PHILLIPS: Leveling the Playing Field

GRAND-AM

PHILLIPS: Leveling the Playing Field

“Be careful what you wish for,” goes the old adage “for it might come true.” For the engine manufacturers that participate in the DP class, it has indeed come true.

David Phillips | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted April 15, 2009 Charlotte, NC

Porsche's dominance at round one drew enough attention to cause the Grand-Am series to reduce their available revs and to limit the number of forward gears at their disposal. (LAT)

“Be careful what you wish for,” goes the old adage “for it might come true.” In the case of the Rolex Sports Car Series, the Grand American Road Racing Association’s wish that multiple engine manufacturers participate in the Daytona Prototype class has indeed come true. A look at the entry list for the Bosch Engineering 250 at Virginia International Raceway next weekend reveals teams fielding cars powered by BMW, Ford, Lexus, Pontiac and Porsche engines.

But the bounty of engine choices available to competitors brings its own headaches for Grand-Am officials striving to maintain a delicate balance between enabling close competition and rewarding excellence. Hamstring a manufacturer who has simply done a better job than the competition and you squash innovation and initiative, not to mention risking said manufacturer looking elsewhere to spend its precious motorsports budget. On the other hand, stand idly by as one engine maker squashes all its opponents and you have little competition . . . and possibly attendance and television ratings to match, not to mention risking the losing manufacturers looking elsewhere to spend their precious motorsports budgets.

So with the best part of three months to mull-over the data and results of the 2009 Rolex 24 at Daytona, Grand-Am officials tweaked the DP rules to level the playing field, taking away some performance from the Porsche-engined cars and, at the same time, giving those running Pontiacs a bit of a boost. Specifically, beginning at VIR the 3.99 liter Porsche-engined cars lose a gear and 200 RPM, while those running Pontiac engines gain new intake manifolds.

Put another way, at VIR the Porsche-powered cars will be limited to a maximum of five forward speeds and a maximum RPM of 9000. While it remains to be seen just how much these restrictions will affect the Porsches, Mike Colucci, team manager of the Daytona-winning Brumos Porsche Racing team expects some drop-off in performance.

“Last year we had no RPM limit at all and then at the Daytona 24 Hours we had 9200 RPM,” he said, during a test at Savannah’s Roebling Road Raceway on Monday. “Grand-Am is always searching to make it as equal as possible, so they made another adjustment after the race. They took away one of our gears, from a six speed transmission to a five, and they also took away 200 RPMs. That’s why we’re at Savannah: to work on the gear ratios to get some of the performance back because (the rules changes) definitely took some away.

“The hardware investment was minimal. It’s a sequential transmission, so in place of sixth gear we just put in a spacer and a little rotating drum that regulates how the gears go up and down. So from that standpoint, the dollar investment was minimal. But, what we did have to do was spend a considerable amount of money to go testing and buy additional gear ratios to make up for the differences we had in holes going from a six speed to a five speed.

With Porsche, Ford, and Lexus engines at the fore, the absence of Pontiac from the head of the grid and victory circle has drawn the ire of GM and their DP teams. (LAT)

“We don’t really have a lot of data to go on, other than our test at Homestead a couple of weeks ago and this one at Savannah. But it unquestionably affected our performance. With these tests and some simulations, I can definitely say we will be slower at VIR than we would have been with the six speed, but beyond that I have no way of knowing. And how it’s going to relate to the rest of the field is a big question.”

Particularly since that part of the rest of the field running Pontiac 5.0L V8 engines can expect to have a little more grunt than of late, thanks to the fact that Grand-Am now allows them to run the LSRXT intake manifold. The ruling comes after the best part of a full season in which the Pontiac runners argued they were effectively swimming upstream against their competitors.

“We believed we were substantially down on power all the way through the ‘08 season,” says Kyle Brannan, race engineer for Gainsco/Stallings Racing. “Ford, Lexus and the other guys got some nice stuff throughout ‘08 and and we got nothing. Then (Grand-Am) gave us half a point of compression ratio prior to Daytona, which is effectively zero . . . it’s lost in your ability to measure. But most recently they did give us a new intake manifold, replacing the one we had been using which is a truck part.

“We had been working with the series, trying to convince them of what we know to be true and Daytona was the visual proof of what we were saying; we couldn’t keep within ten lengths of the other cars on the straightaway. The new manifold will help us a little bit. Of course we’d have preferred even more, but this is about half of what we need. I’m pretty encouraged. It puts us back in the game.”

Like Brumos--Porsche, Gainsco/Stallings has been hard at work familiarizing themselves with their new set-up, testing at Motorsports Ranch in Texas last month. The test was more about making the team’s Pontiac-Riley driveable than about gaining outright speed.

With a new intake manifold at their disposal, the Bob Stallings/Gainsco drivers hope to have something to smile about when round two at VIR kicks off. (LAT)

“The new manifold messed-up the idle and changed the off-throttle response,” says Brannan. “We also had to do new mapping to get the throttle response smooth. I think we’re pretty close, close enough that we can go racing with it now. I think we can be compete at VIR and New Jersey, which are high horsepower tracks.”

Regardless of the ultimate outcome at VIR, New Jersey and elsewhere, Brannan empathizes with Grand-Am officials and their balancing act.

“They don’t have an easy job,” he says. “Everybody playing their games, everybody’s working the angles and there’s going to be some sandbagging going on. I wouldn’t want their job. You’re never going to make everybody happy. In fact, it’s only when everybody’s mad at you that you can be pretty sure you’re doing a good job.”

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

David Phillips has written about auto racing for a variety of outlets including Autosport, Autoweek, Motoring News, On Track, Racer and SPEEDtv.com since the mid-1980s.

In the process, Phillips' travels have taken him -- so far -- to 71 race tracks from Ascot Park and Assento Zandvoort, Zeltweg and Zolder and more airports, hotels and rent-a-cars than he cares to remember.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Phillips

SPEEDtv.com

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