Driver ratings should be downgraded altogether

It’s that most wonderful time of year in the world of sports car racing where teams are trying to put programs together for the following season. The problem is, the economics of putting it all together can be complicated, especially given what could be a drinking term in sports car racing: driver ratings.

If you’re unfamiliar with the process, here’s a brief primer. There’s four such ratings available: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. You might remember earlier this year, each was mentioned in a blog post about how many acronyms there are in sports car racing. 

In theory, this is how they should work. Key words “in theory:”

• Platinum: Primarily factory drivers and other universally accepted paid professionals
• Gold: Paid professionals or junior series professionals who are not yet with a factory outfit
• Silver: Top-level gentlemen drivers who do not derive their sole income from racing cars
• Bronze: Newer gentlemen drivers who are often lacking in experience

Now do all drivers applicably fit within those categories? It’s a yes-and-no type thing.

There’s several problems with the current formula as it is.

JUNIORS MINTED? 

For one, if say you’re an up-and-coming junior formula driver in North American open-wheel racing, you’re likely classified as a Gold (Matthew Brabham and Stefan Wilson would be two good examples). If you’re an up-and-coming junior driver in sports car racing, you’re likely a Silver (as Sean Rayhall was for 2014, before being bumped up to Gold for 2015).

A strange situation that occurred this year though, was that Porsche Junior drivers Connor De Phillippi and Alex Riberas were ranked differently. "CDP" was a Gold, Riberas a Silver, and thus Riberas held more value given his rating. 

Now in theory, if you’re a junior driver lacking for sports car experience, regardless of whether you’re coming from the open-wheel or sports car world, or another arena altogether, you should be classified the same. It shouldn’t be split down the middle between some being Golds and some being Silvers. Whether the one choice is a Gold or Silver is a matter of opinion.

The gentlemen driver will likely tell you that racing against “fake Silvers” – drivers that have outright talent but are unheralded, unheard of in North America or simply fly under the radar – does them a disservice because they’re not racing against equal competition.

The up-and-coming junior driver will probably argue that because he or she may not be at an equal level of sports car experience compared to an Andre Lotterer or Scott Pruett (diverse examples, but basically two top-level Prototype drivers in either FIA WEC or TUDOR), they shouldn’t be ranked as such, for at least their first full year in the championship.

As it stands now, both types of drivers get screwed. In an arena where an “Am” driver is required, teams may opt to bring in a “fake Silver” – a Pro who for whatever reason doesn’t have one of the two Pro ratings – to optimize the car’s lineup. This is a course of action that you can’t fault teams for, because that is how the system is set up.

This hurts both the Ams and the Pros. The Pros lose out an opportunity by the fact the class isn’t designated to allow for them to have a shot full-time (or even in some endurance races), and some Ams lose out by the fact they have to race against Pros.

So the blurred lines, worldwide, fixate on what makes one driver a Silver and another a Gold, even if he or she have similar resumes.

ONE AM, TWO AMS, FAKE AMS? 

Another problem? The type of lineup. Until a team knows what type of lineup a class requires - i.e. One Silver or Two Silvers, one Bronze, only one Platinum/Gold or whatever - it may not know where it can compete.  

This has the knock-on effect of a team perhaps wanting to run a car in one class but not having the lineup with which to do so. An example this year, albeit an extreme one: Bret Curtis had an accident at this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans practice day. The ProSpeed team with which Curtis, a Bronze, was running with Platinum-rated Jeroen Bleekemolen and Silver-rated Cooper MacNeil were scheduled to race in an older Porsche 911 GT3 RSR in the GTE-Am class.

As the team sourced a backup car to replace its injured one, they could not source a suitable Bronze-rated driver replacement to replace Curtis, who was ruled out. So this made for the abnormal situation of a two-driver lineup, with the car then moved into the GTE-Pro class (no driver ratings restrictions) in a car that was intended to go for a top result in GTE-Am. As it turned out, Bleekemolen and MacNeil completed an ironman 24-hour stint on their own and ended fifth in GTE-Pro, for a better result than would have been the case in GTE-Am.

But great as that story may be, it's still confusing to the masses unless you're massively engaged in the day-to-day inner workings of how complicated it is to make lineups work, given the rating restrictions. 

SWITCHING IT UP

Then there's another problem - changing driver ratings in-season. Granted, it didn't happen a ton last year, but it happened enough to affect several drivers last year, which prevented possible opportunities. Again, it's a case of if you're going to have them, at least keep them consistent and level for a standard period of time. 

ULTIMATELY, THIS IS A MICRO PROBLEM AFFECTING ON A MACRO LEVEL

The greater problem? The fact that you seemingly need an degree in advanced mathematics or an acute awareness to study formulas for what makes a lineup, a lineup, not only prevents drivers from getting opportunities, but unnecessarily complicates the process on the whole.

