rolex 24 hrs race handing out penalities like NASCAR
General
Poor ole AJ Allmendinger just can't get away from the Performance Enhancement discussions, can he?
And, we are surprised that Roush-Yates came up with a cheater Ford motor? Not!!!
Shank Racing Fined, Penalized for Too Much Power at Rolex 24
By Chris Jasurek
Epoch Times Staff Created: February 1, 2013 Last Updated: February 1, 2013
The #60 Shank Racing Riley-Ford finished third in the Rolex 24 but was later fined and penalized for having to much power. (Chris Jasurek/The Epoch Times)
Michael Shank Racings #60 Riley-Ford Daytona Prototype, which finished third at the 51st Grand Am Rolex 24 at Daytona, was subsequently fined and penalized when tech inspection revealed that the cars engine produced too much power.
Grand Am has not specified the nature of the infraction, saying only that The engine was found with mechanical adjustments resulting in performance levels outside the documented maximums.
The team will have to forfeit its third-place prize money of $35,000 and pay another $15,000 to Camp Boggy Creek the official Grand Am charity.
The drivers, Ozz Negri, John Pew, Justin Wilson, Marcos Ambrose and AJ Allmendinger, will each forfeit 30 drivers championship points, and Ford will forfeit 30 manufacturers championship points.
The team has also been penalized one point in the North American Endurance Championship.
We are as surprised about this as anyone, said team owner Mike Shank in a press statement. This was an incredible team effortnot just from John, Justin, Ozz, Marcos, and AJ, but from the entire crew as well as our partners at Roush Yates.
We are very proud to work with Ford Racing, and we know that the guys will figure out what went wrong and make sure we are not in this position again.
After having fought back from so far down to make it to the podium, it is hard to put into words how disappointing this is.
Balance of Performance Problems
Many teams have complained that the wining Telmex-Ganassi Riley-BMWs were allowed too much power by Grand Am officials. Rolex Sports Car Series rules specify specific power and torque output curves for each engine. These rules, called Balance of Performance, are adjusted to allow different engines to compete on a supposedly level playing field
The BMW-powered Telmex-Ganassi cars were slower than other BMW-, Chevrolet-, or Ford-powered cars at the Roar Before the Rolex 24 test session, which prompted series officials to restrict the Ford and Chevy engines.
At the actual race, Telmex-Ganassi suddenly found itself five mph faster than the rest of the field, leading competitors to suspect the team had been holding back during the test to gain a favorable Balance of Performance adjustment (which it got.)
Because of this top-speed advantage, no team could compete with the Telmex-Ganassi cars during the race. Everyone else was racing for second place.
During the race the Telmex-Ganassi cars were half-a-second per lap faster than the Shank cars. Since the series prides itself on close competition, and denies participants the right to try to get more performance from their engines, this performance disparity undermines the spirit of the rules.
Next: Reconsider the Rules
The Telmex-Ganassi Riley-BMWs were allowed to run unrestricted while its opponents were given smaller restrictors and fewer rpms, which made the Telmex-Ganassi cars too fast to catch. (Chris Jasurek/The Epoch Times)
The whole idea of a racing series where teams cannot try to get more power out of the motor is a screamingly unfunny joke. Making the car go faster is the whole basis for racing, and making the engine work better is a huge part of going faster.
NASCAR has shown that it is possible to very tightly regulate engine development and still allow teams to try to build the best possible motor. Grand Am has shown that its system can be gamed by the competitors, and does not produce close or fair racing.
The worst part of all this for Shank Racing and every other team which showed up for the 2013 Rolex 24 but didnt have a real chance at winning is that the Rolex is the most prestigious and most important race on the schedule in terms of racing new fans and new sponsors.
Teams which spend the tremendous amounts of time, money, and energy needed to compete in a 24-hour race depend on that investment paying off for the rest of the season. If those teams start off racing for second Grand Am will become the de facto governing body of the merged North American sports car series which will begin operations at the 2014 Rolex 24 at Daytona. If sports car fans used to the real and exciting competition found in the American Le mans series come to Daytona and see the sort of badly managed and controlled competition which Grand Am champions, the new series might not see those fans back again in 2015.
The 2013 Grand Am Rolex 24 at Daytona showed the strengths of the series: the GT competition was intensely exciting right down to the waving of the checkered flag.
The race also showed what is wrong with Grand Ams tightly-controlled rules philosophy: the best drivers in the world showed up to race for the best Grand Am teams, and the race was decided by some guys in a corporate board room devising equivalency formulas based on faked information.
The solution is pretty simple: write the rules for engine displacement and let the teams build the best motors they can. Specify which parts and materials the teams can use to prevent hyper-exotic materials and pure racing parts, which drive up costs up. But let the teams race. Dont shackle them with restrictive rules which actually kill competition.
Michael Shank Racing and the rest of the Rolex Sports Car Series teams will be back in action on March 2 in the Grand-Am of the Americas at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas. Tickets are available now through the CotA ticket website.
