Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Evening With A Legend: Mark Raffauf

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Evening With A Legend: Mark Raffauf · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Evening With a Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to
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legends of the famous 24 hours of Le Mans giving us an opportunity
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to bring a piece of Le Mans to you.
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By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance
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to become part of the Legend of Le Mans with guests from different
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eras of over 100 years of racing.
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Tonight we have an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you sharing in the
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Legend of Le Mans with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.
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And as your host, I am delighted to introduce.
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Mark Raffauf, who has been part of the fabric of American endurance
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racing for more than five decades.
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A steady hand in the chaos, a strategist in the storm, and one of
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the few people who can say they lived.
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Im SA from its early scrappy beginnings to its modern global stature.
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Joining the organization in 1974, he's now the senior Director of competition
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and his understanding of how the rules, the philosophies, and the politics have
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evolved between IMSA Grand Am A LMS wec, and especially the A CO, gives
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him a rare panoramic view of the sport.
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That perspective naturally leads us to the 24 hours of Le Mans, the race that
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has shaped, challenged, and sometimes divided these organizations, yet
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ultimately brought them closer together.
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So tonight we chat with Mark to explore how endurance racing has changed,
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what unites the paddocks on both sides of the Atlantic, and what the
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future looks like as IMSA and Weck move toward unprecedented alignment.
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And with that, I'm your host Rou chief Erik from the Motoring
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Podcast Network, welcoming everyone to this evening with a legend.
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So Mark, welcome to the show.
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First, Eric, thank you for having me.
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I'm happy to be here and looking forward to this for a while.
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Well, I know we could probably talk all night about IMSA history and
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its metamorphosis into the leader of endurance racing in the United States,
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but take us back to one of its most pivotal years, that being 1978, this
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is when Im SA and the A CO kind of first really crossed paths and came
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together to develop the GTP class.
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So can you walk us through the importance of that and being
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there and what that means?
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Well, actually it was 1973 because in 73, RJ Reynolds threw their weight
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behind the Camel gt, which was GT racing.
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That's what IMSA was.
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The coup that year is we took over the sanction of the 12 hours of Sebring.
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We then took over the sanction of the Daytona 24 in 1974, but there was no
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race 'cause that was the fuel deal where it was odd even probably some
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people remember that, but you could only get guess and it wasn't because
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of racing using fuels 'cause there was no fuel for spectators to come and go.
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So both Daytona and Sebring didn't happen.
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However, that started the relationship because in 1975 or
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in 74, there was already a Daytona Le Mans cup between the two events
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that had nothing to do with Ipsa.
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However, it was, I think 10 grand for the car that did
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both and did the best in both.
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It was 10 grand back then was a lot of money.
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So in 75 what happened was John Greenwood took a big block Corvette,
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which turned out to be the fastest car at Mosan, even faster than the 9 36
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Porsches, like 225 or 230 miles an hour.
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500 cubic engine engine, a gearbox that lasted about two hours.
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Mike Kaiser brought a small block, decon Monza, but the fans loved it because
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it was the big v eights, the people, there was a very different structure.
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There were three guys.
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It was, uh, JPI.
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Moreau was like the sporting guy.
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Beit Ro was the communication press guy, and he had actually worked for Bill France
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Sr. Here in Daytona for a few years.
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And Al Lamberto, who was a driver, was the competition guy.
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So they really wanted this American influx.
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The next year, 76, 50 years ago was when they sent the first NASCARs over there.
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We created with nascar, grand National International.
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So we had the Pearsons and Childress and the Allisons.
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All those, like seven or eight of 'em ran at Daytona.
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But only two went there.
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So we're going back just as a side note with 30 historic NASCAR cars to
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the Le Mansr Classic in July this year.
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But we're taking 30 NASCAR stock cars.
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Not current, I mean, 2010 and earlier.
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So that should be pretty good.
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So the relationship started there.
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So we then got really good communication with, and got to be really friendly with
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Al Lamberto, and he and John Bishop sat down and realized that the FIA and what
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they were doing, they were kind of lost.
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They had group six cars, the Renos, the mantras, but there
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were like four or five of them.
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So they created essentially GTP to be a class where private
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guys could win big races.
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So obviously the first and most successful one was Jean Rondo winning
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at LA Mall with a Cosworth powered car that he designed and built in LA Mall.
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So those rules and that cooperation carried on late seventies, well into the
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eighties, the ISA class within which, uh, the Corvette and the Monza ran in.
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And then subsequently nine 30 fives both from Europe and the US could
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modify the cars outside of the FIA raid.
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So that IPS a, there was an ims, a class ISA tech decal whole deal.
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So I had the opportunity, I pretty much was there from 79 to 1990 every year.
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So watch this development.
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So GTP started in, in the eighties, early eighties when the rules went out
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and people like March and Lola and all those guys built cars to those rules and
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they raced at LA Mall with cause words.
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They raced here with Chevys or bors, turbo engines, all kinds of engine.
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But the engine and the car.
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Had to be available to everybody.
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It was a, an across the board effort because group five, the
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nine 30 fives, once Porsche stopped building them, or BMW stopped
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building them, you couldn't get one.
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There weren't any.
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So the A A GT, Corvette, Mazda Bigger engines, we tried to keep.
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The big GT cars going, but essentially, you know, by 1979 we had 15,930 fives.
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Now no two of 'em were the same on the grid 'cause everybody
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hot rotted them over here.
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But it was all Porsche's, occasional Ford victory, occasional BMW victory with hops.
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So we had to do something to keep the ball rolling.
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I think meanwhile, like 1981, there was a fairly major economic downturn as well.
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A lot of car.
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I mean, I think car sales dropped like a million and a half
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vehicles in the US in a year.
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So that's kind of where it really started up until GTP.
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So let's walk backwards just a little bit because I've heard you also tell the story
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about how GTP was also birthed in a weird way from the Group C regulations, which
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I've heard you refer to as a fuel formula.
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Correct.
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And this is where you see the rise of the 9 56 s and then the later nine
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60 twos, which IMSA had a hand in basically creating the nine 60 twos.
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Correct.
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So that story was, since we had put these rules out and people had built
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cars, when the FIA approached the A CO and us about doing Group C, I'll get
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to the 9 56 specifically two problems.
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One, a fuel formula at that time in this country wasn't felt to be what
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spectators and fans wanted to see.
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They wanted to see people race the cars, hard, spectacular cars.
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We were transitioning, you know, we had the K four with John Fitzpatrick
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and JLP three with John Paul racing against Redmond and the T 600,
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uh, Ray Hall in the first march.
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You know, there was just this diversity of prototypes and nine 30 fives.
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The big difference was the prototype.
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The first Lola T six hundreds were $75,000.
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Even a 9 35 back then was twice that if you could get one.
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And there weren't anymore.
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They built so many, they made a few spare tubs and a couple were built California.
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Uh, the Fitzpatrick Sacks car was one that was made from a Porsche factory tub.
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So the problem was when we got to the Group C thing, we said,
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we're not doing the fuel formula.
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I could tell you some stories about the politics, but it was pretty
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much the structure back then of the FIA was there was a manufacturer's
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commission, which represented everybody.