In an ideal world, driver ratings should be downgraded to just Pro or Am, if not abolished altogether. It’s unlikely to happen, but it would make things so much simpler.

I can’t tell you how many times this past season I thought or asked, “Wait, is that lineup good to the regulations?” Sebring this past year saw nearly half the GTD teams need to switch their lineups last-minute to comply.

It hurts from an optics standpoint – if you can’t reveal who is driving your car until the last minute, how are you supposed to do advanced promotion of it and thus help grow your car and brand awareness?

It’s confusing from an organizational and statistical standpoint – remembering which drivers are Gold and which ones are Silver can make your head spin. I’ll usually know which drivers are Pros or Ams, but there are definite times where I’ll need to check the list to view the ones that aren’t as straightforward.

Sometimes with the reasoning behind certain drivers is questionable. For instance, if you’re over 50, you can be classified as an FIA Silver – this includes ex-F1 drivers such as Stefan Johansson and Martin Brundle, respectively.

Earl Bamber, through no fault of his own, seems to be the poster child for a rating mismatch as he’s currently listed as a Silver. The New Zealander has won the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia, and most recently, Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup titles this year. He is a pro, and a badass one at that, but somehow has been misclassified.

This rates him – and the ex-F1 drivers over 50 that are eligible – equal with a majority of tech gurus and other businessmen who typify the words gentlemen racing drivers.

For a comparable NASCAR example, it would be like saying Terry Labonte, a two-time Sprint Cup champion who is now 58, would be the equivalent of a John Potter, the am, team owner, and savvy businessman that runs Magnus Racing. But Labonte wouldn’t be the same rating as longtime Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon, even though they’re both series champions. Because that makes sense.

The bottom line is that it’s hard enough for sports car racing to get recognized in this country as it is, beyond the small, core group of media members and slightly bigger, but still small hardcore group of fans.

We spend our days asking “how does this driver fit this lineup” rather than “how can we better promote this driver, knowing he or she will be part of this lineup?”

Driver ratings don’t help the problem. You’re either a Pro or an Am. You need both for endurance sports car racing to be sustainable, but you don’t need to cloud the picture by having questionable ratings for some inadvertently screw the pooch for others.

But is simplicity so much to ask for? Yes, because this is sports car racing, and the word simplicity might as well be from another language.

Pausing From a Virtual Blur for Real Talk

You don’t realize how fast life moves until it stops – or until you’re forced to deal with something that takes you off your normal groove, your rhythm and your flow.

I write this now, on a random Monday evening, only because the time has come for the fast-paced, frenetic nature of the last several months to pause, properly reflect and attempt to decipher the madness.

From the last weekend of April through the third weekend in June – in total, April 21 to June 21 – I did not have a single day off. Not even a weekend day. There were nine consecutive race weekends – seven on site (Barber, Monterey, Indianapolis twice, Detroit, Le Mans, Road America) and two more I covered remotely from home.

What was meant to be a several-week break at home in June turned into just a one-week break as I got a family health scare, and immediately headed to Phoenix for an indefinite period as I didn’t know how my close family member would be. Mercifully and fortunately, he’s much improved since.

The flow has since returned with trips to Toronto, Mid-Ohio and Road America again… and then Saturday night, while having an enjoyable evening out with friends, a work colleague calls me at 12:30 a.m.

You never want to get a call at 12:30 a.m. under any circumstances.

And this was the first I’d heard of the Tony Stewart news, with his car striking and ultimately taking the life of young Kevin Ward Jr.

What has followed in the two-plus days since has been something that’s been perplexing and difficult to comprehend all at once.

I’d been at Road America on assignment this weekend anyway and the news there – while relevant to the series, media, fans and stakeholders on site – just seemed off on the actual level of importance in the racing world at large. All the while my colleagues on the MST side busted their asses to cover the coverage, and then I came on board for more analysis, reporting and three last-minute radio interviews today.

The perplexing thing is that when a situation like this evolves, you’re kind of boxed into a Catch-22 corner.

The eternally hungry beast that is the Internet thrives and survives only on new content, and frequent new content.

And frankly, amidst the professionalism you see from the racing reporting pros, you also see a ton of shit both in articles and on social media. 

You have respected media members in the NASCAR and racing world who are writing reasoned analysis, with disciplined reporting, and accepted standards. Frankly, our editors would beat the hell out of us if we didn’t – and they should.

And then, as they seemingly always do whenever a tragedy, bad accident or otherwise controversial moment in racing occurs, the passerby national media roll up in their loud, obnoxious Hummer H2 (you get the idea) acting like they run the joint.

Generally speaking, they lack any sort of context, clue, understanding or appreciation but then they opt to not only chime in, but chime in loudly and in full color on your 1080P HDTVs, or whatever the latest trend is in viewing. Or on their websites. Or both, because convergence and new media.

