Oh my God. After many, many years, I’m on the list. No not that list. The Deadline Media Center list. Hey, I’m now somebody… Thanks Nate.
The theme here at Long Beach this year is one of contrasts. First off, the headline series here, Indycar arrives in the midst of a stupid schedule. Last weekend they were at a somewhat disastrous race on the streets of New Orleans and now they’re here on the streets on Long Beach California. Next weekend, they travel back east again, past New Orleans to Birmingham Alabama for a race next weekend. This series is coming down from the positives surrounding the new bodywork and now is facing the harsh realities of a relentless schedule quite heavily involving street courses.
With their schedule somewhat tied to the Indycar series, Pirelli World Challenge will make the trek out east for a 4-day turnaround to take the track at Birmingham. A 40 car field on a street course can be a recipe for disaster, one that the series competitors must take into consideration when looking at the full season grind.
Teams must look not just at the race here, but strike the proper balance between race results and also being ready to go for the next race. Chris Dyson is looking at both aspects of this. “On street courses like Long Beach there are a lot more chances for a car to be damaged in a crash than at a regular road course. That’s just a fact. We saw it in (the two most recent Pirelli World Challenge street-course races at) St. Pete.”
“Our Bentley’s have been getting stronger each race,” Dyson said, “and I think we’ll do well at Long Beach and at Barber, which is a road course that maybe suits our cars a little better. But with two races so close together, it’s also really important that we finish the race at Long Beach with two ready-to-race cars.”
Like World Challenge, the IMSA TUDOR series is here, acting as a support series or track time filler, take your own perspective here. While a 17 car field here for IMSA might not be viewed as a great success, I’d be willing to bet that the race itself will come off much better. Look at last season, after the disastrous race at Sebring, the series moved west and had a greatly needed yellow free race.
From here, IMSA moves north to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, in two weeks, giving the teams an opportunity for a somewhat leisurely drive up the coast of California, especially when compared to the other series.
To be honest, this race is quite the comparison/contrast between the two rival North American sportscar series this weekend. On the surface, the management for both series will state there is no issues between the rivals. They officially will make comments that they are different types of racing and each fill a needed niche in the sport. But under the surface you can tell that things are quite strained. IMSA has long been king of the sportscar world in North America, but Pirelli World Challenge, has been very aggressive since adopting the GT3 regulations. On paper, you could almost say that battle is being won by World Challenge, as their entries are way up and the entries in the TUDOR series are way down. Down far enough that the planned split race at Laguna has been scuttled and the race will include all 4 classes. This was supposedly for scheduling purposes, but you have to know that the reduced car counts in the series had to have a huge influence on that decision.
It will be interesting to see how these rival series will fare over the course of the season. Large car counts are great on paper, but the real thing is how the race itself comes off. World Challenge may be blessed with a lot of cars, but if the hour-ish long race is run mostly under caution, does it really make it a race?
As this is a battle that encompasses not a single race and not even a single season, but more of a longer term, it will be interesting to see how things play out. Will there be a winner or we continue to see a divided sport that suffers because of yet another split?
Time will tell…
Gary Horrocks
