Re: What's With SportsCar / PTG M3?

["Greg Koenig" <gregk@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Time for me to get flamed hardcore, but hey, this is how I feel.

In my opinion, the whole series is going to hell because of the BMW PTG
team.   When one takes a good look at there competition, you are looking at
Porsches and other cars raced by weekend warriors who are not in the game
for the money, hold real jobs most of the time and have little to no factory
support behind them.  PTG, on the other hand, has a few million bucks behind
them, a whole team of professional race mechanics, drivers who are the cream
of the crop (probably looking for rides in the top level of motorsports very
soon) and full factory support.  Umm, I don't think that such is really all
that fair a set of competition.   There closest rival is the Schumacher
(sp?) Porsche team and if you look at there setup, they are simply dirt
broke when compared to the PTG team.
I appreciate what BMW has done to get the whole PTG thing going, but if they
really wanted to do it properly, I think they would have started in GT2 of
even GT1.  Yes, they sucked in there first year, but it was a brand new car
and once they got the ball rolling, watching them race is sort of like
watching the Harlem GlobeTrotters play against those other guys they travel
with.  
I do not know what, if any, series they could compete in that would allow
them to be a match for the competition, the PTG M3s strike me as a tough car
to match up with some of the other competition series out there.
Unfortunately, when you get one team who simply runs away year after year,
it is tough keeping the lesser teams in the running.  Look at what Mercedes
did with the International Touring Cars.  These C280s were incredible.  They
had a moving weight on the underside of the car that could move back and
forth for acceleration and braking in order to keep it running against the 4
wheel drive cars in the field.  Each one cost something like US$700k and
even had an airbag for the driver!  In the second season, Opal and Alfa
Romeo both dropped out half way through because they simply could not win,
they were out spent, outclassed and outrun.  Look at the effect that the
McLaren, Porsche GT1 and, more importantly, the Mercedes CLK GTR has had on
the FIA GT series.  The GT1 class is OWNED by the CLK GTR and, as such, most
other teams feel pretty happy to get a 4th or 5th.
I think the IMSA Sports Car series might just end up in the same quagmire. 
I do not expect or want to see PTG drop out or anything, but at the same
time, I should expect a multi million dollar factory program to whip the
hell out of a couple of weekend racers.  

Greg Koenig

------------------------------