[Deleted]

Originally Posted by EricS

Remember, Sao Paolo was originally scheduled for end of August. It was moved in late January.

2½ month gap would've still been ridiculous.

Originally Posted by Maelochs

Is stability important? I'd say in a way yes, because fans who attend often plan an entire season's racing before the season starts, or even ends. However, track attendance is a tiny part of the picture—TV/video rights are usually a better source of income for a series, as sponsor dollars, and a stable schedule doesn't really affect those so much, while promotion does.

As for changing the length of races, I don't see a strong argument either way. Would shorter races be better attended? I see no evidence—in fact, most racing fans I have spoken with prefer a full day of racing if they are going to the track, and TV/video fans seem willing to watch longer events. How many people are really loudly clamoring for shorter events? I cannot name three.

In the first segment you say that track attendance is only tiny part of the picture and in the second you are saying that they would not fancy shorter racing. So is track attendance important or not?

And yes, I'm sure loads of TV/video people are perfectly happy with the longer events, but how many are turning off because of the length? On non-sportscar places I've met many, they don't either have the attention span or have no time to spend the time in front of telly/PC. And since we are talking about the TV I'm gonna repeat what I said before - surely shorter regular races would suit the broadcasters better, Eurosport specifically.

Are fans truly bored by eight six-hour races per year? Would one nine-hour race really dramatically increase fan interest? I can't see why, and I have never heard three different people say anything about it.

I don't think you read what I wrote at all. I said:

Now would something like Fuji 12 Hours really make it special? I mean quite literally that would just mean 6 extra hours to the current format on a track not universally loved anyways. No not really, but it would still be different and 12 hours actually does test the car. You could improve the spectacle by inviting other classes in too, like AsLMS did (and only did, foolishly) with Super GT's GT300 class last year at Fuji. Or heck just integrate the Asian Le Mans Series for that one race, as ILMC did. Or ELMS if we we're talking of European event, eliminate filler classes if grid capacity is too high. You could also start giving automatic invites for the class winners as PLM used to do. Sky is the limit - unless it's the FIA burearchy that is preventing all these different things out of total standardization that ILMC and previous series practiced.

Just adding random number of hours to the 6 hours won't really make it magically better crowd magnet, but you can boost it up by making the event stand out more and special. And it's not all about the fan interest but creating another non-LM milestone event, particularly for LMP1 teams which have no other place to compete.

What's there to build on? That race makes money for the series because the organizers are willing to pay for it. No sense replacing it unless it is at a venue which will make more money for the series. Any suggestions for a more profitable venue?

Obviously the series wants to race where it can make the most money, and it wants to follow Bernie's lead and put on a big show. One of the main reasons F1 is what it is today is because Bernie Ecclestone demanded that the series be treated like Racing Royalty. When he and Max Mosely took over the series was expensive club-racing. Bernie realized it could be a highly profitable business but it had to look and act like a top-tier racing series to pull it off.

Isn't this the same thing as with the paywall-streams? Should they really be just running wherever the quick cash is being offered? Yes F1 is in a place where everyone pays for them to show up but this series is not.

I assume WEC feels the same way (Yes, I Assume.) They go to Grade 1 tracks because the facilities are so much better there, not just for the teams, but for the B2B customers and the high rollers the series wants to attract.

Compare WEC to TUSC, which is racing at VIR this weekend, with its PC class racing with a support series and its two GT classes racing alone. VIR is a really pretty venue and a really good track, but where do the rich folk stay? How does it look on TV? What kind of amenities does it offer to B2B customers, corporate execs who might sponsor?

On top of that, the whole weekend is basically support races, with the second and fourth class of TUSC cars competing as headliners. Not a great marketing opportunity—the whole thing feels low-rent. Sure race fans will love it, but the kind of people who are willing to sleep in their cars to watch racing aren't the kind of people who can Pay for racing.

I do agree that it is the reason for the Grade 1 obsession. As sad as it may be.

As for VIR, I'm not going to say that or this for the USCC reference. However, as much as I adore it I would never consider it for WEC (unless like half of the races were in NA) for the same-ish reasons you just presented , but surely Road America and Roat Atlanta would do the job heck of a lot better.

As for pre-qualifying ...

If racing still offered the cubic tobacco and motor-oil dollars (or low operating costs) of past decades, that might make sense. Right now teams simply cannot afford to travel to a race and not race. No one would sponsor a team which might not race. We are way past the days when anyone with a torch could build a car—and racing is too expensive for even rich people to pay for it all out of pocket.

We as fans are going to suffer a lot more than we already are if our expectations (not our dreams, which should be wild and free) are totally unrealistic. If we fail or refuse to understand the economics of racing, we will wish for things which might kill the very series we want to heal.

