[Deleted]

The Le Mans Series, even at it's hay day years ago when you had the Pugs and other big names in it, was always the nichest of niche series, mere shadow of the ALMS. That's not to say anything about the quality of the series, just that it was obscure little caravan with small fan base. And it's arguably even smaller now with all pro-am fields, second and third division classes and bigger series having surpassed it. You get minor media coverage even in specialist press. It's nice for competitors, but that's it.

So with that in mind, if we were to re-establish new top class while retaining all the other categories as they are now, how exactly would we be spoiling anything that is there currently? If you had even just say three car top class in your series for the first season it would be bad if we were talking of some higher profile series, but for ELMS it wouldn't really damage the outlook of the series when it's merely for nerds anyway. The only, only thing that would change would be the 'downgrade' of LMP2 and how that could/might effect the field size, and I covered that already in previous post. The other pro-am aspects would remain.

But furthermore, if we look at how the ELMS P2 grid count has evolved in this decade

2010 (with LMP1 & 1 race under ILMC)
Round 1 - 12x
Round 2 - 11x
Round 3 - 07x
Round 4 - 11x
Round 5 - 11x (of 13x)

2011 (with LMP1 & 3 races under ILMC)
Round 1 - 10x
Round 2 - 08x (of 11x)
Round 3 - 10x (of 13x)
Round 4 - 08x (of 10x)
Round 5 - 08x

2012 (top class & 1 race under ALMS)
Round 1 - 11x
Round 2 - 09x
Round 3 - 04x (of 08x)

2013 (top class)
Round 1 - 08x
Round 2 - 10x
Round 3 - 08x
Round 4 - 08x
Round 5 - 08x

2014 (top class)
Round 1 - 11x
Round 2 - 09x
Round 3 - 08x
Round 4 - 10x
Round 5 - 10x

You can see that them upgrading to top class hasn't affected the grid numbers at all. Likely downgrading again would neither, for the previously mentioned reasons and because WEC is more expensive and some teams just want to stay in Europe in the first place. The attractiveness of the series should remain. Particularly since the ACO seems to be handing LM invites somewhat generously for supporting the series now.

Anyway, I'm saying that ELMS should be true (preferred) alternative for P1 privateers instead of WEC. We've had many teams saying that entering the privateer side is quite pointless now due to eventually finishing behind all the factories in every race - and no one gives a crap about the subclass, also signaled by P-Light disappearing next year AND people like Jacques Nicolet wanting to get rid of it. So hey, here would be a series for you to win overall. Your arguments for P2 being the overall winners are exactly same as they would be for P1 privateers. Right now, if LMP1 privateer wants to do anything at all, he needs to go for WEC and that means exponentially bigger budget than for ELMS (+Le Mans). So finding budget for something cheaper shouldn't be that hard.

Rebellion Racing is a prime example of a team that has said in public they want to go for overall wins too, and which actually has done so (while still retaining presence in ILMC/WEC). LMS for 2011 after which they were banned from competing in, then ALMS for 2013 after doing one-off appearance at PLM 2012 for the same reason. So yes, there is proof of teams wanting something and then doing it in recent past. And you can't be sure something that something couldn't work if you don't even try.

It's not about "having some small field there in the top" for the sake of having it, it's resurrecting LMP1 privateer prospects in any means necessary from the current hole it's been digged into, and in my mind this would be the most obvious and logical step to do it.