Talk:Grand-Am Road Racing

Audi R10 costs as comparison[edit]

A bit disingenous given that is clearly the year one initial development cost lumped in with the running costs. Apples to oranges to compare.

If we had other sources available, I would be happy to cite them. The overarching point is unassailable - even with recent rises in cost, DPs cost much, much, much less to run at a top level than LMPs do, by a factor of several times. Of course, a factor not even discussed in the article is the customer chassis issue, which I think is the other reason GARRA exploded - anyone can buy a Riley, but good luck getting a customer R10. I love Dyson to death, but not everyone is masochist enough to pour millions of dollars into developing yet another unreliable Lola design that finishes on the lead lap in fewer than 1/3 of the season's races. There is no out-of-the-box competitive customer LMP1, and until that changes, privateer teams will keep ignoring P1. Sad, really.

BTW, nice to see you here - your site is top-notch. FCYTravis 20:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some points...

Your list the price of a race team in comparison to the price of a manufacturer. Either include the price of the development of the Riley (I believe) chassis and the Pontiac engines into the total for Krohn, or look simply at how much Champion/Joest have spent on simply running the R10, eliminating how much Audi spent in developing it. I'm fairly sure you don't have the numbers for either option.
The only justifiably fair comparison for operating costs between running a Daytona Prototype and running an LMP1 is too look at running cost Dyson has, since they are the only stable LMP1 competitor, and also feature a similar 2-car effort.

However, I shall warn you here and now. This entire subject seems to be very opinionated and lacking in concrete facts or unbiased comparison. It is not only here either, as I have seen mentions of the car count superiority of Grand Am listed on other pages as well. Your statements on DPs vs LMPs, as they stand now, I do not believe belong on Wikipedia unless they are changed and dealt with in a proper manner. Your very statement that DP's benefit gives the appearance of an overall superiority over LMPs, and although it may not be intentional, I believe you have backed up your slight bias on this talk page. Nothing wrong with liking DPs better, but you must remain fair and unbiased on Wikipedia. If you want to point out that DPs are cheaper and that they have higher car counts then most LMPs, you need to also point out that DPs lack advancements over a season, lack technology, lack direct factory supported teams, and also lack high caliber international teams. Do not forget that the Le Mans Series in Europe boasts not only 15 - 20 LMPs in a field, but also major teams. The359 08:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What does not having "direct factory supported teams" have to do with the quality of racing? Many people (myself included) will argue that having no direct factory-supported teams makes the racing *better*, not worse. Furthermore, "major teams" is an entirely subjective measure. What makes Pescarolo more "major" than, say, SunTrust Racing? By what objective standard have you determined that Alex Job Racing is not "major," but Rollcentre is? Why is RML "major" and Krohn Racing not? Please define these standards before claiming that there are no "major" teams in the Daytona Prototype class. Otherwise, you're inserting speculation and opinion. It is noted in the article that DPs are "lower-tech" than LMPs. However, whether that is an advantage or disadvantage is, again, up to the reader to decide. Many team owners and fans feel that it is more important to keep costs in check to sustain viable racing than it is to add technology for technology's sake.

As for Dyson, they didn't win a single race and finished on the lead lap in fewer than 1/3 of the season's events. If we're to compare apples-to-apples on operating costs, we should be comparing similar-performing teams. Krohn won the title for around $6 million. At any rate, I haven't seen any numbers for Dyson. I can say that the team I work for spent around $2 million to run a competitive (but similarly non-winning) one-car effort.

At any rate, two things are clear: I'm biased toward Grand-Am, and you are biased against it. As long as we each understand each other's biases, we can work on the same page. This article is far from perfect, and desperately needs quite a bit of improvement. I suggest that working together, we can do a lot to make it better. FCYTravis 09:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of factory support is still a fact, regardless of what you believe racing fans would argue it or not argue it. However, looking at the IMSA and World Sportscar Championship days, it would be difficult to argue against the fact that battles amongst manufacturers was one of the driving points of the series. One can also not deny that manufacturers drive up costs. Therefore, although DP's eliminated cost, they also lost the option of factory teams, which is an element of your arguement that you fail to mention.

By major teams I mean teams that have no only performed well in Le Mans, but also performed in other series. I did not say Grand Am had none, merely that it lacked in percentage of the total DP teams. Certainly Brumos is a high caliber team with a long history, but the bulk of Grand Am teams are, as you even point out in the article, first time teams coming into the sport due to its inexpensive formula. And yes, the fans should decide whether they like inexpensive cars with basic designs and equalized privateer teams or technologically advanced cars driven by competition between manufacturers to win by whatever means they can reach with cash flow. However, the problem is that you seem to inject your opinion into presenting the choice to the fans.

Dyson does not need to actually win a race to still be the closest comparison to Krohn Racing. Even if there is no true comparison and you stick with the Audi arguement, your statistics still do not help since you are comparing team costs to development costs + team costs.