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So we went to a couple meetings, Paris, and at one point all these people
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were sitting around trying to decide what the Group C rules were gonna be.
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And I think Bill France Sr. Got up and he said, which one of you people
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here would commit two cars to the Camel GT in the US and two cars to
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the World Sports Guard Championship?
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One hand went up Porsche.
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That was it.
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None of the people deciding on what the cars would be, whether fuel formula,
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power to weight, basically the cars were very similar but in three areas.
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The GTP US one and the early A CO ones were a power to weight.
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You got this amount of power for that amount of weight.
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The group C thing was you could do anything you want.
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You only got this amount of fuel.
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So there were a lot of races early on where guys ran outta gas on the
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last lap after a thousand kilometers.
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We didn't think RJ Reynolds, our main sponsor, nobody here thought
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that was a good product to present.
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So the 9 56 comes along and we went, no, we're not taking this
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car because of three things.
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One part of the GTP formula was everything had to be available to anybody.
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So you, the engine in that car was the indie engine, the 2.65 liter indie engine.
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It had an aluminum roll cage, which we had banned after Kathy Root's big
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crash at Brainerd and all the BMWM ones and Porsches had aluminum roll cages.
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They all had to change 'em to steel.
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Well, third point was the driver's feet were out in front of the front axle.
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So after a year, and I think Fitzpatrick ran one in a Can-Am race
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once at Road America, 56, the car, never, nobody here really wanted it.
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So a year later, Holbert stuffed a, basically a 9 34 and a half Porsche
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turbo motor in the back of a march to develop an engine with Andile
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Allen Springer in California, which was bigger because all the people
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here said 2.65 ain't big enough.
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You need torque.
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So you need a bigger engine.
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So they build a three and then a three, two air cooled engine out
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of parts that anybody could buy.
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So you could go to Andal.
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They put those engines in Lolas, they put 'em in marches
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and they put 'em in the 9 62.
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So the actual 9 62 is the IMSA car.
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The 9 62 C was the World Championship car Fuel formula car, which had
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air cooled, uh, water cooled heads.
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So it was even a different engine 'cause it was derived from the Indian engine.
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So that took us to the point where eventually, and I could tell you a little
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story, you know, John Bishop went over to Porsche and I think in my first book
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there's a drawing of the tub and he was trying to explain to him what they had
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to change in that tub to beat the rules.
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Steel cage.
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Put the driver behind the front axle and the pedals are fully depressed.
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So they finally did that because if you remember, I think Stepan Beloff
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got killed in the 56th at spa cars.
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Were not anywhere near as safe as they are today.
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Obviously that's got nothing to do with Porsche, but everybody built things
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the way they thought they knew was the best way to build it then, which,
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when you look at one today, you kind of wonder who, who guys were brave?
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That's a big time.
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His cars are fast and they were brave.
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So that's kind of the story of how GTP and then ultimately Group
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C adopted, not the engine part.
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'cause Mercedes did their thing.
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Jaguar did their, everybody did their own thing engine wise,
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but the cars were, steel cage driver was behind the front axle.
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So everybody adopted that.
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Not that that made us feel any better.
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We weren't rocket scientists, but it just made sense to us.
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If the driver was further back in the car, it'd be a better situation
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when he hit something right.
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So that takes us to like the early eighties and then of course it took
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off with Jaguar, Mercedes, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota, and during the
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eighties, Le Mans specifically is a huge difference across the board was on
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the grid at the start of the race.
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This is probably, it was 48 cars.
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Half of them could have won the race.
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The competition was ferocious.
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Porsche won Jaguar one, Mercedes won.
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Mazda eventually won.
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So everybody got a piece of the pie over the next 10 to 12
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years with those kind of cars.
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That's kind of the story of GTP and as.
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What happened here also happened there, which.
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The drawing in the IMSA rule book that John Bishop drew on his desk remained
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in the IMSA rule book with four pages of regulations unchanged for a decade.
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The only thing that ever changed was the engine specs, different weight for
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different types of engines that changed, but the rest of the car, how it was built,
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how it was run, everything about it.
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The other problem with 'em was Group C had a hundred liter tanks.
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We needed 120, so they had to put a bigger fuel tank in a 9 62 over a 9 56.
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'cause we ran what was then 32 gallons and they were not running
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32 gallons, they were running less because of the fuel forming.
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So that kind of takes us through that era, the a CO people back to Berto.
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Kind of got, I hate to use the word, but they kind of got blackmailed by
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Jean Marie Burlesque, who was the president of the FIA at the time.
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He was also the president of the FFSA, which is the French A SN, and
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he pretty much told them that the World Sports Guard Championship could
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not exist if Le Mans was not in it.
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So he kind of mean, I don't know, that's a bad word to use, but
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there was a lot of politics then between the French and the French.
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We had nothing to do with it.
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We said, we're doing this, this is how we're doing it.
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You guys decide what you want to do, but they kind of argued over it.
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And, and finally, the A CO who as sort of co originators of GTP with us were
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kind of disappointed, but they had to go with the FIA's World Championship.
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Otherwise it probably never would've taken off.
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We'll take a pause there and rejoined the conversation.
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Talk about the nineties.
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Before we do that, you know, you mentioned something about getting all
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the group C cars together, and I'm sure you're aware of this photo shoot that
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was done a couple of years ago where they did a, a group C reunion at one
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of the airports with some jumbo jets behind them and it's just unbelievably
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mind blowing to see them all together in the variety of the cars and all that.
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Yeah.
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It also reminds me of some of the funny stories you've told about that time
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period because you had some big names in racing them, like you mentioned
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Holbert and Fitzpatrick and Garson Bell shook Wallach, Brian Redmond and David
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Hobbs, and you just go down the list.
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Everybody, Ludwig, all the Europeans wanted to come race here because the
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drivers didn't like the fuel formula.
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I mean, I was at LA Mall when Klaus won it a couple times in the New
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Man car where pretty much from the bridge all the way after you went past
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the pits, all the way down through that set of S's, before you got the
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Mosan, they were outta gear coasting.
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That's how you ran the race.
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They weren't driving the car to the extent the car could be
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driven because of the fuel deal.
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And they hated that they were managing fuel consumption as
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opposed to actually racing.
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They liked it here.
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So one of the stories I've heard you tell is the hijinks that went
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on, especially during the eighties behind the scenes, and one of them
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especially is Fitzpatrick testing the Kremer nine 30 fives on the auto bond.
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Yeah.
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Are there any other stories like that, just crazy stuff that happened during
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that period where there was alignment?
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Yeah.
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Back then, particularly in Europe, you know, you could put a dealer
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plate on just about anything.
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So once, once they got the card done, somebody you know, would take it out.
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And I think that photo that you saw is like a week before
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Le Mansr, that was a brand new car.
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And so it's a picture of the car next to a Volkswagen Beetle on the auto bond.
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It's pretty funny.
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So the other stuff, I mean, here in the States, there's certain people in
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certain places, they'd run a 9 62 out the door, down the street and around the
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block a few times just to check it out.
