Though Audi’s return to the ALMS in 2010 remains very much in doubt, the company’s active engagement with the ACO over 2011 rules indicates a continuing commitment to (or at least an interest in) the sport. Does that mean a full ALMS program in 2010? Not with any certainty, since it depends on whether “commitment” or “interest” is the right descriptor.
Sushi, anyone?
Down another one – NAVI Team Goh (P2) is a scratch from the Asian Le Mans Series, joining Signature (P1) and KSM (P2) in dropping out of the race at Okayama, Japan. The latter two were gone before the ACO’s recent press release. Speaking of which, Drayson’s Lola Judd coupé won’t be a “debut” either. Does the ACO even read its own press releases? Or is public relations, like Gallic military prowess, a lost art?
Maserati Redux?
Don’t discount completely the rumors of an MC-12 as a 2010 ALMS competitor. Though it remains little more than an idle thought by a current owner, engineers (who can make the hardware fit) and accountants (who can make a check clear) are really quite inventive people. Working together they can do wonders.
Tony Tired?
Tony George to throw in the towel? He’s rumored to have told his Vision Racing team it’s out of business without a big sponsor. What are the implications of that for the IRL? It hasn’t been good. The league’s been cut off from the IMS gravy train (other than the race-specific benefits) by Tony’s sisters, TG’s leadership seems indifferent, and the Versus deal looks worse every day. (It wasn’t all that popular when announced, either.)
Farewell, friend(s)
The end of the 2009 racing season is in sight, and with it, more departures from Braselton’s staff. Some will hurt more than others. Murphy will miss you.
Nagoya nonsense – or not?
Murphy reported on contacts between Braselton and Nagoya last year. Now increasing signs the latter will leave F1, or at least significantly cut its expenditure, give that much-awaited, on-again-off-again prototype some new “legs.”
Legal beagles
Porsche, caught with an illegal engine, complained to the ACO about Corvette’s (wait for it)…illegal engine. That’s balls, isn’t it? At least Corvette was open about its direct injection when it homologated the its new GT2 C6.R, so technically it wasn’t “illegal,” since the ACO accepted it, even if it was outside published rules. Porsche on the other hand…
All Quiet on the Western Front?
Certainly not. Just in case you thought North American Sports Car racing isn’t at war – Murphy wasn’t sure, himself – Daytona Beach put the illusion of “getting along” to bed by putting NASCAR Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Hunter out as an attack dog on the American Le Mans Series for its proposed “Challenge Class” rules.
In a lengthy blog, he calls the ALMS’s new rules, “misguided,” and “counter-productive,” while accusing the Braselton-based race series of circulating “calculated misinformation and propaganda” to “undermine Grand Am’s success.” Pretty frantic stuff.
The American Le Mans Series (without any reference at all to Grand Am) has created a class that allows cars that meet Grand Am GT specifications (actually all properly prepared Porsche Cup cars regardless of the series they might currently contest, but no other cars now racing in Grand Am) to enter, and another that introduces low-cost prototypes (less cost than Daytona Prototypes) to race alongside other ALMS classes. Let’s be clear. The proposed GT rules affect Grand Am Porsches only, and the proposed prototype rules will make no Grand Am car eligible for any ALMS racing.
Attacking a competing series for doing nothing more than modifying its rules to allow lower-cost entries looks like an act of desperation to Murphy. The panic might be justified; stories circulating point to a DP grid in the single figures next season, and as A.C. wrote in his last column, not everyone on International Speedway Boulevard is happy with the “sporty car experiment.”
Withering away
There are 11 guppies on the Miller Motorsport Park grid. The Bear’s heard from various sources at least five won’t be around next season (though one of those be resurrected). Among the 12 GT entries, Stevenson will be back with a Corvette (actually Camaro – Murphy’s got a “mental block” on that one) body and engine on his tube frame, Greg Loles will enter a single BMW (also a Pratt & Miller project), and the Bear does not believe that TRG will be back with its two Porsches, whatever Kevin said. 23 entries for a series whose claim to fame was robust grids.
BMW
The Bear heard BMW is not happy over at Rahal-Letterman, and though there would seem to be no rational cause for disaffection, it’s said they’re looking around. Is it possible this story is upside down? Or is it simply part of the on-going politics around competition rules? Perhaps the Bavarian’s are upset they’ve had no invitation to the Ed Sullivan Theater?
