The ALMS/Grand-Am Merger

Wednesday September 4th will go down as a day in American racing history where an era of splits and political bad blood comes to an end. The American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am will announce a merger that will unify American sports car racing.

First reported over the weekend, John Dagys has listed a few details of the unification. The Panoz Motor Sports Group is being bought by NASCAR Holdings. This includes Road Atlanta and the lease of Sebring. Jim France will be Chairman of the series with Don Panoz and Scott Atherton having other roles. Television deals for 2013 pushed the merger back to 2014.

The class structure has not been finalized.

As an IndyCar fan and with American Open-Wheel unification happening only four and a half years ago, memories of the many questions, hopes and wishes are still fresh in my mind.

Looking back on that February day in 2008, I wondered about cars and teams; races and dates. I wished for a series that would make the process as quick and easy as possible. Just allow whatever car  a teams has to race, go to the important race tracks and try to have as many dates as possible.

What happened? The one year old Panoz DP01 chassis was scrapped, while gaining Long Beach the unified series lost Road America, Surfers Paradise after one year as a non-championship race and a few teams disappeared along with some talented drivers.

My hope is whatever form of American sports car racing comes out of Wednesday's announcement will be a true merger and not a takeover/overhaul like the one in 2008. I hope the relationship with the ACO stays and will allow for the big name teams, manufactures and drivers to run at Sebring, Le Mans, Daytona, Spa, Petit and Silverstone like they once did. No class will be mothballed in favored of another. The schedule will be made of the best dates for the series and not simply forget the tracks with a long history of sports car racing.

IndyCar took four years from unification to get a new car, still have yet to get all-time favorite tracks such as Road America and Phoenix back on the schedule but have been slowly making headway both on and off the track when it comes to sponsorship and overall attention.

What the new series should not do is enforce totalitarian rule and make all LMP and GT cars worthless, forcing them to use the Grand-Am spec Daytona Prototypes and GT cars. Allow for all to be on the race track. Comprise one large schedule of the great races at their normal date on the calendar. Fans and teams will not be in an up roar because they have to go to Daytona, Sebring, Long Beach, Road America, Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen, Mosport, Laguna Seca, Mid-Ohio and Lime Rock Park with a trip across the pond for Le Mans and whatever other World Endurance Championship races are on the schedule. Scheduling does fall into favor with this unification more than the IRL/CCWS one because of the amount of tracks ALMS and Grand-Am both already go to just at different times in the year.

While some things could have been done differently, the events of 2008 greatly helped American Open-Wheel Racing and IndyCar has had one of their best season ever this year. American sports car racing could very well be in a better place after tomorrow but after what cost, if any? The powers at be must work for the good of all in the situation to come out truly as united series.