And then there’s the comments section. Oh, the comments section. It’s filled with kings and queens of the basements, many who possess a Bachelor of Arts in Name Calling and a Master’s in Epic Lack of Decorum. Much wow.

I’m usually not in favor of starting wars, but I’d gladly support a unilateral military strike on the comments section.

Anyway, with the Stewart/Ward story, only they know what happened, and we’ll know more only when the full investigation is complete.

What we can gather from the admittedly shaky YouTube clip – if you have had the misfortune of watching it – is that it’s dark, Ward had a dark firesuit, dark helmet, walked onto a hot track and was collected. Also, visibility on the right side of sprint cars? Generally sucks. Anything more than that is not for us to write or for us to attack in the court of public opinion.

I first met Tony Stewart as a then 7-year-old fan at the old IRL “Test in the West” at Phoenix International Raceway in 1997. Stewart and Arie Luyendyk were cracking jokes, going back-and-forth about how they’d handle the new IRL car, and giving this kid a thrill of a lifetime by talking to me, signing autographs and making sure I was back for the race. That year, Stewart nearly won but lost to Jim Guthrie in what was one of the IRL’s greatest ever underdog stories.

I haven’t had the chance to get as close to Stewart other than a brief interview I had with him at the Barrett-Jackson auction in 2007 – my second full year as a reporter. But I know from the sources I’ve spoken to that Stewart, despite the rough edges, occasional bad temper and mistakes he’s made, has a good heart and never in hell would do something like this intentional.

The suggestion that anyone behind the wheel of a race car would do so is asinine, as well. Remember these are professionals, running anywhere from 100-1,000hp beasts and they’ve got to know how to control them. All the while knowing that one mistake could not only affect them, but also their competitors.

The point of the above preamble is that my family got me into auto racing, I’ve been a fan for almost 20 of my 25 years and I’ve been fortunate enough to have made a career writing about it for the last nine.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is from my old mentor at Michelin, John Love, who taught me the phrase “who owns the news.” And in this Stewart/Ward story, that is only the officials investigating this case, nothing more. Our job then is to tell the story purely on facts and not on conjecture and misinformation.

As current media members, we’re slaves to the rhythm. The beast needs feeding, but frankly, sometimes, I wish it didn’t. It’s hard to put your mind to writing quality copy when a driver has lost his life and another one could well be scarred for life. But that’s our job.

There’s the other part about the rhythm of feeding the beast, and that’s what it can do to personal relationships.

I’ve had some family relatives in town off-and-on for nearly a month, and the fractured nature of knowing when news happens and being on call almost 24/7 to cover it – we again refer here to the 12:30 a.m. phone call I received Saturday night – can put a strain on those relationships.

You want to spend as much time with them, appreciating the actual real world relationships instead of being slaves to the virtual world of writing, tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming and on down the line. Because our real world life can be affected by our virtual numbers – notably the number of likes, shares and retweets.

And it’s moments like this – when you’re dealing with tragedy that it takes your mind off the real focus – family, friends and real world relationships.

This year, the biggest thing I have struggled with is finding that real/virtual balance. It's been severely out of whack. 

The point of this random stream of consciousness, after you’re probably like Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and you’re thinking, “Hey, DiZinno, have a point – it makes it so much more interesting for the listener!” is this:

In the hierarchy of importance, our real lives must take precedence over our virtual ones. While we, as reporters, must strive to maintain journalistic excellence and do our best on every story we write, we have to let the facts play out as they do and cover when it’s important to do so, not merely just to fill air time or web space.

To close, I can only echo the thoughts of the now late Robin Williams, whose untimely death this evening is another blog post unto itself given his circumstances, in Dead Poets Society:

Carpe, carpe diem.

Why Long Beach is amazing

Few racing events hold as much allure, glamour and memories for me as the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The race celebrates its 40^th running this year, and although I’ve only been alive for just more than half that number, this year’s will already be my ninth time attending – more than I have for any other race.

With that, I hope you’ll allow for a brief indulgence of a trip down memory lane to some of the events that made me a racing fan, and eventually led to my career as it has developed. Long Beach was never my home circuit except for one year, but it has long been my favorite stop on the Verizon IndyCar Series calendar.

Of course you’ll allow it. This is my blog, dammit, and I can write whatever I want ;-)

1998: FIRST TIME ATTENDING, AND TWO DRIVERS STAND OUT

The 1998 race featured my intros – I was then 8 – to the spectacle that is Long Beach. From the chance to meet my heroes in the CART paddock and get autographs, walk the track and discover the sight lines, stay at the legendary Queen Mary on the south side of the circuit and then watch a thrilling race, it was part of what helped root my passion for open-wheel racing.

Two drivers stood out. The first was then-21-year-old Mexican driver Michel Jourdain Jr., driving for the underdog Dale Coyne Racing team that was then partnered with the late, legendary Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton. Jourdain was an unheralded but promising young driver who, when he punched above his or the team’s weight, instilled the joy of seeing what happens when the established top dogs get tackled. We met at the Queen, and have stayed in touch since.

