^^^
Fishey, you've roundaboutly demonstrated my worst fears for the series. If the new owners at NASCAR have the myopic view that ALMS doesn't matter, and the purchase was a land grab bottom feeding scheme to kill off a competing series and secure some top venues as a place to run their series under GA rules with a facade of ALMS...the whole thing goes in the toilet.

The whole reason I liked GA is it provided more racing and different racing than ALMS... But ALMS provided better more interesting and colorful racing with the bredth and history of a world class series. GA while good and fun is no comparison and can't even begin to replace it. I hope to god somebody within NASCAR realizes it before American road racing is mexican wrestlers in clown cars at your nearest roval....which coincidentally looks alot like Jim France's DP driving history...

Why would I worry?...

 

Well, by your own admission neither ALMS or Grand-Am has been a success to this point. So how is putting these two series together going to make it successful?

Unless you can put together a series that attracts first rate drivers AND entrants on a regular basis, the public will lose interest. NASCAR drivers are public property, how many ordinary folk in the US know who the drivers are in Grand-Am?

ALMS has been of considerable interest to European entrants and drivers in the past, and it could be again with appropriate schedules and rewards. Teams learn a lot contesting the ALMS races.

R+C

 

GA has a plan moving forward. The ELMS and ALMS does not. There is no budgets to run multi-million dollar cars and when they only cherry pick a few events why even bother it hurts the series and they compete against who again? Its a bunch of grand-standing at its best not to mention they have exclusive tire deals with the best tire manufacture. So even if the other teams somehow manage to build an equal car if your running tires that A. Fall off 30min earlier or B. Off pace by 3 seconds there is no way in hell your going to win. Its a major problem and they have no solution. How can you attract big companies to spend millions of dollars when there is simply no payoff in TV coverage or Bragging rights over tough competition. Its like all the class wins of the Corvette had before merging the GT classes they mean absolutely nothing.

 

While I'm a fan of both, I don't agree the racing has been better in ALMS. For years GT2 was just a series of 2 Corvettes doing parade laps. Before the RS Spyders, P2 was plain boring, and is again. And even in P1, it got really old to see Audi win every race over and over. The one time that ALMS was really awesome was the epic RS Spyder vs. Audi battles. But other than that, has it really been "great racing" ever year? At best its been one interesting class per year.

I would certainly like to see better and more varied technology in Grand Am, but I think its hard to fault the actual racing. There have been lost of epic battles including, with on of my favorites being David Murray's last lap of the season "flying Porsche" re-pass on Andy Lally to secure the championship. The two things I do hate in GA is the random yellows that come out for "debris", and the lack of consistency in assessing penalties.

 

Then again.....seeing the Cup Cars bounce around Sebrings could be entertaining.

 

I don't think anyone will argue against that.

 

I jumped into ALMS just last year and don't really follow GA, so I may have a unique perspective here. I don't know much about "glory days", but I do know that GT has been extremely exciting while I've been paying attention on a race-by-race basis, 10% of the time we have a margin of victory of ~.1 second, and the PC points race last year ended in a tie through all official tiebreakers. Perhaps this isn't as good as it was back in the day, but I think asking for more (aside from the number of prototypes on track) is a bit greedy. ALMS has been very entertaining for me in the past 18 months and I would hate to see something break that.

I am very disheartened by this news, especially the speculation that NASCAR is buying ALMS outright. Perhaps most frustrating is the fact that this merger could genuinely be good for the sport, but I would be very surprised if the end result is not pandering down the lowest common denominator, most widely appealing money-making formula they can come up with. As even most American "car guys" don't care about Le Mans or international motorsports, I don't see the strong links the ALMS currently has to these being terribly important. But that link is one of the biggest draws for me, along with the prestige that comes with it. The fact is that Le Mans is the pinnacle of sports car racing, and as Porsche enthusiasts do we not demand the best and nothing else? If NASCAR makes this link a priority, I think we'll be alright. But that's a big, nasty if.

