Radio Le Mans’ Midweek Motorsport programme is always worth a listen but last night’s show more so even than usual.
2014 Twelve Hours of Sebring overall race winner Marino Franchitti took to the airwaves to join a large number of drivers and observers in calling for a serious examination of minimum driving standards in TUSCC after a chaotic race in Florida that saw over five of the 12 hours under caution with a number of serious driving errors sprinkled amongst the pro and am drivers.
“The thing that really upset me was some of the driving on track,” said Franchitti. “Some of these guys have no business being in a professional motor race. In fact, I’m amazed they can drive from the hotel to the track without doing themselves some mischief. I think a lot of the incidents we saw early in the race were from—yeah, pros get it wrong, don’t get me wrong—but a lot of these amateur drivers were getting into situations, and pros are coming around the corner, and pros are having to react to something that’s completely crazy. Or, these guys are trying to react to situations that they’re just not of reacting to.”
It wasn’t just in the race proper though that this issue was apparent, as Scott Dixon told Marshall Pruett as early as Thursday evening:
“Racing here is very different to Daytona where you’ve got a lot of straights, a lot of 90- and 180-degree corners, long braking zones, it’s well lit, and passing is easy. Here, it’s a lot different. There’s stuff everywhere. There’s guys on the right side of the track turning into a right-hand corner….
“Most of the time you hope the guy in front of you knows where he’s going, but you end up most of the time driving defensively because you have no idea what’s going to happen in front of you. And then you get into those halfway moments where you think they left the door open but they didn’t and you’re diving out of the way or trying to stop in time so you don’t get hit. It’s kind of mad out there, especially at night.”
Much of the background commentary on the issue surrounds driver rankings, something that is already a hot topic in the TUSCC paddock after several drivers were reclassified in the lead up to Sebring.
That put available Bronze and Silver ranked drivers at a premium, there being little or no time to replace those now unable to fit into the driver hours template required, particularly in the GTD class.
Many in the paddock are now calling for a review of the rankings list, of the process used to establish a ranking, and for an effective appeals process around those decisions.
Marino also last night questioned whether doing business has been allowed to overtake safety as the first priority.
“What people need to look at is the [driver ratings], Bronze and Silver and all this.”
“Because there’s guys sitting on the sidelines that shouldn’t be, and it’s hurting people’s livelihoods, but not only that, you’re putting all of us in harm’s way by making people on track attractive to teams, and you have to have some kind of minimum standards. I said on a Tweet the other night that Skip Barber should put [on a driver’s school], and I was almost serious because it was absolutely awful.”
“I’ve driven [in the] Nürburgring 24 Hours in the old days when you’ve had 220 cars, everything from a VW Polo to a fire-breathing GT2 car, and I’ve never seen anything like [this].”
The TUSCC calendar allows at least some opportunity for thought on this issue, the next event is Long Beach where just the P and GTLM cars are set to race and round four sees two separate races at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, one for the Prototype and GTLM classes, the other for the Pro-Am PC and GT Daytona classes.
All four classes will run together for the first time (since Sebring) on 29 June 29 at Watkins Glen.