The second, of course, is race winner Alex Zanardi. After falling behind early in the race and getting caught up in a traffic jam at the circuit’s most iconic/notorious corner – the final hairpin leading onto Shoreline Drive – Zanardi mounted a phenomenal comeback that culminated with a pass of Bryan Herta at a place that seemed ridiculous. Then Dario Franchitti followed him through. Zanardi did the donuts at Turn 1 after the win, as my dad and I were among the near 100,000 or so fans cheering from the grandstands.

1999: AN ARRIVAL, AND ANOTHER CHANCE MEETING

As I posted earlier this week to MotorSportsTalk, the 1999 race was the time the North American audience really got introduced to Zanardi’s replacement at Target Chip Ganassi Racing, Juan Montoya. Montoya’s win was among the highlights but more so, and one that’s stuck with me with each passing year, was a chance to meet the late Greg Moore at the Long Beach airport leaving on Monday.

I’d developed a habit at that point of just jotting down reports after each race – my handwriting was entirely more legible – and drawing the cars. I happened to have one with me that race – Moore’s win at the 1999 season opener in Homestead – and showed it to him, and he was speechless. He was a kid himself – one destined for greatness – and I’ll never forget the smile on his face when he saw the similar level of youthful passion for the sport. Tragically, the world never got to see what he could truly accomplish after his fatal accident at Fontana that Halloween.

2003: JOURDAIN, ALLMENDINGER’S BIG WEEKENDS

Remember Jourdain, who I mentioned earlier in this piece? Michel had played himself into a top-flight ride after six years learning his trade (a luxury not afforded in modern-day IndyCar), with Bobby Rahal’s team. He’d shown flashes of brilliance in his first season with Team Rahal in 2002, but it was in 2003 when he took it to the next level.

Long Beach should have been his first victory. He took his first pole although Paul Tracy got the jump on him at the start, but played a smart strategic race to be in position for the win ahead of his last pit stop.

Oh, that last pit stop. It still bugs me to this day. The gearbox stalled out and it was game over – meanwhile “PT” waltzed to his third straight win to open the season. For Jourdain, who ultimately finished third in that year’s Champ Car standings, it was one of only two races he failed to finish in the top-12 points-paying positions (the other, coincidentally, was the other race I attended that year at Road America. Maybe it was my fault? We’ll see later.)

There were a lot of then young up-and-comers I met that weekend, too. A talented Californian named AJ Allmendinger won the Formula Atlantic race, in a field that also included this notable names: Danica Patrick, Ryan Dalziel, Joey Hand, Alex Figge and Luis Diaz among others. Champ Car had two rookies named Sebastien Bourdais and Ryan Hunter-Reay, who eventually went onto win championships.

Discovering the young drivers, and meeting them before they become the big stars, is undoubtedly one of my favorite parts of my job. That weekend did a lot of it for me.

2007: AGE IS JUST A NUMBER, OR IS IT MORE?

This was a funny one. I was 17 at the time, and hadn’t been to Long Beach in four years. I was into my second season contributing to Motorsport.com on Champ Car and the IRL.

Yet even though I was a budding media hack, I wasn’t yet eligible to ply my trade in the media center. You had to be 18… probably to ensure you didn’t take any of the food away from the veterans. So Dad and I took it in as fans, and I met at least three Atlantic drivers younger that me who’d be racing on these same streets: John Edwards, Adrien Herberts and Matt Lee.

More young guns I met during that weekend? How about all of JR Hildebrand, Simona de Silvestro, James Hinchcliffe, Jonathan Bomarito and more, who were like those three in the Atlantic field and would eventually go on to bigger and brighter careers.

The other funny part of this weekend was that I’d gotten my first invite for a RACER Magazine party, even though I wasn’t eligible to write about it! Multiple meetings occurred there in an all-around fun night.

On-track, I think this was the year astronaut legend Buzz Aldrin flipped his car in the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race. Then “PT” hurt his back in the new Panoz DP01-Cosworth, and Oriol Servia came to the rescue to replace him.

The Champ Car race itself was uneventful compared to the other three I’d been at – Bourdais won and Servia was second – but it was the weekend itself that was a blast.

2010: THE MEDIA PAYOFF

After four prior trips, this was the first time I was able to go to the media center – life goal accomplished. It was my second race working with the Michelin PR/marketing team, and night-and-day difference between it and the first race at Sebring.

At Sebring, you have 6 days of work. At Long Beach, you have exactly 3 on-track sessions. It’s relatively laid back – as much as it can be for working.

On-track, the race came down to an epic scrap between Simon Pagenaud in the Highcroft P2-spec HPD and Adrian Fernandez in the P1-spec Lola Aston Martin, which is one of the most gorgeous sports cars to my mind in recent memory thanks to its flowing nature, lack of the rear engine cover “Shark fin” and shrieking, piercing V12 engine.

