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Oi, another endless and pointless debate featuring our favorite canine.
Look, P3 is what IMSA has chosen. Teams seem to like it, and fans seem to like them.
In old IMSA Lites, the Tpe 2 cars were never in the top five ... at Sebring the Elans ran close---and No Accidents because of it. So that is all BS.
The way I see it, DP02 is the entry-level semi-serious playground for the wealthy and first step for the up-and-coming. Cheap, spec, but enough power and downforce to be dangerous if a driver gets silly---which is important, because it weeds out the silly drivers (crash a few times, money goes away.) And still the cars are sturdy enough that no one gets hurt when they crash. All good.
In the hands of a really skilled driver the Elans can (for now) keep up with the top ten P3s ... I expect that to change as teams learn their cars.
Thing is ... the new PC class is a Great Show. I am sorry, but I watched a lot of Lites and it just wan't inspiring. Maybe good for aficionados but nothing to excite the average fan.
P3s are Hot. They are loud and they have Presence on track. They are compact and powerful (seemingly) and quick enough and loud enough that they Create excitement.
That is what the series needs. Classes which are exciting to watch. Sure, nobody is going to buy a race weekend ticket just because PC is running, but people will watch the races ... and like them, which creates an overall better race-weekend experience.
Nobody buys a St. Pete GP weekend ticket to see the Stadium Super Trucks, but everybody watches them, and everybody likes them. Same principle.
My take is that IMSA wanted to do a couple things: first, get in deeper with FIA so they can leverage the relationship to get DPis to Le Mans some day, and second
make PC into a real series. I am sorry, but Lites was sort of a club series. Spec cars, the slowest class powered by go-kart engines (well, motorcycle engines.)
Nothing wrong with the class, and it did support itself as both a training class and as a playground for the unskilled but wealthy, but anyone looking to step up to a Real prototype sort of needed to go to an FLM09 ... a Lites Elan had half the power.
(Which is why, in Europe, PC was kept as a stand-alone training series.)
IMSA sees the need for a training series, wants the cash from the wealthy amateurs, and also needs to trim the fat. A pure P3 series might not be sufficiently subscribed, and that would mean adding a whole 'nother series to the schedule.
Instead, by dropping Lites 2, and adding P3s, IMSA elevates the Lites series, creates both a playground and a training ground, and keeps the race weekend schedule at the same size.
All sounds pretty smart to me.
I have no doubt that CN is a wonderful series---it is certainly popular all over Europe. But that it Not the way IMSA went, and it never will be. IMSA wants to create the ladder from Elan to P3 to P2/DPi. It wants to support the P3 constructors because they also build all the P2/DPi chassis.
IMSA Could have gone a different way, and maybe in some ways, from some angles, it would have made more sense. However, they went This way, and it also makes sense and seems like a strong step forward.
Let's give it a couple seasons ans see if it withers or grows, eh? I know some of us really like a fight, and will parse every post and attack every space and comma ... but that never seems to help anything, does it?
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