How To Improve The Daytona Prototype

In the debate of ALMS vs Grand-Am, each side has a big point going for it: ALMS has the sexy high-tech machines, but Grand-Am is guaranteed to put on a good show.

ALMS has been hit-or-miss on the overall action this year. Sebring was good, but St. Pete and Long Beach was lacking. Salt Lake was a huge step in the right direction, but Sebringis still the only ALMS race of the season that gave us more action than any given Grand-Am race thus far in 2009.

Good action is what I want most in a race, but the sexy technologically advanced cars of the ALMS helps keep them on top when it comes to which I prefer. Despite it's shortcomings this season, ALMS still has enough potential for action to keep the lack of it thus far from harming it's position over Grand-Am.

For one thing, the Acura LMP1 domination is not the same as the Audi LMP1 domination. IT's not two cars racing for the same team, one willing to let the other scream ahead when they achieve a championship advantage.

They're two different teams fighting to be the top Acura team, and once they stop worrying about breaking their cars they're sure to give us some good battles for the LMP1 win.

Salt Lake gave us some intrigue over the LMP2 class win, which shows the Acura LMP2 program is not as indestructible as it seemed without any LMP2 Porsches.

And of course, GT2 is ALWAYS exciting.

Mid-Ohio promises to bring a lot of brilliant stuff to the ALMS, enough to hopefully pull their racing actions head-and-shoulder above Grand-am once again.

Grand-Am's problem is, in the end, the Daytona Prototype. Not in concept, but in execution.

The DPs were designed to be safe, cheap, and exciting to watch. The problem is that to see the excitement, you have to force yourself to look past the predominantly-ugly DP designs and focus on the actual battle.

If you can do that, Grand-Am provides nothing short of excellence every time they hit the track. They may not be very fast, but if speed was everything then NHRA top fuel dragsters and the Red Bull Air Race World Series would be the top two forms of motorsport in the world, not to mention that nobody would care about LMGT2.

In the end, the ugly designs of the DPs were the result of an overly strong focus on safety, which was compounded by a driver's death as the DPs approached their deployment.

Noble intentions, but here's the thing: Every aspect of the DPs design was based on the fact that Grand-Am ran mostly ROVALS at the time. The high-speed oval sections are unacceptably dangerous to the high-speed, high-tech open-cockpit LMP-style prototypes used at the time.

But now Grand-Am has but two rovals left -Daytona and Homstead- both of which are equipped with SAFER barriers. The extremes are no longer as big a necessity as before. Some will argue that they never had to go to extremes to begin with, but that's not the point.

The point is that RIGHT NOW the need isn't as strong as it clearly was back then. Safety has improved, so certain aspects can be backed off of.

I will go so far as to state that I believe a closed-cockpit LMP would be just as safe to run at Daytona as the current DP chassis.

But Grand-Am also wanted to set themselves apart from ALMS with the DPs, so let's assume the DPs are here to stay. How do we improve them? How to we make them eye-catching enough to make people pay attention?

Well, in terms of speed capping, just having stock-block engines should be sufficient. All that needs to be done is to open up the bodywork and aero regulations.

Look at the picture I have attached to this article. It's a nearly-complete (just some smoothing to do in some areas plus some paint touch-ups) kitbashing project I like to call "what a Daytona Prototype SHOULD look like." It's a diecast Ferrari F50 toy modded front and rear to apply some DP-based stylings.

Looks like a DP, doesn't it? Only a million times better. Just allowing a longer front end would allow some much more stylish AND aerodynamically-effective, and allowing a slimmer cockpit area would do the same.

Plus more front bodywork means less potential for injury in a front-end collision.

The current overly-restrictive regulations on DPs have still produced some notably interesting designs—the chassis makers have really started to figure out how to work through the limitations.

The new Crawford DP08 looks better than a Dallara IRL car so long as you don't view it straight-on from the front, and the Proto-Auto Lola when viewed from the side looks like something you'd have seen in the old IMSA GT Lights class.

If they're coming THAT close to making some stylish cars even with the restrictions, imagine what could happen if they backed off a bit.

If the DPs were tweaked in a way like I've noted, their speeds would increase significantly, but with the limitations of the stock-block engines they wouldn't increase to a dangerous level.

Grand-Am and ALMS function on two different philosophies, but unlike the CART/IRL split, the differing philosophies apply SOLELY to the chassis, and I believe that because of this the two series CAN co-exist. But Grand-Am needs to tweak it's DPs in order to be able to get enough of a fanbase to do it.

Grand-Am will attract the people who want to be guaranteed a good show every time they flip on a race. ALMS will attract the fans who want the technology. There's plenty of both fans, and the two series could survive easily by splitting the casual fans between them. But if Grand-Am wants to get a share of the casual fans, they do need the better-looking cars.

I'm not one to prioritize improving the looks of a car over competition or safety, but I believe that in this case, tweaking the looks will actually INCREASE the already-excellent quality of competition, and do it WITHOUT compromising safety. And without a doubt Grand-Am needs it to attract some casual viewers.