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So that was fairly common practice if you were in the right place.
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The other antics, I mean, everybody in racing is constantly
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trying to make it go faster.
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So you know, a lot of times people were using stuff that they shouldn't have used.
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The rules were a little bit more.
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In that era, if it didn't say you couldn't, you could so pouring dry ice
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into the air intake before qualifying in an air cooled 9 62 became normal.
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So they'd be hustling down the track and you'd see all that dry ice team
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coming out all over the back of the car, and everybody says, we can't do that.
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This says, no, you can disappears.
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It evaporates.
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It's not putting anything on the racetrack.
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But they did that to cool the air charge going in the intercooler and
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then into the turbo, particularly with the air cooled engine.
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So there were a lot of tricks like that.
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You know, basically the competition back then with, at one point there were
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nine OE manufacturers in SS GTP at about six or seven in the World championship.
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Some manufacturers had completely different cars.
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They would have, the Nissan here was a V six stock block that anybody could get.
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The Nissan and the World Championship was a V eight race motor, more or less.
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Same with Toyota Mazda four Roter.
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A lot of the big powerful cars here were the gm, Buicks, and Chevys that
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had a thousand, 1200 horsepower.
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They also went through a quite an evolution as far as antics of playing
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with aerodynamics without having a lot of the tools that we have today.
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I mean, CAD and wind tunnel stuff.
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Yeah, they had wind tunnels, but they're using little models now.
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We put cars in the wind tunnel full size first.
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We do a model, then we do the whole car.
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So there was a lot of stuff there where at the end cars were running.
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The downforce was.
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Tons cars were running 72 to 7,500 pound rear springs to simply
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keep the car off the racetrack.
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That's how much downforce they could produce that tunnel concept, which is
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what made GTP probably a better car.
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The tunnels in GTP were bigger, are longer than they were in group C, so the American
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style car had more downforce and bigger engines, which was torque, which was
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cornering speed, which is what you needed for our circuits more so than La Mall.
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La Mall was 252 with a low wing 9 62, and the Mosan was okay, but you
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wouldn't want to drive that at Road America or Watkins Glen or Daytona.
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It's a Streamliner, not a, not a road racing car for our tracks.
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So as we jump into the nineties and the nineties is a really interesting period
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'cause we kind of have to address the front end of it and then what happened
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at the tail end as we get into the Audi Dynasty and things like that.
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But let's kind of walk before we run.
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And there's a sense that in the World Sports car effort, and you kind of
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alluded to this before, especially in the early nineties, the way you guys were
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changing that it was designed to really influence WEC and the A CO to change
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the scene at the 24 hours of Le Mans.
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And I've heard you say that one of the most successful WSC cars
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actually did really, really well at Le Mans, like 94, 95.
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It won both times and it finished second at petite later in that decade.
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Ran three races.
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That was it.
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So let's talk a little bit more about the WSC and how that eventually
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gets us to another period of overlap between wec, the A CO and imsa,
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especially with A LMS involved.
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You gotta go back a little bit.
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By 19 88, 89, the federal government had already told the tobacco companies
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you're gonna be done in 1993.
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So by that point in time, GTP had gone beyond its original concept, which
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was once again, manufacture exclusive.
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Cars.
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You could buy an old Nissan 1-year-old and you could buy an old
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Toyota because there was a new one.
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No wanted to do.
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Nobody wanted to do that.
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You know, 9 62 won races in 1984, and then one races in 1993.
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So that one car carried through the decade, so to speak.
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We realized in the early nineties, again, another economic downturn worldwide,
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I think it was two and a half million fewer car sales in the US in 1991.
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And that sort of put some writing on the wall that this
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was sort of running its course.
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So we went back to the basics of what GTP was 10 years early and created what was
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essentially a camel light car with the roof cut off of it with a bigger engine.
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Narrower tires, no tunnels, no ground effects.
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Just upper body arrow.
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We didn't need 7,000 pounds of down force anymore.
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The cars just were too fast.
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You've seen some of the crashes at Atlanta before the chicane
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was put in with the Nissans.
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Huge accidents.
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The cars were going faster than the tracks could handle, so to speak.
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The tracks had to spend millions of dollars changing
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the tracks, which some did.
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Thankfully, Don Panos did it at Atlanta, but at the other side,
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the cars were just unbelievable.
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I mean, we're talking about doing a throwback video at Laguna Laguna without
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the inter loop of GTP car went over 200 miles an hour where the bridge is
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'cause turns one and two are flat out.
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So we, we came back with this concept.
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The funny thing was when we did that.
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There was immediately a response here from Riley cr.
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All kinds of people looked at this and said, these cars are reasonable.
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They're fast enough.
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A lot of people could drive them.
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They're, they're not scary fast, like the GTP cars were in the early nineties.
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You had to beat grab them or Chip Robinson or Juan.
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Fun Joe, to actually pedal one of those things.
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Quickly.
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So when we did that, I actually was at the press conference.
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The coup was, I went to, well actually Jean Piro Moretti went to
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Ferrari and convinced Piro Ferrari, we need you to build a customer car.
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Not a Ferrari rate, but a customer car.
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And there was a lot of talk, uh, Monte Zelo was the president of the time.
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Pierro was the vice president, but Moretti was still thee
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supplier for steering wheels.
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He was always welcome there.
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So the two of us go a second time and you know, we have the
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political stuff and everything else.
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And at the time, Ferrari wasn't doing well in Formula One and they were
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pretty adamant that was the priority.
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But Pierro said, I want to do this.
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And Montelo agreed.
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So they went and designed this car, the 3 3 3 sp, which still today
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ranks as one of the greatest, in my opinion, sports cars ever made.
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It's funny how history tends to repeat itself.
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Ferrari not doing so well at Formula One.
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So the 4 9 9 P comes out right.
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It's how it works.
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It's either that or the Pope will excommunicate 'em all or something.
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So they build this car.
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I was at the press conference at the mall where they were doing the GT one cars,
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the Porsches, the Mercedes, the McLaren's.
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That was the top class at the mall.
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There were no more prototypes.
21:45
So I was at the press conference when Auto Sprint, which is the Italian weekly
21:49
magazine, puts the first rendering of the 3, 3, 3 on the cover that week.
21:55
I'm sitting in the press room and all these media guys from all over Europe
21:57
have this magazine and the a CO guys are up front and they're all asking us, why
22:01
aren't these cars gonna race in the mall?
22:03
Because we felt here, even though we had strong GT racing with Nissan
22:08
and the Audi Quatro, the F 40, we had a lot of really cool GT cars.
22:14
It wasn't a big enough deal to sell as the top class here.
22:17
We had to have a prototype, didn't need to be 12 seconds, a lot faster,
22:21
it could be five seconds, a lot faster.
22:23
And that was kind of the goal technically was to make it a
22:25
little bit faster than a GT car.
22:27
So they went another year or so using the GT ones.
22:33
And then because of Gabrielle, KD Ringer from the FIA and again, Al
22:38
Barto was still there going, we gotta have these kind of cars here.
22:41
All right.
22:41
Now certain ones like the Riley was made for here, high down force, no top speed.
