[Purist]

i think there's some misattribution on a number of levels there, plus we don't help ourselves by getting locked into certain preconceptions.

If the argument is that the cars are, or were, too fast, here's something to look at.

Sears Point Lap Records:
2.520-mile Layout
GTP: 1:21.409 (111.437 mph), 1990
Lights: 1:29.064 (101.859 mph), 1990
LMP900: 1:20.683 (112.440 mph), 2000
GTS: 1:30.621 (100.109 mph), 1999
2.530-mile Layout
LMP900/675/1: 1:21.688 (111.497 mph), 2005
GTS/1: 1:28.042 (103.451 mph), 2004

So it seems, if there is an issue, it's not outright speed, but how lap time is made, and/or the interplay between how it's made within the different classes. In general, you'd expect that the focus has turned more toward aero relative to power, and hence, top-end speeds have dropped while cornering speeds have increased. In a number of cases, the cars have also gotten heavier, which means the ability to lay into the throttle and cleanly slice between cars has quite possibly been reduced.

And just to get this out of the way, those Grand-Am races at Sears Point were DP-only affairs, and those were big, heavy, draggy, comparatively under-powered machines, a bit like the old IRL Indy Cars, which weren't that great at road racing.

The changes to the track in 2001-03 maybe hurt things a little. Taking the front stretch off of the drag strip made Turns 12 and 1 more abrupt, and more confined with the walls there on both sides. Also, in 2002, the ALMS started using the "Budweiser Bottleneck", that extra lobe there on the exit of the Turn 7 hairpin; this is what increased official lap length slightly. Still, the main choke point is just that squiggly bit there between Turns 7 and 8. Turn 10 is single-file, but you're through there pretty quickly. The rest, while a bit on the tight side, can be negotiated two-abreast, even Turn 1; actually, it rather reminds me of the madness in the turns at Mosport, especially during the 2007 and '08 ALMS races when you had the LMP1s (mainly the Audis) and LMP2s zipping around the GTs, and they had to make that work without any paved run-off outside Turns 1, 2, and 8.

One absurdity now is, it's been outright stated that newer tracks are designed to give some driving challenge, while also offering at least a few clean, conventional overtaking opportunities. The funny thing is, well, how's that been working out for F1? (They're the main ones getting these new tracks designed for them, after all.) But this can play into a certain mindset, and what I mentioned earlier about not getting locked in, because the racing suffers if drivers become less creative in their race craft, and stick to these preset, conventional notions.

Furthermore, we end up screwing ourselves in the expectations game when we take this "conventional overtaking points" philosophy too much as gospel, analyzing every track too closely, and even demanding that these sorts of corners, complexes, and setups be made common place on tracks that are going to continue to be used.

I might add, having too confined a track design philosophy will lead to even more homogenized car design to take better advantage of the one, anointed style of racing that has been chosen. Track design, at least at the top levels, has been criticized for some time already for being too homogeneous in nature.

There's also just the general issue in racing that, I think drivers have become less cooperative overall. You see the guys make it through the old, fast, first iteration of the Portland chicane during the 1984 CART race; that wouldn't happen today, there'd be a crash, like there usually is in the current version of the Festival Curves basically every year. In addition, while everyone has a "right" to be out there, as long as they're not an undue hazard, I'd say there's been more of a tendency in the last 10-15 years for drivers in slower cars, whether in the same or another class, to be more strident, and even sometimes belligerent, when the leading cars come up on them. More of a sportsman's attitude, as opposed to that of a generic celebrity, would be a good thing, and a driver can do that without being a pushover.

And a final note on the current LMP1/LMP2 situation. Even 20 years ago, it seems like the big stack-ups tend to happen at those conventional overtaking points, where you have the large compression of the accordion effect into a heavy braking zone. Just a fun little observation. And again, I have to laugh with the way talk of closing rates has changed. Now, they're probably down to saying a 30-mph differential is huge, whereas at the start of the ALMS, it was 50 mph. And then you think back to the '60s and '70s, when the closing rates, particularly at Le Mans, could be 100 mph. It certainly provides an interesting perspective.