savannah996

noob question here.
i know GT class is production based cars.

so how the hell does someone race a 425+HP 3 rotor mazda? last time i checked mazda didnt put a 3 rotor in anything around the USA.

LVDell

Do a search. Been discussed ad nauseum in the appropriate forum (racing and de forum)

savannah996

man ive been searching, guess im not using the force.
im starting to gather that grand am doesnt care what engine a chassis comes with. (ie=rx8 and 200 something hp engine.)

since the rx8 somes factory with 2 rotor (and no option for 3 rotor) but they race with the "renisis" 3 rotor,
why doesnt porsche teams just race the gt1? hell, grand am is turning into another nascar.
when one brand takes the lead, officals just put in a throttle plate restrictor or rev limiter. hell why do i even watch?

savannah996

we all know a mazda off the showroom floor cant compete with an off the showroom floor p-car!

LVDell

And yes, that's the rub. The cups are homologations of the street car yet the mazda, etc, are tube frame cars that share nothing but body work with the showroom cars.

I thoroughly enjoy grand-am racing and don't miss a race but I find it comical that they can't get it "right" before the season starts and instead restrict or enhance different manufacturers during the season to hinder or aid progress. My race engineer is one of the team engineers for Stevenson and trust me, it's frustrating every time they have to work with a rules change GA sends down as it makes rebalancing and setting up the car like starting over every single time. Just isn't fair. Have the teams test FOR grand-am before the season, check everything out, release the SEASON rules and then leave em! THe problem is you have cry babies like Buckler that everytime they get spanked on track, the cry foul and that's unfair for the Porsche's. He fails to see that FL is leading (by a great margin too) in the same car he has! Just goes to show what kind of pull he has with grand am.

russo

That is a good question that I am interested in knowing.

Meister Fahrer

Also up until recently Pontiac was racing a rwd conversion of the G6 I think.

Race on Sunday, but don't sell it on Monday, ha.

Blackness

The fact that Buckler is running a truck in NASCAR and is rumored to field a DP in Grand-Am next year increases his influence. FL has their act together this year and the driver pairing of Werner/Keen is superior than any of the TRG entries (except for the Rolex 24 lineups).

I agree it's frustrating to see all the tube-frame GT cars running against a uni-body tub 911. One of the recent races the commentators said that if the Pontiac brand name goes away they could just rebody the GXP's with whatever. Which is complete crap IMHO.

All that said, it still produces some good racing

LVDell

absolutely! still very close and exciting racing. and at the end of the day, EVERYBODY has the ability to run whatever car they want to.

savannah996

yeah i think if you cant race with the tub of your factory car and you NEED a facade, well you probably arnt racing a brand that makes a real race car. porsche makes THE car!

this being said anyone want to race in a mercedes smart car with a 5.4-liter V8 that pumps out 355 hp and 376 lb-ft of torque? (from the slk55 amg) we will fit it in there somehow.

JimB

I'm with Dell. It drives me crazy the way GA is constantly changing the rules.

The Grand Am and ALMS Corvettes and Pontiacs aren't even built by GM. They are built from the ground up by Pratt and Miller.

What really drives me nuts though is KONI. It's essentially Porsche street cars (not even GT3s) against everyone elses version of cup cars.

But, as others have said, it is good racing.
Jim

Bob Rouleau

It says a lot about Porsche that the GT3 is a production based race car whereas the Mazda, Pontiac and perhaps others in class are silhouette cars, i.e. looks like a Mazda but is in fact a purpose built tube framed race car.

Torontoworker

Grand Am with their 19th century Proto Turtles and the 'slowed up' GT class are all about show and nothing else. They have always been anti Porsche and cannot be trusted to be fair. They will do whats best for their bottom line and nothing else. As long as you can agree with that and like that weird taste in your mouth you'll get along ok.

LVDell

They had cars in the 1800's?

Thundertub

LOL! Well, actually YES they did have cars in the 1800's. Daimler, Peugeot, Renault I think... lots more. Heck, I don't know for certain off the top of my head. But "cars" were invented and made usable in the 1880's and 1890's.
LOLOLOL!
All those thousands of posts and you had no idea when cars were first made? LOLOLOL
Here is some interesting reading. Try it, you may like it. LOL!
http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cars/carhist.htm