Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Many years ago when I lived in England I went to a waxworks which featured among other things a history of torture. One that stuck in my mind was "the death of a thousand cuts." These were just small flesh wounds, on their own not much problem, but 1,000 eventually bled the person to death.

Is this is what we are seeing in the new "unified" sports car series in America? This was no merger between ALMS and Grand-Am, the Doctor sold out to the ISC, and presumably to keep the fans and teams happy we were to see both series cars included with balance of performance. The DP is of course a NASCAR style derivative, and the LMP1 of Le Mans was way too quick to have a place, so we had LMP2 cars in the prototype class with the DPs. Last year the LMP2s were a lot quicker than the DPs, so we had to have a balance of performance to even things out, except as we have seen in the three races so far the DPs have won and the LMP2s struggled.

So what do LMP2 car owners, who are largely doing this for fun remember, decide when they are having no fun? They take their bat and ball home. Was this the plan all along, the death of a thousand cuts? Small nicks that seem slight at the time but in the end kill the class? So Grand-Am wins in the end.

Sure we have the GT Le Mans class, and thank goodness for it. They produced the best racing in the last few years of ALMS, and that's where the manufacturers are, so I don't see ISC killing that off, but you never know. Their GT class was modeled on the NASCAR culture of tube frame cars, so why would they kill that off. Just maybe the owners of those cars might feel like the LMP2 owners and just fade away.

Dyson racing have teamed with Bentley to go race in the Pirelli World Challenge. Got to be more fun than being beaten in Tudor Sports Cars. Strange decision though by Bentley. The Dyson team has been conspicuous for its lack of reliability and results in recent years. Still, it will be great to see the Bentley here in the US.

Back in the real world the WEC kicks off this weekend with the 6 Hours of Silverstone. First chance to see Porsche go head to head with Audi and Toyota. F1 is in China and Ferrari's new Team Principle is at hand, although what he is going to bring to the team other than another politician I don't know. Alonso seems to have pulled his finger out in the first days practice, new manager syndrome? It is early days though and we will see tomorrow just how close he can really get to the Mercedes.