Pagenaud – who was then a rookie in Champ Car in ’07 – put on a comeback clinic to catch and pass Fernandez for the win on the last lap. It remains one of my all-time favorite finishes, although it isn’t as widely heralded in sports car lore because it occurred at a track better known for open-wheel racing.

2011: A RELATIVELY UNEVENTFUL WEEKEND, SAVE FOR ONE BIT

There’s not a ton I can recall about 2011 quite honestly. Like in 2010, I left on the Sunday to get home early. There was a chance meeting of Patrick Carpentier, ex-open wheeler, but that was about it related to the race.

However, that weekend was where I was told by RACER’s Laurence Foster there was a potential web editor position opening up, and I’d be graduating in a little more than a month…

2012: #BLAMETONY, RAIN, RACER, AND A DOUBLEHEADER

OK, so 2012 was another level of Long Beach for me. For one, the RACER gig had actually materialized, but we were in flux as an organization. Haymarket sold to RACER’s original founder Paul Pfanner in March, which saved the company but put some pressure on us to perform from a media side.

In my case, I’d have extra focus to cover the IndyCar and ALMS races in detail, as well as do some magazine interviews. Plus we had the RACER 20th anniversary party. It was going to be busy.

Then… well… there was the weather. Since I had moved from Milwaukee to Orange County to take on my new post at RACER, the inside joke was that I had brought the crappy overcast, cloudy skies and rain with me. My two buddies, Efrain and Eversley, said “it’s @tonydizinno’s fault,” then #BlameTony, and the hashtag took off from there. Heck, I believe the post on that #BlameTony weekend got the most page views ever of any post ever written in this space.

On-track, ‘ol Pagenaud damn near pulled off another one. He put in a storming comeback to almost overtake Will Power for the win, but just ran out of laps. Meanwhile Hinchcliffe inherited his first career podium after teammate RHR was docked for hitting Takuma Sato on the last lap.

2013: TWO HATS, DIFFERENT WORKLOAD

With a change of jobs in the winter between 2012 and 2013, I entered Long Beach a year ago as one of four writers for MST, and also had taken on the role of PR rep for the radical DeltaWing. Although Long Beach for me last year was the beginning of the end as far as the DeltaWing went… I’d gone to Atlanta on a day trip the Friday prior to leaving to basically tell my boss it wasn’t the right fit between the two of us. I’d do Monterey the following month and leave it at that.

As such, I had to bolt out of Long Beach on a redeye Saturday night to get back to Atlanta for another test of the car, the first time Katherine Legge drove the chassis. It was an interesting few days…

With all that in the bag, roll on 2014. I’m stoked to be headed back once again.

And by "stoked to be headed back," I mean I'm already here and now I'm wondering why exactly I left Southern California when I lived here... 

2014: A strange start

This year marks (hard as this is to believe) my 19th year as a fully-fledged motorsports fan (1996) and my ninth straight working for a media outlet covering the sport (2006). And to be honest, I can’t remember a year getting off to as strange a start as this one has.

What follows is a random stream of consciousness from a series of observations gleaned from both North American racing and across the pond…

Almost nobody in sports car racing is happy. At least in the IMSA ranks. If you’re a driver, team, official, media member, partner or fan, there’s something that’s grinding your gears. It could be driver rankings (a convoluted process to determine who can drive where), Balance of Performance (a process to figure out how to best equalize a wide variance of machinery), officiating, safety, quality of driving, budgets, some combination of the above factors or something else altogether. I’m not smart enough to come up with any solutions other than to try to think, for a second, what got us into this crazy line of work to begin with and try to recapture that essence of what made it fun, rather than what’s making it miserable. To me, that’s the variety. Because the variety is fun, and it makes up for the approximately 726 acronyms currently in play.

The points, they are a-changing. NASCAR, Formula One and now IndyCar have all opted to shake up their points systems. In NASCAR, it’s a new Chase (version 4.0) where winning means everything, except it doesn’t, because likely three or four of the 16 Chase spots will still go to guys who haven’t won and have the most points not already locked in. And that’s before we even get to the Chase itself and eliminations. F1’s gone for a completely bonkers “let’s make Abu Dhabi worth double points” idea, because … well I have no idea what they’re thinking and the reaction against it was largely swift and visceral. Just this week, IndyCar’s opted to make its 500-mile races double points, and adjust qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. As one fellow media member put it, “they operate in mysterious ways at 16th and Georgetown.”

The leadership is changing, too. Bernie Ecclestone could well be on the way out by year’s end of F1, pending his legal battles, which would mark an end of the sport’s longest reign. The battle for political control of the sport is going to be an intriguing subplot beyond the new cars. IndyCar, too, has a wealth of new leadership staff in place ahead of the year, under Hulman & Co. CEO Mark Miles. To their credit, they have Verizon in place as a new title sponsor, and the activation, promotion and technological advancement potential there is off the charts.