Bye, bye, Acura
Will Acura return in 2010? Murphy hears the simple answer is “no.” They’ll lease engines (the teams have already bought their ARX-01 and 02 chassis), but that’s all – support for teams and the series, along with HPD work on further development will mostly disappear. It doesn’t take a lot of reading between the lines of the Fernandez Racing announcement of its demise to come to that conclusion, and when the Bear was told that HPD has been laying off folks, well, that kind of clinched it.
Supersomething-or-other
The Don’s supercar is “on the table” again. Literally. The latest flight of fancy will be floated (flown?) at an invitation-only dinner at an undisclosed (but probably obvious) location Friday night of Petit Le Mans. This is a “fund raiser,” a “what we’ll do with the millions you give us” get-together for the unreasonably well-heeled. In a nutshell, that will be a butanol (Florida algae)-powered road-going “supercar” that will morph (somehow) into a Le Mans-legal racer. (Maybe it’s a Transformer.) The Bear’s invitation to the Friday affair seems to have been lost in the mail. Well, he’d have to turn it down anyway, since he’s already got a social engagement – or two – on that night.
Stupid rules
Well, the Frogs have done it again. More utterly stupid ACO rules. “Petite changes” to chassis aero rules aren’t trivial if you’re the small team that has to pay for them (again). IMSA has its own problems, it shouldn’t commit hiri kuri with the French for expensive minutia. Braselton should “grandfather” anything currently eligible. Heck, they’re going to run a single prototype class anyway, so what would be the point of such tweaks, particularly with entirely new rules likely for 2011?
Is this the 2010 ALMS Schedule?
Pulling together the stories Murphy hears, his 2010 ALMS schedule might look like this:
Sebring – March 17-20
Long Beach – April 16-17
Sonoma – May 1-2
Salt Lake City – May 8-9
Lime Rock – July 16-17
Mid-Ohio – August 6-7
Road America – August 19-22
Mosport – September 4-5
Petit Le Mans – September 22-25
Laguna Seca – October 8-9
As always, that’s nothing more than a consensus of scurrilous rumor, and irresponsible speculation.
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Tags: ACO, ALMS 2010 Schedule, Audi, BMW, Grand Am, Greg Loles, IRL, Jim Hunter, Maserati, Nagoya, NASCAR, Okayama, Porsche, Pratt & Miller, Sushi, Tony George, Transformers
Stevenson will be running Camaro bodied tube frame. The proposed schedule doesn’t look too bad (except the BS Long Beach event) as long as they get the race lengths to endurance lengths. 4-6 hrs.
The schedule doesn’t look bad, but that is terrible news about Acura. It looks like that car’s lineage could compete well in 2011 at the 24.
If nobody leases the engines and Audi doesn’t enter next year next year’s prototype grid in the ALMS will be scary!
darn, bifred! The Bear keeps typing Corvette. He knows it’s Camaro, but just can’t get his stuffed head around it. (Perhaps it’s because he can’t imagine that brick as any kind of a sports car or GT.) Off to fix it.
The bear must really want some Corvettes in Grand Am.
If The Bear and I are reading the same press release (9/1/09) from the Asian series (asian-lemans-series.com ) which also has the Drayon and NAVI teams… Seems the Japan race will have “…all the big endurance names…” I guess the Peugeots aren’t all that big. The race will have two R10′s, though. The PR does say “..big..names”, not technology.
I also found this little charm:
“The big news in GT2 is the arrival of one of the works BMW E 92 M3s racing in this year’s ALMS entered by RLR (Rahal Letterman Racing), which have just scored a double at Road Atlanta.”
Damn.I warned y’all there might not be anyone to open the gates to let the spectators in!!!!
You know…
The Prototype grids could be seriously bad, however.
Its still a bit too early to give up on a quality Prototype field.
But anyway, right now it stands as -
6 Prototypes, maybe 7 with Part-timers VDS
11 GT2 Cars
8 Porsche Challenge Cars
4 Le Mans Challenge Cars
28/29 full time entries
The unknowns are still -
1) Will somebody buy Fernandez out?
2) Will Toyota pull the plug on its F1 project and go back to Sportscars?
3) Will Drayson do the full ALMS?
4) Will Audi feel the return of DFM and Highcroft is enough to have older R15′s run the full season and return to Le Mans to help the factory team later.
I don’t put much “stock” in the rumors about RLR-BMW connection, after all, they have won and been competitive, that’s all you can ask for. Rahal was racing his old BMW M-1 recently in England…
Overall the number of entries will stay roughly the same.
In any case, let’s enjoy Petit and let the chips fall where they may for 2010, besides, we’ll know quite a bit more next week.
No Jag in the paddock on Wednesday. Didn’t see Murphy at Paddy’s Wednesday night. Things that make you go, hmmm.