22:46
Wayne Taylor did go, uh, with the olds Riley that won at Daytona
22:50
and Sebring that year in 96.
22:52
We basically had Dyson and, uh, four or five Ferrari, six or seven,
22:57
I think the first world sports car race with just world sports cars.
23:01
There were 17 of them at Road Atlanta the first time, you know,
23:04
so that kind of stuff spawned a lot of people to build cars.
23:07
Spice built a car, Roger Mandeville built a car, downing built a car.
23:11
All these private guys were able to build a car and compete and potentially
23:15
win big races, and that was the intent.
23:18
The Ferrari, even though at the time was a Ferrari, the joke was
23:21
the badge on the nose was 250,000.
23:24
The rest of the car was 250,000.
23:25
So it wasn't really that bad if you took the badge off, but that whole
23:29
deal, that mid nineties, early nineties, after 93 by 95, it was storming.
23:36
It was pretty good.
23:37
It was excellent racing.
23:38
The cars were super competitive with each other.
23:40
Again, a lot of world class guys came over and eventually Le Mans adopted it.
23:44
However, as we get into the later nineties, we made an effort right
23:48
then we did not allow turbos.
23:50
The story about that one world sports car, WSC car is the Porsche
23:55
with the turbo motor in it.
23:56
We made that effort to try and bridge a gap with the A CO and let
24:00
them have turbo cars and our cars.
24:03
They took it, but they also did a couple other things, which were kind of not
24:09
right, which was they allowed BMW to come in with a six liter motor when everybody
24:13
else had a four or five, and they used that BOP term for the first time.
24:18
Oh, we'll fix it with BOP.
24:19
We got no, you're not.
24:20
All you're gonna do is cap the power.
24:22
You can't cap the torque.
24:23
They also put diffusers on that car, and they also put a single
24:28
roll hoop instead of a full roll hoop with no bracing forward.
24:31
They did a couple things with the rules that we gave them.
24:34
Say here, if you wanna do it, here's the rules to kind of put their mark on it.
24:38
And it did attract new cars, but it immediately obsoleted the
24:41
ones that already existed because they had too small of an engine.
24:44
Things like the Porsche was based on the XJR 14 Jaguar, which was a ground effect
24:50
car, which then became a Mazda car and then became the Porsche World Sports Car.
24:55
And that car ran three races.
24:57
It won Le Mans twice, and it finished second at Petite Le Mans the first
25:01
year after Wayne Taylor's Ferrari.
25:03
So it, we proved there that it could be competitive with turbos, but they changed
25:08
the rest of the car and you couldn't take a Ferrari 3, 3 3, which was a flat
25:11
bottom car with an open rear with no tunnels and just stick diffusers on it.
25:15
It doesn't work that way.
25:16
The whole car would have to be redesigned to take advantage of that.
25:22
The Porsche was an exception because it was already built with tunnels.
25:25
The new cars from Audi and BMW by 98, 99 were all ground
25:30
effects cars to some extent.
25:32
And the BMW we're talking about for those, you know, maybe Googling it,
25:36
that might not know the history, that's the LM RV 12, which is infamous.
25:39
Correct.
25:40
To your point, you mentioned a very specific brand that was in the shadows
25:43
with the original R eight Roadster, which looks nothing like the McNish
25:48
car and the ones that we know.
25:49
It was kind of plain Jane, sort of in the style of the 3 3 3 sp,
25:54
and that's the original R eight.
25:55
So Audi's in there in the shadows trying to figure out what they're doing, what
25:59
their play is, all the politics with Porsche and all that kind of stuff.
26:02
Because you're right, we were still transitioning out of GT one with the nine
26:06
11 GT one and some of those other car, the BM, bmw GTR, all that kind stuff.
26:09
So it was an interesting period.
26:12
But at the same time, there's a lot of stuff going on on our side of the
26:15
ocean, especially 98 99 with A LMS.
26:19
So let's talk a little bit more about that history and overlap, and
26:21
can you shed some light on IMSA's involvement in A LMS and how that grew
26:26
out of Grand Am and eventually they merged back into what we consider the
26:30
rebirth of IMSA as we know it today.
26:32
So what happened was when Andy Evans acquired imsa, who was the fifth
26:36
owner since 1990, okay, this is 96 7.
26:41
Basically the management of imsa, old Generation one ended up here in Daytona.
26:47
Myself, George Silverman, our director of operations, so on so forth.
26:51
The race staff became the contracted staff and they were part-time
26:56
people that ran the A LMS races.
26:59
So basically IMSA split in half.
27:01
Management came to Daytona.
27:02
We worked with the France family for a long time, so Don Panos vision was to
27:08
accept the Le Mansr rules and run them here.
27:12
Looking back at that, it was a great idea, but it didn't really work that
27:16
way because most of the LA MA stuff, even today, is designed for Le Mans.
27:20
Okay?
27:20
So you gotta think about, all right, how's this gonna work at Lime Rock?
27:24
How's this gonna work at mid Ohio?
27:25
How's this gonna work at Sonoma?
27:27
Okay.
27:27
Or the places where, where we raised, you know?
27:30
So initially it was good.
27:32
It attracted the manufacturers, okay?
27:35
Tried new stuff.
27:36
The Audi, I think was a V eight.
27:38
It was black.
27:39
They ran two of those against the BMWs at Sebring in 99, I believe.
27:43
And the other side of the equation that didn't adhere to that philosophy
27:49
because fundamentally costs just like doubled and tripled within a year.
27:54
So all of the people that had the original world sports guards were kind of
27:59
like, we can't race against these guys.
28:01
It's not possible.
28:02
So there was a, not an appeal, but there was people like Rob Dyson, there was
28:05
people like Moretti, there was people like Freddie Leinart, people with
28:09
Ferraris and Riley's and everything who could not race these new factory
28:12
cars because they were a completely different kind of car, though they looked
28:15
the same, technically very different.
28:18
So the U-S-R-R-C was restarted with the SCCA, the France tracks, which
28:24
at the time were Watkins Glen.
28:26
Daytona, middle Ohio, joined that group.
28:28
So USRC ran a few races in 98, 1 in 99, and at that point is where the people
28:35
here decided we're gonna start Grand Dam.
28:38
On the same principle of the original GTP in the original World Sports Car,
28:42
which is every component engine and car has to be available to anybody.
28:46
They're gonna be low down force cars.
28:48
They may not be pretty, but they were designed for close competition and Grand
28:52
Dam provided that with the DP car as we rolled into 2000 and started Grand Dam's.
28:57
First race was the 24 hours of Daytona with 80 cars.
29:00
2000 no prototypes.
29:02
We were still running the Delara with Lista.
29:05
The Riley's, the Cadillacs were eligible because of how they
29:09
were made, both sets of rules.
29:10
They could run in A LMS and run in Grand Dam.
29:13
And then by 2003 is when the Daytona prototype car was introduced.
29:17
And then that propagated rapidly because again, reasonable little
29:21
guys could get one race and have a chance to win the big races.
29:25
So that's kind of taken you through that transition.
29:27
The transition was difficult times.