Whinging about F1 noise misses the point. The new F1 cars sound different, they’re quieter and they certainly look different (insert your favorite phallic nose joke here). What they aren’t, still, is cheap. It’s more millions of new technology in play. Unless the powers-that-be rein in the spiraling costs there – and the UK’s Motor Sport magazine has put together a fascinating read on what F1 can do to evolve – it’s going to be unsustainable down the road.

Manufacturers hold the ultimate power and influence. Same as it ever was really, but it’s more now to the point as with limited dollars to utilize, where manufacturers opt to race speaks volumes. As has been said on SHAKEDOWN on YouTube, should they race in series that are “show” first, “tech” first, or “product” first? There's also a good take on SHAKEDOWN on series making sure they're running the series as they should. 

The modern driver seems more beholden to their corporate backers. This isn’t entirely new, but it is a shame to write this because from talking to drivers over the last six or seven years, there are still plenty of great personalities. The problem is, perception is such that drivers have to be good for their sponsors first, then good for their own personality second. The death of Gary Bettenhausen this past week harkens back to an era of drivers as pure racers, not beholden to corporate interests first. It’s what makes guys like Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya so great now, as they’re among the last in a dying breed. You think of them with their at-times gruff exteriors more than them as corporate spokespersons.

But at the end of the day, this is still fun. Or at least it’s supposed to be. Seriously what would we rather be doing? Be grumpy in our cubicles, getting the latest memo about how we need to put that new cover on our TPS reports? Going in on Saturday or Sunday because our boss tells us we have to? The amount of negativity I’ve already had to deal with just in 2.5 months in 2014 is astounding, and unlike any year I can remember in the past. I know there are multiple issues. I know things are in flux in the battle for relevancy. But dammit, when I’m at a racetrack, there’s still almost no place else I’d rather be. Something about the sounds, the sensory overload and the aroma of tire smoke leaving pit lane just drowns out the shitty smell of the daily BS and politics. Every day I get to live my passion is a blessing. And as you can see from the lead image to this post, some of the sights at a track, you can’t get anywhere else.

Sports Car Racing: Basically Like the Periodic Table

Remember when you were in school, either in high school or university? There was often a time where a teacher/professor would ask you to memorize a series or list of things and then you’d regurgitate them back for the sake of getting a good grade.

Sports car racing is the motorsports equivalent of the periodic table of the elements. I say that because throughout my own educational career, there were numerous times I’d need to memorize the 100-plus element table, and it’s why to this day elemental symbols like 79-Au for Gold and 47-Ag for Silver still stick. Or 25-Mn for Manganese, but who’s counting.

It’s with that as a reference point that sports car acronyms could be as confusing as the periodic table. Because for all the classes there are that exist in North America (or worldwide, but let’s take this one step at a time), the acronyms do match the name of the class.

There’s just so many that they rival the table in sheer volume and, easy confusion unless you take a substantial amount of time to study them.

So, here we go with “Acronyms 101: A Guide to 2014 Sports Car Racing in North America, and Maybe the World if We Have Time.” Remember, there will be a test on this later.

The first element/acronym that applies to more than simply one championship is BoP (#1). That stands for Balance of Performance. That’s what sanctioning bodies (FIA, IMSA, SCCA, etc.) use to help equal widely varying cars that could range anywhere from V10-powered SRT Vipers to smaller V6 turbos, and anything in-between. It’s not an easy task, and it’s a thankless job … because anyone who doesn’t get the necessary BoP will bitch about it constantly.

Now, we’ll move to the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, or TUSC (#2). TUSC is the amalgamation of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS, #3), and GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series (no acronym here, because it never caught on. People just called it “GRAND-AM” or “Rolex Series”). TUSC is the merged series for 2014 … yet is still in a marketing/branding identity crisis because it began as United SportsCar Racing (USCR, #4) before TUDOR entitlement sponsorship and is also colloquially referred to as TUSCC (#5) in case folks don’t identify SportsCar as one word. Sanctioning body IMSA is #6 on the Sports Car Table of Elements, and has been through several iterations.

So, we’re through six acronyms and we haven’t yet got to the classes yet. Ready, set, go…

The lead class is P (#7), which combines Daytona Prototypes (DP, #8), LMP2 (P2, #9) and the radical DeltaWing (DW, #10) into one class. The DPs are not ACO (#11) homologated; P2s are ACO homologated, and the DeltaWing doesn’t fit into any technical set of regulations. But it has perpetually spawned “Ace and Gary” jokes for the life of its existence given its shape. ACO, we’ll get to again later.

PC (#12) is the second prototype class, combined of spec-ORECA FLM09s, which were introduced to ALMS in 2010. They require a pro-am lineup and have a lower cost than the flagship class; P2 is also cost-capped but not a spec-chassis.

