Grand-Am: GT Expansion?

[Matthew Little]

Speed Channel: Grand-Am GT Expansion Progressing

Interesting article by Speed's John Dagys on Grand-Am's current plans to expand the GT category to include most of the vehicles involved in GT3 competition at the moment; those vehicles include..............
---Ferrari 458 Italia
---Mercedes SLS
---Audi R8 LMS
---Lotus Evora
*At present, only the 458 Italia is ready for GT competition; the others are expected to make their respective debuts in 2012.......

Currently, Grand-Am's GT class consists of the following vehicles...........
---Porsche 911 GT3
---Mazda RX-8
---Camaro GT-R
---BMW M3
---Ferrari F430
---Ford Mustang Boss 302

I'm of two minds on Grand-Am's plans here. On the one hand, it says something for Grand-Am that they're expecting to expand the GT ranks to include a couple more of the big European marks especially if it gives Daytona & the powers that be a chance to lord this over the sports-car purists in North America(I can just picture ALMS fans groaning over this......."Audi's going WHERE?!?!??"......)

On the other hand, I pity Mark Raffauf & Grand-Am's Competition Office for they're definitely going to have a time trying to equal-out any of the new vehicles in terms of performance balancing..............

 

[Brogan]

Should make for an interesting series with such a wide variety of manufacturers.

Performance balancing is always tricky and will take some time to get right.
It will be a case of refining it first one way, then the other, then back again until they hit on just the right parameters.

And then the rules change and they have to do it all again

 

[MCLS]

Have Ferrari fixed the glue problems on the 458 yet? Could be dangerous otherwise