Overnight Sensations on The Long Road to Success The trouble with overnight successes is they are hardly ever overnight. Such is the obvious case with South Florida’s Champion Racing, winners of the 2004 American Le Mans Series Championship, also winners of the 2005 Sebring ALMS opener, and the odds on favorites to win Le Mans in June. The Price of Glory As Champion vice-present Don Skuta says, "We’ve made every mistake in the book getting here. When we started we tried to re-invent the wheel by taking a street car and modifying it ourselves into a racer, which didn’t work. Then we got involved in trying to win our class, and finally we concentrated on being a top contender, making all the usual errors in the process". "Today we’ve reached the point where we expect to win, and are disappointed if we don’t. It’s a hard sport, and it takes a tremendous amount of work to go from knowing nothing, to being successful." It also takes money. According to Skuta and Champion owner Dave Maraj, the team will take no less than 50 people to Le Mans in two months, along with its two Audi R8s and the spares to support them. In short, as the man notes, if you want to make a small fortune in the sport, bring wheelbarrows full of cash. Over to you Chris Chris Economaki, the dean of American Motorsports' reporters who has been involved in racing since before the Second World War, decries the situation, contending that the industry can not make it financially on its own, but must depend on outside resources, such as sponsors, manufacturers, and the wealthy to survive. Even though the involvement of car makers and the rich, if not always famous, has been a part of Motorsport since its earliest days, Economaki has a valid point. Consider for a moment that the budgets in Formula One are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and that even the "one-off" Bentley Le Mans effort cost its parent Volkswagen AG in the area of $60 million –this in spite of the fact that cars were largely re-done Audi R8s in theory with roofs on them, one can begin to see what the 84-year-old is talking about. And so it goes So why is this relevant to those interested in the ALMS? The answer is simple; the championship needs new prototypes if it’s going to expand its fan base to the point where it can assure itself of a future. Those in charge of the ALMS have been working hard to assure themselves of a new supply of the headlining 2004-spec (all the current LMP1 entries are 2003 legal vehicles with their life spans extended by fiat to the end of this season) necessary to conduct business next year. So far, there have been indications from the smaller manufacturers like Lola, that they will produce such cars. However, the mainstream manufacturers such as Porsche and Audi have maintained an official silence concerning their intentions. Diesel and Dust In the past several weeks, there have been hints that VW subsidiary Audi will be back with a V-10 twin turbo diesel to replace the R8, a fact, which if true, will bring smiles to the faces of not only ALMS founder Don Panoz, but his management team as well; not to mention the folks at Le Mans from whom the ALMS leases its technical regulations. Still, there are suggestions that Audi will only build its new R10 if there is someone else to race against. And, who might be an acceptable opponent? Why, Porsche of course. The problem is that for as speciality firm like Porsche, the price of developing such a rival is so huge that it only makes sense if the company’s management can be assured that it will be a winner. And, since Audi expects to be in that position, and since there’s not room for two at the top, the question becomes why should the Zuffenhausen-based firm take a chance on what definitely is not a "sure bet." In fact, Porsche’s current management has said in the past that such exercises are like putting money "down a black hole." My friends all drive Porsches In fact, since the company’s overall triumph at Le Mans in 1998, Porsche has focused on developing and building lower GT class 911 GT3 Cup and RSRs, variants of the cars used in Zuffenhausen's own Cup title chases. In total, the factory annually sells between 150 and 200 GT3s of all shapes and sizes, which at an average price of around $ 120,000 for a Cup car and close to $ 300,000 for an RSR, creates a sizable profit center. Now, there are suggestions that Porsche will produce and sell a smaller LMP2 customer spyder before the end of the current season. Reportedly the engineers were told the could move into the prototype arena as long as they could assure management of success, something easily achieved in LMP2 where survival almost guarantees victory, but clearly not necessarily an accomplished fact in LMP1, especially if Porsche finds itself squaring off against Audi. There is little doubt that road racing needs Porsche, with its proven capability of supplying competitive cars to a wide number of hungry customers. Yet, the folks at the ALMS, nor their counterparts at Le Mans and elsewhere can’t promise that what Zuffenhausen comes up with will be an automatic winner, the one crucial criteria for Porsche to launch any such program on the first place. Being There Many enthusiasts have decried the conservative approach taken by Porsche and others such as Ferrari (at least in terms of the sports car scene) in terms of involving themselves at the highest levels of the sport without assurances of climbing to the top of the podium. Yet when one is spending in the tens, or hundreds of millions "to be there," no one wants to explain to the bean counters why one hasn’t exactly achieved the objectives that were the basis for the decision to proceed initially. The Grand American series has solved all these issues by simply limiting technology to an affordable level for its Daytona Prototype category, this resulting in not only ever increasing numbers of these cars, bur close, even entertaining competition among them as well. Even so, for the traditionalists Grand Am’s approach is not necessarily appealing. This is the group that the ALMS is working so hard to please and to expand. Still, the ALMS and its fellows are going to have to find a way to make the financial commitment for the car makers low enough for them to take a chance on losing, as opposed to winning, a difficult task requiring the wisdom of Solomon. |
Bill Oursler |
