How would you change the racing world?

Howdy all! Been lurking for awhile, first REAL post. Thought I'd try this on you:

Let's say you had the power to make any changes you wanted in the entire automotive and racing world with the snap of your fingers. What would you do?

If nothing else, I'd like to see NASCAR return to it's roots. That is, manufacturers MUST only race cars that John Q. Public could buy off the showroom floor. And yes, I realize that back in the "dark ages" all sorts of mods from "stock" gave folks (unfair?) advantages...but this idea of every team racing what is substantially the same car capable of the same speeds is about as exciting as watching paint dry. IMHO.

I would like to see a series with unlimited mods (save safety stuff) but directly controlled costs.

It would work something like this. The Ben Racing Empire Directorate would invite Penske/SierraSierra/BobTheGuyWithHammers to partake in the 50,000 dollar challenge. With this money the teams have to purchase and modify their entire project in Ben Racing Empire Directorate's garage, under BRED's supervision. Entirely bolt on stuff.

What would win between a 40,000 dollar C6 with ten grand in modifications and 49,999 bucks worth of mods on a 1984 Mercury Topaz? I have no idea, but it would be fun to find out!

I would remove insurance from the equation.

Wow. Great question. I gotta gnaw on this for a while.

F1 - 3 liter engines. open wheels. must be driven by a human being. (THATS IT...NO MORE RULES)

Le Mans (and abiding series) - no more equivalency crap...if the petrols aren't as fast as the diesels, TOO BAD...get faster.

NASCAR - Don't care...maybe bring back showroom stock...and police the crap out of it to avoid cheating.

New sports prototype class - Crazy fast and crazy powerful prototypes. No limits on engine size, no limits on tire size, no limits on aero. Maybe call it...Can Am?

All sedan racing must use a production line body.

NASCAR, V8Supercars etc were ruined by tube frames IMHO

Bring back Group C and Group A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=795Skr8LzSo&feature=related

Zomby woof wrote: I would remove insurance from the equation.

+2387492387492387492374927394872934797593874598347958734295billion

Seems like 80% of all local races get the axe at the brainstorming stage because of insurance. We have single digit rallycrosses (that I am aware of) in New England every year. THIS IS SO WRONG!

Insurance schmurance. If you get in a car and knowingly drive it to threshold near hard obstacles, that should not put any land owner at risk. You'd have to be seriously mentally disabled to not know that you're at risk. Take it up with your health/life insurer.

I would fire and Lifetime ban B Ecclestone and J Todt, thereby turning the racing world on its head.

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Here are a few things I can think of off the top of my head.

Situation A) - Make Don Panoz disappear. All of your currently owned or leased tracks are not world class. Your biggest money maker the 12 hours of Sebring is only a money maker because of tradition. If this were a new venue, people would be disgusted by the facilities. Plus your sucking on the teet of Audi for the past 10 years has really made the American prototype field a yawn and has made the Daytona Prototypes a better viewing experience. Oh and the Abruzzi....WTF were you thinking?

Situation B) - Echoing previous posts about returning NASCAR back to a showroom stock series. Tell the manufacturers that want to compete they have to build an engine with this many valves, cams, displacement, etc. Tell them the car can weigh this much, and has to have a transmission with this many speeds. Still enough room for there to be parity in the field. Plus add more road courses to the schedule and eliminate cookie cutter tracks off the circuit. Like get rid of Chicagoland, Kansas, eliminate one New Hampshire race. Make the summer Daytona race to be run on the road course, Road America has to be run during the chase, Sebring, Mosport, and a street circuit as well.

Situation C) - Ground Effects Situation D) - Try to bring back something like the IMSA GTP, GTO, and GTU days of racing. Situation E) - Take F1 back to it's roots. Situation F) - Can you save Indy cars?

Introduce a few race series utilizing production cars with minimal aftermarket performance mods ($4-5k), include a variety of cars e.g. (the old motorolla cup), full coverage of those series on TV & streaming on the net...

Revive the real Trans Am-lets use the new pony/musclecars. Then for fun, lets throw a modern 2.5 Challenge into the mix.

Oh, the correct answer for this board:

Make all the series from F1 to bar stool racing use Miata based race cars.

Teach people how to properly pass. Make sure the Earnhardt, Schumacher, and Senna wannabe's are properly penalised for their on track stupidity, and racing would be much better in this day and age.

Oh, and give me a series director with the cojones to tell manufacturers NO on rules creep items. THAT'S the real reason series suffer, not tube frame chassis.

Tube frames are much easier to repair, and save man-hours and money for teams. It's all the "Well, you gave team X these concessions, we need part Y to be able to keep up" stuff that eventually makes racing expensive. Look at Spec Miata these days.

Rule change #1 - get rid of restrictor plates in any shape or form in all series. If it's too fast for you, stay home. F1 could go to a turbo 2.0 Liter engine and single plane wings front and rear. NO additional levels, no curves, no steps - just a straight wing. Make sure racing drivers get hired on talent, not how pretty they are on tv or how articulate they are.

