So I've heard the 24 hours of Daytona was supposed to be big.... (56k warning!)

[niky]

so...

where is everyone?

 

[Tornado]

Wow. They did good this year.
Seriously though, Bernie Ecclestone always said something that probably had something to do with how television is more important in motor racing today than the grandstands are. And Speed shows a good majority of the race on TV live, so...

 

[Roo]

My excuse is I was 4000 miles away without a passport. Adn I was washing my hair.

I'd love to go one year.

I suspect not everyone is up to a 24 hour slog in a plastic grandstand seat, particularly in January. How much are tickets?

 

[Kylehnat]

I suspect not everyone is up to a 24 hour slog in a plastic grandstand seat, particularly in January. How much are tickets?

Furthermore, Daytona is not the most interesting place to spend 24 hours. You can see the whole course from pretty much anywhere, so there isn't much incentive to move around. At places like Le Mans and Spa, you can spend hours just walking around to new areas and vantagepoints throughout the race, which breaks up the race a little bit and keeps things interesting.

 

[ND4SPD]

Well, since I've had contact with someoe who went to it. I think he said the majority of the people were in the infield. Even the announcer of SpeedTV took note of the lack of people in the grandstands and pointed out they were all camping out in the infield.

 

[JohnBM01]

Maybe many of the fans wanted to see the 12 Hours of Sebring instead .

A few things. First of all, it's a sportscar race on a NASCAR oval. Sportscar racing on infield oval courses don't get too many fans. Even though this is Mecca for anyone with the last name of France, and even though a lot of GARRA races are on ovals with road course configurations, you can't really expect a lot of people to show up for the race, even Daytona. So one of three reasons: (1) while the race was big, not many cared, (2) many of them probably wanted to see the Daytona 500 instead, or (3) just a low turn out for the race.

As far as us endurance fans are concerned, Daytona's done. Up next- Sebring. Place well in the race, and you could get that Le Mans invite to race in mid-June.

 

[YSSMAN]

Well, its not that the 24 Hours of Daytona isnt interesting, but it really does not tickle the fancy of many racing fans in the US. I personally would have loved to go down to FLA to spend a week watching build up and tear down of the race, but it is at an awkward time where temperatures arent that warm, people are still recovering from Christmas and New Years, and as with this year, is awfully close to the Super Bowl.

John does make a point... Daytona is a Meca of NASCAR, not GT racing, and being that America is the land of left-hand turns, it could explain the relatively low turnout...

I think there was a thread like this earlier somewhere...

I dont think that it is necessiarily that the races are unpopular with American race fans, its more or less the problem that GM and the like do not use their success in the races to sell cars like they do with NASCAR. I can only think of one time in recent history where any American automaker has done so, and it was Chevrolet to commemorate the success of the C5R with a special paint coises on the base models, and the Z06 recieved special paint and a carbon fiber hood.

Another problem is that the American sports media all but ignores GT racing, but some races do recieve some airtime on CBS and the SPEED channel. That can also explain why F1 is so unpopular in the US as well...

 

[Layla's Keeper]

A few corrections, both John and YSS.

1: GARRA's calendar does not include a majority of rovals. There are only four roval visits on the calendar. Two at Daytona, one at Homestead, and the traditional Phoenix visit.

For the record, the Phoenix 300km/250ml race is actually a holdover tradition from the days of IMSA, and is one of the few races where the GT category and the Prototype category (then and now) split.

The rest of the calendar of 13 DP/GT events are all natural terrain road courses. Some of America's finest courses, in fact. Mid-Ohio, Watkins Glen, Sears Point, and Laguna Seca all have places on the schedule.

2: Road racing success is just as celebrated by American manufacturers as any other. There was the GTS-R street edition of the Viper coupe, the AAR 'Cuda, the 340 T/A Challenger, and a fair few others. The thing about road racing, as it's perceived in the marketing of this country, is that the close lineage of the race cars to the street cars coupled with an often more product savvy fanbase means that the victory itself speaks for the car.

In other words, commerative editions are unnecessary when the car wins because it's already known to the racing public that the car won.

Honestly, the real test of the DP's popularity (or lack thereof) is going to come in March at the Long Beach GP. The Daytona Prototypes will have their own 1 1/2 hour sprint race on the Long Beach street circuit, and it's supposedly going to draw a veritable ton of topnotch DP's.

If the crowds who'll be missing the lamented Trans Am series (God I know I'll be missing the rorty V8's and lurid slides of those beasts. They always put on a brawl of a race at Long Beach) come for the DP's, then we know that the racing is growing.

 

[JohnBM01]

So Layla, you're saying that Trans-Am's loss is the GARRA's gain, then?

 

[Layla's Keeper]

Tommy Kendall, Ron Fellows, and Scott Pruett have all gone on record comparing Daytona Prototypes to Trans Am cars in both performance and show.

The loss of Trans Am creates a large LARGE void in American road racing. Trans Am cars are all brawn and bluster, speed and swagger, and they've become as extinct as ol' T-rex because of Paul Freaking Gentilozzi's rule manipulation.

The phenomeonal sprint races they put on, with topnotch road racers banging doors and swapping positions on every nature of circuit, will live in the American road racing psyche for years, but in the immediate future a series with the same sort of swagger and spectacle needs to step in.

Speed World Challenge has already attempted this, and are coming to Long Beach for their second visit, but the cars are nowhere near as fast as the Trans Am racers, nor do they have the ever-seeming wildness of the Trans Am, and the competition (even with rewards weight) is nowhere near as heart-stoppingly close.

The Daytona Prototypes have a chance to come to Long Beach and steal the show, much in the way that Justin Bell, Boris Said, and Paul Gentilozzi did a few years back with their classic last lap battle.

But no matter what series steps up to fill the void, we NEED a void filler. Trans Am never should have gone away in the first place. It hasn't even been a year since the carb'd V8's were thundering around Burke Lakefront and I already miss them terribly. They're loud, they're brassy, and they're as fast as anything out of the JGTC, DTM, or V8 Supercars.

SCCA Trans American Road Racing Series. 1966-2005. RIP.

Long Live the Daytona Prototype. May its racing be filled with side by side, doorslamming, wheel slipping, heart-gripping excitement.