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Originally Posted by Speed-King
I think many people are too stuck on that "evil empire"-line.
The Frances have been involved in American sportscar racing for a long time, basically since they financially supported John Bishop when he created IMSA in the early 70s.
The Camel title sponsorship for IMSA GT was related to that as well, seeing that Camel and Winston (then of course NASCAR Cup sponsor) are brands of the same company... I also remember reading an article about Jim France being in his childhood a much bigger sportscar than stockcar fan.
And when they took away Daytona from Andy Evans, ALMS was probably just a distant thought at the back of Don Panoz's mind and finally it was Panoz who walked away from the USRRC to found his own series, not the other way around.
All this leads me to believe that the creation of Grand Am was a result of genuine interest in the future of sportscar racing rather than some weird conspiracy to keep ALMS from reaching greatness...
That they would choose NASCAR as a template for their sportscar series was only logical, seeing that in 2002/3, when the concept of the DPs was developed, NASCAR was probably at the peak of its popularity.
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By the same token, I think we can agree NASCAR has never had a genuine interest in making IMSA or Grand-Am anything more than a "road racing" series, a couple rungs below the Cup Series.
Don Panoz walked away from the USRRC, a breakaway series from Professional Sports Car (IMSA). When Don saw that the USRRC wasn't going to be the home to manufacturer teams he decided not to invest his money in a series that he didn't believe in the philosophy of. Therefore he worked with Professional Sports Car (IMSA) to create the American Le Mans Series where the manufacturers could come to play. The ALMS wasn't therefore a breakaway series.
Chris