First Post of 2012...

 Memorial Day and I thought I would make a post while watching some more racing action. I'm currently watching the uninterrupted coverage of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge from New Jersey's so-called Thunderbolt Raceway (SMH).

 This post is about the future of racing on TV or should I say on the internet. I should start by saying I recently added XBMC to my Windows Media Center PC. Why is this a big deal? -

•  This added ESPN3 to my PC without the clumsy use of Second Run TV 2.0 which just went directly to the web site. Second Run used the number pad for mouse control and as you can imagine its not fun to use at all.
• Has the best You Tube Account app I have ever used. Automatically defaults to full screen and best quality (adjustable in the settings) 

 Why is You Tube important? The FIA GT1, European GT3 and Blancpain Endurance Series has moved its Live Streaming to You Tube. However GT1 and GT3 are Geo-Blocked because in the US its available on Speed2. Nothing Tunnel Bear can't solve (VPN), I'll get to that later...

 Back to XBMC for a second... XBMC is a development of Xbox (the original) Media Center (thus XBMC) that allow Xbox users to watch and listen to media. Development for the Xbox stopped about two years ago but continued development for Apple TV, IPad, Linux and Windows machines has continued with the release of Eden.

 This makes it possible to have all your motorsport needs completely covered. Again, I'll get deeper into that in later.

 More importantly I think Auto Racing Fans especially those that enjoy racing outside of America or racing not on the mainstream radar need to understand that the days of producing content exclusively for broadcast TV are OVER. Series like SCCA World Challenge and Continental Tire series are not shown live on TV. Neither is any of the FIA sportscar series. Do you wanna wait until the NASCAR season is over or do you want to watch it as it happens or a few days after?

 Several web sites have popped up and I'll mention those in another post later on; As long as you have a better than average broadband connection, you can get all the racing you can stand or what your significant other will allow you to watch.

 The time to embrace this is NOW.

 In the next post, I will cover what you need to experience streaming in high quality on any size TV.

   

  

Racing On Saturday? WHY NOT!

First some reaction to this past weekend's racing.

The 4-hour Road Racing Showcase held at the famous Road America circuit just outside of Madison, Wis was excellent and even better for me personally that Risi finally broke through and took their first victory for the F458 with the CEO of Ferrari SpA on site.

That's the good news, the bad news is that DNF@Mid Ohio just two weeks ago really hurts their chances at a Driver's (3rd), Team's (3rd) and all important Manufacturer's Title (4th).

But wait, as they say its not over until the fat lady sings and basically Risi has to win out to have any chance at the title. In their favor as many as 5 Ferrari's will be entered at Petit. Its possible for more Ferrari's to show up at Laguna Seca since its after Silverstone as a buffer between the #62, the BMW's and Corvette's.

I really hope Ferrari pulls out all the stops and puts in the best drivers they can find, share information, setups, whatever going into the last two endurance events.

Also racing this weekend was NASCAR at Montreal and I have to say that I'm glad Ambrose has finally got the monkey off his back. His win at Watkins Glen on Monday and this weekend's victory at Montreal despite being spun by Jacque Villeneuve of all people in what can be described as the "Bone Headed" move of the year, ruining his chances for victory (he lead the most laps) but almost killing Ambrose's chances. But lucky for Ambrose his car wasn't damaged too much. Maybe that's what it takes to win at Montreal, it continues the stat that the leader with less than 7 to go wasn't the winner...

There's talk that the funding for this race was lost, but with the general fan turnout being excellent, I think they'll find some funding and continue to race there.

Finally this weekend was the first International meet at the newly opened Slovakiaring and it featured SRO's FIA GT3 Championship as its headlining event. Turn out was very good and even the Slovakian President showed up on Sunday to watch some racing.

I would embed the races here but until people start commenting on what I am saying on his blog I will suspend embedding videos for at least a month.

I also won't tell you who won, you'll have to find that yourself, there's an RSS feed on the broader to the left of your screen.

Now about racing on Saturday....

This topic came up during Mid-Week Motorsports I believe this week and last week. I think its an excellent idea and the ALMS should look at having its events on Saturday. There isn't much going on TV wise during the summer months and many channels are looking for "filler". Usually showing local programming or old movies as that's cheap. This is where the ALMS can spread its wings. By putting more races on ABC instead of ESPN2, you expand the reach of the series and also move it away from larger series like Indy Car and NASCAR Sprint Cup on Sunday's. I watched a bit fo the truncated race on ABC this afternoon and while I haven't watched it this season because I know (a) the outcome and (b) I know its shorten (90 mins vs 4 hour stream for example) but for those that are unwilling or can't access the races online, that's perfectly okay.

The landscape of TV is changing and some fans have to accept that expensive to broadcast events like a typical ALMS race are not affordable to put on National TV. At least not without some structural changes to the ALMS. The ALMS has lost from Acura and Audi. They haven't replaced it. Nobody's sure of what roll Patron plays in funding as well. But this is easily solved by making the GT class the top class, full stop.

