[Purist]

BR, the quantity of events bit has to do with practicality. You will NOT maintain the presence of a series in the US in a serious way with just 6-8 events a year. Even 10-12 is on the edge. To really maintain presence over here in the shadow of open wheel and NASCAR, it would be good to have at least two races a month for March through October; that comes out to 16 races a season.

In Europe, it's quite a different picture. You have LMS with just five or six races, but you also have FIA GT, and several big national GT series plus a few national prototype series. Thus, Sportscar & GT maintains its exposure very well throughout the season, even though the LMS itself has so few races. Over here Speed GT and Trans-Am (only on life support atm) are not at a level to really support what the ALMS provides, and they aren't quite the same thing either, as the cars in those series are often rather different from those in ALMS' GT categories. Therefore, the ALMS MUST have a greater number of events to keep Sportscar & GT racing on the map in the US.

As to Memorial Day Weekend racing, it is too close to Le Mans Pre-Qualifying (or whatever they call that test session) to allow for ALMS teams to run at Elkart Lake and still have proper allowance for travel time.