Success Ballast: Your thoughts?

[Mulsanne]

What do you guys think about the use of success ballast, rewards weight, whatever they want to call it?

Some series (Speed World Challenge, FIA GT/WTCC) have been doing this for years, but to me it has only become relevant in the last few weeks with the ALMS's "performance adjustments" to the Corvette and other cars.

I am really torn on this issue. As a motorsports "purist," the idea of penalizing those who have built a better car or hired better drivers totally offends me. However, I also realize that, in today's motorsports, we simply cannot have one manufacturer winning every race, or else we're left with something like what's going on in the ALMS, with low car counts and dominant factory teams. We've seen this in LMP1 the last few years, with no one wanting to challenge the mighty Audi. Having success ballast might have enticed at least one or two manufacturers to meet the challenge.

So what's your opinion? Yea or nay? Good for some series, but not for others? What's the difference? Is motorsport a sporting/technical exercise or entertainment?

 

[dougiemeats]

Excellent topic. You mention two instances of success ballast.

One is the systematic addition of weight determined by the finishing position of the car. I'm not a big fan of this. Sure, there will be a different winner every race or every other race, which in turn may make the series "more exciting" to some. But I feel that every car should have a chance to win any given race, despite how they did in previous races. With success ballast, a car that has won the previous 2 races has very little chance of winning a 3rd race in a row. The magic of the "winning streak" is taken away. The good part about this system is that the whole season is a championship fight. It is less likely that a champion is decided only half-way into the season. These make races very exciting to watch. I suppose it is appropriate in some series and not in others. I hope to never see the ALMS, LMS, and JLMC apply this concept.

The other instance is what is happening in the ALMS: competition adjustments. When done right, I actually support this. I have no problem with IMSA letting Autocon and Highcroft shed a few pounds off their Lolas. Last season, when IMSA gave a break to the older GT1 cars (Saleen, Viper, C5-R), I was actually excited about the decision. However, when a bigger team is given the same breaks, this is where I draw the line. Yes, I'm talking about Pro Drive and Aston Martin. They are a high level team and their cars, along with the Corvettes, should not have to be "adjusted" for competition. The competition should be "Who can build a better car, and have a better strategy when race day comes?" In summary, I believe in giving the little guy---the ones that may not have the cash that the big guys have---a break here and there. As much as I want to see an Aston Martin win, let them do the "adjusting" with their car to match the Corvettes. Let them win in the pits or with a brilliant strategy. Don't let them win because you put 176 pounds of weight in every Corvette that's in front of them.

 

[Mt. Lynx]

I have always felt that if "success weight" is in use, they should scrap the constructors/teams championship, and only have a drivers championship.
Simply because the constructor who actually made the best car, is not rewarded for it, but rather punished.

I understand that the fans are important, and the fans wants to see close racing. But do the fans want to see winners that should have no chance if "success weight" didn´t exist? I don´t think so. The recent Corvette vs. Aston is a great example. Corvette has done a wonderful job with their cars, much more so than Prodrive apparently, and now they get punished for it? bad business I say! Things like this could hurt the series commersial value, and it´s also a letdown for the many Corvettefans who actually wants to see the Vettes win every race.
Now, I´m a racing fan, and I´m not biased towards any particular team/constructor, so I don´t actually care who wins, as long as it was a fair fight, but an entertaining dito. And thats where it usually collides; A completley just race is usually not very entertaining. Look at F1, where Ferrari dominated a few years back. No other team was not even close. Now, Renault has that position, and Ferrari has stepped up and can put up a good challange. But this is only two teams! If the title was between four or five teams, it would be great racing every time, but this rarely happens.

Do we have too many (international) racingseries in the world? The answer is yes! ALMS, LMES, JLMC and even FIA GT should join forces! sure, many teams would probably not afford such a worldwide series, but there would be plenty left! And having so many teams and constructorbacked projects would ensure some great, close races.
They did this with GP2, wich meant scrapping the F3000 intl. championship, Nissan World Series, and Formula Renault V6 (IIRC), so it should be doable. The thing with these series were that they were all FIA. I can´t really see IMSA, FIA and JAF/GTA getting along enough to agree on one set of rules...
But a (re)join of Champcar and IRL then? Seems to be on the way! Can´t be bad IMO!

 

[Blake]

I am downright against the use of “success ballast.” If a driver or team have done a better job than the opposition, then they deserve the results they’ve got, and the results that they can get with that package in the future.

It is up to the opposition to do a better job, not to the governing body to penalise those who do well.

Then again, they’d know the rules when they go into the season, and part of the game would be to put up with these penalties. Still, I think it is the wrong way to even out the playing field.

 

[TheCracker]

I understand that the fans are important, and the fans wants to see close racing. But do the fans want to see winners that should have no chance if "success weight" didn´t exist? I don´t think so. The recent Corvette vs. Aston is a great example. Corvette has done a wonderful job with their cars, much more so than Prodrive apparently, and now they get punished for it? bad business I say! Things like this could hurt the series commersial value, and it´s also a letdown for the many Corvettefans who actually wants to see the Vettes win every race.

Trouble is that these days teams/manufacturers put so much money into the sport they want to get some success out of it. If the Vettes are winning everything then good on them, but you can't expect Prodrive/Aston Martin to continue pumping millions into their ALMS program to just come second or third at best, sooner or later they'll just withdraw completely and go elsewhere, which will leave the Vettes to fight with themselves. Winning with no competition at all isn't competition.