Yeah, series managements often make completely bone-headed decisions, blow easy opportunities and throw away the best parts to augment the worst. But as fans, we should at least criticize them rationally.

The whole pre-qualifying idea was just an alternative for your class, in this case ELMS GTC not to show up at all in an event (if oversubscribed). Is that better? How would LMPC or LMP3 in the future feel if in the future at Daytona they weren't allowed to run at all? Would they rather take A) total rejection B) some half-ass support race before the 24 a la Kansas/VIR C) pre-quali. I don't know.

By the way, referring costs. Even if we just go for that turn of the century period when such thing as pre-qualifying still existed: yes surely the economics were in different shape but in a time when privateer teams were capable of fielding big LMP1 and GT1 cars, was the situation really any better cost wise? Those things required large budgets to be able to operate them - and there were no proam categories and other "easier" places for you to run. You just had to cope with the factories in the same class.

I would say we can equally blame the economics as well as the ever growing desire to try to please everyone equally. Just as with the whole BoP ideology.

No, it proves that only diehard fans follow the sport at all. Not even diehard fans are generally clear on all the various permutations (Interserie, Can-Am, WSC, PSCR, IMSA, SCCA, WEC, ILMC, WEC, ALMS, GA, FIA, PWC, ACO, USAC, AAA, SRO, Trans Am, TUSC, BES, ADAC, AsLMS, ELMS, LMS .... just a very few of the many which have been active in the past few decades or so.)

So what? Is Le Mans more important than the championship? Measured how? In terms of public awareness Le Mans has a Lot more—most non-fans don't know there are any other races. So what?

As with the Indy 500, without the feature race, there would be very little public awareness, but without the supporting series there would be no one racing in the feature race. Le Mans has seen some dark days—having a series for specifically Le Mans-style cars is a smart economic move.

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To make a Le Mans-style team feasible, the teams have to offer sponsors more than one chance in one race once a year. So ... if the series is necessary to support the main event and the main event is necessary to support the series .... it's like asking if your left or right leg is more important. You aren't walking far with only one, whichever.

Sorry I don't understand the point you are making here.

Nowhere have I said that there shouldn't be races surrounding Le Mans (and as for me not personally wanting it to be part of the championship -> it's mainly for auto entry reasons), of course there should be. The other races are important for the reasons you just mentioned but they should be events itself, not just "rounds" / practice races for Le Mans. ALMS for example understood this concept very well, the other races besides Sebring and PLM felt worth something.

Even the biggest factories might balk at spending the kind of money they spend at Le Mans if it were one-and-done, because they would know that would be a bad business proposition. Since only one car in fourteen can win even in class, the odds are stacked badly against most entries, so who would pay to Lose the biggest sports car race of the year if it were a one-off?

But Le Mans is one-and-done... when you finish up 3rd in LMP2 it means more than winning the championship. The championship gives something for them to do for the rest of the year and is good for the business but really it is just waiting for the next season. Having bigger races in between creates additional goals.

Would the series have more cachet, more fan awareness, if it raced at Road America, Spa, Sebring, Kyalami? Probably ... but only among race fans who already know the WEC schedule, so really, no gain that way.

As you say, the general public has never heard of WSC, ILMC, WEC ... so they don't care. Put an exciting ad in front of them and the letters of the sanctioning body are meaningless—the action is the key. People who have never heard of those classic tracks don't care who used to race there. if they like what they see right now, they like it.

Yes I do agree that if people don't know how it could be better they won't complain if they like the product otherwise...

However, having all-Grade 1 mindset lures them into thinking that only F1 tracks are possible for this series... which I guess is true now anyway...

Sorry, but by 2040, nobody but diehard fans will remember anything about racing, which might not even exist by then, because all cars will be autodrive. In any case, only the diehard fans remember the Mille Miglia, or have heard of the Nurburgring. How many people remember the Carrera Panamerica?

This is is all as much speculation as my comments about 2040

As for Carrera Panamerica and stuff, nobody remembers them cause they are dead. If Sebring is alive by 2040 - or heck even Spa 24 - people will remember them. Not the massive public because for them Le Mans is the only sportscar race on Earth, but the same sort of public that is watching non-LM sportscar racing right now.

The issue isn't whether people who don't care remember what they never cared about twenty years from now. The issue is, the series making enough money to keep racing so the vast majority of fans who couldn't attend more than one race a year no matter what, can keep watching on TV or the Internet—after all, if we can't even watch the races, do they ever really happen?

A lot of PC teams who were at Kansas can answer that one.

There are more sportscar series on television and web now than ever before. I'm not worried by the current direction on that front.

Case Kansas wasn't down to money but because the series management didn't give rats ass about the event or the categories that were running there.