MTosi

Just a little rant (forgive grammer and spelling, I just finished a 15 page term paper), but it seems to me anytime Porsche starts winning in any series they (FIA, Grand AM, ACO etc.) penalize them for having designed and built the fastest car. It's been happening for 30 years. It seems to me people go to sportscar races to watch Porsche win, the same way half of the the grandstands at F1 races are filled with red. Imagine evrytime Ferrari gets a car capable of winning the FIA penalizes them, the fans wouldn't be very happy. Porsche will be willing to run a street car on a unibody chassis and they'll win and then they are penalized against cars that have tube frame chassis with engine locations and drive wheels opposite of the street cars. In the ALMS they step up to the plate in LMP2 and put a full factory effort since they don't want to build a diesel, they do so well they start beating Audi. I'm pretty sure last year I saw more people come out to Lime Rock for the ALMS then I've seen in recent memory. I'm pretty sure most of those people came to see an audi-porsche battle and I'd be willing to wager a guess that most people were there rooting for porsche. So the ACO doesn't like the fact that someone is subverting their class structure so they penalize Porsche even more. I have to ask how many people want to go to the races to watch diesels battle it out, If I want that I can go to the highway and watch the kenworths do that. If they gave two hoots about the fans theyd be willing to make consistant rules that allowed fair competetion, and ones that manufactures including porsche would be willing to race to. Anyway thats my little rant.........

DrJupeman

I agree that it seems to me to be the success of the RS Spyder that has helped boost up ALMS. This judging from my own observation of the crowds at Lime Rock the past few years.

Congo

People have come out because there is a battle for the overall win for the first time since 2002.

The ACO have reportedly dropped the 2010 LMP1 Coupe rule which would have brought other changes (more $$$).

http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105673

Porsche has been given a weight break in the FIA GT Championship:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/66700

MTosi

I'm pretty disappointed they're dropping the new lmp regs. It would be nice to see all closed cars, that at least have some small similarity to their street counterparts. I think people forget open prototypes were invented by max, Bernie, and Balestre to help kill sportscar racing. I've stopped caring about lemans since GT1 died.

Congo

GT1 is what caused such a mess in sports car racing in the 1990s.

The RS Spyders don't have any different regs than the factory Acuras in LMP2.

Why force constructors and automobile manufacturers to build only closed-cockpit LMP1 cars? Why not allow open-cockpit LMP1 cars?

The FIA helped to kill the World Sportscar Championship in the early 1990s with the 3.5 liter engine rule.

Three all-new LMP1 coupes will race at Le Mans this year.

Lola B08/60 with an Aston Martin V-12:

Design by Julian Sole

http://ultimatecarpage.com/car/3557/...on-Martin.html

Dome's first all-new LMP since 2001, the S102 with a 5.5 liter Judd V-10:

Design by Oku Akiyoshi

http://ultimatecarpage.com/car/3506/Dome-S102-Judd.html

Epsilon Euskadi's LMP1 machine with a 5.5 liter Judd V-10

Design by John Travis with a big emphasis on low cg

http://www.supercars.net/cars/4075.html

http://www.racecar-engineering.com/a...e-lmp1-07.html