Talk:World Sportscar Championship

Removal of Championship Names from Championship winners table
The names of the various championships have recently been removed from this page as they were considered to be "not needed". Why on earth would we not want to spell these out on the WSC summary table? They were added in an attempt to unravel the very confusing history of the so called "World Sportscar Championship", a name which was in reality only used in thirteen of the forty years covered by the table. GTHO 03:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * They're redundant, since the title has now been copied to each individual season page.
 * They take up space on an already large chart.
 * They can easily be explained in the article text.
 * The nuances of minor title differences (for instance the change from World Sports-Prototype Championship to Sportscar World Championship in 1991) aren't that important, and only major overhauls in the nature of the championship really need to be covered. The359 03:50, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Successor series
The FIA GT Championship is not the correct successor series. FIA GT did not start until 1997, and used production based GT cars, rather than prototype Sportscars. If GTs were to be the successor category then the successor series should be BPR Global GT Series which started in 1994, which in turn was succeeded by FIA GT, or more accurately should be the FIA Sportscar Championship which actually used Sportscars rather than GTs. Pick one, but please replace FIA GT. --Falcadore (talk) 22:19, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't see the FIA GT Championship as a replacement. It technically does not even have World Championship status, although there are plans for a GT1 World Championship in the future.


 * If the FIA GT Championship is considered a replacement, then the Sports Racing World Cup/International Sports Racing Series/FIA Sportscar Championship is equally a replacement. The359 (talk) 22:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Shut up?
"GT (closed bodywork) and Sports (open bodywork)" I take this to mean coupé (coupè? coupê?) or speedster, but it could equally be open wheel/not. Can somebody clarify? Also, I changed the "championship" header to dab from class winners. And if anybody's got good info on the '50s-60s rules, add it here & here? Thanx. TREKphiler  hit me ♠  04:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Ford´s nationality
Is it correct to use American flag for Ford? Yes, Ford is American company, but Ford won titles in 1966, 1967 and 1968 seasons with Ford GT 40 car, which was built by british Lola in England. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.41.90.31 (talk) 08:13, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is correct, Ford is American. Where the car was physically built matters not.  And the GT40 was not built by Lola, it was developed by the head of Lola without Lola backing.  The359  ( Talk ) 08:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Does Honda become American if it builds a factory to consturct Accords in the USA? --Falcadore (talk) 13:28, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Shelby won championship in 1965 with car Shelby Daytona that was built in Modena, Italy. Should we now change flag for Shelby from American flag to Italian flag ?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.103.2.116 (talk) 19:15, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Ford is also a British company or a German company and many places else, no doubt.
 * Ford P68 says Ford's American headquarters organisation withdrew from sports car racing at the end of 1967
 * 1968 World Sportscar Championship says a homologated Group 4 GT40 won 5 races, thus the championship for Ford.
 * Ford GT40 says Unlike the earlier Mk I - III cars, the chassis of which were built in Britain, the Mk IV car was built entirely in the United States by Kar Kraft, Ford's performance division in Detroit. Thus, Le Mans 1967 still remains both the only all-American victory in Le Mans history
 * The 1968 FIA Yearbook says the championship for makes was open to Groups 3,4 and 6, not entrants, and the make is whoever built the chassis. The Group 4 GT40 is on the historic database as Ford Advanced Vehicles Ltd, a British Company.
 * So there's at least one flag to change, possibly more. IF, the flag has relevance to the championship. It never seems to be sourced, or agreed why flags are there. Rally Wonk (talk) 18:58, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Spectator counts
Recent change: Racingsportscars.com has attendance figures for some World Championship races and for for every Le Mans (click the event, attendance is next to the race poster). Is this a trusted source? It seems like the attendance figures could be the official ones published (back then) after the races. If this qualifies as a source, I'm not sure the current claim of regular crowds of 50,000-70,000 in the article is correct. For certain races yes, but some of those figures on this site are much lower.

In any case, that figure for Le Mans (350,000) is highly questionable, considering that 258,000 in 2008 was touted as a record crowd. A lot depends how it is calculated or reported, though. 84.251.93.60 (talk) 18:54, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You may find it questionable but crowds can be calculated a numbers of ways. Unlike Football, motor racing events typically take more than one day to complete. Is 350,000 a single day figure or a total event figure? Motorsport attendances are typically quoted as totals over the multiple days, but records on singular days are always championed by the event's PR guys because, well, it's a record, look at how good we are.
 * It could also be that 258000 is the highest total since the began counting crowds with any regularity. Those 350,000 crowds seem to date to the 1960s (from I add the same source as you question the 50k-70k crowds - is it a trusted source or not?) when counting may have been more looking out the window seeing how deep people are at the fences and saying, ooo that looks like 350000. --Falcadore (talk) 19:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Please correct info about the 1964 prototype title
In the 1964 season the prototype title was won by Ferrari, as it did in the 1965 and 1967 seasons. In 1964, Porsche won only the 2l GT title. I don't know if this error is made on purpose or not but you can check this on The book by Brian Long "Porsche Racing Cars 1953-1975" Veloce pub. as well as in many other sources.

