Another DP debate (split)

[nrc]

Very true. Why have all these talented open-wheel drivers ended up in DPs and LMPs? There's lots of paid rides available for talented drivers.

No checkbook needed - there's owners who will *pay* you to race for them, either as part of a gentleman-and-hotshoe team or as part of a sponsored full-on pro outfit.

Because Champ car, Indy car or AMLS are too expensive for those "gentlemen". They would rather fund a DP team and pretend to be racing at the top level of the sport than run a feeder series team where they would be running if NASCAR hadn't decide to "fix" sports car racing the same way Tony George "fixed" Indy car racing.

And that's the end of DP discussion in the Champ car forum.

[FCYTravis]

Oh, but that won't shut the conversation down, nrc, because, as I said, it's far from just being a DP thang - Cosmo drives the Mazda-powered LMP2, Joey Hand and Bryan Sellers are factory BMW drivers for Team PTG in GT2, David Empringham is a GA Cup GS champion in Ford Mustangs for Multimatic Motorsports...

There's a whole pile of recognizable North America feeder series talent that Champ Car team owners have let slip through their fingers, and Champ Car's loss is the gain of every other road racing series in America.

[FCYTravis]

I'm absolutely mystified as to why this post was moved, given that I'm specifically talking about Atlantic drivers winding up in series other than DP, as requested.

"As I said, it's far from just being a DP thang - Guy Cosmo drives the Mazda-powered LMP2, Joey Hand and Bryan Sellers are factory BMW drivers for Team PTG in GT2, David Empringham is a GA Cup GS champion in Ford Mustangs for Multimatic Motorsports...

There's a whole pile of recognizable North American feeder series talent that Champ Car team owners have let slip through their fingers, and Champ Car's loss is the gain of every other road racing series in America."

[FCYTravis]

Mods, might as well delete this split thread because it makes absolutely no sense. There's no "DP debate" - the post above is talking about Atlantic drivers in series *other* than DPs. :saywhat: :shakehead

[Insomniac]

I'm absolutely mystified as to why this post was moved, given that I'm specifically talking about Atlantic drivers winding up in series other than DP, as requested.

"As I said, it's far from just being a DP thang - Guy Cosmo drives the Mazda-powered LMP2, Joey Hand and Bryan Sellers are factory BMW drivers for Team PTG in GT2, David Empringham is a GA Cup GS champion in Ford Mustangs for Multimatic Motorsports...

There's a whole pile of recognizable North American feeder series talent that Champ Car team owners have let slip through their fingers, and Champ Car's loss is the gain of every other road racing series in America."

While what you're saying is true, however, you have to recognize the economic situation of the majority of the teams in ChampCar need the driver to bring money. That is the way it is. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to come up with money in America.

[FCYTravis]

While what you're saying is true, however, you have to recognize the economic situation of the majority of the teams in ChampCar need the driver to bring money. That is the way it is. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to come up with money in America.
The problem is that it creates a vicious cycle. Most (note I said most) drivers who "bring money" to create seats aren't that talented and don't have much staying power. So you end up with a revolving door lineup of no-namers that are gone before anyone notices they were there. The endless string of forgettable mediocrity lowers the quality of the racing and results in fewer people showing up or watching on TV. Fewer people showing up and watching on TV means less sponsorship, so more teams have to go out and find ride buyers...

This isn't so much a problem when you have 26-car grids like Champ Car used to have. You could have 6 or 8 no-namers and not worry about it. But when you've got 16 or 17 cars, those no-namers are half the field.

[Sean O'Gorman]

Because Champ car, Indy car or AMLS are too expensive for those "gentlemen". They would rather fund a DP team and pretend to be racing at the top level of the sport than run a feeder series team where they would be running if NASCAR hadn't decide to "fix" sports car racing the same way Tony George "fixed" Indy car racing.

Is it really "pretending" to be the top level of the sport if the field has more talent than any other form of road racing?

[nrc]

I'm absolutely mystified as to why this post was moved, given that I'm specifically talking about Atlantic drivers winding up in series other than DP, as requested.

"As I said, it's far from just being a DP thang - Guy Cosmo drives the Mazda-powered LMP2, Joey Hand and Bryan Sellers are factory BMW drivers for Team PTG in GT2, David Empringham is a GA Cup GS champion in Ford Mustangs for Multimatic Motorsports...

There's a whole pile of recognizable North American feeder series talent that Champ Car team owners have let slip through their fingers, and Champ Car's loss is the gain of every other road racing series in America."