I would also argue that people DO care about ALMS outside of North America. Do they make a stream of their races available for free to the rest of the world for fun? Is it broadcast in Europe because there just isn't anything better to watch? I know that Europeans in some of my other online communities enjoy and follow ALMS.

 

GT2 is pretty good actually! Porsche, Vettes, Ferrari, BMW and now Dodge.

 

I was at the Baltimore Grand Prix yesterday. Low car count. WTF?! Why were there not 2x or 3x as many cars? This was a joke. 5 classes running together because there simply are not enough cars on the track. And the winner was not from the highest level... maybe because there were only 3 cars entered. Snoozer.

To me this Baltimore Grand Prix seemed a lot like a PCA club race. Just a bunch of rich dudes having fun spending a ton of money. Boring.

I have been to a few NASCAR races at Richmond, Dover, Rockingham, and Martinsville. With one singular exception the fan experience at NASCAR blows away that of ALMS. The exception was the lack of security around the paddock for the race teams - that was pretty cool to walk right in to their tents and trailers and when the race was over we walked right up to all the winning cars while they were doing the post-race inspection -- which, again, gave me that PCA club race feeling - is this for real? lol see picture

NASCAR is a business that is in the money-making business. ALMS certainly is not - just a playground for rich dudes (where else can you pay $100k and get to be one of the drivers in a race on TV? You gotta be kidding me that I am watching a supposedly PROFESSIONAL race with amateurs with big $ playing racecar driver). Looking forward to a exclusively "professional" and serious road racing series in USA.-- and hopefully MUCH LARGER car counts.

 

GA is full of paying drivers. Very very few drivers are actually paid to drive these days

What appeals to me in ALMS vs GA/Nascar is the top tier of factory motorsport efforts are present in ALMS/LMS competition. There is nothing innovative about GA/Nascar. For god's sake they just began using fuel injection! We can see the technology tested and eventually in the road cars. Nascar and Grand-Am are the exact opposite of ALMS.

 

Hopefully this means LMPs and not DPs, and a GT class more like ALMS and less like Rolex.

 

With the new rumor out that GA is outright purchasing ALMS I doubt they will be too concerned about preserving ALMS as we know it. I hope this is incorrect as the LMP cars are far more exciting (though suffering from low car counts) and I fear the loss of the GT3 RSR racing in America if the classes adhere to more GA rules. That means we as a country do not have anymore teams going to LeMans. Not going to get a GA Camaro to go to race in France are we?

Maybe the DP guys can run LMPC and let LMPC open up engine manufacturers to keep Ford and BMW in the series. While I grudgingly admit that the Corvette DP car is a huge improvement in looks I think the DP program is a little silly as a whole.

 

this thread has turned into the biggest buzzkill ever.

 

This post highlights my concerns exactly. I've worked in Grand-Am and I don't have a lot of faith.

 

GA and ALMS is akin to when here in the States we had both the NFL and the USFL. Two football leagues could not survive. The market wasn't big enough to support them both. In my eyes, this has been the problem with having both ALMS and GA all along. There is a limited interest for sportscar racing in North America. The two series have been fighting over the same fans and the same teams for a decade. We've got guys like Ryan Daziel, Spencer Pumpelly, Guy Cosmo, Johannes Van Overbeek, and many many more trying to run in both series. We've got enough drivers. What we don't have is enough money from team owners and enough spectators/fans. Merge the two series and it becomes a lot easier for everyone involved to make it work.

I'm still pensive on how all of this will play out. It could be catastrophic if it's not handled properly. But I personally think that the manufacturers and the teams themsevles weild enough power to make this a good thing once all the bugs off it are sorted out.

What I would personally like to see is 2 separate races. One race that contains 3 prototype classes and one race that contains 2 or 3 GT classes. With the two series merged, there will be enough cars to run 2 races per weekend in just "Rolex" not even counting the street stock production class cars down in the Conti series.