29:30
I'm just gonna speculate, but I know it was hard for Don Panos to understand
29:35
that people like Daytona we're not gonna brand an event with Le Mansr at Daytona.
29:40
They have an interest in the physical plant here, or Watkins Glen,
29:43
they're not gonna call it Le Mansr.
29:45
We have the petite Le Mansr because we inherited that with the
29:48
reassembly of the two halves in 20.
29:52
13 actually.
29:53
So for a decade there were two different paths that actually both
29:57
were part of imsa, but separate.
29:59
They're doing completely different things technically and philosophically.
30:03
Uh, grand Am was all about reasonable costs, reasonable schedule.
30:07
A MS was all about manufacture teams and having gone through the late
30:13
seventies and then the GTP area where the manufacturers come and then go.
30:18
After they fulfill whatever their need was.
30:21
There was a big reluctance to go that way.
30:23
That kind of takes us to the early two thousands.
30:26
But by 2005, six and seven Grand AM was booming.
30:30
We had just as good a TV audience.
30:32
We had just as good crowds and we had way more cars.
30:35
And A LMS was beginning to struggle a little bit with manufacturer
30:39
dominated Penske and the P two car Audi and the P one car.
30:43
But.
30:43
Who else was there?
30:45
Nobody.
30:45
They all went away and in gt, I mean the Corvettes ran one year against themselves.
30:51
GT Le Mansr had two Astons and two Corvettes the year before, and then Aston
30:56
stopped because it was too expensive to run the GT car to those rules.
31:00
They just parked them in England.
31:01
So they began to struggle.
31:02
They put the Porsche Cup cars in there.
31:04
They came up with the PC car.
31:06
They came up all of a sudden with similar concepts of cars that
31:10
were easily accessible that people could get and go participate.
31:13
Not win overall, but participate in their big races, which were Atlanta
31:17
and Sea R, so on and so forth.
31:19
The other thing that Grand Am had the benefit of was the
31:22
company owns a lot of racetracks.
31:24
So the road course at Fontana, the road course at Phoenix, obviously Daytona.
31:29
Obviously Watkins Glen, we could build a schedule on our own tracks right away.
31:34
We also added mid Ohio Lime Rock, three Rivers, uh, San Jovi, you
31:39
know, uh, we went to Canada twice.
31:41
Panos owned, uh, most ports, so we didn't go there.
31:44
And he owned Atlanta and we owned Seabring.
31:45
We didn't go there, but pretty much everywhere else, grand Dam, we went
31:48
to Sears, we went to, we went to all the same places and did well.
31:52
Tracks did well.
31:53
So that kind of, how should I put it?
31:55
It kind of created a, a split, but the split, the long-term view was
32:01
gonna be the one that succeeded.
32:02
And the long-term view has always been you have to keep some
32:05
sort of cost control in place.
32:08
It's a discussion item today.
32:10
It's cost control.
32:11
Cars are super technologically oriented, difficult for the
32:15
little guy to run, if at all.
32:17
No customer cars, so it's got a limited field size.
32:20
There's, there's no cars.
32:21
Porsche's the only one that's made a customer car, so that is a, a
32:25
current problem, but that recurring problem of economic explosion out
32:31
of the realm of people being able to do it, including car companies.
32:34
It's a constant thing with sports car racing.
32:37
Going back to World War ii, what Ford spent in 1967 was crazy to win them all.
32:43
Mark, let's get into one of my favorite discussions.
32:46
You and I shared a beer about this particular topic last year.
32:50
It's Balance of Performance.
32:52
I ask all our pro drivers about this.
32:55
This is something that I know you know very, very well because it's at the heart
32:58
of your job and what you do, and it's very complicated and it's very nuanced.
33:03
And IMSA has been at the forefront of perfecting balance
33:06
and performance for years.
33:08
And I know that there's been conversations, especially as we get
33:11
closer to the unification of the rules between IMSA and we in the
33:15
modern times of how does BOP work?
33:17
So can you put it in perspective for us?
33:19
Because as fans, BOP is like, it's like the worst thing ever, right?
33:24
We want people to build better mouse traps, but that's not how racing works.
33:27
No.
33:28
So BOP, the way it works, the relationship we have with the A CO first, people have
33:32
to understand there's two kinds of cars.
33:34
A hypercar is a hypercar, an LMDH car is an IPSA car.
33:40
Our class of those two cars together and they're all eligible for,
33:44
or you can come, POEO can come.
33:45
They can come if they want, is based on a process that we developed over three or
33:50
four years with all of the manufacturers that were building LMDH cars.
33:55
And if you think back, other than those three original ones, there
33:59
have been no new lm, no new hypercar.
34:02
Why It cost about eight to nine times more to develop because
34:05
everything is proprietary technology.
34:08
LMDH was decided to be standard hybrid units, standard
34:13
batteries, standard gearbox.
34:15
So the system that runs all of the cars in LMDH is the same, so the manufacturers
34:20
didn't have to go out and develop that.
34:22
The Bosch management systems that run it all are the same.
34:26
They can program it the way they want, but they're using the same
34:29
hardware, so that solves everything.
34:31
The other thing is there are four chassis options in LMDH.
34:35
You pick one, you put your stuff in it, and then the manufacturer pretty
34:38
much, and they are cost capped.
34:40
Those chassis, the, the what we call the spine.
34:43
So the manufacturers, really all they had to do was do a body work.
34:46
Everybody in LMDH is using an engine they already have, I think the genesis will
34:50
be the first car that has a new engine.
34:52
But the BMW engine is two generations ago.
34:55
DTM engine, the Porsche engine's out of a nine 18, I think the Honda
35:00
engine in DPI was actually the turbo version of the minivan engine.
35:04
Now it's more of like, it's the IndyCar engine, but it's stuff they had, they
35:08
didn't have to go and make new stuff that made the decision economically acceptable
35:14
to the board of directors to go racing.
35:16
Meanwhile, in hypercar, everything is from scratch, so you gotta
35:19
develop a whole hybrid system.
35:21
You gotta develop the body work, you gotta develop, and the rules of the
35:24
cars themselves are not the same.
35:26
Hypercar has all wheel drive.
35:27
It's been reduced a lot at the front from the electric motors, but we learned
35:31
in 1989 with the Audi GT car, you got a road racing four wheel drive car, see ya.
35:37
There's no way to really match it.
35:39
So the BOP on both sides of the water is what those two groups us and
35:45
them want for their championships.
35:48
World Endurance championship, weather tech championship here.
35:51
So we don't do the same thing or do it the same way.
35:54
They're trying to get LMDH cars in the game and I'm not being
35:58
critical, but they've changed their process, we've evolved our process.
36:02
It isn't perfect.
36:03
It's really kind of like bracket racing.
36:06
For drag racing.
36:06
You want, unlike things to go around a racetrack ranging from Daytona to.
36:14
Long Beach the same way.
36:16
Well, that's not possible.
36:17
So we work within a margin, but the margin of difference of the
36:22
demonstrated performance during a race at an IPSA race is usually about 0.2%.
36:28
It's smaller than LMP two, which is a spec car.
