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PRUETT: “It’s Not Easy Being Steve”
Written by: Marshall Pruett   
08/19/2008
Oakland, CA
 
The color of Steve Wesoloski's hair is getting lighter, thanks to the uncertainty of the budget and rules he'll have to work with as the decade draws to a close. (Photo: GM) » More Photos


As a child of the ‘70’s raised on Sesame Street, Kermit the Frog’s song “It’s Not Easy Being Green” has stayed with me ever since and has come to mind a lot lately when pondering the complex tasks that face Steve Wesoloski, GM’s Road Racing Group Manager.

Take some of the constraints he’s faced with like the ACO’s fuzzy future rules package and the ever-constricting budget General Motors is willing to commit to road racing, and singing the tune “It’s Not Easy Being Steve” wouldn’t be out of place.

I’d originally called Steve to inquire about Corvette Racing’s plans for 2009, but our conversation quickly shifted to something I found much more interesting than their oft rumored LMP1 plans.

“I wish I had some nugget of information that could even be perceived as a credible rumor,” he offered. “I'm in the midst of laying out my 2009 programs and the associated budgets. Right now, everything is under scrutiny and nothing is certain.” That’s where things hit a fork in the road.

(It’s worth noting that while I find it rather fascinating to have GM’s road racing principal spell out the troubles in deciding how to spend millions of The General’s dollars, compared to the troubles faced by someone who’s unable to pay their mortgage, this is as trivial a subject, at best.)

2009 looks to be a year of transition for GM on all levels of their factory auto racing involvements. NASCAR, the series with GM’s most high profile expenditures, is rumored to be on the chopping block as the auto maker looks to stem the financial hemorrhaging that has Detroit and Dearborn reeling. If heavily reducing their Sprint Cup exposure is an acceptable solution to ease impact on the auto giant’s bottom line, it’s safe to assume an even bigger chunk of money will be taken from their top road racing program.
GM's commitment to Le Mans is solid, but beyond racing in the French Classic, the future of the Corvette Racing program is hard to predict. (Photo: Marshall Pruett) » More Photos

Things get even more interesting for GM and their Pratt & Miller-led Corvette Racing when the constructs of their current contract are called into play. GM locked P&M into a long and exclusive relationship a few years back when Toyota reportedly came knocking, but despite GM’s financial woes, that P&M contract could be a lifesaver for Corvette Racing’s ALMS and Le Mans activities.

“About the only thing I can tell you is that we have a contract with Pratt & Miller through 2010. As you can imagine, that would be a pretty expensive endeavor to [break that contract and] not race.”

How this will manifest itself in 2009 and 2010 is yet to be seen, but one thing is for certain: Corvette Racing’s GT1 entries will be hard pressed to bridge the performance gap to Aston Martin unless the ACO intervenes. Wesoloski’s painted into a corner in regards to their GT1 program. The ACO isn’t expected to make significant changes to the GT1 rule book for 2009 and with the Corvette C6.R’s already developed to the outer reaches of the rulebook, options are limited. While they can always find incremental improvements, the C6.R’s have reached the peak of their competitive form.

Speed is a byproduct of money and rules in auto racing, and with shorter dollars on the horizon for the C6.R’s, Aston Martin’s Le Mans-winning DBR9’s are an early favorite to score a hat-trick
at La Sarthe next June. That’s foreign territory for Wesoloski, and the counter to the role the feisty P&M team are used to playing.

“We really don't have any room within the rules, or any budget, to make any wholesale changes to C6.R. We’re compiling all the data now and assessing where we came up short [at Le Mans] and what we could do to address those items. That will all be part of the decision process regarding what we do in 2009.”

This has also put Steve in an unfamiliar position of having to hope and pray the ACO will make concessions to advantage Corvette or to disadvantage Aston Martin. The ACO is notoriously cautious when it comes to performance balancing; although the factory DBR9’s have claimed the last two Le Mans 24 Hour races, those wins weren’t earned from a massive performance gap or a superior budget.

While Corvette Racing’s budget is less than most assume it is, their funding easily surpasses what the Prodrive-run Aston Martin Racing receives from parent Aston Marin Lagonda. Just how the ACO would react to a petition from GT1’s Goliath asking for a rules change to increase the size of their armor or to handicap David with a smaller slingshot remains to be seen. Wesoloski is smart enough to know such pleadings would likely have the opposite effect he’d hope for.
GM is believed to have commissioned a design study for the new LMP EVO class, but the project has been put on hold for future evaluation. (Photo: Racecar Engineering) » More Photos

Steve’s made many trips to Paris to meet with the ACO both in private and as part of a collective to help shape the future direction of GT1 racing, but that doesn’t mean the manufacturer he represents will gain favor in the short-term from the sportscar rule makers. Things are still rather fuzzy when it comes to the long-term direction the ACO has in mind for prototype and GT racing; it’s forced team principals like Wesoloski to try and plan three to five years down the road without knowing what the cars or budgets to build and run those cars will look like. If Nostradamus was alive, I’m sure Steve would have him on retainer to help predict the future.

“The bottom line is we have to rely on our 12 year relationship with the ACO and place a large value on the trust we have developed with them. We have met with them numerous times since the first hint that rules would be changing in 2010. You can imagine the difficulty in dealing with the continuous changes in direction from them as well. The first announcement of the proposed prototype rules indicated the EVO rules would become mandatory as early as 2010.”

LMP EVO, a new type of car proposed by the ACO featuring a prototype/GT-hybrid shown at Le Mans in 2007, was meant to create a prototype solution for manufacturers to use their bespoke GT engines in a dedicated class. It was even mentioned as a possible replacement for the current generation of LMP cars altogether, but the EVO concept was universally panned. The ACO made a smart and swift compromise to allow GT engines in LMP1 for 2008 with performance breaks to provide parity with the diesels. Some erroneously reported the ACO had killed the EVO concept, but that was quickly corrected at Le Mans this year when EVO was discussed as something the sanctioning body still intended to go forward with.

For Wesoloski, trying to pick a set of rules to work with and plan from must be like trying to play ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ after being spun in a circle at 200mph.


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