NASCAR fans often say they want “real stock cars”. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve read that on links from Jayski. On the same, related track, many people, open wheel and stock car, want to see the “glory days” of innovation and imagination, even when maybe only a couple cars finished on the lead lap.
The point? Well, for fans who want “stock” racing, watch ALMS next year. The GT2 cars are very similar to stock. There are significant difference between a Corvette, Ferrari, and a Porsche. If you’re upset about lack of innovation, watch the Prototype classes. There’s lots of innovation, from Acura’s four equal sized tires, Audi’s diesel engines, Peugeot’s hardtops, and Lola’s… not sure, to be honest. Anyways, ALMS, and European Le Mans is the closest thing to the old Indy 500 spirit of innovation.
GT2 cars are actually very close to street cars, with obvious safety and racing upgrades. Yeah, they’re sports cars, not your four door passenger car, but, they’re pretty close to stock, and very cool to watch battle each other. The car type and engine actually matter for GT2 cars, unlike say, NASCAR. And, compared to F1, a GT or even Prototype car has things on it much more likely to be seen in a street car. Plus, a Prototype’s budget is under a 10th of Ferrari or Mclearn’s.
Also, watch the GT3 challenge and Speed World Touring series on Speed. They are very street like cars, although I must admit; I don’t know a ton about them. Touring cars, including British Touring cars, Australian Touring cars, and the FIA backed World Touring Car Championship all are stock like cars. If you really want “stock”, seriously, watch these series.
Of course, these series also show what’s bad about “stock” racing. It needs to be understood that you can never race a true “stock”, because some safety stuff has to be added. That said, these “stock” series are very slow, compared to even NASCAR, much less P1 cars, Indycars, and F1 cars. For everyone who says they want stock racing, they had better understand that the speeds will drop, and that is not exactly a good thing.
I don’t know of anything, besides some local stuff, on ovals that’s truly stock. Part of that probably is the speed and safety aspect. To race on ovals, particularly longer ones, requires a lot of modifications. Otherwise, you get things like the first races at Darlington and Talladega, and no one wants that. Really, it’s insane to suggest that NASCAR try and go “stock” because the safety and the speeds would make that impossible. On the other hand, if NASCAR tried to go “stock”, they’d actually update the cars, adding Fuel Injection, Telemetry, and other things that “stock” cars have.
On that note, the idea of returning racing to the way it was in the beginning through the 90’s, where often a couple of cars/drivers dominated, yet the cars were innovative and fast, would that be good or bad? I’m really on the fence about that. That said, ALMS and Le Mans are good place to see that type of thing.
In particular at Sebring and Road America, the competition is mainly between a couple of cars. Le Mans, because of it’s length, and really any long race, can get somewhat boring, but, you really get the tech/tuning stuff when race cars have to go 12-24 hours during a race. At a lot of the other events, only one or two manufactures are represented in P1, and only about 4-5 cars per class. Despite that, there’s often a lot of excitement. For instance, at Lime Rock this year, there was a lot of excitement despite the track being very narrow, and relatively few cars in the P1, really only representing 1 manufacturer. De Ferran won the race, but it was a very interesting battle between De Ferran and Patron. All this when only like 3 Prototype cars showed up!
Anyways, the point is, if NASCAR or Indycar went back to the old ways, which could lead to races where a large amount of cars end up either laps down or out of the race altogether, might not be that bad. It would really depend on how interesting the top group of teams/drivers were, and how many times upsets occurred. Also, oval races look worse with smaller fields, the first IRL race at Kentucky I watched, during 2007, there were just too few cars to race on an oval, and on TV it looked pathetic. Again, I don’t know which way to go, spec racing or an open, old school format, but, I do think that going back to that format might work out alright.
