ALMS & Grand-Am merging
 

Just found some early news, I follow and attend both series events, probably good for the sport...what do you think?

EXCLUSIVE: ALMS, GRAND-AM Finalizing Merger

ALMS Reportedly Merging With Grand Am To Create One Crazy ****ing Awesome Racing Series

Well that sucks.

If true it will be interesting to see how many classes they end up with. I'm not a fan of the Daytona prototype look but maybe they will end up with a better product.

Well, I'm not so sure... Depends how it turns out..

I've been an ALMS fan from day#1. Gone to at least one race per year since forever. You have to admit that of late, the quality of the P1/P2 field has sucked. There's like 2 cars competing for victory in P1, and that's if Muscle milk has bad day because they can apparently make up 4 laps in a race ;-( They brought those spec P2s from europe but nobody seems to care... Same with the GT3 spec series, I'm happy to see more 911s on TV but that reeks of "grid filler"... The series died when Audi left and Peugeot stopped coming to the 2 big ones. The GT class is now the one and only ALMS attraction if you're honest about it. Now say the merged series keep that AS IS: the BMWs, Flying lizards, Ferraris 458s, Viper, etc... and put the current Grand AM GTs one notch under, which I think is where they are anyway. Now you've got a giatn field with 2 cool GT classes to watch...

The Daytona Prototypes which I agree were so ugly in the past are now much much improved, I'd go as far as saying good looking cars, the corvette in particular is gorgeous... Call that P2... And use the series new fame to bring back a couple more P1 cars... Or kill P1 (not many cars to kill) and negociate with the ACO to have the DP spec incorporated at le Mans... It could be the best series in the world... Of course with GRandAm as the governing body they could also eff it up spectacularly... 50-50 chance ? Long term, it was unavoidable.

Very good points Greg. Yes the Corvette DPs are really gorgeous.
My comment was strictly about NASCAR running the series. Road racing doesn't need water bottles thrown out of cars during races, don't need green/yellow/checker finishes, & certainly don't need Porsches looking like Ferraris, Ferraris looking like Camaros etc. Road racing doesn't need to be a show. The cars and drivers should and generally are enough. When you have every car looking exactly the same with different stickers then yes it has to be a show.
A problem will be how do you incorporate so many big races? 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, 6 Hours at the Glen, (love to see ALMS GT cars at the Glen), & Petite LeMans. Of course the Francis' will give their redneck track owner buds the baulk of the races.
It just doesn't have a warm fuzzy feeling.

What sucks is no Grand Am or ALMS maybe at all
 

With the Monterey (Laguna Seca/Mazda raceway) just a week away, it gives us hope that we will have a full schedule of race's next year. As Greg stated, the race field has become very poor in some classes; going racing is not cheap and other than Nascar (which I'm not a fan; and who has also loss car owners) the events are not making money with small fields running. I think it will bring the overall cost down, bring more cars out and more people at one time to the track too enjoy both groups. Do you like Indy cars today all looking the same, having trouble passing on many of the tracks! {NO} I have tickets and a group of us are going to F1 in Austin, the tickets are high, hotels pricing is a joke within 50 miles; but it's still the first F1 in the US in a long time. Look at the cost of most club track days when all is said and done. We have lost over the years a lot of tracks, events and great drivers; but we still have many great forms of racing. The vintage races/events seem the strongest, but look at the price levels these cars are being sold at! Thankfully we can still enjoy our cars and the events that show todays and yesterdays great cars and driver in some cases. I love sports in general, but the smell of Castrol oil {Brad Penn} and six Weber's at full song with open exhaust is worth the price of admission! :D
Cheers
agrimmitt@pelican
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eight0five, fiveseven0, fourone03

IMSA ran all these tracks in the '70, '80, 90's and the France family played a big role in IMSA back then. Not many redneck track owners own road course tracks.

It's about to be official, just got this in the mailbox:

Wednesday marks an historic day for sports car fans. Join us at 10 a.m. ET on ALMS.com for an important announcement regarding the sport's future in North America...

Seems to me that if the merger leaves a 'need' for international sportscar racing, then another sanctioning body will be formed. IF the merger satisfies that need (ie, European manufacturers show up to play), then we all win. Would love to see Daytona and Sebring part of one series.

