Originally Posted by dj4monie
This will be my last post in this thread on Bob's rants.
Allowing LMP1's to compete with LMP2's is something that already happen and produced some excellent racing. Audi from the good Doctor's position Audi wasn't in the series to loose to the lesser LMP2 cars and felt it was a dirty trick to allow Acura and Porsche to skirt the rules a bit and build cars for a class intended for Gentlemen drivers.
2007 and 2008 have been some of the best racing in ALMS history at the sharp end. You didn't know who was going to win and Audi had to earn every victory. By 2008 they had turned a car designed mainly to run at Le Mans into a car capable of winning every where.
If things had remained the same, only with Acura moving up to LMP1, but Porsche and Penske re-signed to running LMP2 with updated Spyders, this year would be have been classic just like the years previous.
IMSA should be applauded to be willing to adjust the rules enough not to totally make them ineligible for ACO races like Le Mans, but allow enough flexibility to return back to ACO spec when needed.
What the ACO was protecting themselves from was a skyrocketing cost of racing in his home series mostly. Knowing what the Porsche Spyder had done the LMP cars at Laguna Seca at the end of the 2007 season, they knew if somebody went to Porsche with a large checkbook, they could dominate the LMS, especially at circuits where power is not nearly as important as high speed cornering.
To be honest, Porsche like they usually do, looked at the rules and said as long as the Diesel engined cars have a straight line advantage they would not spend the cubic dollars needed to close the gaps to them enough they you could keep them at bay when a corner came up.
Sportscar Racing in America doesn't have the star power it needs to close ground on NASCAR. But it can close ground on IRL and has. I think the ALMS is moving in positive direction.