Quote:
Originally Posted by tux
I think it also has a lot to do with GT3 coming along though. Until that time if you were an amateur driver and you wanted to race GT cars you had 3 choices. GT1, GT2 or Carrera Cup/national level series. Now drivers have the choice of 10s of different championships and the pool of "paying" drivers for ACO/IMSA can decide to pay 100s of thousands of dollars/euros/pounds race against other like minded individuals AND have the chance to win rather than just drive around in midfield against pros.
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GT1 and GT2 were run in various international and regional championships in the 2000's too, just as in the modern era there were dozens of choices. Not only did you have LM, ALMS, LMS, ASLMS, FIA GT, and IGTO, but many nationals run them too, including earlier British and Italian championships. French GT and Super GT even had GT1 cars as late as 2009. Every AM was perfectly fine with running along PROs, remember that both GT1 and GT2 had factory or semifactory entries in them as well as privateers. Neither class was intended for pro or am, but the base car type was the major factor, as it should be. There were rules.
Moving on, they probably will listen to the whines of amateurs here again, after all a guy like Hedman got a waiver that went against FIA rules when he was magically allowed to compete in LMP1 too. LMP2-PRO and LMP2-AM would be a terrible idea, continuing the list of terrible ideas since 2011, but again in the grand scheme of things it would be like drilling a hole into already shinking ship. And also, even though LMP2 as it is is a hollow shell of a spec class, it could stil be worse even with sub classes (= fabricated bop classes like LMH and GTE are always worse to my mind, at least we know that the boring and unchanged Oreca 07 wins by merit every round, even if it is "thanks" to Hughes de Chaunac)
Nonhybrid LMP1s would have been great for ELMS and ASLMS even as late as 2018-19 but obviously that ship has long sailed now