Has Grand-Am Become More Entertaining Than ALMS?

ALMS has gotten weak

The 12 Hours of Sebring was quite an exciting race this year, but sadly the ALMS has since then not provided us with the excellent racing action it had for the past few years. The economic crisis and withdrawal of several manufacturers has left the Prototype classes almost nonexistent.

The GT2 class still gives us good action as always, but shouldn't we be getting the same from all the classes?

The LMP1 class will be gaining a fifth entry at the next round—the Corsa Motorsports Ginetta-Zytek 09HS. It's nice to see them on the grid since not long ago there was concern about whether the car would be ready.

The entry brings the LMP1 class up to five entries—which I've always felt was the minimum amount of cars you needed per class to make for good racing.

When you have two cars almost guaranteed to win every race, you need a good fight for that final podium place, and a three car minimum is very good for that since it allows for some fighting to continue if one of the cars has to retire.

An LMP1 Pescarolo 01 run by Team Mundill is supposed to join around Mid-Ohio. Hopefully they can make things more interesting.

LMP2 is soldiering on with just three cars. One of which is pretty much guaranteed to win if it doesn't break. Yawn. LMP2 is where the privateers are supposed to be, and even though the winner is pretty much a forgone conclusion, there are TWO podium spots open to it's other entrants. That nobody else has taken a stab at this class boggles the mind.

Well, the Pescarolo 01 was designed to be able to run LMP1 or LMP2 depending on the team's choice. Is it just possible that Team Mundill will decide to set up their chassis for LMP2 rather than LMP1? Don't get your hopes up—there's been no such indication.

There's nothing wrong with the LMGT2 class, but if that's the ALMS's only draw, then they have a serious problem.

Grand-Am Running Strong

Meanwhile, two races into the Grand American Rolex Sports Cars Car Series, the on-track action has been obvious and excellent. Full fields with no sign of significant shrinking anytime soon, and excellent battles that make you forget how ugly the Daytona Prototypes really are.

And that's how racing should be—so mind-blowingly awesome that you forget about what the cars look like, or whether or not there's a technological issue with them.

The Daytona Prototypes may only be as fast as an LMGT1 car, but it's certainly not for lack of grip. These thing corner like LMPs, but just don't have the top speed to get better lap times out of it. But that combination is part of what has allowed them to produce such good racing.

Some people have compared ALMS/Grand-Am to the CART/IRL war, but I don't see it. It seems like both sides are willing to just let he other be and do their own thing. Plus, unlike IRL, the Grand-Am philosophy works to a certain extent.

As a result, both series are completely different, but they're both just as good as long as they have strong fields. Grand-Am's benefit is that it's cheap to run and the field is much closer, but more importantly it's not a spec series.

Some complain about the series owners trying too hard to "equalize" the field, but better that than "spec" the field, wouldn't you say? We've seen it in Champ Car, and we've seen it in IRL: If you don't put some effort into equalizing things, you'll end up with a spec series when the weaker manufacturers decide to leave.

They way things stand right now, Grand-Am's got the kind of action that ALMS needs. The action's going on throughout the field, not just in a single class. Perhaps if Grand-Am altered the DP rulebook a bit we could get some good-looking DP designs in there.

Or, perhaps, good-looking DPs are already here...? That new Crawford (pictured above) is no Lola LMP coupe, but it ain't no Riley MkXX, either.