Some people are resistant to make this change and poo-poo the recent LMS announcement of no LMP1's next year in Philip Peter's series. These people assume that with so many low funded LMP efforts not looking to run the WEC next season would automatically run the LMS series with little to no TV coverage... People want to complain about the ALMS coverage, at least its available to most people around the world as long as they have an decent internet connection, you can't say that about the LMS or even the ILMC...

The ALMS belongs on Saturday whenever possible. Petit Le Mans is on Saturday, what difference does it make if the rest of the races are on Saturday????

Why Does The Continental Tire Cup Series Get No Love?

On 10-Tenths, there's a regular poster named "Speed King". He lives in Germany but watches American racing. Anyway we often agree on many subjects especially the Continental Tire Grand Am Cup. I refuse to link to Grand Am so you'll have to use Google.

The origins of this series go back to 1980's. It was originally the IMSA Firestone Firehawk series which was a rival to the SCCA Escort Endurance Championship. Both series features current Speed TV color analyst Calvin Fish and Dorsey Schroeder.

Calvin who came from a middle class background in Britain couldn't afford to continue his single seat career in Europe, decided to come to the States in the early 80's and has been here every since winning the Formula Atlantic Championship in 1987. He eventually linking up with Ford Motor Company and raced Saleen Mustangs in the Escort Series, along with Mustangs in IMSA GTO for Jack Roush.

Dorsey was a struggling Formula Atlantic driver in the late 70's. Forced with quitting racing or trying another more affordable series, he was able to take his last few dollars and purchase a Renault Spec Racer; He won the championship. He credited the series with changing his driving style which allowed him to succeed in the Firehawk series for Chrysler (Eagle), IMSA GTU (with Dodge). Later become IMSA GTO race winner and SCCA Trans Am Champion for Jack Roush.

A short history lesson, if you want to know more about Dorsey's early career, just Google his name with Renault Spec Racer, he did an interview back in the early 00's about this phase of his career which was make or break, its very interesting.

Anyway, the Firehawk series was enthusiastically supported by the manufactures. Chrysler Corp at the time used the series to promote its version of the Mitsubishi Eclipse; The Eagle Talon which Dorsey drove back when he was connected to Chrysler. Porsche even built factory prepared 944 Turbos for the series. They had two divisions and fields of 40-50 cars. The series was often featured on The Nashville Network (Diamond P Sports).

I used to find Eagle Talon ads in Car & Driver featuring the pictures of the Dynomax (Walker Exhaust) sponsored two-tone Blue and White Eagle Talon AWD's.

When Don Panoz bought IMSA in the late 90's from a ousted Andy Evans, changed the name back to IMSA from PSCR (Professional Sports Car Racing) and signed a deal with fledgling Speedvision Channel. With that partnership and Firestone leaving as series sponsor, it became the Speedvision Cup Series.

About the time Speedvision was bought by Fox and the name shorten to Speed, they sponsored the series for I think one more season (1998). Also about this time a faction of IMSA broke off and became USRRC. The management of the Speedvision series decided to go with this group instead of sticking with IMSA. SCCA entered in a partnership with USRRC and the series then became the Motorola Cup when it merged with the Motorola Cup Series out of Canada.

It then became the Koni Challenge Series where ITT/Koni supplied the teams with Koni dampers, the first series I think that had a single damper supplier. Finally at the end of the 2009 season it became the Continental Tire Cup, a spec tire series back to its origins (Firestone Firehawk).

With close racing and manufacture support you think this would be more popular than NASCAR. After all one of the main complaints of NASCAR Nation is that the Sprint Cup Series, Truck and Nationwide have nothing in common with the cars and trucks they drive everyday. This series has you covered, many people bought and owned Mazda MX6's, Honda Preludes, Honda Accords, Ford Mustangs, Pontiac Firebirds, BMW M3's, etc, etc.

I think lack of promotion to the base was part of it. The internet at the time wasn't broadband and mature yet. But I really think they could have gotten the grassroots, the owners of the street versions of these cars to support the series. The manufacturers didn't seem to leverage their dealer network to attach fans to the races or even watch it on TV.

This still continues, because most dealers have NO IDEA what your talking about if you mention Continental Tire Cup Series. Some of the forums reminisce about cars raced in this series by posting pictures.

I think a major problem is the series has no high profile drivers. Over the years drivers of other series would "moonlight" in this series but they were not high profile drivers and never became series regulars. One of the most famous drivers of these series is Randy Pobst. Hardly a house hold name but if your a hardcore road racing fan like myself, then his name is not foreign to you at all.

