2014 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship

[Matt Horst]

So more than half way into the season what are peoples opinions on this? I watched the first couple of races and wasn't impressed, most other people seemed to be the same.

Laguna Seca and Detroit were the best races so far.Over all i think it is decent racing and i guess i am used to all the laps under yellow since i used to watch a lot of nascar.You must watch this race before you say there is no good racing in this series.

 

[Mattross]

Some shots from Road America.

Album:
http://imgur.com/a/c3u5h

Jan signs a bicycle



"Ferrari" Truck



Action Express #5 Corvette DP



Starworks #8 Oreca Chevy PC



DeltaWing #0 Prototype



Wayne Taylor Racing #10 Corvette DP



More:
http://imgur.com/a/c3u5h

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I only watched the last 45min of the race live and finished scrolling through the replay on youtube now.
I think the longest was 30min under green, which is a joke. I didn't time it, but it felt like at least 60% of the race was under caution, that is not acceptable for any racing series and even less for a more "endurance" typed series.

The drivers are one issue especially in the amateur classes, but why the hell needs nearly every caution to be 15min+? Other race and most of them smaller race series have a much better handle on that.

One of the main issues I think is the speed of the Prototype class. The DPs got upgraded and the P2's slowed down and of course the PC's need to be slower than the P class, but that gets them right into the mix of the GTLM. I looked up the laptime gap between PC and GTLM and it is only marginally smaller than in WEC, but somehow GTLM and PC always get together somehow.
I don't follow it closely, but some drivers are really stupid sometimes. The races with only the P and GTLM class were a lot better. I think Long Beach and Laguna Seca had no cautions at all. I don't know how many this race had as I lost count.

They definetely should work more on the BOP. Maybe give the P2 the same weight as the DP as well as the same power, but at the moment a P2 gets overtaken by at least 1 or 2 DPs on a restart (and there are many) and they can't reovertake as they have no tyre temps in the first two laps. On pure laptime they are well balanced, but top speed is so critical for overtaking especially with that many cautions. But I think it is more important to fix the amount of cautions, because without them the BOP would be much better automatically.

 

[johnnymat]

Frederic;
I agree with you about the lengthy caution periods. In fact , I deleted the Road America race from my DVR without watching the end. One of the problems they seem to have relates to the size of the field. There were 53 cars at Road America, and I think they let them pit during a caution by individual class only. That's one of the reasons for the long cautions , and that's something they need to work on. It's still early and I hope they get it right eventually.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Frederic;
I agree with you about the lengthy caution periods. In fact , I deleted the Road America race from my DVR without watching the end. One of the problems they seem to have relates to the size of the field. There were 53 cars at Road America, and I think they let them pit during a caution by individual class only. That's one of the reasons for the long cautions , and that's something they need to work on. It's still early and I hope they get it right eventually.

Yes, I hope so.They have good ingredients, but it is pretty messed up at the moment.
Maybe they need to disallow pitting under caution, because if 4 classes pit individually you are looking at a minimum of 10min caution. Maybe they should just disallow pitting under caution at least in the short races.