First of all this was moved out because you don't get to argue with the moderation.

Drivers who don't get a shot or wash out of Champ car have always ended up in some lesser series. That's not relevant to the discussion.

[FCYTravis]

Yeah, ALMS is really "lesser" to Champ Car right now :gomer: :laugh:

You moved a post that, as you requested, had absolutely nothing to do with DPs, simply out of spite. Pathetic. That's all I'm going to say. :thumdown:

[nrc]

Is it really "pretending" to be the top level of the sport if the field has more talent than any other form of road racing?

If you believe that, that's your perrogative. Considering that the talent in Atlatnic is better than it's been in years, you could argue that Atlantic is a top level series by the same logic.

[Fio1]

A season of Grand-Am DP cost a lot less money then CCWS and get a lot more coverage. Also, thanks to Nascar, some teams are introduced to sponsors (Crown Royal, Sun Trust, Playboy, Lowes, Vonage, etc). Besides, you can finance a DP car, good luck financing a Formula Atlantic let alone a Champcar! And, there are manufacture involvement (Pontiac, Lexus, BMW, Porsche, Ford, Etc). You add these factors together and you can clearly see why there are so many new teams in DP. :p

[nrc]

A season of Grand-Am DP cost a lot less money then CCWS and get a lot more coverage. Also, thanks to Nascar, some teams are introduced to sponsors (Crown Royal, Sun Trust, Playboy, Lowes, Vonage, etc). Besides, you can finance a DP car, good luck financing a Formula Atlantic let alone a Champcar! And, there are manufacture involvement (Pontiac, Lexus, BMW, Porsche, Ford, Etc). You add these factors together and you can clearly see why there are so many new teams in DP. :p

"A lot more coverage?" Based on what? Every DP race is on Speed. According to the last figures I saw they draw under 250,000 households per event. Even though most of Champ car's events are on speed, every network race will at least double that figure (as pathetic as that is).

At Long Beach the Atlantic cars were 3 seconds faster and they had 3 more cars on the grid than GA had DPs.

[Fio1]

"A lot more coverage?" Based on what? Every DP race is on Speed. According to the last figures I saw they draw under 250,000 households per event. Even though most of Champ car's events are on speed, every network race will at least double that figure (as pathetic as that is).

At Long Beach the Atlantic cars were 3 seconds faster and they had 3 more cars on the grid than GA had DPs.

Based on the fact that you here more about Grand-Am outside of the racing media then you do CCWS. You see more national TV, Magazines & News paper comercials and ads after each Grand-Am races then the whole CCWS season. Companies like Ruby Tuesday, Playboy and Pontiac are putting a lot of effort into their Grand-Am effort. I'm sorry, but I can't remember the last time I saw 2 different ads in USA Today after a Champcar race. There was a huge Ruby Tuesday ad because they won in DP and a smaller ad because the GTO won in GT.

[FCYTravis]

At Long Beach the Atlantic cars were 3 seconds faster and they had 3 more cars on the grid than GA had DPs.
Yes, and I bet you'll see quite a few of those rising Atlantic stars behind the wheel of Daytona Prototypes in the coming years :)

I missed another DP-driving Atlantic driver - Antoine Bessette had a one-off at the wheel of the #6 at Laguna Seca.

Also, from what I know the Playboy deal didn't come through NASCAR, but from a road racer-turned-marketer by the name of Tommy Constantine.

[chop456]

I can't remember the last time I saw 2 different ads in USA Today after a Champcar race.

Sometime back when there was more than one manufacturer? :gomer:

[cart7]

"A lot more coverage?" Based on what? Every DP race is on Speed. According to the last figures I saw they draw under 250,000 households per event. Even though most of Champ car's events are on speed, every network race will at least double that figure (as pathetic as that is).

At Long Beach the Atlantic cars were 3 seconds faster and they had 3 more cars on the grid than GA had DPs.

As pathetic as that is is right. What good does a .5 - .8 do you on a network buy? What's the ROI for any corporation wanting to support a Champcar team with that kind of network number (and there's only a few of those races) and the rest are .1's or .2's on Speed? Certainly not enough to justify the millions needed to keep a single car on the track for a year. At least GA provides an affordable alternative and has a Cost to ratings/attendance ratio more balanced than CCWS. Whether you like GA or not they provide a racing alternative for corporate sponsorship dollars.

