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Although I think the Intercontinental cup would be a good idea, I hope that the ACO doesn't overdue it. ACO cannot forget that the sport is made up by a large number of low budget and/or privateer teams in the '4' classes and a majority of the teams are regional except for the 24 hours.
If they go all out to please the Manufacturers, they might kill the ALMS and the LMS and end up like the World Sportscar championship in 1993, with a grid of 15 cars or something because noone can afford to fly their cars around the world.
I hope they don't get greedy and start thinking about going to Africa, South America or Australia in the first 5/10 years (the sport, the economy, is not ready for that).
I can understand the feelings of ALMS fans but you can't put it on the ILMS the reason for ALMS' downfall, nor will I put it on the economy. Audi has wanted a world series for a while and even if ACO were to standfast and say "No" to save the regional series, that doesn't guarantee Audi would return. It would better than chances but they could still stay out or just run major races, with the only problem that they wouldn't be able to say they were ALMS or LMS champion, if that holds any leverage.
ALMS needs to promote more privateer racing. But unlike the LMS, ALMS has to fight against Grand-Am to get the privateers. I mean, Grand-Am is close enough to sportscar racing and in Europe there is no rival for LMS so all privateers went there, and it's worked. America is different. For some reason Grand-Am managed to work and just like IRL/CART, something's gotta give or else both are going to be buried.
It's good to see that this year, the calendars of the ALMS and LMS are a bit more harmonized. Not much can be done about July / August, unless the LMS stops racing during those months because ALMS has 5 races in 8/9 weeks. Therefore, 3 LMS races are within a week of an ALMS race. With June blocked out and April/May harmonized, there's not much more room for both series to fit in 8 races between July and September without stepping over each other.
What ACO and the 2 series have to try to do, is push Silverstone later, so not to interrupt the summer schedules (and not include any of the summer races in the ILMS) so that the regional cars will stay in their respective championships, and if the rules are well set (I like the idea of obliging an ILMS team to also commit to one of the 2 regional champs), this could work.
Just my 2 cents.
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