RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

Now you are just being silly...

wcs

iTrader: (2)

What do they get penalized for Fuz?

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

I know right?

I've never been able to figure out why, in any form of racing, you'd penalize the fast cars to make them slower. Why wouldn't you just give the slower cars something to take advantage of to get more speed? When you penalize the fast cars, you make them change their setup to go slower. It effectively defeats the point of racint: being faster than the other guy.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

Grand-Am makes "competitive adjustments" to the car-specific ruleset throughout the year each year. Over the past several years, the impression is that most of the adjustments are not in favor of the Mazdas due to their good race results (even though they were usually spread through the field, when you have 1/3rd of the cars in the race being 1 make, they are mathematically bound to have some on the podium). In contrast, when the Porsche's start getting consistently good race performance, the impression is that there is little to no adjustments that are in favor of the other cars.

Adjustments can be anything from a rev limit change to weight addition or reduction, etc.. They can penalize fast cars or boost slower ones.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

G-A is owned by NASCAR. They like close racing. If one type of car is faster than the others, they will slow it down. Just as they did the Mazdas 4 yrs ago.

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

3 years ago, Grand-am added a small weight ballast to way them in. The P car teams complained because the rx8's were sweeping the podium at every race still. Instead of making their cars faster, they bitched and moaned until Grand-Am added more weight to the 8's. I believe they further screwed with them before last season, but i'm not sure what all was done, and a p-car took the championship. This year there are over twice as many p-cars in the field because they are by far the easiest to win with at this point.


Rules as they are, are only a small part of what makes them easy to win with. Porsche supplies qualified teams with factory drivers, engines are overnighted, and it's treated almost as a factory effort even if they are "customer" cars and basically privateers. Porsche has an amazing racing and support program. Some of the team owner are whiney little bitches sometimes though.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

If one team wins by a good margin, it doesn't matter where the other cars of that type finish. They still have the performance potential, as demonstrated by the winner.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

Well, to me it just depends on how the slower car compares to other slower cars. If they are all the same speed, then yes, penalize the faster cars. If there is someone too far off the pace by themselves, boost those.

Most of the problem in past years have been what I pointed out above. When you have 8 RX-8s in a field of 22, mathematically we are going to have someone on the podium. That should be "normal," but it's viewed as "domination" and penalties are applied. However, if we have 8 of the 22 spots and can't get anyone higher than ~10th, people in the other camps say "good, it's even," but the math says that we are too far penalized for none of the cars to have the results reflect the mathematical odds. It means that the other cars are simply too good for the RX-8s to have a chance.

It was like this for the 2011 24hr Rolex. The highest qualifying RX-8 was...16th in class? Out of 11 RX-8s entered. The time gap was crippling.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

The P cars, get magnificent support by the parent company.
They also cut revs from the Mazdas, which hurt more than the weight they added.

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

Right. It's not only the 8's that are penalized. Look at the rear wings of the DP cars. They have a plate welded to the rear wing uprights to induce drag on the cars deemed "too fast"

It's the main reason TRG doesn't run a full season in the gt class. They come out and win, then get penalized so they don't bother to run the whole season. Happened 2 years ago i believe. they only ran 5 or 6 races and won almost everyone.

Porsche's racing support network is fantastic. With the overwhelming number of them in the field this year, it should be interesting to see if the same pattern of penalties is followed to keep it even.

wcs

iTrader: (2)

Wow, very interesting.
Thanks for skooling the newb

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

At least Nascar hasn't made it a spec series...yet.

Nascar and Indy are just glorified spec racing series in my eyes.


I like how F1 does it. If you can't qualify within a certain percent of the leader, you don't get to race. They'll look into everything new and rule on it as they see fit and there's a lot of politics involved to take the fastest team down a notch, but i like the "If you're not fast enough, you don't get to race" mentality they've taken again.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

F1 is a different animal. GA GT is made up of street and sudo street cars. You have to do some equalization due to the different engines, engine locations and suspension differences between the cars. You can even run fwd, even though no one does. In F1, your building a new car within a given specification each year. The engineers win those races. Well, the drivers do have a little to do with it.

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

Oh i know that it's a completely different animal. I just like the, you're fast or you don't race mentality. I think it's something that would do wonders in other forms of racing.

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

On a completely different note

The ferrari's look fantastic in race trim. The make me drool.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

Overnight, one of the camera men volunteered to stayed on and took control of the roof top camera. Even though he was alone, he did a great job of following the leaders and picking out the battles that were going on. Apparently, online there were praises for his work. The Radio Lemans announcers said he should get a Emmey for the work he performed.

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

I heard that and the little interview with him a little bit ago the the radio cast. I did check in and watched some of the roof top cam before i went to bed. I looks like he did a hell of a job.

alnielsen

iTrader: (4)

18 Hours into the Race:
#70 Speedsource is in 7th (4 Laps behind the GT Leader)
#40 Dempsey Racing is in 15th
#42 Team Sahlen is in 16th
#41 Dempsey Racing is in 29th
#36 Yellow Dragon Motorsports is in 35th.
#43 Team Sahlen is in 44th (and out of the race after 21 laps)

Chad D.

iTrader: (19)

morning.
He was doing a good job, and the radio lemans guys were totally in sync. I watched until about 5 ish last night.

wcs

iTrader: (2)

Man this is frustrating, especially now that I know what I do about the rulz .. aka the previous post by Al, Fuz and RIWWP

None of the other GT car are even close to being in the same class as those Porsche GT3's

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

It's still the best racing available on TV in my opinion. If they televised the ST/GS class races live, it would be even better. When they do bother to televise them, it's like 1-3 weeks later.

Those races are typically >60 cars, slower speeds and much wider mix of cars. ST class is by far the most diverse class of the 4 Grand-Am classes and is also the closest to OEM showroom cars (add safety items, some development areas allowed, but otherwise nearly stock).

fuztupnz

iTrader: (4)

agreed. There is an "all or nothing" mentality to it, especially in the shorter sprint races.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

ST is usually a complete riot to watch.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

I don't remember the 24hrs of Lemans doing a track cleaning...

wcs

iTrader: (2)

I didn't to imply I wasn't enjoying the race or the coverage.
I just hate those damn GT3's!!!!

<glares an evil eye towards the GT3's cars, grrrrrrrrr )