No major series is without its high profile drivers. Even Indy Car with most of its winning drivers of the last decade being born in South America, Canada or Europe they still have large fan followings in the States. Grand Am Cup has had occasional well known drivers drop in for cameo but seldom stayed in the series, usually at the request of a manufacture. Boris Said has found himself racing in this series do to his connections with Ford and BMW.

How can they solve this problem, is it even solvable?

Promotion -

Every manufacturer should be promoting this series through its dealer network by putting posters in the waiting room of the service center at the very least. They should also be sending out promotional items for the series, including videos.

My father worked for one of the larger Chevy dealers in the Los Angeles area for 13 years and didn't remember anybody mentioning any of the various names this series has been called.

Which is shocking since this series has been around in one form or another since 1986, making it 25 years old. The ALMS is 11 years old, SCCA World Challenge is about 25-26 years old.

Why aren't they promoting it?

TV -

Is tape delay really an option in this date and age of the internet? What are people suppose to do ignore web sites like Speed TV? Now if I haven't seen a race for example but recorded it, I will avoid web sites I know will have the results. This includes avoiding my own blog as I have RSS feeds on it and sometimes results of races are posted since I have feeds directly from Auto Sport Magazine and a few FIA series.

Internet Streaming is an option at least for those that want to watch it live. Since they are on Speed, I believe the races are shown live on Speed 2, but they have limited reach at the moment.

The product -

Get away from throwing Yellow Flags for even the slightest incident! In years past they would use local yellows to remove broken cars close to the racing line. Seldom is there a reason to throw a yellow unless the track is blocked. But even Grand Am Cup is guilty of throwing the debris caution!

The biggest problem is self promotion. They regularly have fields of 50-60 cars. I don't know what the entry fees are per event or for a season, but fields that large allow the series to stay afloat clearly.

I understand this is a feeder series to other Touring Car and GT series like the ALMS, World Challenge or Rolex Grand Am, but there's no reason for poor fan turnout, no promotion from key players and tape delayed TV broadcast.

Just beyond the half way point....

In Sports Car Racing, the half way point is usually Le Mans in a season. However that's not quite the case. The ILMC has 3 events left (Silverstone, Petit Le Mans, China). The ALMS has 5 events left (Mid-Ohio, Road America, Baltimore, Laguna Seca, Petit Le Mans). International GT Open 4 events (A1/Red Bull Ring, Portimao, Monza and Barcelona).

The FIA/SRO series have 3,2 and 2 events left between its three biggest series.

In any case we're far from finish and Championships are far from settled. But some news about 2012 is starting to trickle out. LMS recently announced it will drop LMP1 cars from its Pan-Euro series and add a ALMS-type GTC class but expanding it to include Ferrari Challenge cars. This is sort of a problem Ferrari Challenge Teams and a boon ($$$) for Michelotto who must develop an aero package for these cars since FC cars have no aero package to start with. Why not just allow the Grand Am version of the Ferrari F458 GT3 car???

For the ALMS I think this gives them the opening to make the changes they need to stay relevant. Grand Am was able to talk Michelotto into building a Grand Am spec car for the series. Thus far its only been Michelotto who builds these race cars for Ferrari that has committed to the new cars. Audi and Benz are being talked too, but I think they are in a wait and see what the ALMS does.

This is the time for the ALMS to be aggressive and allow FIA spec GT3 cars in GTC. You won't have to change anything or built special models These cars are only slightly more than Porsche Cup S cars which make up the GTC field now.

There some grumbling among the fan base that BMW leaving the ALMS is all but a done deal because of their commitment to DTM and DTM coming to America. They think because DTM is backed by the current Grand Am brain trust that this will automatically succeed and put the ALMS on the defensive. I say is WAY too early to make those assumptions and also know that by BMW dropping F1 can run several series and still not come up to the budget they spent on F1 every season.

They get vastly more value out of running GT cars and DTM than just F1 alone.

We can count on at least 99% of the current field of GT cars/teams to return in 2012. Beyond that, its anybody's guess, but I think BMW and Jaguar are SAFE for the moment. That means 16-17 cars per event and about 8-9 car battle for the podium = GREAT!

The problem is the drop off in the prototype classes. One part of me says drop Prototypes all together including LMPC and just run GT cars. You would have fields of 30-35 cars every event and if you have seen FIA GT3 or International GT Open races I have posted on my blog, you'll see its close, hard fought racing with very little domination by one car or one team.

FIA GT3 has seen the biggest growth in the past few seasons and continues to grow. This is the time to make the change and make it stick. I personally don't care if you keep LMP2 and LMPC as these classes will always be in the single digits. But I think when it drops to only two cars, it time to kill it, we did it with GT1 a season before the ACO did it, but we did it.

Making hard choices is why I have continued to support the ALMS.

Memo to Scott Elkins -

If you do nothing else but open GTC to FIA spec GT3 cars, it will move the series forward. It will increase fan support, you'll hear less about the availability of the "Stream" and the product or action on track will be BETTER if that's even possible.