What Sebring 2013 Told Me

The Tale of the Tires

One of the things I was curious about during this year's running of the Sebring 12hr. was what might be learned about the wholesale change in tire formulae in LMPC and GTC. 

Since the introductions of these two spec classes in the ALMS, they have used spec tires: Michelin for LMPC and Yokohama for GTC. This year, in a preview of changes coming in 2014, both classes are now running on Continental tires. All of the Grand-Am cars run on Continentals, but until now none of the ALMS cars had been using them. How do these tires measure up? Only the team race engineers will know definitively, but I could at least look at some data and see if I can get some indication of what the change means.

So, I looked at data from both the 2012 and 2013 Sebring qualifying results. I took the average qualifying lap times for the entire LMPC and GTC classes for comparison. There have been no major changes in those classes except for the tire change. To get an idea of what sort of year on year improvements (and/or track conditions) might mean, I also calculated the mean qualifying lap times for LMP1 and GT classes. I took the mean of all LMP1 competitors but only the ALMS GT teams (excluding the WEC teams from 2012 to reduce variation). Here are the results:

Average Qualifying Lap Times

I can't draw too many conclusions from these limited data. What I can see, at least for qualifying, is that the Continental tires are not a step backward. While the LMPC change shows a slight improvement, it is in line with year on year progress (or perhaps just better track conditions). The GTC class also show improvement, in fact it shows somewhat better improvement than might be expected year on year (with the usual caveats). The LMP1 class shows a marked improvement over last year, but being true prototypes, that should probably be expected. I didn't look at LMP2 times for two reasons: they too were forced into changing tires this year, not by the organizers but by Dunlop Racing pulling out of the series and they are spec Michelins rather than bespoke Dunlops, making comparisons problematic. All but one of the LMP2 runners are running  Michelins, where all but one were running Dunlops last year.

These results are for qualifying. It says nothing about wear characteristics and fall-off on longer runs. From anecdotes relayed by pit reporters, the LMPC teams seemed happy with their new tires.

Coverage of the Race

First you need to know that I can't get Speed/Fox from my local cable TV monopoly. This means that I was entirely reliant on on-line streaming for my live race coverage. Luckily the U.S. Virgin Islands are considered "International" by the ALMS web site, so I was able to watch the entire race live. I had it better than the stateside fans who were without Speed/Fox, they had no sanctioned streaming alternatives.

Last year the ALMS stream was profoundly broken for the first half of the season as I reported here. This year's Sebring round video was provided by Speed (last year's came from ESPN). Audio commentary for both years were provided by John Hindhaugh and Jeremy Shaw. I had only minor glitches in the stream, but others who attempted to connect after the race began, reported serious problems even getting the main ALMS site to respond. In fact there was a complete outage for everyone late in the race that was reported to be due to a "satellite outage". I seriously doubt that was the actual problem, but the stream eventually did recover. I believe that the web site was seriously under-provisioned; there were reports of over double last year's viewership. Anyway if last year's streaming coverage was an "F" this year's (so far) would earn a "C-"; when you could get on it was fine, but it was difficult to get on. In a 12-hour race I expect minor malfunctions, but under-provisioning is inexcusable.

The fact that there was no live stream available in the home market for the U.S. fans is also inexcusable. Last year you could at least subscribe to ESPN Player for a reasonable fee. Of the remaining ALMS rounds for 2013 only Petit Le Mans will be on Speed/Fox; the rest will be back on ESPN and therefor available on ESPN Player. International fans (like me) can get the ALMS feed. I have also subscribed to ESPN Player in case.

The Race

We had some good racing this year. As I write this, the video of the race has not yet been posted, but the qualifying can be seen here. Next week the full race should be posted. 

There were only four safety-car periods; the fewer of these the better. The race director was very strict and consistent in calling avoidable contact penalties, much to the consternation of those penalized. Perhaps there were some marginal calls, but I think calling them tight during the first race of the season might lessen damages throughout the remaining rounds. It seemed that a similar strategy was being followed during the Grand-Am Daytona 24 back in January; lots of penalties and fewer safety-car periods. I hope this heralds an adherence to these higher driving standards once the ALMS and Grand-Am teams are on the same track in the 2014 USCR series season.

UPDATE: 
Archived video of the 2013 12 Hours of Sebring can be found on the ALMSOfficialVideos channel of Youtube. For some reason they have not yet (31 Mar 2013) posted the race on their own web site.

The United SportsCar Racing series

Finally the merged ALMS-GrandAm series has a name: United SportsCar Racing. It's not the most exciting or imaginative name perhaps, but it has accomplished a couple of important things: we now know what to call it, and probably of more importance, it is not divisive. If the new name had been a derivative of either of the old names, it would tend to alienate fans from the "other" old series. If the name had been to jingoistically "American", it might have turned-off some of the international fan base (but it still manages to get that "U.S." in there). While the new name doesn't excite me, I am relieved that undue partisanship was avoided. I hope this is an indication of the continued ecumenical tenor exhibited thus far by former ALMS and GrandAm principals.

Along with a new series name, the new competition class names were announced today as well. Again the names were unexciting but also uncontroversial:

No further information about the details of the classes were discussed. We still don't know driver regulations for the former LMP2 and LMPC classes. We know that the Prototype Challenge cars will be running spec Continental tires, but will there be any classes with an open tire formula? There were several questions about homologation (particularly with regard to DP/P2 performance balancing), but again no definitive answers were given.

The sole sanctioning body for the United Sportscar Racing series will be IMSA, which gets a new logo. IMSA will also get a "refresh", the details of which were not discussed.

At the announcement press conference, there was a question about series sponsors. Tequila Patron currently sponsors the ALMS and Rolex currently sponsors Grand-Am: who will be the new series sponsor? No definitive answer was given.

There are many things yet to be worked out within the new United Sportscar Racing series before 2014. My hope is that the USR principals mean what they say and continue to try to preserve the "best of the best" of endurance sports car racing in North America.

UPDATE:

The day after the press conference announcing the new series and class names, there was a licensing and partnership agreement between the new series and the ACO. This allows the retention of the name "Petit Le Mans" for the 10-hour Road Atlanta event, and formally retains a connection between the ACO and both the GTLM class and select LMP2-spec cars in the Prototype class.

There are two reasons this agreement that brightens my day a bit: it makes the stated intention to keep LMP2 cars close to the ACO spec (allowing them to be eligible for Le Mans) a bit more concrete, and there is some hope that in the future the USCRS Prototype class will evolve to be more compliant with the rest of the international sports car world. I think it is in the interests of both the ACO and USCRS to cooperate in formulating future regulations.