misfit

n ['m?s?f?t]

1. a person not suited in behaviour or attitude to a particular social environment

2. something that does not fit or fits badly

In our continuing look and mavericks and misfits it is perhaps appropriate to consider the definition of such terms.

The first decade of this century saw the steady growth of endurance and sportscar racing, there have been a few hiccups I'll grant you but the prevailing trajectory is upwards.

The ALMS has been part of this success, not as much depth in the field as they would have liked but, by and large, a quality mix. The events themselves are now eagerly anticipated and attended by the fans. It was not always the case. There were a few races back in the early days that badly supported and are now forgotten. I refer to the attempts to fill the stadiums combining ovals and in field course, the Rovals.

Misfit is the only possible way to describe this mix of cars and tracks.

The ALMS visited these temples of NASCAR/CART (remember them?) Korporate Racing some five times over the 1999-2001 seasons. This odd direction for a pure road racing series was part pragmatism, part opportunism; pragmatic in that some of the traditional arenas for endurance racing in North America (Road America, Watkins Glen, Lime Rock and Mid Ohio) were signed up for the successor to the defunct USRRC CanAm Championship, Grand-Am.

Opportunism came from two rich and powerful barons of motorsport, Don Panoz and Bruton Smith. Don needed venues to give the ALMS credibility with the manufacturers that had embraced his series. Back in 99 they already comprised BMW, Chrysler, Porsche with plans for others such as Audi, General Motors and Mercedes Benz to join in in an attempt to tap into the wallets of the North American sportscar fan base. The ovals with their vast capacities and demographic and logistically friendly locations seemed to be a ready made answer. For Smith it was a potential revenue goldmine, getting into the wine and cheese crowd at no financial risk (Panoz no doubt underwrote the whole affair).

This sequence of races kicked off with the final round of the 1999 ALMS season when we headed for the Nevada desert and the city of Fear and Loathing, Las Vegas. At the time some of us expressed the hope that when aliens finally land on this planet that they do not commence their exploration by starting at the Strip……..others felt that the aliens were here already and that is how Vegas came into being but I digress.

The race was won by the BMW V12 LMR of JJ Lehto and Steve Soper from their teammates Bill Auberlen and Jo Winkelhock.

Being the final round there were titles up for grabs. So the main story was the Driver’s Title going to the veteran Elliot Forbes-Robinson in the Dyson Racing Riley & Scott MKlll after favourites David Brabham and Eric Bernard retired their Panoz late in the race with engine failure.

EFR was a popular Champion rewarded for consistency rather than outright speed, not bad for a guy had "retired" several years earlier.

As a track Vegas was a nightmare to shoot with virtually no access for even accredited media.

From the driver's point of view the circuit was better than anticipated but the tiny crowd lured from the flashing lights of the slots meant that the event was, on balance, a failure.

The lack of interest shown by the punters in the ALMS was illustrated by the findings of noted chassis plate fondler and author of Time And Two Seats, Janos Wimpffen.  Janos settled down to cover the race from the main grandstand which afforded a view of the whole track. He found himself sitting with the few spectators that did show up to the facility on the day. He discovered that most of them were patiently waiting for the sportscars to finish so that they could enjoy a ride on the Richard Petty Experience……..they would have done better with the Steve Soper Experience…………

For the 2000 season three more visits to Oval Land were planned…….Charlotte and Texas would join Vegas on the ALMS trail. Charlotte in the heartland of NASCAR territory would be a tough event to sell to the Good ‘Ole Boys but the circuit itself was pretty good.

Lowe's Motor Speedway featured a quick infield section with plenty of elevation changes, well up to the Daytona Rolex course standards. With the exception of the section taking the infield track back onto the banking at turn one, which did not really work with the low slung prototypes. Didn't stop McNish giving it large over the bumps.

There was also a silly chicane on the back straight in an attempt to slow the cars down through the oval turns three and four.

