Restrictor Stealth
IMSA Memo 9-13 reduces the minimum weight of Porsche’s GT3 RSR to 1245 kilos. That should raise eyebrows, since it’s previous minimum was 1250. Five Kg? A reduction for the car that’s won four in a row? Murphy’s smarter friends think they have it figured out. The ACO’s restrictor table breaks at 1245, meaning that a car running that minimum is required to use smaller restrictors (28.6 versus 29.1). So by taking off weight, the Porsche loses power. Everybody else – including Corvette – gets closer to the leader on the track.
Weaving Tangled Webs
Yesterday, Murphy tweeted that Elan Motorsports Technologies (EMT) chief David Bowes was out door, following a lunch meeting with the CEO of PMSG. Some speculated the move was related to the aborted sale of EMT (or EMT assets, anyway) to Carl Haas. With the sunrise, the Bear’s gonna revise that to a “sort of.” Murphy now hears that Don turned down the Haas offer for EMT, but his counter is still “on the table” in Chicago.
So why is Bowes out? First, if you’re going to do business with Martin Birrane, you best not have Mr. Bowes as the face of your business, and with Lola’s connection to Multimatic (and Multimatic’s connection to Panoz) about to grow, that was becoming problematic. Call it an alignment of interests.
What he Knows (that you didn’t – until now)
The CEO has lately returned to making references similar to the infamous “If you knew what I know.” Well, at least part of what’s been hinted will be the subject of the Elkhart Lake “Stakeholder’s Summit” next week. According to Murphy’s sources, here’s what Scott Atherton will announce:
The American Le Mans Series will add a prototype class based on the ACO’s nascent Courage-Ford V-8 series. The prototypes, selling for $345,000 complete, will be built by EMT in Braselton. To control costs, engines will be sealed (and available only from EMT), only two sets of gears can be used (long and short circuit), and only a “small range” of springs can be used to modify set-up. Courage (now owned by Oreca), Lola, Multimatic, and Haas will all have pieces of this pie. Don’t be surprised if Yokohama is the exclusive tire supplier. Are we surprised at Oreca showing up in Georgia next month in the middle of the LMS schedule? Not anymore.
The important thing here? Instead of running as a stand-alone race (as the same cars do in Europe, and as IMSA Lights do in North America) these spec machines will run as a class within American Le Mans Series races.
The Bear is going to leave the dissection of whether this is good or bad to others (look for a Last Turn Clubhouse commentary in due course). The suspicion is the more current participants (particularly GT2 teams) consider this the less they’ll like it. Murphy’s “first take” is if you’re an EMT “stakeholder” you like it. If you’re racing in the American Le Mans Series, not so much.
Requests for comment from Braselton this afternoon went unanswered.
DP Demo
The Daytona Prototype “demonstration” at the Indy MotoGP is off, according to one of the Bear’s sources.
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Tags: Comprent, Corvette, Courage, David Bowes, EMT, Ford, Haas, Lola, Martin Birrane, MotoGP, Multimatic, Porsche, PTI, Yokohama
So, “minimum” weight. Doesn’t that mean they could just keep running at 1250 kg by their own choice with their restrictor as is and continue with their winning ways?
No, it does not. The restrictor table defines the restrictor for the miniminum weight “assigned,” regardless of whether you can actually meet it or not.
What will the new Class be called? BP? (as in Brasleton Prototypes?)
Well, now that you’re mentioning it, these and the DPs would make a nice class. Yeah, I know, DPs will need to be made faster…
I can’t imagine running the formula le mans cars with 2 prototype classes and the GT2s at the same time during a race. This must seal the idea of combining the current prototypes in ALMS and allowing the FLM cars to be the new P2 class. Races like Lime Rock will get really busy.
Not too sure about the “Courage Ford V8″ reference. Formula Le Mans use GM engines, see here:-
http://www.formulalemans.com/en/about-flm/the-car/
Is Murphy expecting a switch to Ford power?
Also what is the Lola angle?
(BTW that FLM website is worth a browse, these are very nice cars virtually identical to the first LC75s that the Acura team had before they got the Wirth tweaks.)
mariantic says: Not too sure about the “Courage Ford V8″ reference.
As it was explained to the Bear, the PMSG deal is not a purchase of the cars built in Europe. It’s a licensing deal in which the Oreca (formerly Courage) chassis is built at EMT, the cars are powered by EMT-built Fords, and other bits and pieces are provided by Multimatic, Lola, Haas (who probably gets the spares business, as he did with Champ Car). Murphy isn’t sure what the Lola connection is (there has been one through Multimatic recently, but he can’t remember the details)…Murphy is told these things by others (he’s not the source) and he’s often not told all the nitty-gritty details.
There’s some precident for this; the current IMSA Lights was proposed year before its launch to be non-spec., including Radicals, Wests, and other prototypes. By the time it became reality, it was pretty much restricted to cars built by PMSG.
Edited to add: EMT and Multimatic have long associations with Ford. If they are the supplier, it’s logical the engines will be Fords.
Excellent detective work Inspector Bear!
It’s interesting and historical THAT Haas comes to rescue again, or
is involved in the rescue of a race car series. Some of you Paddock
Poop readers may remember the Lola Formula 5000 cars that got
full bodies and became Can-am cars back in 1977 or so.
Haas was one of the key suppliers.
Interesting that Haas is going to be involved but I don’t think it is anything altruistic. The loss of a series like the ALMS is not good for racing as a whole. If Bear is to be believed (and I have no reason to doubt his Paw-ness.), Grand Am is teetering and comparing the Mid-Ohio lack of anything approaching a crowd by GA in June with the #’s drawn by this past weekend’s ALMS and IRL race should tell us there is very little interest in a spec car series. And anyone who doubts it is a spec series should listen to Ben Collins (the Stig?) about how the cars are built. His one sentence said it all.
Am curious…are we to believe that Gil will really run two cars next year in the ALMS?