GT Racing Questions

[RICKYRJ1]

Can somebody explain to me the different GT classes? Who & what runs in where? I beleive Corvette moved from GT1 to GT2? Cadillac is running this year? Thanks in advance :handshak:

[tomtom72]

http://americanlemans.com/primary1.php?cat=paddock|14262

This is the ALMS web site.

GT1 was eliminated because no one wanted to play heads up with the old C5R's and C6R's. The Alms made "competition adjustments" to the corvettes using weight penalties and restricting motor output. Eventually there was not much that could be done to "level" the playing field in GT1 so corvette racing was tired of being frustrated and they agreed to a new class, GT1 with new rules.

I'm not gonna BS and say I know the new rules as I lost intense interest because the level playing field don't work too well in competition; somebody has to get the short end of the stick. 5+ L V12's do not = 7 L V8's.

I think the Caddy's are in the Rolex Series if I'm not mistaken.....although I could be wrong on that. I know that there is no factory corvette effort in Rolex. Camaros and GTO's before the Camaros and before that it was the early CTS's. The vettes were all privateers like LG racing. Those guys had no chance against the factory Porsche & BMW & Mazda teams.

[1990 415]

The Cadillacs are competing in the World Challenge Series. Johnny O'Connell will be driving one of the Cadillacs since he no longer drives the C6R. Pratt Miller built the Cadillacs and they should be quite competitive.

[Aurora40]

Can somebody explain to me the different GT classes? Who & what runs in where? I beleive Corvette moved from GT1 to GT2? Cadillac is running this year? Thanks in advance :handshak:

Basically GT1 cars are extremely modified. The GT1 Corvette had a custom chassis, carbon brakes, a crapload of aero, direct injection engine that ran on ethanol, and was crazy light. Basically it was a bad-*** race car with some Corvette-inspired body panels hung on it.

GT2 is more production-like, "cheaper" (that's the idea of the series anyway), and slower. It uses an actual Corvette chassis. The motor is more similar to a production one, though I believe still uses the racing block from the GT1 cars.

You can find some info here: http://www.corvetteracing.com/cars/gt2-c6r/gt1-v-gt2-chart.shtml

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Cadillac is racing in the SCCA World Challenge series. This is a different sanctioning body, and a different series. I believe there are Corvettes that run in World Challenge, but they are not the factory team.

Cadillac ran in this series with the first generation CTS-V sedan, as well (was called Speed World Challenge then).

In spite of the radical appearance, the cars are actually highly based on the production car. They use a production car chassis, and you can usually even see parts of the production dash still in place (albeit hacked up pretty good).

You can find a pretty readable summary of the rules for each class, and how the car can be changed from stock, here:

http://www.world-challenge.com/series.php?page=carfacts

Cadillac races in GT, if I'm not mistaken.

World Challenge races are also very short, like an hour. Vs ALMS races that are 3-4 hours on up to 10-12 hours.

You can catch the Cadillacs racing on April 9th on the "Versus" channel, though the race happened a week ago.

[Aurora40]

GT1 was eliminated because no one wanted to play heads up with the old C5R's and C6R's. The Alms made "competition adjustments" to the corvettes using weight penalties and restricting motor output. Eventually there was not much that could be done to "level" the playing field in GT1 so corvette racing was tired of being frustrated and they agreed to a new class, GT1 with new rules.

Hey Tom, just so you know, the ALMS made those sorts of adjustments up and down the board. It wasn't unique to Corvettes. In fact a quick read of the rules shows very biased monkeying to ensure "satisfactory" results. Diesels are far and away the biggest recipient. They can run larger engines, 2-3 times as much boost, and larger fuel tanks, than their gasoline powered counterparts. For some odd reason the ALMS has tried to position itself as being fairly "green". I never understood who the demographic was that cared about racing and also about being green.

Also, Aston Martin competed in GT1 from time to time, and certainly took it to the Corvettes at LeMans. GT2 existed the whole time, and was where the non-prototype excitement happened. Ferraris and Porsches and such were dicing it up. When Corvette quit GT1 to move to GT2, they just called GT2 "GT" (as there were no more GT1 entries).

I suspect the European competition for LeMans-style racing has hurt the ALMS a fair bit. There is the ACO's LeMans Series, the Intercontinental LeMans Cup (which includes two ALMS races), and probably to some degree the FIA's GT World Championship.