36:32
So the quality and the quantity of those cars is unfortunately limited
36:38
because there aren't that many cars.
36:39
But trying to make all that stuff work the same way.
36:43
You have three tools.
36:44
You have power, and the power is controlled by torque sensors on
36:47
the axles, and WC uses it the same.
36:49
So we manage that and it has a split.
36:52
There's low RPM power and high RPM power, so they have two levels.
36:55
And then you have a couple other things such as.
36:58
Weight, but there are limitations on how heavy the car can be because the
37:02
battery and all that stuff is heavy.
37:04
And then you run into tire problems.
37:06
If the car is too heavy, tires are made for a certain weight range.
37:10
You'd really like to put 20 kilos on a car to slow.
37:13
Its cornering down, weight handles cornering power straightaway, speed.
37:17
And then there's the arrow.
37:18
And all the cars have been in our wind tunnel using our protocol.
37:21
And now just this last fall is the first time the hypercar went to the
37:26
wind shear wind tunnel that we use.
37:28
And they got different results.
37:30
If you've read the press, Ferrari's gotta make some, everybody's gotta
37:33
make changes over there because the process they were using before.
37:37
Was, uh, at the Sauber Wind Tunnel, which is a small wind tunnel.
37:40
Wind shear is probably the best wind tunnel for race cars on the planet.
37:43
And we've used that really since about 2009 in dp.
37:47
We were putting cars in there, 10, 20, somewhere around there.
37:50
So we do the same thing in principle, but not the same way.
37:54
And that's been agreed to all along.
37:56
So when we talk about real convergence for the future, our opinion is
38:01
there has to be one car, that's it.
38:03
One car type.
38:04
These are the rules, and everybody has the same rules.
38:06
So for an example, a hypercar has a much more active aerodynamic
38:09
floor than an LMDH car.
38:12
It has all wheel drive.
38:13
LMDH doesn't have that.
38:15
So there's some fundamental things that are.
38:18
My opinion almost impossible to make really equal.
38:22
One may rise above the other based on a track specification.
38:25
It might do better at this kind of track versus that kind of track.
38:28
It's a difficult problem because you have two kinds of cars and they
38:33
are very advanced aerodynamically.
38:35
And then when you look step back, first off, you gotta remember,
38:38
BOP does not dictate the results.
38:40
How you run the race dictates the results.
38:43
That's number one.
38:44
Number two is trying to make 'em all equal.
38:47
Even at small percentage, you get differences of where certain
38:51
cars work well on others.
38:52
That allows 'em to pass each other.
38:54
If they were identical, it would like a Formula One race.
38:57
They'd drive around in line the way they qualified.
38:59
Be boring.
39:00
Sorry.
39:00
I'm just saying technically when you get it too good, that's what happens.
39:04
And the same, what I'm talking about applies in gt.
39:06
Except in GT it's much harder because the base cars are so different.
39:10
You can see on TV how much bigger a Mustang is over a
39:13
Lamborghini, but same three tools.
39:15
So if you drew a circle, I would say the BOP makes up maybe 40%
39:21
of the performance of the car.
39:23
All the other things are in the controls of the teams.
39:26
What kind of tires when they change 'em, who's, you know,
39:29
all these other variables.
39:30
How long is your pit stop?
39:31
I mean, just did Seing.
39:32
Penske's making three to four seconds on pit stops.
39:36
Just better.
39:37
They're better at it.
39:38
Making that up on the racetrack when you're 0.2% apart on
39:41
performance, actual real performance in the race is really hard.
39:45
It's really hard.
39:46
The final thing is we run our races where we bring all of the classes back
39:50
together after a yellow and there's gonna be yellows and long races.
39:54
And the first car over in each group, it's GTP, MP two GTD Pro GTD is the leader of
40:00
that class and everybody's behind them.
40:02
So some people say, well that's, no, that's what it is.
40:05
It's four races separate from one another going on.
40:07
So our sporting regulations are how we run the races are different than the
40:12
ACOs and it's not a right or wrong thing.
40:14
That's how they do what they do.
40:17
They come over and watch what we do and they've slowly began to look at how they
40:22
deploy pace cars on an eight mile track.
40:24
Big problem.
40:25
It's tough.
40:26
Um, but they're beginning to see what we do to make the product.
40:30
And that's how we look at what our racing is.
40:33
It's a product, it's an entertainment product.
40:35
We want people to go there and go, yeah, there's eight or nine
40:38
guys that can win this race.
40:39
I'm gonna watch to see who does the best job to do that.
40:43
So we go to the extra mile to do that.
40:46
But it isn't easy because basically the game is the OE manufacturers will never
40:52
go faster than they need to go to win.
40:54
Which means they've always got something in their pocket and we're
40:57
always looking for what that is.
40:59
So even though we have all this data and all this stuff, and again
41:03
I'll emphasize that we only use performance demonstrated in a race.
41:06
So we don't use qualifying, we don't use practice.
41:08
You go to the roar here, they're three seconds elapsed slower than they are
41:11
at the race or in the 24 hour race.
41:13
They go faster on Sunday morning after they've been racing 16 hours.
41:16
'cause there's what we call go time.
41:18
Go time is when everybody looks around and says, okay, it's so many pit stops for
41:22
fuel and energy to the end of the race.
41:25
How am I gonna do this?
41:26
You know, am I gonna push now or do I push later?
41:28
But they all go faster.
41:29
They did it seem too, they're going as fast at night as they were qualifying
41:32
us because they push, they really run hard at the end of the race.
41:36
'cause that's what it's all about.
41:37
I think that explains it.
41:39
But it's basically making, unlike things.
41:42
Performing as much as you humanly can, kind of the same way.
41:46
And there's a couple threads here that we can pull and I'll,
41:49
I'll just pull two of them.
41:50
Yep.
41:51
You talked about LMDH versus hypercar.
41:54
Yeah.
41:54
And how they're sort of trying to edge each other out.
41:57
But in the end, this is just Mark's opinion.
41:59
You know, take your IMSA hat off.
42:01
Yeah.
42:01
Who do you think is gonna come out on top in terms of, this is the spec that
42:05
we're gonna see in the future When you're just looking at the P one class?
42:08
The sustainability path is LMDH.
42:12
Look at it.
42:12
Ford, LMDH.
42:14
McLaren, LMDH, Genesis LMDH.
42:17
Nobody has done a hypercar since the initial run.
42:20
The Aston is kind of a a bit of a bastard car because it was originally done on
42:25
the original hypercar concept, which it had to be based on a road car, and it
42:28
is, it's the Valkyrie Road car, so it has an elements to it that are different.
42:34
Again, like the cockpit side, it has certain dimensional things that are
42:38
required for use on the road in Europe or the UK that you really don't have to do if
42:43
you started with a clean sheet of paper.
42:45
So it's a little bit of a problem.
42:46
It's got a great engine.
42:47
It's not gotten the development that the other ones have had,
42:51
so it's a little bit awkward.
42:52
But again, my opinion is the LMDH concept of standardization of some significant
42:59
components that don't require the manufacturer to have to go develop from
43:03
scratch is gonna be more welcoming to more people, and that's what's happening.
