Sebring Postscript, TUDOR Media and Kevin Magnussen

Sebring Race, Streaming and Overall Media

 The qualifying stream provided by IMSA was appalling. Three fixed camera positions and tower PA only provided on the media/timing tower camera. That just smacks of cost-cutting, similar to the story that IMSA/NASCAR would not have a traveling safety crew that has became apart the ALMS family.

 If this is suppose to be a destination series then ACT like it! For years the ALMS had qualifying shows, especially when it cut its deal with ESPN3. These were high quality used all the different cameras around the track along with booth talent. Why not continue this in the new series?

 If you feel the same as I do about this, contact IMSA (386-310-6500). As an ardent supporter of the American Le Mans Series, I find this completely unacceptable.

 Also during the Continental Tire Race (CTSC) on Friday, the Timing/Scoring feed impacted the streaming, dropping frames when it updated. If you experienced this as well, please contact IMSA to make sure the code of their website is fixed. I believe it might have been because the stream of the final nine hours of the 12 hours was excellent, accept for the last 90 mins that was plagued with buffer issues.

 Seems to me if IMSA is going to offer these services to fans, maybe they shouldn't have fired much of the production company that produced the ALMS broadcast for Speed and ESPN3...

 The race itself was a bit disjointed early but turned into a descent race after half way. At the time of this writing I don't believe its a record but 11 caution periods marred the event. The race never reached 300 laps as it had done in previous years. With almost as many cars as the final ALMS at Sebring last year, there we're only four cautions.

 Disappointed ESM was impacted by the questionable final caution when the Whelen Corvette stopped OFF COURSE. If you were watching the stream you would have found one of the rules of the new series is that corner workers are not allowed to leave their assigned post. I think its pretty obvious to see why this was done. It forced a 20 min shootout; where #02 Ganassi car that spun coming into the pits for its final stop (or was pushed by the Action Express Corvette, depending who you wanna believe) ended up with a 5-6 second victory. ESM's Ryan Dalziel had built up a 7-8 second lead over the Ganassi #02 after a restart from caution #10.

 Orchestrated finishes? Ganassi (a long time GA supporter) granted victory? You be the judge...

A chip off the old block

 Kevin Magnussen finished 3rd on debut in his first F1 GP. Congratulations to Kevin and his father Jan who I have been a fan of for a very long time. With Ron Dennis back in control of McLaren F1, I think we may see a victory from Kevin before the year is out.

Blog change delays

 I am still finalizing the look of my blog, its not super important, but I want it clean and simple so I can just add content and focus on promotion. 

 I will be reporting from the Long Beach GP weekend. At this point I don't know if I will attend all three days or just the Tudor race which is traditional for me the last 5-6 years. If I do attend all three days, I will be focusing not just on Tudor but the Pirelli World Challenge who has seen a doubling of its grid in less than twelve months. 

 Did IMSA/NASCAR made a mistake by not accepting full house FIA GT3 cars, instead balancing those cars against a car that was already in the design stage (Porsche GT3 America) which meant the removal of traction control and ABS from the cars but also meant a restriction in rear downforce by mandating a spec wing?

 We'll find out because I am eager to compare lap times between the Tudor GTLM cars and standard FIA spec GT3 cars in World Challenge GT.

DTM in America??? Full House at Rolex 24, Full House at Sebring??? More Changes Coming!

 I hope most of you reading this thing are staying on top of things. I am trying to develop a regular schedule of posting and the format for the podcast.

 My series of how we fix racing in America will also continue into 2014 as we have less fragmentation but more confusion than ever????

 As a regular follower of racing since my childhood and hardy supporter of the ALMS since it started in late 1998, I can say that having one united series is a good thing, but watching how the sausage was made much how Government law is hashed out in real-time was a bit messy.

 2014 Dakar featuring Robby Gordon

 That said I am excited for 2014 to get started and it kicks off with the Dakar (in South America) Rally. If you didn't know Robby Gordon will be there, not with his Hummer (they have been sold) but with a new car based around one of the chassis he developed Short Course series. The rumor is this new SUV is based on a production SUV Robby will debut sometime in the future.

 You can check out some pictures here, the car, chase trucks and equipment was shipped with the rest of the European teams equipment, cars, etc. So for the first time Robby will have his stuff through customs hopefully with less missing parts than in previous years. This is not the first time I've heard of shady customs in Latin America but I will talk about that another time.

 This narrower, shorter wheelbase car will be much better in the early stages of the rally which runs through river beds and access roads.

 Good Luck to Robby and BJ Baldwin.

 Tudor United Sports Car Championship

  IMSA has released its entry list for the official test session for the Rolex 24 @ Daytona. This list is pretty much has the cars, teams and driver line ups not only for this race but the entire season.

 As I have said in previous post, the premium of drivers will be key to any success next season, especially in the Pro Am classes of LMPC and GT-D. GT-D as expected is oversubscribed and some teams will be turned away, even at Daytona. The Roar list has 65 entries on it (was 67) and there is (to my knowledge) only 60 spaces at Daytona, so some GT-D entries will either have to qualify to get in or won't be invited.

 Some might view that as a bad thing. I think its good, it will ensure a quality field for the race. It will be interesting to see how IMSA handles this and the PR problems it might create with the fanbase.

 While the Rolex Race might be fully subscribed, that may not be the case for the next race which is the Sebring 12 hours. Some teams focused more on their European activities will go back to Europe. That said, some teams have setup US operations, so it will be interesting to see who stays and runs the entire schedule, which is likely if they end up being highly placed in the championship after the first two races which should be double points.

 DTM in America, again????

 One would think with a merged championship, not even a complete rules package there is crazy talk about a United States version of the Pan European DTM series.

 I have nothing to say really, this subject doesn't really deserve a blog post, so tell you what, I will just let The Racing Insiders hash this out for you, ugh.

 Not sure I will be posting again before the end of the year as I am finalizing the transfer over to Wordpress for this blog and submitting content to Motorsport.com. All these changes come with a new look and a new host. The URL will be the same but the register.com logo at the bottom of the screen will disapear.

 I will also be adding some new content not normally featured on automotive websites but its related to racing and cars in general.

 Finally I may turn this thing into a forum/blog hybrid because to really discuss the problems that threaten racing long term really need a better platform so we can share our ideas in a threaded format so its easy to keep track of.

 Until then Happy New Year!