the auto racing industry is falling apart.

Audi and Porsche are withdrawing from ALMS. Honda is withdrawing from F1. Subaru is withdrawing from all rally.

Shit's messed up.

What the fuck? That's all fucking insane. Especially Subaru / Rally and Porsche Audi / ALMS.

Not seeing Honda in F1 is going to be wierd too.

i can sort of see their point. noone cares about the LMS. In their advertising it's only worth writing Le Mans winner.

awesome. maybe fucking china will field a team of chery-powered cars in f1. the fucking pit crew will consist of 10,000 people that will assemble new parts as needed. first fucking team to total a car on lap 12 and have it completely rebuilt by lap 15.

Aristotle wrote:awesome. maybe fucking china will field a team of chery-powered cars in f1. the fucking pit crew will consist of 10,000 people that will assemble new parts as needed. first fucking team to total a car on lap 12 and have it completely rebuilt by lap 15.

hahaha they'll have the execution vans on stand by for the people that fuck up.

hahaha the fucking pace car will be a death truck. awesome.

I like it myself. I think a lot of these series have gotten way too expensive and too hung up on homologization, commercialization, exclusive deals, strict governing bodies, tight restrictions on car specifications, disallowing personalities, et cetera. You might see things devolved to where a bunch of people who just want to have a fun race and enjoy their cars and their skills, and a bunch of spectators who just want to watch a fun race, might all get together and enjoy an afternoon.

Blowing things up and getting back to basics will be good for motorsports.

this was when racing was actually fun

WHEN WILL NASCAR DIE!!!!

JaysonAych wrote:
Blowing things up and getting back to basics will be good for motorsports.

And for humanity in general.

thewalrus wrote:

JaysonAych wrote:
Blowing things up and getting back to basics will be good for motorsports.

And for humanity in general.

+ 256,742.4

GregTX wrote:WHEN WILL NASCAR DIE!!!!

You'll be happy to know all the teams just laid off large amounts of their staff, including nascar themselves, ratings are down to the point they want to move some races back to cable, and cut the season down, and there will be cup races next seasons that 43 cars will not enter.

JaysonAych wrote:I like it myself. I think a lot of these series have gotten way too expensive and too hung up on homologization, commercialization, exclusive deals, strict governing bodies, tight restrictions on car specifications, disallowing personalities, et cetera. You might see things devolved to where a bunch of people who just want to have a fun race and enjoy their cars and their skills, and a bunch of spectators who just want to watch a fun race, might all get together and enjoy an afternoon.

Blowing things up and getting back to basics will be good for motorsports.

BINGO!!! You hit it on the head.


There are many ways to control costs without bleaching the flavour and starving the personality brought to each racing series.

dudes i don't even care about racing any longer. if they canceled every series, i'd probably not even notice.

Yeah, I barely watch any form of racing anymore, fuck I don't know who races either. The only racing I have seen in the last 10 years that has excitement in it is Australian V8 super cars. I also watched the 24hrs of Bathurst, and watched a 427 HSV Monaro tear the shit out of a 360 Modena several years back, that was exciting as well.

Aristotle wrote:dudes i don't even care about racing any longer. if they canceled every series, i'd probably not even notice.

Yeah. I'm at this point too. In fact I can't even recall what sports I watch anymore. Try to catch a baseball game if I see one on TV once and a while.

racing will survive in some form. what that form will be is going to be interesting. i've still got the nurburgring 24 hour race to look forward to, and sebring should be good. other than that, it'll be pretty bleak. but the sport will survive somehow...

Dakar starts up again in a couple of days. Although I find it a bit ridiculous to call a rally through South America the "Dakar", it looks promising.

Swerve wrote:Dakar starts up again in a couple of days. Although I find it a bit ridiculous to call a rally through South America the "Dakar", it looks promising.

yeah, they've really twisted that one beyond all meaning.

but apparently, it's not longer "safe" enough to do a proper paris-dakar...

I think we need to start back to the basics...........production cars off the lot

SBF wrote:I think we need to start back to the basics...........production cars off the lot

it exists: koni challenge / FIA GT4...

spaced cowboy wrote:

SBF wrote:I think we need to start back to the basics...........production cars off the lot

it exists: koni challenge / FIA GT4...

Yeah and it exists in many other racing series too, but I guess I wasn't specific, I feel that some of the major auto racing leagues should to back to their roots. Some of the best racing I have seen has been with moderately modified production cars.

I would also like to go to a race without being molested by advertising.

they need to pull all of the 1960's vintage Grand Prix racers out of retirement and start running future grand prix's in them.

spaced cowboy wrote:

Swerve wrote:Dakar starts up again in a couple of days. Although I find it a bit ridiculous to call a rally through South America the "Dakar", it looks promising.

yeah, they've really twisted that one beyond all meaning.

but apparently, it's not longer "safe" enough to do a proper paris-dakar...

It's a sad sign of the times when something relocates to South America to avoid terrorism.

how fucking ugly are the 09 F1 cars???

Pennzoil GT-R wrote:how fucking ugly are the 09 F1 cars???

I haven't even looked at them.

hahah what the fuck is that. It doesn't look terrible. Cartoonish though. Especially with that rear wing.

