So, the 2013 season has ended and both Grand-Am and ALMS are officially no more.  Grand-Am bought the ALMS from Don Panoz for a lot of money.  Green saves the day, not just the environment….

This is good!  For many years I was an open wheel fan, but the split killed it.  I went the ChampCar way and sorely missed the Indy 500.  The IRL folks missed the competition.  It was not good.

But it was, in many ways, similar to the sportscar’s separation.  The IRL had Indy.  They had what amounted to spec cars (they still do!). ChampCar had the names and the variety of makes, both in chassis and engines. Grand-Am had a very tight control of specs and it had the Rolex 24 at Daytona.  ALMS had the killer cars.  I’ll eventually work my way through those tracks that shared both series, but I digress.

With the merger, we have lost P1 and GX.  We kept those classes that had exciting racing.  The new rules package is going to be interesting when it is finalized, but if the testing at Sebring and Daytona show anything, they may be on the right track.  OK, I am not a fan of flying cars, so there are going to be tweeks.

In all honesty, ALMS’s P1 class was dying. Not enough participants.  Audi and Rebellion were WEC teams who party crashed on select races and somehow made it work, sort of.   There were not enough teams.  I hazzard to say the same holds true for the WEC p1’s, even though Porsche is joining.

GX just didn’t take off.  There were 3 cars for most of the season; the 2 factory backed Mazda diesels and the lone privateer Caymen by BGB.  BGB won through sheer determination against a major corporation making it’s comeback in motorsports.

So we have the Daytona Prototype’s, P2’s, PC’s and 2 GT classes.  We have a great mix of the high tech, high horsepower, true street machines and pure racers, it really is the best mix in racing, the best of both worlds.  Imagine F1 meeting IndyCar!  Yes, we now have it!