The challenges facing Scott Elkins

Scott Elkins is the highly respected COO of IMSA and has been busy drawing up new regulations for the new United Sports Car Championship, which is a merger of the American Le Mans Series and GRAND-AM.

The problem is, both parties want their premier class to lead the grid in the new series. The relatively crude GRAND-AM Daytona prototypes don’t have the aerodynamics of a Le Mans Prototype car, but have a higher top speed, given a long straight. The cars are really polar opposites. Road America saw both series on the same bill, although they didn’t run at the same time, you could compare their times for a rough estimate.

So, using existing artwork from the Spotter Guide series and previous livery proposals I worked up a quick chart to compare times. I took Qualifying, rather than the race as its more relevant and similar conditions.

Its well documented about the gap between DP and P2, but a little surprised how slow they are around RA compared to PC cars.

Also note how slow the GX cars are. For reference, the quickest CTSCC GS car did a 2:22 (not 1:22 as indicated in my notes). (EDIT: Since this post, USCC have confirmed the GX Cars will be merged in with the GTD/C Class in 2014)

Of course, different tracks would give different results and this is Scott Elkins huge dilemma. Daytona would be a different story. Wouldn’t want Scott’s job. Can’t please all the people some of the time.

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