Charlotte marked the last appearance of the Audi R8R in the ALMS and this handicap to Joest Racing opened up the real battle for the win to the Panoz and BMW teams. 

Once again Charly Lamm’s Schnitzer boys out fumbled the Panoz guys in the pits and took top step on the podium. JJ Lehto and Jorg Muller got to spray the Champagne or whatever sparkling wine was used.

Second were David Brabham and Jan Magnussen in the thundering Panoz LMP-1

Unusually in this time of three factory teams, the final place on the podium was claimed by the Rafanelli Lola Judd B2K/10 with Mimmo Schiattarella and Didier de Radigues on driving duties.

The crowd numbered in the thousands rather than Nevada’s hundreds but in the confines of the huge auditorium designed to take the huddled masses of NASCAR fans this looked pathetic, a problem at all of the Ovals visited.

Signs warning “NO THROWING, You will be Removed” stencilled onto the wall were not necessary during this meeting. The track photographer informed me that it is a local sport to lob Kentucky Fried Debris and similar at passing cops, photographers etc. during quiet periods on the track……..a sort of Agincourt Experience with Wings ‘n BBQ sauce rather than arrows……..

If Charlotte had been pleasant enough then the furnace conditions at Texas Motor Speedway were not. Whoever signed up the circus to perform in this part of the world at the beginning of September kept a low profile during the weekend, if discovered he would have been lynched. Those of us compelled to work outside in temperatures of 110F looked like extras from Lawrence of Arabia sans camels.

This is a pit stop involving one of my clients of the time, Aussie team owner, Rohan Skea. He has just completed his mid race stint and is delirious, holding himself up by the Porsche's door. A minute later he collapsed in the pit road and was rushed to the medical centre, where he was treated for heat stroke. This was a common tale up and down the pit lane the heat took its toll.

As for the poor sods driving front engined closed cockpit crucibles such as the Viper and Corvette, words fail to describe the heroics required just to last the race. Even someone as fit as Viper star, Karl Wendlinger, ended up in an ambulance. Utter madness from those bright sparks who sat around shivering in air conditioned rooms.

In the race BMW were nowhere, Gounon's spin into the wall during Qualifying giving a visual representation as to their form.

A pit stop for Frank Biela in the Audi, in front of empty grandstands. Armed now with the R8 the Joest squad won at a canter with Panoz seeing off the BMWs and Corvette triumphed over Viper for the first time in GTS.

In recognition of the insanity of attempting to run in the noon sunshine, the race was timed to start at dusk…….about 2 degrees cooler………naturally not all Texans are mad, despite what you may read and they stayed away in droves…….the rest of us were not so fortunate. At least the darkness disguised the scale of the disaster.

If there was any comfort to be drawn from the visit to the Lone Star State, at least the grid was healthy both in quality and quantity.

If anything the second trip back Las Vegas saw the numbers increase…………the GTs wait to go out and qualify.

At this rate there would be more cars than spectators, now what sportscar series have I heard that said about before?

Actually some off track action WAS exciting as nearby Nellis Air Force Base played host to all kinds of foreign exotic warplanes on a Top Gun event. The pilots, being gearheads, generally would circle low over the stadium on their final approach to the base, giving us something new to argue about.

Roswell is not that close to Vegas is it? Maybe this is what the Air Force were looking for…………………..

Access was still poor.

This race marked the end of the career of the BMW V12 LMR………two seasons, victory at Le Mans and six ALMS wins, including Sebring……..Quality……….regrettably it also brought down the curtain on the sonorous BMW V12 which had aurally entertained those track-side since 1995.

Back in the race the action was a little too fierce at times with several incidents between the leaders.

In the end Audi continued the dominance that would become commonplace in the following years, ORECA’s Vipers finished 1-2, oh, and a Porsche won in GT. Plus ca change………but little or no interest locally and few in the way of spectators to be seen. Those of us who had been to Vegas before had scant enthusiasm for the place, a little of that town goes a long way.

