There's four sets of rules that I think make sense - 1999 is very much a crossover year for Le Mans rulesets which makes things difficult:
- PD consider Gr.1 to be prototypes only regardless of year or speed, and also consider the existence of the 1998 road car enough to make the 1999 LMGTP GT-One not a "true" prototype. This would put the V12 LMR, Speed 8 and all R8s, including the 1999 R8C in Gr.1.
- PD think LMGTP should be Gr.2, but LMP900 and 1999 LMP Gr.1. This would put the R8C and Speed 8 in Gr.2, but the V12 LMR and 2000s R8s in Gr.1.
- PD think all 1999 Le Mans LM cars should be in Gr.2, like 1995-1998. This would put the V12 LMR and R8C in Gr.2, and the Speed 8 and 2000s R8s could be either as we'd have no information on what they think of 2000s LMGTP or LMP900.
- PD think all other 1999 Le Mans LM cars should be Gr.1, but are making an exception for the GT-One, possibly because they want to keep it with where the R390 would eventually end up for the nostalgia. This would, like option 1, put everything else mentioned above in Gr.1.
Unfortunately any of the above four rules could be true, we don't know enough about how they classify cars to choose until they put another car from the era in.
PD should simply divide the proper prototypes into various categories, it is normal for a car like the GT-One '99 (LMGTP) not to be in Gr. 1 as it is structured now, but it is also wrong to place it in Gr. 2 together with the GT500, which deserve a separate group. So, if it were up to me, I would do this:
1) Gr. 1 > modern prototypes, roughly from 2006/2009 onwards (why do I say 2006/2009? Because in 2006 we saw the first diesel powered LMP car on the track, the Audi R10 TDI, and in 2009 arrived its evolution, in the form of the R15 TDI, and if we had both cars in the game I don't think they, especially the latter, would have far off performance from the R18 '11 which is already in Gr. 1);
2) Gr. 1 "Historic" > GT1 from the late 90s and LMP900/LMGTP/LMP1 prototypes from the early 2000s, let's say until 2004/2005 (theoretically, it would be appropriate to separate the GT1s from the LMPs, but in fact we have only two GT1s in the game currently, McLaren F1 Longtail and Mercedes CLK LM, it would have been better to have other GT1s such as the GT-One '98, the Nissan R390, the Porsche 911 GT1 98 and the Panoz);
3) Gr. C > well the name says it all (here we would find the various Mazda 787B, Nissan R92 CP, Porsche 962, etc.);
4) Gr. 2 > the only GT500s from SuperGT.
But unfortunately none of what I said will happen and so we have to keep the mess of the various groups we have now.
www.thedrive.com
www.hrowen.life
insider-gaming.com