Never mind I just saw it from a different perspective. It looks terrible too.

it looks odd, but no worse than the current cars. and unlike the current cars, it will actually help the racing by permitting the cars to follow more closely to a car in front of them...

just found out all the porsche p2 chassis's due to enter this year's le mans are currently up for sale...maybe none of them will actually be there come june

and the porsches are the reason noone else botheres with p2 anymore

Pennzoil GT-R wrote:just found out all the porsche p2 chassis's due to enter this year's le mans are currently up for sale...maybe none of them will actually be there come june

and the porsches are the reason noone else botheres with p2 anymore

no one bothered with p2 in the first place. porsche stayed in p2 because they didn't have a hope in p1, since unless you ran a diesel, you didn't have a chance at le mans. a lot of teams who ran the rs spyder were also quite dissatisfied with porsche, as the car was ridiculously expensive ($1.5 million a year, for the car itself). unless you were penske, you also didn't get the level of support promised (in a desperate attempt to stave off the acuras, they focused all their development on the penske cars, with everyone else getting dealt with later. that pissed off dyson racing so much, they dumped their porsches (which they haven't even managed to sell, so they're taking a serious loss) and are going to run lola-mazdas).

in the ALMS, on the non-FIA north american tracks, LMP2 had a chance at the win because their power-weight ratio made sense. hence the rs spyder program debuted in north america, and the factory team was in north america. penske aren't being paid by porsche to run in LMP2 anymore, so they're off to grand-am for a year, until the porsche LMP1 will be ready, apparently.

acura ran in LMP2 until they had learned how sports car racing worked, and until they had finished devleoping their LMP1, which debuts at sebring this year (pictures of the car in testing are already online). and apparently scares the shit out of audi...

spaced cowboy wrote:

Pennzoil GT-R wrote:just found out all the porsche p2 chassis's due to enter this year's le mans are currently up for sale...maybe none of them will actually be there come june

and the porsches are the reason noone else botheres with p2 anymore

no one bothered with p2 in the first place. porsche stayed in p2 because they didn't have a hope in p1, since unless you ran a diesel, you didn't have a chance at le mans. a lot of teams who ran the rs spyder were also quite dissatisfied with porsche, as the car was ridiculously expensive ($1.5 million a year, for the car itself). unless you were penske, you also didn't get the level of support promised (in a desperate attempt to stave off the acuras, they focused all their development on the penske cars, with everyone else getting dealt with later. that pissed off dyson racing so much, they dumped their porsches (which they haven't even managed to sell, so they're taking a serious loss) and are going to run lola-mazdas).

in the ALMS, on the non-FIA north american tracks, LMP2 had a chance at the win because their power-weight ratio made sense. hence the rs spyder program debuted in north america, and the factory team was in north america. penske aren't being paid by porsche to run in LMP2 anymore, so they're off to grand-am for a year, until the porsche LMP1 will be ready, apparently.

acura ran in LMP2 until they had learned how sports car racing worked, and until they had finished devleoping their LMP1, which debuts at sebring this year (pictures of the car in testing are already online). and apparently scares the shit out of audi...

i was speaking earlier with a friend who used to run in p2 and its a joke how it has ended up. he used to run a lola and since porsche came along its just been pointless racing against them....and the real cost of going with porsche is more like 5mil a year once everything is taken into account. he still has the 07 lola chassis sitting there and doesnt know if he will bother with it again. p2 wont be around much longer at this rate....p1 is where its at. the 3 Euro RS Spyders and the 3 American RS Spyders are literally sitting there gathering dust waiting for a buyer. the peugeots are already considerably faster than the audis in p1 when they stay in one piece and now everyone is being scared away from F1 Le Mans is the place to be. im thinking of making the trip this year

Pennzoil GT-R wrote:i was speaking earlier with a friend who used to run in p2 and its a joke how it has ended up. he used to run a lola and since porsche came along its just been pointless racing against them....and the real cost of going with porsche is more like 5mil a year once everything is taken into account. he still has the 07 lola chassis sitting there and doesnt know if he will bother with it again. p2 wont be around much longer at this rate....p1 is where its at. the 3 Euro RS Spyders and the 3 American RS Spyders are literally sitting there gathering dust waiting for a buyer. the peugeots are already considerably faster than the audis in p1 when they stay in one piece and now everyone is being scared away from F1 Le Mans is the place to be. im thinking of making the trip this year

it's not really pointless to run against porsche, it's more that no top team outside of the acuras has run a proper entry against them. we could have see that this year, if it wasn't for the fact that everyone is as you said, garaging the porsches. almost no one is willing to spend what porsche is asking, it was a really bad business model. also, i think the number of rs spyder's gathering dust may be 7. there were 4 in the ALMS (2 penske and 2 dyson), plus one sold to a team called CTE (which was essentially a scam). in europe, there were three that i recall (essex, some dutch team i can't remember how to spell, and lista), and of that, team goh has apparently bought the dutch car and plan to run that. i don't know if the lista and essex cars will run, but if they don't, then i think there would be 7 cars not running, out of the total production run of 8 cars. pretty pathetic, but as i said, it was a really bad business model.

le mans would definitely be a good time, and you'll probably have a blast, but i don't know how good a race it will be.

the rules by the way, are changing in 2011. current LMP2 cars will become LMP1, and LMP2 will be the same chassis, but with the engines from the cars currently in GT2 (for cost reasons). supposedly the audi R15, and the acura ARX-02 are both running in 2011 trim now, but that's completely uncomfirmed by anything other than wild speculation...

audi has a new car for this year, but are only running sebring and le mans. at least, that's what they say. if it's true, they're going to get their ass kicked. their strength was always the fact that they ran a full season while their competition did testing. oh well, we'll see what's what come sebring.

bah. i'm frustrated with all of racing.

the 3 euro porsches are still up for grabs so whatever the story is with the other team pen hasnt been put to paper yet. p2 was traditionally the home of the privateers....and now they'd be competing for 4th place. thats why alot of the euro teams feel there is no point.