R.I.P ALMS LMP1 Class

Starting in 2014, the LMP1 cars will be no longer seen racing in the ALMS. With American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series being combined in 2014, they will remove the LMP1 cars from the grid and make the top class the LMP2 cars, the DP cars, and the DeltaWing. Shame to see those amazing machines go.

To be honest mate it was going to happen anyways with the ACO.
Classes like GTE will be going soon and the Top GT class will be GT3 as its cheeper easier for companies and teams to get hold of and produce race cars.
To be honest though a GT class like the BES doesnt look too bad but it would be a shame to see them go.

ShrinkingSteven wrote:To be honest mate it was going to happen anyways with the ACO.
Classes like GTE will be going soon and the Top GT class will be GT3 as its cheeper easier for companies and teams to get hold of and produce race cars.
To be honest though a GT class like the BES doesnt look too bad but it would be a shame to see them go.

The removal of GTE is going to be a big shot in the foot for racing, that's for sure.

Blame Corvette. It's the same fate as GT1. GM cuts the NASCAR budget, dumps it into GT, and kills a class within a few years.

Really goddamn annoying now.

Not like corvette ran away with the championship or even in the races.

LMP1 really isn't dead, since they are the main show at Le Mans. No factory teams have raced in LMP1 since audi left the alms a few years ago so really why would they keep that class? LMP2 has boomed as of late thanks to the cost cap cars, but it will be interesting to see how they are going to balance the dp's/lmp2's cause lmp2 cars are way faster then dp's thanks to thier aero and better chasis.

I really think p2 should be the top class, dp serving as the "pc" class, GTE the main gt class and gtc/rolex gts as the new "gtc" class. Don't allow the deltawing, waste of time.

LMP1, a class so expensive that even most auto manufacturers cannot afford it. When Audi comes in and say that they cannot afford to race LMP1 in North America, who is left? Toyota... and???

Actually Audi could afford it, they left the ALMS because porshce left. Also, the audi dealerships throughout the united states all paid for the audi racing program. When the dealerships could no longer afford it then the Audi teams left. If you think about it, why would Audi want to run in a series where they dominate every race and win handily over their opponents? They would essentially be hotlapping every race, maybe if Toyota committed to the ALMS we would see it, but with no LMP1 cars in 2014 we won't see it happen.

Also, Audi ran 4 cars at Le Mans and the whole WEC. They easily had the budget to run a factory team in the U.S. if they actually wanted to.

^ A huge part of prototype racing is marketing. And it is very expensive, not just the race cars, but the entire racing program. When you are spending 8 figures to race a season, and you race in front of many empty grandstands, it is hardly effective advertising.

Read elsewhere on the internet earlier this week...

As of 1/1/13, the number of P2 cars entered for ALMS: 0

Ok, we are losing P1 in NA, and P2 isn't much healthier. Looks like the ALMS/Grand Am merger may be less of a merge and more of a win by default for Grand Am.

I think you misunderstood my post, Im pretty much said the same thing you did. Also, I wouldn't say the ALMS dosen't attract fans, every year I've gone to Laguna Seca the crowds have been bigger each year. Also, petit le mans this year had 90,000 people. Dosen't sound "empty" to me.

Laguna, Petit and Sebring are healthy.

Portland got dropped because I couldn't get another carload of fans to join us in the stands. Utah is much the same, and other than some street courses that share the weekend with Indycar, the series has a long history of not enough fans to keep the dates.

Maybe motorsport isn't appealing in Oregan? Not much racing goes on there really. No big time series race there. If you look at mosport, mid ohio, Road America and Lime rock. They have big turn outs, just really depends I guess on how into motorsports the area is.

Race where there is a market for it. I attended Petit Le Mans, had hot pit passes, etc (thanks T10). The GT cars attracted so much more attention in the pits and pre race. The Audi was cool to look at but it was never around anyone or doing anything but flying by the other cars. Just pointless, it was like entering a zebra in a horse race. That place is also far from empty, tons of people were there and the atmosphere was amazing.