NASCAR ruins the track for the fans. This will destroy the experience at Road America and Road Atlanta, just like it ruined Watkins Glen. I bet they take away pit access too.

We'll see when they dome to Long Beach in2014.

I think the current version of the Daytona Prototype was about due for an overhaul, so it won't be such a big deal to conform to rules that allow for the different chassis. But, I think I remember the reason for the split. It was about development and expense like when Porsche came in a destroyed CanAm. Before Porsche, it was McLaren or Chaparral.

Now, it seems it's teams that dominate like Ganassi. There is no all around fix. They are just gasping for attention (TV money) and attendance.

I think this is good, I worked on teams in both series, and even got to crew chief a couple times, though I always thought the organization in the grand am series was better, and so was the competition. its hard to say how the teams would like it, for those drivers and teams that ran both series, its probably a much better situation, how ever smaller teams may not like it if the season is longer.

Well, the NASCAR pits allow cars to drive through hot. Most other series do not. Being in the NASCAR paddock is way more heads up. I've seen some real stupid stuff go down in a cold paddock. So to allow any rubberneckers in a hot paddock is looking for trouble. Those stock car boys come off the track and drive 30 MPH through the garages thinking they are doing 5 because 30 does feel like 5.

No too bad at all.

http://www.autoguide.com/gallery/gal...totype-005.jpg

Well said.

I sort of agree and I'm no fan of NASCAR but who gets pit access? Media, guest 'maybe' and of course team. Now if speaking of the paddock, some events are way over crowded and near hazzard, so when they sell paddock access for whatever series, its extra revenue and keep less account the number of spectators. So in that regards, maybe some restrictions are in order.

After finally getting to experience ALMS in person at the Baltimore GP, I hope the merger doesn't ruin the experience. It was a blast, from the race to the paddock.

Here is the official news 9/05/12

GRAND-AM Road Racing, American Le Mans Series Announce Historic Merger :: PaddockTalk :: F1, Formula 1, NASCAR, IndyCar, MotoGP, ALMS, And More!

Great news !!!! Both series could not survive by themselves very long. Road racing needs to have one series with the best of both worlds. Can't wait to see this happen.

Merger my ass, Don is throwing in the towel. Look for this to become an American series and the gap to what is run in the European endurance series to become quite large. You can kiss the international aspect of the Sebring race goodbye, much like Daytona some years ago.

At least Jim France can't **** with LeMans, so I'll have at least one good race to watch each year.

JR

Fair enough, but for the sake of the argument: What international aspect ? Audi left. Peugeot is one step away from bankruptcy. Toyota was never coming... The ELMS is not doing well, and neither is the FIA GT championship...you can see tumbleweeds in the stands...

Separately, the current flavor of ALMS has a laughably small P1 field, a bunch of imported grid fillers in P2 and 911Cup, while Grand AM has like 8 DPs (seems like) and a gaggle of GT cars that seem to follow very strange rules - it annoys me no end to see an effing RX8 trounce a GT3 or corvette, it's not right ;-)

I reeks of CART vs. INDY to me... Together, they "could" attract some cool entries... I can see the muscle milk boys and Dyson or whomever adding entries in DP, which are fun to watch now that the cars are no longer ugly. Atherton said ALMS GT was pretty much untouched, so we get to keep the best part of ALMS right now...

All in all we should have bigger grids and more meaningful victories, and I'd like to see, say, Lucas Luhr or Alan Mc Nish measure againt Scott Pruett in a DP, or Pat Long vs. S. Tremblay in GT... Much as I agree with you on the international aspect that ALMS used to have, the last 2 years it's been a joke... I think they merged just at the right time, actually, ALMS was going down while Grand AM finally had nicer looking DPs, so just before Grand AM "won" the battle. At least both management teams were merged, both side's signature race tracks remain, etc...

Again, its no sure thing, but it's a shot... As for Le Mans, the good P1 teams didn't need an ALMS provided entry... The GTs should still get one, nothing changed... Fingers crossed !

PS: let's not forget TV coverage: Grand AM wins hands down in HD on Speed, while over the last 2 years we've got 2h long edited morsels of ALMS races on ABC, which don't make any sense anymore - last race before baltimore we didn't even see the start !!! Or you need to watch on your computer, ugh...