There is in America at the moment a demonstrated desire for what the mainstream news media calls “change.” It is not this columnist’s mandate to debate the reasons for this, or offer solutions; the politicians will take care of that matter.
However, the reality is that the fallout from the current economic hard times is a subject of interest to the racing community, particularly to its professional road-racing set.
At the heart of the road course community is what is known as the “gentleman” driver, a way of describing a rich, highly motivated, competitive sportsman with sufficient financial resources to indulge those instincts at the top levels of the game. This has been the way it has been forever, going back past the days of the young, well-to-do group of Englishmen known as the “Bentley Boys” who cleaned house at Le Mans in the 1920s and very early ’30s.
On many occasions, as was the case with the “Bentley Boys,” these individuals possessed the kind of talent that would have made them standout professionals had they so chosen. Others with lesser skills hired the “pros from Dover” as teammates to improve their chances. Either way, it is on the backs of this group that the sport has built its house. However, today things have changed to a degree.
As has happened with Formula One, international sports-car racing, including the American Le Mans Series, has been taken over by the manufacturers whose budgets are measured in the hundreds of millions, rather than just the tens of millions. Audi, Peugeot, Porsche, Jaguar, Ford and Chevrolet have all invested large corporate sums over the years to finish first and not second so that they can utilize the achievements either to market themselves or their products. The gentlemen largely have been relegated to the “second fiddle,” or support arenas, such as the GT2 production category, or, before Porsche appeared, the LMP2 sports racing division.
The only exception to this trend has been the Grand American’s Rolex Series, which after all is said and done, has been built for road racing’s traditional supporters by limiting technology to the level where a budget of tens of millions is more than sufficient. This “big fish, small pond; large pond, small fish” tug of war is the basis for the fundamentally different approaches espoused by the Grand Am and the ALMS toward the sport.
To put it in its most simple terms, the gulf between high tech at all costs, and restraint of technology to make things affordable is so large that when rumors surfaced that the two sides might be talking about a possible merger, one could only dismiss them out of hand. Yet, while no one, especially myself, is suggesting that there is indeed truth to those rumors, their outright dismissal might be premature.
The reason is twofold. The first consideration is the economy, of course. How much longer will the entrants, be they corporate or privateer, continue to participate, especially if what sponsorship they now enjoy disappears in the present economic mess? The second consideration is that the international regulations themselves will change in 2010, and while the current ALMS prototypes and production racers may race one or two seasons beyond that, by 2012 most assuredly they will be replaced.
So, putting this together, there might be an opening for reconciliation if the new international rules under which the ALMS will most likely operate come closer to those of the Rolex tour and far from the high-tech scenario which prevails today. If they are close enough, and if the two championships are battered enough economically, then there exists the possibility that they could get together.
It may not be likely, but it is interesting, particularly since many within the road racing community feel there is in the final analysis room for just a single title chase if their sport is to have a true future.