GTLM (#13) is the ACO GTE class racing in America, but because we don’t have enough acronyms, the American series has adopted this name for the TUDOR Championship. Lucky #13 combines GT – for Grand Touring, but that’s not an acronym on its own because it fits into so many other acronyms – with LM for Le Mans. Most of these cars can go to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which is run by the ACO, if they so choose.

GTD (#14) is not a GTE class, but instead GT Daytona, which combines 2013 Rolex Series GT class teams and 2013 American Le Mans Series GTC (#15) class teams. Rolex Series GT cars, except for the Porsche GT3 Cup, were eligible to continue into this class, as were ALMS GTC teams except not with their Porsche GT3 Cups. Porsche created an all-new car for this class, just for North America, the aptly named Porsche 911 GT America. This is a pro-am class and has the highest number of cars entered, north of 25, for the 2014 Rolex 24 at Daytona. GTC continues, but in other championships around the world and not limited to the aforementioned Porsche GT3 Cup. GTC in the ALMS stood for “GT Challenge.”

To add to the TUSC confusion, SRT Viper, BMW, Porsche and Ferrari are running cars with nearly the same nomenclature in both classes. There are two factory SRT Viper GTS-Rs and two factory BMW Z4 GTLMs that run in GTLM, and a solitary SRT Viper GT3-R and BMW Z4 GTD that run in GTD. Porsche, as mentioned above, has the new 911 GT America in GTD and the factory-run 911 RSR in GTLM. Ferrari seeks to be more confusing, because it has the Ferrari F458 Italia in GTLM and simply the Ferrari 458 in GTD. Easiest way to tell them apart is that the GTLM cars have red number badges and wing endplates; GTD’s are blue. The GTD cars are modified GT3 cars… GT3 (#16) is another animal in and of itself.

We’re not done, of course, with TUSC. Now we introduce the four driver rankings, which, this is perfect, nearly match up with four elements from the periodic table! These aren’t official acronyms but because we can never have enough acronyms, I’m just going to arbitrarily declare that Platinum (#78, Pt), Gold (#79, Au) and Silver (#47, Ag) match their place and symbol on the periodic table. No symbol exists for the fourth category, Bronze, but because it contains Copper elements I’ll give it the Copper number and symbol (#29, Cu).

The driver rankings system is a way of separating the pros from the wankers. For example, Anthony Davidson is an ex-Formula One driver who is now a factory shoe driving for Toyota’s Le Mans team. He’s a Platinum. The wanker who took him out in the below video at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans, Pierguiseppe Perazzini, is a Bronze.

Determining Gold and Silver is a bit trickier, and for a couple years drivers with the Silver designation could race in more places because they met the “Am” driver requirement, even if they weren’t necessarily an “Am” driver. Because it’s sports car racing, and it’s complicated.

Now you’ll note here we’ve mentioned a few acronyms – FIA, ACO and GTE – that we haven’t elaborated on. So this will serve as a perfect transition into the FIA World Endurance Championship and its acronyms.

ACO (#11) is the Automobile Club de l’Ouest. They run the 24 Hours of Le Mans. They are French, and are kind of a big deal. The FIA (#17) is the Federation International d’Automobile. They are a slighter bigger deal, run most of worldwide motorsport and sanction several championships, including F1 and the WEC (#18). In 2012, the WEC succeeded the ILMC (#19), which was the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (2010-’11), as an FIA-sanctioned world championship for sports car racing. The ILMC not only didn’t receive that sanctioning, but it was a clunky name to begin with.

The WEC has four classes: LMP1 (#20), LMP2 (#21), GTE Pro (#22) and GTE Am (#23). LMP1, of course, because, this isn’t confusing enough, will see a new set of regulations enter in 2014 for both factories and privateer entries. Essentially, the factories have to run to a certain mandated fuel number while privateers won’t. And there are designations for hybrids versus privateers within LMP1. LMP2 is cost-capped and open-tire, unlike in TUSC, where P2 cars are still cost-capped but run on Continental Tires.

GTE Pro is the GTLM class in TUSC but with a different class name; GTE Am allows GTE-spec cars as runs in GTE Pro but they have to be at least one year old to be eligible, and requires at least one Bronze driver.

LMP3 (#24) was announced as a new 2015 class for the ACO, similar to PC as runs in America, but with different machinery.

(pausing for a gallon of water)

Now that those are straight, time to get to the dozens of other sports car acronyms.

Pirelli World Challenge (PWC, #25) is North America’s longest continually running sports-car championship. It celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2014. It allows full FIA GT3-spec cars (hey, there’s acronyms 16 and 17 together!) to run in its GT (#26) class, has created a GT-A (#27) subcategory (but not class) for gentlemen drivers, and also features the GTS (#28), TC (#30), TCA (#31) and TCB (#32) classes for 2014. More than 15 manufacturers are involved and more than 80 cars are projected to race. And there’s way more ways of denoting what those all entail, but I’m already at about 1,500 words.

