The fundamental problem facing the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

Detroit. As I've said repeatedly in the last few Fumes columns, wanting the "whys" and the "wherefores" of the new TUDOR United SportsCar Championship to be different is unrealistic and a waste of time. I think most everyone who has followed the twists and turns of the ALMS vs. Grand-Am saga and is interested in the fate of major league sports car racing in this country understands how the sport has arrived at the point it finds itself today. But that doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable or that the basic competitive package couldn't be tweaked or improved to make the racing more compelling.

For perspective, I think it's fair to say that there's a fundamental dichotomy going on here that can't be ignored, and that is that the prototype "LMP1" machines that are capable of winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans bear no resemblance to the "Daytona Prototype" machines that contest the top category in the USCC. The reasons for this are painfully obvious too. Besides the fact that the manufacturers fielding front-line racing machines (Audi, Porsche, Toyota) aimed at winning at Le Mans are spending upwards of $100 million annually for bragging rights to the most prestigious sports car race in the world, the FIA has mucked things up by diverting the participating manufacturers' attention away from North America in order to promote their own World Endurance Championship, which has effectively neutered any efforts by the U.S.-based USCC to attract top prototype teams to contest the racing schedule over here.

Now rumors abound that there's a distinct possibility that the WEC will open its season at Daytona and then contest Sebring as well at some point - which admittedly would be a degree of awesomeness that's mouth watering to think about - but even so that does nothing to help the full USCC schedule once the WEC circus departs for the rest of their global series.

So what can be done? First of all the DP cars are competing in a vacuum. Not fast enough for overall victory at Le Mans and not special enough to be legitimately called "prototypes," their occupation of the top rung of American sports car racing is questionable, at best. And let's face it, USCC DP teams competing at Le Mans for a class win would be doing it as an exercise in ego gratification and nothing more. Not exactly a rip-roaring endorsement, is it? But the reality is that Jim France has bought the playing field and owns the bats and balls, and his insistence that the DPs be the stars of the show is apparently iron clad, and the fact that it severely curtails the scope of the USCC and limits its global prestige is neither here nor there. It just is and it's truly unfortunate.

The other undeniable fact about the TUDOR USCC is that the real action and manufacturer interest is in the GTLM class. Even more so than anything the WEC can muster when it comes to GT racing, the GTLM class in the USCC is the most hotly-contested and flat-out best sports car racing in the world. There is a move afoot to "merge" the GT class rules between GTLM and the WEC in 2015, which would make eminent sense, but that doesn't solve the USCC's fundamental problem, which is that its allegedly top-class cars aren't compelling or special enough. And there doesn't seem to be much room - or hope - that the situation will improve either.

But I do think there's an answer for the powers that be running the USCC and that is to scrap the DPs altogether and create instead a new class that would start with the GTLM rules package and then go a little crazy. Okay, a lot crazy. More power. Lighter weight. More engineering freedom. Movable aerodynamic devices. The gamut. I'm not talking F1 cars with bodies or the antiseptically-orchestrated visage of the DTM cars in Europe, no, I'm talking American hot-rod engineering know-how as opposed to the FIA's approach to everything, which always seems to revolve around clinical sameness and colorless rule restrictions.

I would call this new class GTO - for "Outlaw" - and while I'm at it I would eliminate all the other classes except for GTLM, too. That's right, we'd be left with a two class all-GT road racing series with some real juice.

After all, short of an American manufacturer mustering the effort for an overall win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which is highly unlikely, why shouldn't major league sports car racing in the U.S. go its own way and carve out a little excitement - with an irreverent attitude - all its own?

Or, we can just leave things the way they are and hope for the best, which would be about par for the course in this day and age.

 

Publisher's Note: As part of our continuing series celebrating the "Glory Days" of racing, we're proud to present another noteworthy image from the Ford Racing Archives. - PMD

(Photo by Dave Friedman courtesy of the Ford Racing Archives)
Sebring, Florida, March 30, 1967. The No. 1 Ford Mk IV driven by Mario Andretti and Bruce McLaren parked in the pits during practice for that year's 12 Hours of Sebring, which took place on April 1st. Andretti and McLaren would smoke the field, qualifying on the pole with a 2:48 flat and winning by twelve laps. The A.J. Foyt/Lloyd Ruby (No. 2 Ford Mk IIB) finished second, and Scooter Patrick/Gerhard Mitter (No. 36 Porsche 910) finished third.

Publisher's Note: Like these Ford racing photos? Check out www.fordimages.com. Be forewarned, however, because you won't be able to go there and not order something. - PMD