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Viper hit the Ferrari then Ferrari rammed Viper

Viper penalised

Muscle Milk hit the wall

LMP2 is 5+ seconds faster per lap than the DP. GT2 is little over second slower than the DP. I don't see Grand-Am allowing LMP1, LMP2, and GT2 in this "unified" series.

If that's the case, I'm hoping the World Endurance Championship ends up with 12 Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans.

I really thought the topic was a joke... so "wow". On the other I feel quite indifferent, one could say the writing has been on the wall for some time.

Does Panoz Group still own the tracks?

I think that a Merger would be good with the introduction of three classes..

1. LMP (Audi R18, Toyota LMP, etc.)

2. Grand-Am DP

3. GT (Corvette, Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Viper, Lotus)

this would keep the privates and factories busy.

Just think of the amount of cars.. in each class running at Daytona, Sebring, leMans.. Wow that would be fun in a perfect world..

Have to wait and see what happens on Wednesday.

That's easily changed by giving the DP's more power and downforce.

They're made to be reliable right now, when was the last time one of them blew a motor? Givem like 700hp(which would be very easy) and a bit more downforce and you have an extremely viable middle class between an LMP car and a GT.

How would giving them an extra 200 hp be easy? You'd need to change so much that you might as well make a new car. The engine would have to find 200hp, the gearbox and differential would need updated, as well as the cooling. You don't just add 200hp to a reliable car and say it'll be fine.

Since this is for 2014 it's completely open anyway. New ACO regulations, and if Grand-Am wants to keep Petit Le Mans and the Sebring 12 hours, they'll need to look into those. Otherwise they become nothing races.

Yes.

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GrandAm will more then likely keep LMP the same and slot in the Daytona Prototypes accordingly.

You guys are focusing on prototypes why too much. the GARRA series don't even need prototypes. Many have said that GTE cars are a merely a second slower on select tracks? What is stopping GARRA from making GTE the top class? And why is that such a big deal? You get your prototypes at Sebring, so fans can still go see them. But elsewhere, you get GT as the headliners, and you have a big name enduro with GT cars as the showcase. IIRC that was one of the reasons the ELMS was hemorraging teams in GT to GT Open, right? They were always in the prototypes' shadow.


The FIA/ACO turned their back on Petit, which is basically one of the big reasons this deal got done in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised to see record low attendance for Petit this year. Nobody goes to Petit to see Rebellion Racing in a Lola, or Signatech in an Oreca. Petit thrived because of the P1 manufacturers bringing their top stuff, and everything else was icing on the cake.

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Sebring is owned by the Panoz group, so along with the ALMS buy out will go to Grand Am.

And making this a GT only series makes it essentially worthless. There are already countless GT only series around the world, why bother making this yet another one?

LMP and Grand-AM cars, lose the LMPC field fillers.

Well LMPs as we know it won't exist in 2014. So assuming this all begins in 2014, they all need new LMPs anyway. The new ACO rules haven't proven to be very popular, especially the engine regulations. So if the series merge, what's to say they don't just use a whole new rules set? Or even reopen talks with SuperGT.

Lets just keep pretending that the size of the track and pits is not a real problem.

Indeed. There's also the issue of why should Petit get a WEC round. We already have one in the States, and Sebring deserves it more.

You really don't know much about the ease of pushing power into a big displacement V8, do you.