[Speed-King]

I have such hard time believing Oreca would have been operating with loss in terms of 05 and O3R supply in 2015-2016, but even if that miraculously was the case, their supplementary "bonus income" coming out of LMP3 and LMPC, all effectively orchestrated with the ACO, would surely have compensated.

But that's not what smart business men do, propping up a failing program with money from a well-running one.

That being said, I guess you have a point with them making enough money with the 03 and 05. But even if so, there was no guarantee that they would keep on selling cars in sufficient numbers in the future. After all, even once thriving constructors like Spice and Lola ran into trouble over time.

As you sort of pointed out, ACO has one thing none of these other championships and organizers do - the Le Mans 24 Hours. With that card alone you could pretty much dictate what you want, and not to follow the "guaranteed success" models of others. Because let's face it, whatever ACO does you will always get full grid of cars for Le Mans - this is not 1992 anymore.

I'm not too sure about that. I don't remember the exact year, but not too long ago, the ACO actually had not enough entries to completely fill up the ten reserve slots. And that was at a time when the economic climate was somewhat decent.

However, now that they indeed have given up, there is no going back anymore, because the crowd has already settled in for the said guaranteed success.

I wouldn't be quite as pessimistic. Eventually, the current leadership at the ACO will retire, and maybe the next guys will actually value innovation again. It's not a perfect analogy, but the touring car series in both Sweden and Denmark went from running all-out silhouettes to TCR, which despite the BoP requires builders to at least come up with a somewhat decent car. So a series going less spec is not completely unheard of.

Maybe this is a process that needs to happen in small steps, so here is a modest proposal: Provided the ACO see some value in allowing innovation and open competition again, they should set aside a small number (six or so) of slots on the grid for a new class. Let's call it LMP-C, with the C Standing for "constructor". To make sure that this new class does not get dominated by major OEMs, their performance should be somewhere in the vicinity of LMP3. Additionally, the ACO should provide all teams with a spec tub. This, however, would be the only common-part shared by the cars in the class as the rules for LMP-C would specifically require all teams to create their own cars around that tub (much like HPD, Oreca and Pescarolo created their own cars based on the Courage tub). That way, you'd have a cost-effective class that would still encourage innovation - and a good test balloon to determine if more open competition would actually be attractive for teams, drivers, sponsors and fans.