IMSA also sanctions the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (CTSCC, #33) which features the GS (#34) and ST (#35) classes. That’s a barnburner form of racing, usually on TUSC weekends, of more than 60-70 cars on average. Other series sanctioned by IMSA include Cooper Tire Prototype Lites, Ferrari Challenge, Lamborghini Super Trofeo, Porsche GT3 Cup USA and Porsche GT3 Cup Canada.

There’s also NASA (#36) and ITC (#37), sports car organizations that exist but I’m not sure if anyone really knows much more about them other than their acronym. Maybe the competitors.

Worldwide, you have things like the Blancpain Endurance Series (BES, #38) and other GT-type series that widely embrace GT3 machinery.

You can’t know sports car racing without knowing Radio Le Mans (RLM, #39), led by the renowned voice of sports car racing John Hindhaugh, with responsible adult Eve Hewitt and the team that make their broadcasts around the world can’t miss. The flagship is the weekly Midweek Motorsport (MWM, #40) and the Midweek Motorsports Listeners’ Collective, that that has spawned.

RLM, unfortunately, has been passed over for MRN (#41) for TUSC radio coverage, which make RLM and many sports car fans around the world collectively SMH and ask WTF.

I haven't mentioned SCCA (#42) yet, so I am now. Apologies for the oversight.

The beauty of sports car racing is its variety, diversity of machinery and friendly, open paddock. The downside is that it is bloody confusing to keep track of. And I say this having covered it regularly for six years.

And even after all the above words, I know I’m almost guaranteed to have missed an acronym … or 12.

Here’s my completely unofficial recap:

Acronym #	Acronym	Description
1	BoP	Balance of Performance. Designed to level playing field
2	TUSC	TUDOR United SportsCar Championship: The official acronym
3	ALMS	American Le Mans Series: 1999-2013, part of TUSC
4	USCR	United SportsCar Racing: TUSC before TUDOR arrived
5	TUSCC	TUSC with an extra, stupid, unwanted C
6	IMSA	International Motor Sports Association. TUSC sanctioning body
7	P	Main Prototype class in TUSC
8	DP	Daytona Prototypes; part of P class in TUSC. Was in Rolex Series
9	P2	P2; part of P class in TUSC. Was in ALMS
10	DW	DeltaWing; part of P class in TUSC. Radical car from ALMS
11	ACO	ACO; head sanctioning body of the 24 Hours of Le Mans
12	PC	Prototype Challenge; spec P class in TUSC. Was in ALMS
13	GTLM	GT Le Mans; open GT class in TUSC. Was in ALMS
14	GTD	GT Daytona; modified GT class in TUSC. Combo Rolex/ALMS
15	GTC	GT Challenge; former class of ALMS, integrated into GTD
16	GT3	Most popular level of GT cars; modified for TUSC and PWC
17	FIA	FIA; head sanctioning body of WEC
18	WEC	FIA World Endurance Championship; world sports car chp.
19	ILMC	Non-FIA sanctioned forerunner to WEC
20	LMP1	Top class of WEC. Open to factories/privateers. New 2014 regs
21	LMP2	Cost-capped second prototype class in WEC, w/open-tire regs
22	GTE Pro	GTE-spec lead GT class in WEC. Open all around.
23	GTE Am	GTE second GT class, requires 1+ year older machinery
24	LMP3	Future class, because we don’t have enough classes
25	PWC	Pirelli World Challenge; sprint series in North America
26	GT	Lead class of PWC
27	GT-A	GT subcategory in PWC, open to gentlemen drivers
28	GTS	Grand Touring Sport, GTS open to Camaros, Kia, Porsche, etc.
29	Cu	Bronze driver ranking, to sync up with Copper of table
30	TC	Touring Car class in PWC
31	TCA	Touring Car A class in PWC, designed to lower cost
32	TCB	Touring Car B class in PWC, entry level professional racing
33	CTSCC	IMSA Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge
34	GS	Conti’s lead class
35	ST	Conti’s second class
36	NASA	Another sports car racing organization
37	ITC	International Trophy Cup, another NA sports car series
38	BES	Blancpain Endurance Series, races in Europe
39	RLM	Radio Le Mans, ace broadcasters of sports car racing
40	MWM	Midweek Motorsport, weekly show on Wednesdays led by RLM
41	MRN	MRN Radio, who are not RLM. NASCAR-owned radio station
42	SCCA	Sports Car Club of America. They do Runoffs and way more.
47	Ag	Silver driver ranking, to sync up with Silver in table
78	Pt	Platinum driver ranking, to sync up with Platinum in table
79	Au	Gold driver ranking, to sync up with Gold in table