Vision for future TUDOR United SportsCar Championship class structure revealed

Tudor IMSA USCC rules for 2015 and beyond announced.

Rules unifying USCC with WEC will be in 2017. First time seeing this development.

Vision for future TUDOR United SportsCar Championship class structure revealed | News | Motorsport.com

BHW

 

Yes, and the addition of GT3 rules to replace GTD should see stellar fields as we've seen
in Blancpain and PWC.

BHW

 

They started doing this separating the classes at the starts, during pit sequences, reducing the
amount of fuel capacity for GT cars, etc. early on after the DP cars lost out to GT Corvette, Viper
and Porsche teams in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

To have this happen once was embarrassing enough but to have it happen three years in a row
was completely unacceptable and changes needed to be made.

They likely stated at the time it was a safety issue but what was so unsafe about having the entire
field take the green flag together? They immediately built in a 30 second or more deficit between
the DP and GT cars right from the start.

Then, with GT cars running reduced fuel capacity, they had to pit more times than the DP cars, more
time lost stationary in the pits. So, no way the GT cars could show up the DP cars in their blue ribband
event ever again.

Not sure the justification for separating the DP and GT pit stops under caution as all it does
is serve to jumble the running order and cause more confusion which all came to a head at Sebring
this year.

Many point to the 1983 12 Hours of Sebring as one of the best ever. That race concluded with a GTO
Porsche 934 winning overall against far more potent GTX class Porsche 935s and and handful of prototypes,
all of which ran into problems.

The attrition in that race was such that a GTO Mazda RX-7 led for a brief time as well. Did this cause
IMSA to completely change their rules to assure it never happened again?

BHW