Corvette as a brand looks better competing withbalast against other makes than it does entering and finishing a race and winning by defalt because it's the only real competitor.

As long as we have high budgets and therefore a high level of competitiveness in motorsport we're going to need success balast to even things out a little.

 

[m.piedgros]

Up untill a few weeks ago I was "okay" with rewards weight. I too was split on the issue, why penalize those who are doing their jobs best? But, why risk good racing to keep it pure if one manufacturer is going to dominate? But having read an article in the May edition of Racercar Engineering magazine about GT3, my whole opinion changed. There is a way to find the balance of field without affecting the balance of each particular car. Generally when a car is entered in a particular series, the manufacturer or whomever plans to run the car will submit a car that is to fit within the regulations to be scruitenized and crash tested. Now, at that point, the sanctioning body will do their thing and send the car back with a list of changes that need to be made to the car. If this list outlines a performance advantage the first reaction by most sanctioning bodies is, add weight, and or put in an air restrictor. Now, stay with me because my point is coming. The car designed by the company performs optimally without the air restrictions and weight. Cars like Aston Martin's DBRS9 has suffered in the world challenge for a number of reasons (not the least of which is the DOT spec tire rule and lack of downforce, but that is another story for another day.) The DBRS9 is built to GT3 specs which are very different from the World Challenge Specs. As I understand it 200kg (or what, nearly three grown men?) of ballast weight was added which threw off the dynamics of the whole car causing the team running them in World Challenge to baisically rebuild the car. That in itself started my move to the "con" side of ballast weight, though I still do appreciate it for it's equalizing effects. I suppose my real problem with ballast weight came when reading about the troubles another FIA series had in the GT bracket. The FIA GT series faced a challenge with the addition of the MC12 to the field, a fully preped homologation intended for one thing, racing domination. The car in it's original form would have blown the doors off all competition. So through a series of data aquisition exercises, and many fiar reasonable changes to every car in the field (using a ProDrive 550 as the test dumbie, just incase you wanted to know) they were finally able to come to a comprimise, with all teams a little upset with the changes made to their cars. Essentially they added as little weight as possible to some cars, while taking some off others and added air restrictions and the like to some cars while removing some from others. Instead of relying on raceday performance the FIA were able to see the problem in advance and stop it. With excellent results I might add, Maserati got 4 wins, Ferrari 3, Aston and Corvette won two each. Pretty even, despite the odd complaint from teams throughout the year, by the end of it all everyone appeared to be satisfied. Bottom line, cars were very even, parody was a mainstay and still the cream rose to the top, but the biggest part is, all this was done without making teams spend tonnes of money on developing cars to ridiculous horsepower and more importantly weight classes. (By the way the same thing was done in GT2 for this season, things are expected to work even better!) If you want to get the word from someone who actually knows what they're talking about check out the May 2006 issue of Racecar Engineering (hey, Racecar Engineering you owe me bigtime for this plug!!) To conclude, in my humble opinion ballast weight can never be taken out of racing, it is one of the great equilizers, however, do I support the addiont of Success or Rewards ballast to cars, quite frankly no. To me it just means, fast one week slow another. Of course, there are plenty of ways to adjust to the ballast weight and avoid it hurting you bigtime. But, it seems to me the ballast weight adds a great amount of parody, Cadillac and Porsche seem to be mainstays up front in GT and BMW, Mazda, and Acura's big teams seem to be always leading at the end, is that true parody?

m.piedgros

m.peidgros

 

[imsa77]

I am not sure how I feel on this subject. I kind of would like to see no rewards weight added to cars that have one or placed a pretty good overall position. Added weight is not always such a bad thing in a race car. It can allow a team to balance the car a little better by using the weights to their advantage. Yes it would weigh slightly more but they could also get better handling out of the added weight by balancing the car. I like how ALMS evens out their fields by doing restrictor sizes and by overall weight.........ALMS does't add or subtract weight to a car just because they won a grand prix here and there. ALMS will however even out the field as they see needed by allowing a team to run a slightly bigger restrictor or by allowing a slightly lower overall weight. Basically I like how ALMS doesn't do this on a race to race basis.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I think that a number of touring car championships are doing "success ballast" quite well. That is to say that a car is ballasted according to its position in the previous race and/or championship. It does prevent "winning streaks", but it also enables others to catch up quite quickly. Compare this with F1, where the catch-up period often extends into 10 races.

There are also cases where the governing body is using a combination of factors to adjust the relative competitiveness of cars. This needs to be handled very carefully, and to be honest, it's only recently started to be done properly. I like the WTCC's Technical Working Group, which has allowed technical "breaks" to Seat and Chevrolet this season to good effect in closing up the field. They're also being more clever than simply adding/subtracting weight/power. They're working to overcome some of the fundamental design issues with a regular model that prevent it from being a successful touring car. This has led to the Seat Leon being granted a partially flat floor, and Chevrolet have been allowed to re-site suspension pickups. It prevents a manufacturer from spending millions developing and selling a "homologation special" (can anyone say M3 GTR?).

The upshot is that my opinion is in favour of technical regulation - including success ballast - if it's done sensitively.

 

[Blake]

I think that a number of touring car championships are doing "success ballast" quite well. That is to say that a car is ballasted according to its position in the previous race and/or championship. It does prevent "winning streaks", but it also enables others to catch up quite quickly. Compare this with F1, where the catch-up period often extends into 10 races.

Point system. 🤬