For someone, who knows the history of this championship the excuse provided to cancel the title from Ferrari and adding it to Porsche tally is laughable, I'm citing from the 1964 seasons page "the Ferrari scored 46.8 points but was deemed ineligible for classification as it had not contested the Prototype category at all four races"

Even if this strange rule (...) would have been in effect (and it would have caused much trouble because it was really difficult for the participants during that period to always provide works entries to all the races... see for example if Aston Martin could be declared champ in 1959 or if Ford could be declared champ in 1966... etc etc). In 1964, Ferrari was represented at the Targa Florio by private entry with a Dino prototype and that settles the matter.

Also, the 1964 season of the Porsche 904/8 proto had been a real tough one with the car struggling to finish races and almost always behind 904 GTS that were running in the Gt category...... 151.68.208.8 (talk) 12:36, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Beautiful thing about Wikipedia is YOU can make those corrections. --Falcadore (talk) 13:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, but sometimes there is people who vandalize the pages and don't accept the corrections even if they are coming from known references.......
 * Fighting a world battle to make corrections to wiki pages is stupid but, if there is consensus...., it's more probable that you could help back to reach consensus on the truth. 151.68.208.8 (talk) 13:45, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a wider issue going on here. See a related discussion I've started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports Car Racing. A7V2 (talk) 11:02, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Please improve the balance of the voice
There are many subjective remarks in this voice's text. It will be good to restore a little bit of balance, if you will, and leave out subjective judgements that reflect your support for this or that marque or this or that nationality...

For example, I'll cite 2 things : 1) "Notably absent from the overall results were the Jaguar works team, who did not enter any events other than Le Mans, despite the potential of the C- and D-Types"

Jaguar works team and affiliated private teams (benefiting from works support) took part in the championship from 1953 to 1957. Only then, and because of numerous aspects, the Ecurie Ecosse entered cars only to the 24h of Le Mans for some years. Every marque had its strategy and tried to win as many events as possible and the championship but, given the scoring system, it happened that after a few races, sometimes only by misfortune, sometimes because of reliability issues, they were so down on points that winning the Championship seemed such a remote option that they invested all their money in a few events [NOTE], leaving private, works backed, teams to enter which other races they could. Nobody questions the potential of the jaguar racing department. The problem was the cost and the multiple difficulties associated to endurance racing in the 50's and 60's (general lack of munific sponsors, general state of technical development, safety on the circuits etc).

[NOTE] While the other marques that were still battling for the championship had to prepare cars for many events (just think about refurbishing engines after stressful long distance races), with the available money. The ones that were already out of the battle for the championship could enhance their chances of winning the selected events by entering "fresher" cars and limiting their presence on the other race events or sometimes even not entering them. In the end, everyone was happy it seems... Some make won the championship, some make make won prestigious events. Supporting journalists or the marque marketing could boast the wins and tell you that they didn't give a damn about the World Championship Title. But, as it is documented, the next season they would again enter as many events as possible (paying for logistics, car development, car testing, car refurbishing etc) until it was sound for them. If you are able to put away with the nationalistic fervour of the author, a good read that gives an account of what was like racing in these days, is Cyril Posthumous " World Sportscar Championship".

2) "The period between 1966 and 1971 was possibly the most successful era of the World Championship"

That is debatable : the 50s and early 60s were immensely popular also, with competition coming from Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar, Aston Martin, the small Porsches...etc Also the first 2 seasons in the "Ferrari VS Ford battle" (i.e. 1964 and 1965) were really succesfull in terms of media exposure, due to the expectation for the racing duel between Maranello and the Ford GT40s. That, even if in the end Ferrari come out the winner in these 2 seasons. 151.68.208.8 (talk) 13:39, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Paragraph title "rebirth"
Since templates from both WSC and FIA-WEC don't keep continuity between the 2 eras we shouldn't write of return but something almost totally new. mcg (talk) 11:43, 27 March 2024 (UTC)