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Further ... to me the biggest deal with a common platform is not that every car is eligible in every series everywhere in the world. Individual sanctioning bodies need to put on a show which suits the fans of that region. Blindly following France in North America didn’t work to well in the recent past, eh?
The big benefit of the common platform is that it keeps costs down at a time when interest in and thus investment in racing seems not to be particularly robust.
I am NOT a fan of cost-containment ... as a fan. As a fan I want unlimited development, radical changes in every car for every race, people dreaming up weird new ways to escape the rules and find a few more horsepower or a few fewer seconds per lap.
Jim Hall, the various F1 six-wheelers, the Shadows ... the sucker-fan F1 Alfa, while it lasted .... I love that stuff.
However, the realist in me says, “If sports car racing costs more than it makes, only NASCAR will be left.” ‘Nuff said?
Sure, multi-billionaires from Russia can evade cost-cap rules and build non-production one-off P2s, and a lot of different companies released variations on the old Courage L-75 or whatever, and adapted them for an extra decade of life ... but there just aren’t that many companies willing to do the development, supply the parts, and take the business risk involved with producing a sports car chassis, knowing the competition is intense and the rules change so frequently that last year’s product might not be saleable next year. (HPD ARX-04, anyone?)
Not saying I agree with or approve of the ACO solution, but it makes sense. Four companies should be enough to meet the needs of all the various P2 teams, and hopefully only one of them will go broke because everyone likes the others.
Actually of course, none of them will actually go broke because they all have multiple revenue streams ... which is real excellent, because it means they will still be around to manufacture spares and design upgrades for the life of the chassis.
Like DPi rules, new P2 rules are a compromise ... but a necessary compromise. The sport needs to survive as a business, and it needs to be lean enough to survive in the lean years so it is around to take advantage of the better times.
Fans should be fans ... but it helps if at times they can also be realists. it helps ... The Fans, because if they cannot accept the realities of the times they will be bitter and caustic and ... fit right in here at Ten-Tenths.
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