I like the revised format once I've sat and thought about it. I'm also not a huge fan of P2 either. I just cannot relate to them as well as a car I can see on the road or a feat of engineering like the F1 cars. They killed the prototype classes when the offed Group C (mainly C1) in my opinion. It comes back here and there but it's nothing like it used to be.

They could also do away with the Deltawing. It has as much place out there as a kart would even though it's pretty cool.

F4H Bullet wrote:Maybe motorsport isn't appealing in Oregan? Not much racing goes on there really. No big time series race there. If you look at mosport, mid ohio, Road America and Lime rock. They have big turn outs, just really depends I guess on how into motorsports the area is.

Portland's basically Little Europe, or so they like to think. SCCA meets and the annual NASCAR event (appeals to the hipsters) get good turnouts, and the CART/ChampCar races that were ran there were usually pretty full as well. Something about ALMS never quite drew the same crowds. Maybe it was because they liked coming to Oregon during one of the 2 annual 95-degree-plus weeks that made going outside unappealing to a bunch of tree-dwelling hipsters.

It doesn't make much sense otherwise that sports car racing failed so hard here. The Northwest is the capital of soccer in America, and we have a good proportion of tasteful car enthusiasts compared to the rest of the nation. Other than the heat, I think it comes down to the actual event

You know there was one season that P2 was relevant in ALMS. When there was a decent field of privateers with some factory support. The minute the ACO got word that the Audi domination was threatened by Acura and Porsche P2 cars, the rules were changed. Since then, the class would be a joke if it wasn't so sad.

LBGP ALMS 2012... P2, two cars, both Level 5, both parked as soon as they hit the 75% mark, as to get points and money. Sorry, but that makes the infamous six car USGP look an actual hard fought race.

It's hot and humid down here all the time. You northwestern folks are soft!

Level 5 did park thier cars, it was in 2011 though, part of the reason, no competition, but also they where going to ship thier cars to Le Mans soon. They didn't want to risk damaging the cars right before the break and it was a long beach. Concrete walls always win.

They won when testing cars today when you hammered me into that one. I've never done more mid air twirls after that pancake you delivered in Forza before.

Yeah I hit you pretty good on that one.

To me this was the era of prototypes. They were awesome cars and they never should have killed off Group C. I also realize things evolve but damn look at these things. They were running times as quick as the lower F1 cars were and were just as, if not more popular.













and the last one I can think of that stood out was the Peugeot.


I liked the looks of the new Bentley. I liked the R18 even though it was a shitshow which made me like it less. I dunno, maybe they lost their character to me. I like being able to identify with the cars. By the way speaking of Bentley I had never seen this and I ran into it from the LA motor show. My god.

Hopefully, Bentley put a lot of weight reduction on the Continental considering how heavy it is. And its a shame I was never alive in the Group C era. I've seen some of the classical races with the Group C cars and they were just ASTONISHING!

Yeah group C was a blast to watch, it's a shame the way things are shaping for 2014 but I hope that in some crazy way it's for the better and sports car racing can thrive again in the US.

As for that continental, I think it should hit the tracks this year.

And don't forget P1 can come back, with Porsche making its debut in the ELMS in P1

If i recall correctly, the speed and costs of Group C is what led to its early demise.

I know that most sports car purists tend to hate rules in general, as they love the highest technology known to man, but tech costs money, and in a stuttering and sputtering global economy, cost-effectiveness thrives while the latest tech advances just sit idle by the wayside. Which is why lower cost racing series such as Continental Tire Challenge Series can boast 60-80 cars per race, split between two classes, while it takes six classes to field a "full" 26 car grid in ALMS.

Flyin Mikey J wrote:If i recall correctly, the speed and costs of Group C is what led to its early demise.

I know that most sports car purists tend to hate rules in general, as they love the highest technology known to man, but tech costs money, and in a stuttering and sputtering global economy, cost-effectiveness thrives while the latest tech advances just sit idle by the wayside. Which is why lower cost racing series such as Continental Tire Challenge Series can boast 60-80 cars per race, split between two classes, while it takes six classes to field a "full" 26 car grid in ALMS.

Tsukuba race anyway?

Yeah I really need to get speed again so I can watch the races they shown along with speed2.com :/