A big ol' fat congrats to Pontiac for winning the championship. Yeah, I know it's not over JUST yet, but with the weight addition PLUS the rev limit restrictions that GA placed on the Mazdas, the season is all but over now. I guess the Pontiac teams just bitched loud enough and GA felt a need to hand the championship back to them. This DESPITE Banner Racing's attempt to sneak a ride-height adjustment by the officials a few races ago. Did anyone else hear during the race broadcast that Speedsource cracked an exhaust manifold due to excessive heat secondary to the rev limitations? Way to go GA...penalize teams that are successful to the point that they begin to have mechanical failures.

Funny, but it seems to me that if GA had simply given the Porsches ride height adjustments sooner in the series, things would have been pretty even all through the season. But nope...start screwing around with formulas LATE, and screw a contender out of a championship title. Nice going GA!!!

Oh well...third place in the championship is pretty damn respectable. Go Mazda, and nice going Speedsource.

/rant off

 

Yeah. Just ridiculous to do this to the car. Obviously the 8s were overpowering the pontiacs prior to the weight/HP reduction but they should have just added weight - not fundamentally change the way this car is meant to be driven.

The optimum shift point was apparantly around 9100 so they ended up cutting off over 500 RPMs of max power production not to mention the RX8s would go near 10k when a late shift wasn't helpful. And like you said this is actually causing the car to overheat damaging the exhaust manifold.

Ridiculous that a team as well constructed and funded as Speedsource can't compete on a track which should have been a dream for the 8. And while the 70 car had a few problems with cold tires getting them into the dirt today and an oil leak the 69 had none that I noted and still wasn't competitive.

What a waste of what had been a pretty competitive season. When the highlight of the race is Patrick Dempsey leading for a lap or two because he's off-pit you probably need to rethink your strategy.

Oh well. At least the Speed announcers seemed to give at least as much, if not more, TV time to the GT series today over the DPs. I guess they realized that there wasn't a whole lot of drama in the DP series. Course now there's no drama in either for the final run but oh well. That's what Rolex wanted.

 

RK,

I agree with you in all aspects EXCEPT with regards to the #69 car. It finished 11th which is pretty much on par with their average finish and better than they had been doing. I mean ****, their last 3 races prior to this one they were 17th, 17th and 12th . They have only done better than 5th on ONE occasion, so to me the only thing really off was the #70 car and for obvious reasons.

 

The 69 has been incident prone the last few races. They hit the wall coming out of pit row in the previous race. The one before they had to put for ~10 minutes for reasons that no one posted here. Before that they had the epic roll on the final lap in Daytona where they had been in 2nd right behind the 70.

When the 69 runs without incident it runs as well as the 70. This weekend the 70 had more incidents that I saw while the 69 ran clean - and was completely smoked. Maybe I missed something with all the cars getting off track and creating dust storms.

EDIT: Just looked at the results and the 69's best lap was almost a full second behind the leader. 70 was closer but was still almost half-a-second. Both came very early in the race (lap 27 and 29). All of the 8s had their best times around the 25th lap which I believe was right after the caution with the driver switch (sans McDreamy).

 

actually it wasnt the ponti's that was bitching, it was the porche teams that where doing that.

 

^^ yeah they said make it cloeser for us to win or we are out of here, basically

 

Yup although the Pontiacs did seem a little upset on one race (not sure which) where the 8's were clearly pulling away on the straights every time. It was right after the pontiacs had the weight penalty added.

 

I just wish they wouldn't do adjustments in the middle of the season. All the teams are striving for that "unfair advantage", so it really penalizes the teams that try and look for the loophole, which they are all doing anyway. Give us unrestricted revs!

 

My words will not be kind to Dave Spitzer V.P. Competition, Grand Am and indeed a good bunch more should come from SpeedSource fans in the same vein.

 

This is true about the midseason changes.

 

I'm really not over this yet either...
Is this an official call to arms???

 

Revin to 9 grand and popping the clutch! Go for it, the damage is done. Of course Sylvain would be his typical gentleman self and keep the faith in Rolex Grand Am decision making. In reality, you know it's beakin his heart as hard as these guys worked. Not fair Amigos and Amigas what they did.

 

NOOOOOOOOO!
Oh Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!

http://www.grand-am.com/rolex/news/index.cfm?cid=19123



NASCAR/Grand-Am?

 

Well, the only postive thing that I can see coming from this is the increased budget for marketing. I know I would kill for a Speedsource or Rolex GT podcast!

 

well, it did say in the news release that they would still operate independently. we can hope.

P.S. This takes SpeedTV one step closer to being NASCAR TV

 

WOW! There goes the neighborhood!

 

I dont know, whatever happens if the 8's cant find a way to counter the rpm limit in a way that puts them near where they were, im not very enthusiastic about future Grand Am events. I mean, the heart and soul of the rotary lies within the high revs at the LIMITS, not at the ALMOST limits (wtf). They have taken that away and its just disheartening. Its just a freakin Rape.

 

Mazda kicks Porsche's ***, Porsche bitches, the rotary is restricted...hmm, this seems familiar somehow...

 

I really would like to see that!


Hmmmmm.... Are 2.6L 4-Rotors legal? Restrict that!!!

 

Unfortunately the only chance is for the Pontiac teams to have problems or a DNF. In a 7 hour race I guess it's possible. Grandam basically decided the championship when they limited the 8's revs.

 

Maybe there's a chance, the rotaries excel in endurance events. How many wins did the 69 car have before Watkins Glen?

 

It'll be tough. Sylvain reportedly said Miller will be even harder for them with the revs cap. Lets hope the war of attrition works in SS's favor.

 

Endurance might be the only shot that the RX-8s have at Miller, but there were comments during that last race that the higher elevation at that track will make for higher exhaust temps than they saw last week when they had a cracked manifold.

 

Yeah, part of what I heard too was that heat becomes a bigger issue as they have to shift more compared to when they have higher revs available. The Pontiacs will just sit back and let the race come to them.
Still what more can you hope for than to have a shot at it in the last race of the season. Either way it's been a fun year.

 

Updated Tech Talk page now making it known in print about GT rev limits to "even the playing field":
http://www.grand-am.com/rolex/news/index.cfm?cid=19132

I guess our outpouring cries were enough to put it in print.

Interesting info as well on both classes...