The last visit to the land of NoRight was the first ALMS round of 2001, for the intriguing sounding Leather Center Grand Prix of Texas. The weather in March was more Donington than Dallas,  mostly damp, cold and grey. ALMS had lost the ORECA Vipers and now Schnitzer were battling GT Porsches rather than LMP Audis. Champion had an R8 to bring to the mix and at the time, most importantly, Panoz had the new LMP07. Most cars start slowly and develop, this dog reversed the process and Texas was the only time it looked competitive. 

It was also the first race that most of us snappers sported digital cameras, Canon having brought out a D30 that was just about affordable. Of course it was a great novelty being able to see your pictures by pressing a button. Film was yesterday's man and everything was going to be great.

The night before that race we all gathered in a sports bar to watch the live screening of the Australian Grand Prix. I happened to mention to Dindo about his moment over the kerbs which was instantly picked up by Michele Alboreto, somehow Dindo had neglected to mention this indiscretion to the team. I happened to have camera with me and voila there it was…………..busted.

The grid was a tad thin especially compared with the year before plus the prototypes got ahead of themselves on the pace lap.

Another problem with the ovals is that they have walls.

As usual the crowds stayed away missing another good battle and a tight finish. Plans to run again at Charlotte late in 2001 were quietly dropped and that was the end of the Roval experiment.

OK what went wrong?

Simply that sportscar races held on these hybrid tracks were artificial, driven by TV and marketing demographics, planned by those who had little feel for what they were doing. We would all show up with the “Hey another day at the office attitude”. There was none of the anticipation that the mention of Laguna, Monza or Mosport brings. Sportscar fans are usually amongst the sharper knives in the block and even the dumber ones could sense that this was ersatz racing, endurance lite and avoided it like the plague. If the real fans did not care why should casual spectators spend their time and money?

This failure and the failure of street events such as Miami and Washington (for different reasons) posed a question.  What is the future for sportscar  racing, given the need to increase attendances to get greater coverage, to get more sponsorship $$$, to get greater coverage…….or should we just give up and admit that F1 and NASCAR have sucked the life out of the sport below their Augean stables? Perhaps the answer lies with a different question. Instead of chasing new markets should we not just consolidate our existing strengths and concentrate on improving the show……….sort of  “Build it and they will come” philosophy?

Well the numbers that attend Le Mans and the other classics attest to the popularity of the endurance form of racing……sometimes. There are many who would no more stop breathing than fail to turn up at their favourite event be it La Sarthe, Sebring, Spa or Nurburgring; these folks would no more go to a Grand Prix or Daytona 500 than fly to the moon. Some of the more extreme cases plot their trips throughout the year and there are many websites run by the fans for the fans. Even the absence of a historical lineage is no obstacle to success as the instant classic status of Petit Le Mans proves.

Maybe that is it, in this age of hundreds of cable channels, the internet and all day drinking hours, for us to get off our backsides and go to a race meeting without the incentive of making a buck, requires that the venue/event has a sense of occasion, a promise of a place in history……….most of us Sartheophiles reference our personal index of the years by the who-what-why of 24 hours between 4.00 pm on two days in June. I suspect the same is true of the guys on Sebring’s Turn 10, even for the most part, like the 60’s, if you can remember it you weren’t there.

Our fables are not of dragons and wizards but of Ickx in 1969 or 1975 or Andretti in 1970 or of Pedro and Seppi just about all the time. In an age when almost everything is pyrite to find the genuine article is exciting and precious, so seeing a McNish, a Sarrazin or a Kristensen on a charge is the real deal but only given the right setting.

That is where the experiment of the Rovals failed, it sounded great in a Power Point presentation and I'm sure that some sharp suits and marketing mavens made a quick Buck but for the rest of us…………….

The ACO's attempt to create the Inter Continental Challenge would appear to go for fewer “classic” events at the remaining few real tracks. Quality over quantity……..F1 and NASCAR are on the opposite course, so that’s proof enough for me.

John Brooks