43:09
Of course, the guys that got the other cars want to keep doing what they're
43:11
doing because they hold all that technology to their chest and nobody
43:16
knows about what they're doing, which is.
43:19
Politics to some extent.
43:20
And I can't really speak on that 'cause I don't know the juicy details of that.
43:24
But I do know more of the people who have done an LMDH said the only
43:28
way they would've ever done it is that way they will not do hypercar.
43:32
Right.
43:32
So another thing that came up recently and, and this gave me pause when
43:36
thinking about motorsports as a whole, and you mentioned before Formula
43:39
One and Formula One has always been considered at the pinnacle of motorsport.
43:43
I'll make the argument that I think that the P one cars, you know, whether it's at
43:47
WE or a CO or IMSA or whatever, they're as technologically advanced, maybe more so in
43:52
some ways in Formula One, because I think Formula One cars are hamstrung these days.
43:56
But there's something really interesting happening here in the 2026 season
44:00
with the new regulations and what gave me pause was someone said, what
44:04
happens if this new hurry up in Coast methodology that they have in Formula
44:09
One makes its way to sports, car, and endurance racing because of their mgus.
44:14
And their fuel consumption and energy management and that.
44:17
Do you see a future where it'll be hurry up and coast in IMSA's?
44:21
What?
44:21
It's already there.
44:22
Oh, it's already here.
44:24
It has been from the beginning.
44:25
We call it Lift and Coast.
44:27
So Lift and Coast shows up on the data where people are off
44:31
the gas going into a corner much sooner than you would have to be.
44:36
And the reason for that is back to my comment about Penske.
44:39
If you can save that energy and come into the pits and not take as much,
44:44
you're gonna gain time on everybody.
44:46
There are drivers that can drop 750,000 RPM off an engine and do pretty close
44:52
to the time they need to do in the race.
44:54
The other part of Lifted Coast, which a lot of people don't realize.
44:57
The theoretical best performance a car can do is usually engineering reviewed
45:04
based on it being by itself, not sharing the track with at Daytona 59 other cars,
45:09
a lot of lift and coast that you see in data is basically the guy has to lift
45:14
because he's gonna run into somebody.
45:15
He's got three GT cars in front of 'em.
45:17
There's traffic I figured out a few years ago to win Daytona, you gotta pass like
45:22
15 cars a lap for 700 and something laps.
45:25
So it's pretty monumental.
45:27
And we're running 60 cars on 3.65 miles while they're, I
45:30
think running 50 or 55 on eight.
45:33
So the density of what's going on impacts the performance that a car potentially
45:38
can do, regardless of who's driving it.
45:41
So the strategy of.
45:43
Energy management, it's not backing off like F1.
45:47
The problem with F1, in my opinion, is it's too much dependent on that.
45:50
It's sort of like halfway to Formula E. We're working with like 10 or 15% of the
45:56
potential energy being that, and that's manageable, and the drivers can manage
46:01
that and the teams can manage that.
46:02
But it is a factor in the outcome of the race is who manages their energy the best.
46:08
It really isn't different with us than if it was just straight fuel.
46:11
There are guys that would save fuel and they would get one more lap in a stint
46:16
just because they saved enough fuel.
46:17
So what happens, like at Sebring is a lot of cars early in the race or
46:21
actually in the middle of the race when it went around and around for like
46:24
hours with just no yellows or nothing.
46:27
They're all basically running laps, but they're saving energy so that at
46:31
the end, at night, they could push.
46:33
We've talked a lot about the alignment of Im SA and WC and a CO in the modern
46:39
times, and we saw evidence of this, you know, it was rumored for a long time,
46:42
but we've seen evidence of this over the last couple years and we knew it was
46:45
real when you saw the Lexuses show up at Le Mans for the first time and it was
46:49
like, whoa, this is really cool, and that's awesome that our guys are going
46:54
over there and competing in GT three, and there's a lot of excitement and a lot of
46:57
action in that class, which is awesome.
46:58
But how do we do the reverse?
47:00
How do we convince Ferrari or EO to bring their cars here?
47:06
Some of the reasons that they don't have some, in my opinion.
47:11
There's some technical reasons.
47:12
Like I said, they for a long time did not want to go through our protocol
47:17
of how you get Homologated in Ipsa.
47:20
The deal was both sides have tested all the cars that compete with them
47:24
the way they want to test them.
47:26
We have, you know, 15 years of experience working in a big wind
47:29
tunnel and have great aerodynamic consultants who have been with us
47:35
with IMSA or Grand Am since like 2005.
47:38
Okay.
47:38
So work with the same people, understand how the cars are made,
47:42
understand how, what can be done to them, so on and so forth.
47:45
So they may, I mean, it's just a matter of, there's a big expense to that.
47:50
The cars are super expensive.
47:52
Ferrari calls the yellow on a cus it's not a customer car.
47:55
The development costs for LMDH cars in the beginning from design
48:02
to being at their first test is.
48:04
Not yet.
48:05
10 million hypercar, probably 35 to 40 to develop the car.
48:10
So there's, there's no growth there.
48:13
So it's not like they got a stable of eight cars.
48:16
They don't, yeah, there's like, what you see in a wet race
48:19
is pretty much what exists.
48:20
There's some spare chassis, but they don't have built up cars sitting around.
48:24
And the reason I bring it up is because if we take Porsche off the
48:27
table, 'cause Porsche's always.
48:29
Built a car to race in every series so they could dominate
48:32
and do that kinda thing.
48:32
There was one brand, and it's the close cousin of Porsche, and that's
48:36
Audi that was able, at the time, at least in the nineties, in the early
48:39
two thousands, was able to build a car that could compete in both series
48:43
without really making a lot of changes.
48:44
Lot of changes.
48:45
Yeah.
48:45
And that might have been because there was even closer alignment at
48:48
the time, and there's not a schism like there is, as you mentioned.
48:50
Keep in mind A LMS was running Le Mans's rules.
48:53
Exactly.
48:54
Grand Am was not, that's why there was no Audis there.
48:56
Okay.
48:56
Or that Audi powered car.
48:58
You gotta remember in the beginning of LMDH, the other manufacturer
49:01
was Audi and Multimatic was gonna provide the chassis for Audis and
49:05
Porsches factory and customer cars.
49:08
Audi then made the shift to F1.
49:10
Well, they can't afford to do both.
49:11
Let's just tell you where the money is.
49:13
You can't do both.
49:14
They chose to go to F1 and that killed half of Multimatic build of cars
49:20
because then it was just Porsche's.
49:21
So that brings up a really interesting point, and I'm glad you went there.
49:25
The lineup for the 24 hours of Le Mans for 2026 was released earlier this
49:29
year than it's ever been in the past.
49:30
And you look at the line, you know, you see the usual players.
49:32
It's Ferrari, it's BMW, it's Cadillac, and you've got Genesis in there Now,
49:37
Ford's coming next year, this and that.
49:38
Yep.
49:39
As you go down the list, even in the production based classes, GT three,
49:43
there's only a private tier group.
49:46
Of nine elevens, Porsche has pulled out.
49:48
Is that a result of the F1 program?