Fire Bernie, have a looonngg talk with Max Mosley--oh, and I'd be Bernie's replacement. Talk to Bruton Smith about monoplies, open up the regs for engines for Indy Cars--although saw this morning that GM, Lotus, someone else, and Honda will be supplying turbo V-6s in 2012, so that's an improvement. Form a strong lobbying group to give the local tracks around the country property tax breaks, and put federal monies behind the F1 track in texas to get it built ASAP. With additional tax break for any team that uses its grounds for its headquaters. AND make it a federal law to allow citizens, anywhere to keep one unregistered, uninsured car on their property. And demand NASCAR join the rest of the world with overhead cam engines.

triumph5 wrote: And demand NASCAR join the rest of the world with overhead cam engines.

Do you know what an LS1 is? or the SBC2 that NASCAR uses? It revs past 9k and spits out a whole lot of horsepower. OHC engines are just as old as their pushrod counterparts. Look at the winning engine from the 1913 Indy race.

NASCAR: Stock bodies must be used. Add road courses. Only engines available in the road models they are representing may be used...same with transmission.
F1: Quit the "going green" crap...it gets 3mpg on the track...it ain't "green". Go back to H pattern gearboxes, i want to see shifting like Senna at Monaco again. Let them refuel and use as much as they want. Run whatever tires they want...no more of this having to run all the different compounds at a race. Do quali like NASCAR (one car on track at a time).
All racing: I agree with whoever said this above. Quit penalizing faster cars. "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch"

And can I just say, I love watching Continental Sports car challenge.

NASCAR: pretty much what has been thrown out there from above. Drop cookiecutter tracks, add road courses, "Stock Cars" should start out as stock cars from the factory. All engines should start out as an engine available in the said car from factory. Bring back more than 3 or 4 makes of cars. Oh, whatever happened to "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday"? Cause I'm sure not running out to buy a new Impala tomorrow.

F1: Don't really watch it so I have no input., but the ideas from above are good.

WRC: Go back to real manual transmissions. There also needs to be more than 3 or 4 brands as well. Also cars need to be larger than a bag of popcorn. Needs to be 3 classes: AWD, FWD, and RWD. Yes AWD is ideal, but there needs to be another challenging way to drive.

Indycar: Drop circle tracks. There are plenty of awesome road courses in North America. OR if the circle track has an infield road course, that is acceptable. (Indianapolis doesn't count, it can stay the way it is)

Trans Am: Needs to come back and run the same weekends as IndyCars to build up popularity. It NEEDS to be televised. I don't care if it's on ESPN 8, they need to show it. We have the same cars (makes and models) that they did 40 years ago. Same rules about the cars as NASCAR. Manual Transmissions and Fuel Injection.

SPEED Channel: Yeah not a racing series, but I want to blow it up and start a new Motorsports network not revolving one form of motorsports ( cough cough NASCAR cough).

jlm_photo wrote: All racing: I agree with whoever said this above. Quit penalizing faster cars. "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch" And can I just say, I love watching Continental Sports car challenge.

Conti Challenge penalizes faster cars more than just about any other series out there.

Great thread!

I would love to see more racing of production cars with bolt ons, echoing what someone else said.

aussiesmg wrote: All sedan racing must use a production line body. NASCAR, V8Supercars etc were ruined by tube frames IMHO Bring back Group C and Group A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=795Skr8LzSo&feature=related

I'm ok with the tube frames ... the safety aspect of it... but make them conform to OEM as built wheel base / width and must hang OEM bodies on the frames

NASCAR (Daytona / Talladega ) specific.... give 'um back their motors... take away their front ( or at least most of it ) aero , great big upright spoiler on the back .... this would make them put decent brakes on them and lift approaching the corners ... then they'd have enough motor to get away from each other on the staightaways

for most of the other series I'd do away with the equalization attitude and let 'um race... let the spec series BE the spec series...

with nascar.. I think the old homogulation trick would work... you must build X number of cars for John Q public that are exactly the same as the race cars in order to race them.

I also agree that Bernie needs a lifetime banning

Maroon92 wrote: New sports prototype class - Crazy fast and crazy powerful prototypes. No limits on engine size, no limits on tire size, no limits on aero. Maybe call it...Can Am?

^ this

DirtyBird222 wrote:

triumph5 wrote: And demand NASCAR join the rest of the world with overhead cam engines.

Do you know what an LS1 is? or the SBC2 that NASCAR uses? It revs past 9k and spits out a whole lot of horsepower. OHC engines are just as old as their pushrod counterparts. Look at the winning engine from the 1913 Indy race.

Why, yes, I do, having rebuilt a few. Yeah, lots of engine progress since 1913. I hear there might be new fangled fuel injection next year in Nascar...Since Cup is the premier form of racing for most in the US, I'd like to see them use variable vale intake timing, OHC V-8 engines, modern technology found in cars sold every day . A little more cutting edge. would be nice.and easier for, oh, Toyota and other manufacturers to get involved in, rather than having to build a OHV engine one-off just to participate.