.

This is a far cry from NASCAR where it LITERALLY is the same chassis. You cannot intercharge suspension and other chassis-specific hardware between DP chassis. Bodywork? Yes. Motors? Yes. But the chassis are all very different.

Yes, Grand Am is tightening up the rules to allow less room to play. First major step in that direction was the spec ECUs (implemented in 07). Why did they do that? They finally acknowledged that the teams had smarter engineers that Grand Am had tech officials, and they couldn't police what was going on in the ECUs, particularly code that was being hidden in the traction control programming (thus, no more traction control).

The Corvette body was developed in partnership with GM as a branding thing. Like TLGunman said, Ford and BMW could do the same thing if they ponied up the cash.

Is there a NASCAR flavor to the racing? Sure, you have some NASCAR drivers in the race, and NASCAR owns the series. But I can promise you that the contact and kind of banging around that McNish and Allmendinger were doing is NOT the norm. Usually contact like that with the DPs breaks bodywork and folds upper A arms, and as you saw with the Starworks car, damaged bodywork is a killer in these cars, unlike the stock cars.

As for bang for the buck, I'm not sure about now, but when I was in the series, a roller (minus motor and electronics) was ~$500k. Most motors are ~$50-55k each under a lease deal. You'll use 2 at Daytona (1 practice, 1 race), then you'll get 2 races out of each from then on out typically. You can't touch an LMP motor for anywhere near that - of course the Porsche DP motors are near $100k, but that's the Porsche tax.

As for the motors, I can also tell you that, other than Grand Am's push to get them all to be 4-cam 5.0L V8s (which Porsche and GM aren't helping with), which is in an effort to make it easier to level the engine performance, they are all drastically different.

Maybe the new Chevy is a destroked LS9-based engine now, but it was first a destroked LS6 until blocks became more scarce, then it was a destroked and sleeved LS2 (to bring it to LS6 bore). The Ford is a big-bore 4.6 quad cam Cobra engine with Ford GT 5.4L heads. They're now allowed a Kinsler ITB intake because the OEM BMW (which is a stroked 4.4 IIRC) has ITBs and had far superior intake dynamics. The bores, strokes, rod/stroke ratios, valve sizes, head volumes, etc are all very different on all of these motors.

And spec or not, to have 4 cars on the lead lap after 24 hours is a hell of a lot more interesting than LeMans.

1991Z07

Amen brother!

RX-Ben

+1.
I liked what I saw.

Jason

To see 'Dinger and McNish, two guys from wildly different career paths, going hammer and tongs around ANY track in ANY cars was something I won't forget for a long time.

AU N EGL

That is Good right there. Tires sucked so the Crawford on the GA tires.

Cheby has some engine development to do.

YES it was. Very cool

Everett Ogilvie

Let's make it 3 (bite me's). I was talking about performance all along. My statement still stands - DPs are the most performance for the money. The comparison between a DP and ALMS GT1 and GT2 cars was to show relative performance at potentially similar price points; when you throw a P2 car in the mix the price goes through the roof. Even a GT1 car was typically twice the price of a DP yet the DP is very close in performance.

Please stay in your lofty ivory tower and let those of us who like Grand Am racing discuss it and enjoy it.

CorvetteZ51Racer

If you go back and look at the races from the days when there were a few Crawfords running with good teams, they definitely had speed potential, but were so sensitive to the setup that it was hard to deal with changing conditions. The old Hoosier tires that were being run at the time simply could not take any kind of shock loading. That's why the Riley's more flexible chassis was more consistent, because it wouldn't shock the tires nearly as much.

Perfect example of how bad those tires were - I was at the Pirelli tire test at Miller in '06 with a Crawford Ford Team. They went through and dialed the car in on the Hoosiers and ran a best of 2:42.1. BOLTED on the Pirellis with no setup changes and went out. 5 laps later turned in a 2:38.8. One full second was on the esses in the back because the Hoosiers couldn't run the curbs, but the Pirellis could. The Hoosiers would flat slide as soon as soon as you came off the first curb.

1991Z07

Everett: To equate F1 to spec racing is the most bizarre stretch of the term I've ever seen.

