Re: ALMS - Laguna Seca (Carl Sims)
I know, it's a real bummer about the lack of Factory support for Ferraris in other areas of motorsport. I too would like to see some go the way of privateers but unfortunately, Ferrari has decided to place all it's money into F1. With all the sponsorship given there, and it's relative high visibility to potential and current customers, they get all the advertising they need. Not to mention the success of Reubens and Michael in the cars themselves. <br> About the closest thing to factory support given to a privateer racer as of late was the 333sp. For about 2mil, you could buy the car, an extra engine and a whole host of extra parts. After that, you were on your own. I think you could get the engine rebuilt by the factory but as far as all the stuff like service and in-pit technology, tough.<br> I think that Ferrari got tired of trying to homologate it's road cars for racing in LeMans and other Sports and GT racing. That was something that it did only some of the time anyway as Il Commendatore felt his cars should race anyway without having to build the required number. Just a thought.<br> If all goes well, and Prodrive, Raffanelli and the others that field the 360's show that they not only can challenge the C5-Rs and the Porsches but beat them on a regular basis, perhaps they might interest Maranello enough to rake in some support. <br> It's unlikely, but it would be nice. <br> I may be wrong but I think that's how the Corvettes got factory support. Chevrolet stopped racing them back in the day and only privateers fielded them since. Someone decided that the C5 would be quite the contender to take on the Viper threat and built a team. As soon as all the bugs were worked out, wouldn't you know it, Chevy said heck yeah we'll back you.<br> Aside from the factory support issue, one of the reasons that privateers have such a hard time going it alone is that constant rule changes make it difficult to field a close-to-production based car for a reasonable cost. I think there are two teams currently fielding 360's. One spent scads of cash to build out an off-the shelf 360 and the other, after rule changes, fielded two modified challenge cars. Pretty soon now, Ferrari will be selling (and perhaps is already doing so ) the 360GT. That car can run circles around the Challenge 360. So it goes without saying that the R&D for putting the GT car on the ALMS tracks would be minimal compared to what has to go into (and come out of) the Challenge and road going cars. If the teams are in fact racing the GT cars already, then it should only be a short time before they start becoming the cars to beat in the GT class as reliability has always been the issue to figure out for the Ferraris.<br> I've got to go see if I can find the articles about the pain and suffering that privateer Ferrari teams go through to put their cars on the track in the ALMS. I give them an incredible amount of credit though. Hanging tough with the Porsche crowd and the Corvettes takes a sense of humor and some focused aggression poured to cast a die hard never-quit attitude. <p> On a completely different thought though, wouldn't it be nice if Volvo developed a new P1800 for the sole purpose of fielding it in LeMans?