[nrc]

Based on the fact that you here more about Grand-Am outside of the racing media then you do CCWS. You see more national TV, Magazines & News paper comercials and ads after each Grand-Am races then the whole CCWS season. Companies like Ruby Tuesday, Playboy and Pontiac are putting a lot of effort into their Grand-Am effort. I'm sorry, but I can't remember the last time I saw 2 different ads in USA Today after a Champcar race. There was a huge Ruby Tuesday ad because they won in DP and a smaller ad because the GTO won in GT.

Outside of a couple of ads from Pontiac I've never seen any of that. Those ads have never had any discernable impact when it comes to exposure. They never made any difference for Champ car when they had them, they never made any difference for the IRL when they had them, and they don't make any difference for Grand Am now.

The real measure of exposure isn't vanity ads, it's TV sets and butts in seats. Even as pathetic as Champ car's ratings are, one event on network draws 3 to five times more viewers than Grand Am's events on Speed. Grand Am brags about over 200,000 households for a race on Speed. The first Atlantic race of the year drew 166,000 households.

Here's a more subjective measure of media exposure:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=rolex+series%2C+champ+car&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

[Insomniac]

The problem is that it creates a vicious cycle. Most (note I said most) drivers who "bring money" to create seats aren't that talented and don't have much staying power. So you end up with a revolving door lineup of no-namers that are gone before anyone notices they were there. The endless string of forgettable mediocrity lowers the quality of the racing and results in fewer people showing up or watching on TV. Fewer people showing up and watching on TV means less sponsorship, so more teams have to go out and find ride buyers...

This isn't so much a problem when you have 26-car grids like Champ Car used to have. You could have 6 or 8 no-namers and not worry about it. But when you've got 16 or 17 cars, those no-namers are half the field.

You're right. But the current options are don't run or find a driver who brings money. We all hope that in the future, teams won't need driver money and will then seek talent first.

[nrc]

Certainly not enough to justify the millions needed to keep a single car on the track for a year. At least GA provides an affordable alternative and has a Cost to ratings/attendance ratio more balanced than CCWS. Whether you like GA or not they provide a racing alternative for corporate sponsorship dollars. There's no question that the ROI for Champ car (and all of open wheel) has been out of balance for a while now. That's different than claiming that GA gets a lot more coverage.

The question is how to fix it. NASCAR chose to "fix" the problem in Sports car racing by lowering the bar by calling sports racers prototypes so the little guys can play at being big guys. It's the original crapwagon philosophy applied to road racing.

By that logic if Champ car dubbed the Swift 016 a Champ car all their problems would be solved.

[Tifosi24]

It can be argued that Nascar chose to "fix" something by making it less sophisticated, but in the long-run it isn't going any where and likely produces some of the best road racing from a television standpoint. It might not be as clean as some of us would like, but in hockey some people like wide open Euro style hockey and most enjoy fights and physical play.

It is also hard to make the statement that ads aren't going to work when a formula is only a few years old and when it is backed by the most powerful force in North American motor sport. They have marketing and I have the feeling that open wheel racing will never have effective marketing.

[cameraman]

That's different than claiming that GA gets a lot more coverage.

You can hate GA until you head explodes but it won't change the fact that GA has far more sponsors using GA in advertising campaigns than Champ Car has. This year I've seen GA tie in print ads in many nonracing publications, I haven't seen a CCWS tie in in years.

[oddlycalm]

Champ car and the EARL could cease to exist and the DP's still wouldn't amount to anything. It's simply "motorsport product" from the folks that invented the genre.

The number of tie-in ads, the cost to participate...? When were these ever the measures of stature in a racing formula? By these measures the best racing I've seen over the last 40yrs doesn't rate at all.

None of us know if US professional formula car racing will ever get fixed but that's a completely separate issue, and I imagine that's why this thread landed here.

oc

[cameraman]

The number of tie-in ads, the cost to participate...? When were these ever the measures of stature in a racing formula?

I'm not refering to the stature of the series or even its worth as a form of racing. GA as a series is what it is but GA has convinced at least part of corporate America to invest in them and denying that the money exists and calling all involved with GA bottom feeders is not going to fix anything for Champ Car.

[oddlycalm]

I'm not refering to the stature of the series or even its worth as a form of racing. GA as a series is what it is but GA has convinced at least part of corporate America to invest in them and denying that the money exists and calling all involved with GA bottom feeders is not going to fix anything for Champ Car. Agreed 100%