One-make racing (known as Spec racing in North America) is a type of racing in which all competitors race in identical vehicles. Typically, this means the same chassis and engine are used by all drivers. The idea behind spec racing is that success will be based more on driver skill and car setup instead of engineering skill and finances. Spec series are popular because they often bring down the cost of non-consumables, such as the engines and chassis, through economies of scale. Many amateur racing leagues follow the spec model in order to ensure participation remains affordable to the teams.

As we all know, F1 requires the teams to build their OWN chassis. That means 12 different chassis with at least 4 different engine manufacturers represented as well.

F1 is FAR from a spec series but they are required to build based on specifications written in the FIA book, where every team has the freedom to interpret the rules in their own way. In this comes innovation, like Red Bull did with their blown diffuser, Lotus with the active suspension car, Tyrrell with the 6-wheel P-34, McLaren with carbon fiber tubs (first race team to do so), Brabham with carbon fiber brakes (in 1976), etc., etc.

Some real milestones were set here http://www.enterf1.com/f1/60-Years-o...ormula-One.asp and every one had a direct impact on American racing & design.

It was Clark's Lotus that dominated the Indy500 that finally signaled the death knell of front-engined roadsters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana...ine_Revolution

F1 = Spec series?

Not in any way, shape or form. Engineering & finances are the very root of F1...

travisnd

Would be cool to see more MFGs get into the mix and design DP bodies.

Allthrottleandsomebottle

ALRIGHT kids............play nice in the sand box and debate the ideas not a person

CorvetteZ51Racer

Agreed. I think part of the issue for Ford and BMW, other than the cost of the development, is that they don't have any current production cars with the inherent aerodynamic shape of a DP car, like GM has with the Vette. Anything that Ford could make that would have a shape near to a DP would look like a cartoon face with stickers. Same issue with BMW. If Lexus was still competing, they could do an LFA themed body, and if Porsche ever releases the 918 hybrid car, they could do a body themed off of that.

On the Gen 1 DP bodies, the differentiator was the headlights and grille intake. If you go back and look at the DPs of the 05-07/08 timeframe, the Ford headlights looked like those from a Fusion, and Lexus looked like those from an SC430 (also the same car the engine was based off of), etc.

travisnd

I know it's not current production, but use the Ford GT and BMW could make a modern interpretation of the M1

SteveDoten

OK, this is getting interesting, learned a bit more of the DP cars

Is the series more 'equal' from the lack of Hendrick and Gibbs types monopoly??

I'm speculating here, but nascar seems to be chopped up into a few 'heavy hitters', not 40 UNIQUE teams

TLGunman

fwiw, Penske ran a DP a couple years ago, and never won a race.

I'm sure if Hendrick, or some other well funded team came in, and focused on winning in Grand Am, they would. The series is designed to control the cost, but there are ways around the limited testing Ganassi has been the top dog, and they can pull resources from the IRL and NASCAR teams. Wayne Taylor racing has the Suntrust funding to help, and Bob Stallings has Gainsco, but it still comes down to the return on investment. How bad do you want the rolex?

travisnd

Do brake pads and rotors last 24 hours of racing? I watched the start of the race on Saturday for a few hours then the final four on Sunday. All I remember seeing was tires and fuel. Did I miss something?

Jason

All teams had to change at least pads. Most rotors also. Some change the whole spindle/caliper/rotor out as a unit, some do it the old fashioned way. The Staubli quick disconnect fittings aren't cheap, and they are the cheapest part of the set-up.

CorvetteZ51Racer

There has been a big push by Grand Am to try to keep things current. I don't know if you caught the comment towards the end of the race about the Ford twin turbno V6 under development, but as I understand it's based off of the EcoBoost engine's architecture. There are no more Ford cars running a 4 cam 4.6L engine, thus the push to keep up. Grand Am doesn't want to do the whole NASCAR "we know no cars in 25 years have been sold with carburetors, but we're sticking with them". Oh, and FWIW, I worked on those carbs too while I was in the industry, and there is a reason those carbs cost $5k. They were NOT low tech. But I digress...