And to make it clear, I have no bias against Grand Am, I've been to both the 24 Hours of Daytona and the VIR 500 twice and I watch both series. Although I am a fan of ALMS more, I have nothing against Grand Am, since both series have their good and bad. I simply like the technology and competition formula in ALMS better personally. The only reason I am making this arguement is due to reading statements which seem to be attempting to use weasel words to state a superiority for Grand Am's formula over ALMS's formula and my belief that that sort of stuff doesn't belong on Wikipedia. The359 10:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't taken a detailed look at much of that in a long time. Let me go over it and if it's as bad as you say it is, I agree. This article should not be doing that - it should simply be stating what the series is. Also, look me up at the 24 Hours or VIR this year. I'll buy you a beer, we'll sit down and talk shop. FCYTravis 10:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"By major teams I mean teams that have no only performed well in Le Mans, but also performed in other series." - Alex Job Racing, 'nuff said. Blackhawk Racing - an SCCA National title-winning team. PCM from last year, an Atlantic title-winning team. Chip Ganassi Racing, speaks for itself. The Racers Group, ditto. Finlay Motorsports - another ex-Atlantic team. Just because you don't know the titles GA teams won, doesn't make those titles meaningless. How many titles in any other series has Dyson Racing won in the last 20 years, anyhoo? Or Van der Steur? Or Intersport? Or Panoz Racing? Or Highcroft? Or B-K? Or Miracle? Or... the list goes on. Lots of new start-up teams in the ALMS too. Which is good. FCYTravis 10:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alex Job and Chip Ganassi yes, but the other teams won in series that are not on the truly international level competition. I also don't remember TRG being in DPs anymore, at least consistantly. I was also looking at tames in LMES as well as ALMS. The359 17:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The LMES is irrelevant to the Grand-Am, as neither series has anything in the least to do with each other. They don't even race on any of the same continents. It would be like comparing Star Mazda to Formula 3. Sure, the cars are rudimentarily similar - four open wheels, wings and an engine - but they're two totally different series with different chassis, rulesets, teams and founding missions. Same goes for the LMES and Grand-Am. The LMES was designed around Le Mans, while Grand-Am was designed around Daytona. Two very different flavors of the same ice cream. I like Ben and Jerry's Phish Food and Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough - but can you really compare the two?

Furthermore, it's rather easier to win an "international" series in Europe, given that there are so many of them in such a small area, whereas in the United States, we're large enough to where almost all our series can be held domestically. "International level competition" is thus a meaningless phrase. I can point to several "international" series that are much less competitive than even an SCCA Club Racing class like Spec Miata. FCYTravis 17:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you're going to compare DPs to LMPs, they LMES has to be included. LMES runs near exactly the same rules as ALMS, and they have a large car count of LMPs. Just because they're in Europe doesn't change the fact that the initial discussion was about DPs vs LMPs, and LMES goes against your statement that the cheaper DPs have led to higher car counts.

As for international competition, I'd consider F1, WSC, IMSA, ALMS, LMES, IRL, CART, FIAGT, FIASCC, GARRA, and others to be international level competition. Atlantic is a feeder series, and so its not really a high level series. It has nothing to do with how many countries the series races in, it has to do with how high on the motorsports echelon they sit. It also has nothing to do with the competitiveness of the series, it has more to do with the notability and international exposure of the series. The359 19:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"LMES goes against your statement that the cheaper DPs have led to higher car counts." - Not really. For one, it's much cheaper to run a five-race series than it is a 14-race series. For two, Europe is the home of Le Mans-style sports car racing - chassis manufacturers, engine designers, privateer teams, et al. are all based there. Look at the number of privateers in the LMES - factories need not apply, really. Clearly, the LMES is at home in Europe, just as Grand-Am is at home in the United States. However, the factory-based focus of the ALMS has been their downfall. By and large, American privateer team owners aren't interested in spending large amounts of their own money to try and compete with bottomless-pocket factory-funded outfits like P&M Corvette and Joest Audi. Hence, P1 and GT1 are little more than four-car high-speed car shows. That's a disgrace.

It's been demonstrated over and over again that factories kill sports car racing - just look at what destroyed IMSA GTP. Once the privateer Porsche 962 was obsoleted by Nissan/Jag/Toyota factory efforts, car counts plunged, competition vanished and the series imploded from lack of interest. The same thing has happened to LMP1 in the United States. Nobody's interested in sinking millions of dollars into... what, exactly? What car can a privateer buy off-the-shelf and become competitive with Audi? It doesn't exist. Heck, even Acura's afraid of Audi. Acura's going to run off the privateers from P2 now... and P2 was supposed to be the privateer class. Yeah, how's that working out? FCYTravis 02:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting article up[edit]

I think this article is a bit jumbled at the moment, and some sections of it really deserve their own articles. Rolex Sports Car Series and Koni Cup should really be on their own seperate pages, since they were the actual series. GARRA is simply the ruling body and this page should really only reflect that part of it. The359 23:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm all for splitting up the article, provided we don't wind up with three stubs. Mustang6172 05:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Works for me. FCYTravis 07:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I should also point out that Koni Cup wont be included in WikiProject Sports Car Racing since it's more of a touring car series then sportscar, even though the GS class does have some GT style cars. The359 09:08, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

iRacing.com sanctioned series[edit]

How would it be suggested this series be considered? [1]

Perhaps wait to see how the series is publicized. This series is intended to have race reports on the main Grand Am website, similarly to their NASCAR sanctioned series. Perhaps following the same policy as their series on the NASCAR page? Bakkster Man (talk) 20:49, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have added this series to the listing of current series. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:21, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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