Bear? Hello? (no pride of authorship, below, I assure you, but someone had to report something and I was there all day Friday and through the fireworks last night) So..here goes…
It rained but the fans came… in droves. No sign of Mr. France…probably still trying to find people other than the GA sponsors to do that rally thingy…
But someone from Daytona school of manners and grace was there. A ticket taking supervisor played Thor (Poseidon?) so the little team from Maryland told the Petit to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Please don’t tell us the Don allowed it to happen. This was the team that had a car, a couple of drivers and with all the big teams having pit boxes that made Roger P envious, this team had a box with three seats and three monitors. Add a stack of tires and a tool box or two. If there ever was a team “for the fans”, this was it…and, well, rules be damned. Unlike the Colts, this team left in the dead of the night but vdS left for a good reason and Don should be ashamed.
It rained, the Jag was gorgeous but it didn’t get wet, even if it was sitting at the beginning of the Paddock and obviously not up for racing. The engineers and mechanics made a great show of working on the car (the operative word being “show”.) It really was gorgeous, folks. The RSR transporter sure was shiny, too!!
Peugeot takes 1 and 2 because McNish spins. Risi takes the GT2.
The most ironic win? Dyson #20! The irony? The Dyson #16 ran more laps than the others in the classification and didn’t score. Go figure. And who was the smartest driver that last five laps in the pouring rain? The Englishman, Mr. Mazda, himself, BD. Sitting in the Porscheplatz, we all wondered why he tiptoed through 10a/b and most scoffed. Then came the #2 (spin), the #8 and the Farnbacher right through the run-off. Others were sideways. And here again, came one of the nicest guys in the Paddock….oh so slowly, not a tread (or hair for that matter) out of place. And from the middle of the packed tent, a female voice spoke for us all…”he’s the smartest one out there.”
Oh yeah. It rained. The crowd was huge (the “stands” on the outside of 10a and b were 3/4 full…that hasn’t happened in years.) And yet, it rained and rained and rained. While some teams started to tear down their Paddocks around 7p, others just sat, others told stories of years past, the Poughkeepsie boys played 15 man/woman hacky sack, Duncan worked the teams up and down the Paddock talking to everyone (his rolled up pants were a hoot.) One Bear reader/contributor had the only signal so he continuously had to update the Buckeye score (they won…she was quite pleased.)
And it continued to rain, yet, a steady stream of bumpershooted and soaked fans continued to parade up and down the Paddock.
It rained. but four hours into the delay, a boat load of fans was still there. Bo was making the call every 30 minutes…”We’re working on a plan. Another update at (pick one: 5, 5:30, 6, 6:20 <yes, 6:20, 7 and 7:30) then, the line of the race, delivered from the spinning Scotsman, himself: “Unless those making the decision have ever done a 180 in a hydoplane skid, he’s not qualified to tell us to go back out there.” Paraphrased but this from the one person with the most to win.
And would someone please tell the dough boy at the mike that it is the “Petite” not “Petty” Le Mans!!!! To SPEED? Please come back for the full 10 hours next year! No one in GA could have expected 12″ of rain in five days! I promise, we’ll tell Sonny to quit praying for rain (who thought it would work…really.)
In the end, we understood the race was 11 (13?) minutes short of halfway. The call was made, the race done, the race “complete”. The sanctioning body made one GOOD call (to end it, complete), one QUESTIONABLE call (not to have red flagged five laps earlier…AM right on that one too) and one HORRIBLE, RIDICULOUS and Radical call.
Bear! Would you please fill us in! The above is soooooo below your standards.
I’m not an expert, but:
Hmmmm.
A ticket taking supervisor played Thor (Poseidon?) so the little team from Maryland told the Petit to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Please don’t tell us the Don allowed it to happen.
While I believe Thor may have called Zeus to address the ticket confusion, I believe Roscoe B. Coltrane showed up at the track with something precious from a craned VerSing rut. Could it have been Barack’s key to the front gate? Or maybe Michelle’s key? You know what they say, you’ll be fine and dandy if you keep that key – just fine if you lose it.
Let’s say you lose your key and you want to get rekeyed? I heard it will set you back $500. But if Roscoe shows up with the key & Michelle and the key is Barack’s (and he’s not there)…. You may get locked out of the White House based on the lease you signed.
No Presidential pardon will help here. So Air Force Nineteen left in the middle of the night? Should the Don be ashamed? Naw (as they say in Georgia). Sometimes what is presented as wrong turns out right through all the rain and clay.
Sorry if I stepped on your paws Murphy…..