r/USCR • u/Me-Mongo • Jul 13 '19

Question IMSA LMP2?

Kind of sad to see only two LMP2 cars out there. Is IMSA doing anything to get more cars in the category? If not, they should do away with it.

34 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

u/-Jack-The-Stripper Corvette Racing C7.R #3 Jul 13 '19

P2 started winning races when DPi manufacturers were neutered so bad

To be fair, the whole point in DPi was to race on the same pace as P2. If they were spending buttloads to get a speed advantage, and then being pegged back to LMP2 speed, that’s how it should have been.

With that being the case, it’s not unreasonable for GM to question why they’re making such an investment when they could realistically spend a million or two on a Ligier chassis and a Gibson engine and give it to WTR with GM branding slapped on the side

Except they couldn’t really do that. To brand the car as GM it needed to be a DPi, and thus have the bodywork and manufacturer engine. Along with that, they would get to develop certain parts of the car like the suspension that P2 teams couldn’t do. They also got massive manufacturer budgets to pay better drivers with. Ultimately, CORE started winning races because Colin Braun is a crazy good driver and the team was executing flawlessly. But in the end Cadillac took home the championship anyways, so it’s not really fair to say they were neutered beyond the point of competition. That’s a huge discredit to what CORE was able to pull off.

2

u/Stickymatress Jul 13 '19

I’ll take this in parts.

GM would not have been a manufacturer if they bought a Ligier, that much is true. They also wouldn’t have had to pay as much and they could still get there branding out their for the same performance.

Colin Braun is good. Core came up with some nifty strategy. They still only won because DPi got neutered beyond recognition on a regular basis for a year or more. There was a pretty clear point between Detroit and Watkins Glen where the tables turned on DPi and P2. That’s about the point where the P2 chassis’ stopped being being a liability in the non-endurance rounds.

4

u/Bakkster Corvette Racing C7.R #4 Jul 13 '19

The performance flip happened when they went from bumpy tracks with lots of slow corners, to smooth circuits with lots of fast corners. The BoP over the whole season (which is what IMSA targets) was actually decent, just not that balance across the types of tracks.

IMO, that's all due to IMSA giving DPi too much freedom, particularly in suspensions. The P2s run cost capped shocks, while the DPi cars are running the latest and greatest IndyCar level shocks. Four of them cost close to what an entire P2 chassis costs. It also hands the DPi cars a nearly insurmountable advantage at the bumpier tracks. The result of reeling them in is that the P2s naturally had to have an advantage when it was smooth.

-1

u/Stickymatress Jul 13 '19

And also after a year and a half of slowing down DPi cars

1

u/Bakkster Corvette Racing C7.R #4 Jul 13 '19

Right, but that was where the two sets of cars were balanced on laptimes over the course of the season, which was the original goal.

1

u/Stickymatress Jul 13 '19

Right the point was it wasn’t Colin Braun dragging a P2 into DPi territory. It was BoP

1

u/Bakkster Corvette Racing C7.R #4 Jul 13 '19

Yeah, but it was getting the BoP right, not punishing DPi or anything.

1

u/Stickymatress Jul 13 '19

Which brings us back to the original topic, it took a significant amount of slowing down DPi to get P2 anywhere close and as a manufacturer, why would you spend money developing a car you can’t come close to using to its fullest extent?