About two weeks ago the ALMS posted the broadcast video of the 1998 Petit Le Mans on YouTube. It was a 90min highlights package of the 10-hour race, but it was my first opportunity to see the state of the art in North American endurance racing in 1998, the year before the ALMS came into being. If you haven't seen this race before it is worth a look.
On December 22nd John Dagys announced the date that the combined ALMS/Grand-Am series would announce the new class structure for the 2014 season: At the “Roar Before the Rolex” on January 4th.
What do these two events have to do with one another? Well, back in 1998 there were 7 classes of cars in the race. The reason there were so many was that endurance racing had been on the decline since about 1993, and in order to make up a decent field IMSA had to include cars built to at least two differing rule sets, IMSA's and ACO's. Sound familiar? The very next year, the ALMS began and were able to adopt a single rule set guiding homologation, and the field at Petit Le Mans went from 31 in 7 classes in 1998 to 50 in 3 classes in 1999. Teams were ready for a new series.
The class structure for the 1998 Petit Le Mans should be a guide for this new combined series: accommodate current reality and migrate toward a common ruleset during a short transition period. This is the strategy that I suggested in a previous posting. I hope something like this is what we will get on January 4th. Not many days until we know the answer.
Here are the classes for Petit Le Mans 1998 and 1999. BTW, in 1998 a Ferrari 333 SP (LMP1) won overall but the fastest qualifier was a Porsche 911 GT1-98 (LMGT1) which DNFed.