49:50
No, because Manthey is here.
49:52
They just won Sebring.
49:54
AO is getting the same treatment it looks like, as the man's been the
49:58
sort of favored Porsche over there.
50:01
So they're going back over there.
50:02
It's a perfect example of your previous question.
50:04
You can't do both.
50:05
So they're gonna run the endurance races, five endurance races here and the wec.
50:10
And that's a huge difference from just running the wec.
50:13
Okay.
50:13
There is that.
50:14
They really can't do both.
50:16
You have to have completely separate entities.
50:19
And you gotta remember GT three is essentially customer programs.
50:23
You know?
50:23
And Le Mans, they have to have, they don't have a GTD Pro, you've gotta have.
50:28
Am drivers in your car here?
50:30
We broke it in half because there's two distinctly, same car, same rules,
50:34
different teams, different drivers.
50:35
When we step back and we look at what we've been talking about
50:38
tonight, we've talked a lot about the influence of Im SA on the A CO and
50:42
the relationship and this and that.
50:44
But if we take that lens away and you look at how Le Mans has evolved over the
50:49
decades as you've been evolved, you've been going over there, you've been
50:51
going to the races, all the changes you've seen, whether it was adding the
50:55
Chicanes at Mosan, changing the pits.
50:57
We hear a lot about that from the drivers, all the politics, everything
51:00
that's going on behind the scenes.
51:01
What do you think about the direction of endurance racing as you look at the
51:06
evolution of Le Mans, what does that say?
51:08
For Motorsport, having been to Le Mans as early as the late seventies and having
51:13
been there recently, Le Mans has transcended as I think both Daytona and Sebring
51:19
have, that they're just not car races.
51:22
They are events that you need to be at.
51:24
And Le Mans is a massive event.
51:26
We had 180,000 people over three days at Daytona.
51:30
It's massive.
51:31
So when you look at the influencers and the people that show up now, those
51:36
key endurance races are now referred to as events you just need to be
51:40
at because of the whole experience.
51:42
It's not watching cars drive around for 24 hours, it's the manufactured Wi Bay.
51:46
It's all the stuff you can do and the places you can go.
51:49
Uh, here you can leave the track and go over to BJ's and have a really
51:53
nice dinner and then come back.
51:54
You know, Le Mans a little different, but they've created an event which
51:58
is a massively solidly good event.
52:01
May not always necessarily be the best racing, but it's
52:04
an event you need to go to.
52:06
And we kind of over the years have seen that and have taken some of those
52:10
principles of making our bigger events, petite Laal, Sebring, and Daytona.
52:15
Are essentially almost sold out.
52:18
I mean, we had to block people from getting in in Atlanta last year
52:21
'cause there was no place for 'em.
52:22
Actually, the police did.
52:23
They said, we're done.
52:24
We can't handle this.
52:25
So when you get to that point, you go, okay, we we're there.
52:28
It's places that people want to be, but I think for us, we've still tried to keep
52:32
the entertainment value of the competition because to us, again, that's the product.
52:37
It's gotta be entertaining.
52:38
But I think you gotta give Le Mans credit for establishing a level of
52:43
event in motor sports that certainly a lot of people might argue.
52:47
I mean, I think the biggest thing I've ever seen is the Indy 500.
52:51
As far as a one day thing, Le Mans is right up there.
52:55
I mean, it's a major sporting event that happens to be with cars, which
52:59
makes it cool for car people like us.
53:01
But it's an event that you can go to.
53:03
Like Sebring, I mean thousands of people go to Sebring and I don't think they
53:06
have a clue what's on the racetrack.
53:08
They're having a great time.
53:10
Okay.
53:10
And the environment fosters that now that Le Mans has made the
53:15
classic a every year event rather than every so many year event.
53:20
If you compare classic to the 24, what does Mark like better?
53:24
So the classic I'll, I'll probably go, 'cause I mentioned earlier
53:27
we're taking 30 stock cars over there from HSR, historic stock cars.
53:30
But I would say this historic racing in Europe is much more,
53:35
there's a lot more finess to it.
53:36
The cars are much more accurate in their, I argue with people about, there's no
53:41
such thing as an original race car.
53:43
As soon as it leaves, wherever it was built and gets in the hands
53:45
of the team, it gets changed.
53:47
So race cars have a different life than classic cars, for instance.
53:50
But the classic and Daytona here.
53:53
24 Classic or historic classic.
53:55
It's different here.
53:56
We're a little bit more like cowboys.
53:58
We kind of do different things.
54:00
A lot of replicas, but there's a lot of real cars and our whole goal is to try
54:04
and get people who have worked all their lives to get a car that they've loved,
54:09
an opportunity to take it out on the racetrack, safely compete if they want,
54:13
but they wanna drive around in the back.
54:15
They could do that too over there.
54:16
It's hardcore.
54:17
I mean they, they blow up all kinds of really valuable stuff running the crap
54:21
out of them and they're like 45 years old.
54:24
It's like stuff wasn't that good back when it was new and it's worse today.
54:29
Okay.
54:30
I've had some significant 9 62 drivers who have been to the 24 here when we've
54:35
had nine 60 twos who take the cars out and they come back in and basically say, if
54:40
I knew then what I knew now, I probably wouldn't have done this because they are
54:44
scary cars and Le Mansr is a serious place.
54:48
So I think that the difference is in Europe, it's a much more
54:52
pure form of the classic element.
54:55
While here it's more Americanized hot rods, you know.
54:58
Well, mark, as we wrap this up, looking ahead, what goals or
55:01
unfinished business do you feel that IMSA still has when it comes to the
55:05
relationship with Weck and the A CO and of course the 24 hours of Le Mans?
55:09
We touched on it.
55:10
I think the goal should be a common platform.
55:13
If everybody's using the same kind of car, a lot of the difficulties
55:18
that we both have would be resolved.
55:20
WEC does what they do the way they want to do it, and they have changed their
55:24
process for BOP during the season, which is why you see Ferraris go from
55:28
winning to 10th or the Porsche being eighth and all of a sudden winning.
55:32
There's an up and down there.
55:33
And I don't know that that's good or bad.
55:35
I'm not saying it's wrong.
55:36
That's what they choose to do.
55:37
We go the other way.
55:38
We're trying to smash 'em all together in this very narrow window of
55:41
performance and let the other elements that the teams and drivers decide
55:47
to determine what the outcome is.
55:48
In other words, we want everybody to show up at the race thinking they
55:52
have a solid chance if they execute correctly and basically perfectly
55:57
is what you have to do nowadays.
55:58
It's not correctly, perfectly no mistakes, but you know, the Lexus at Sebring,
56:02
they should have won the GT race.
56:04
The wheel falls off.
56:04
It's like guys.
56:06
You can't do that.
56:07
You have to be Penske ish.
56:09
And there's a reason he has succeeded with all of his racing is the way
56:13
they execute the races is something everybody should be looking at.
56:17
Well, mark, we mentioned in the intro, you've been at
56:19
this for nearly five decades.
56:21
What's next for you?
56:23
Everybody says, when are you gonna retire?
56:24
And I go, well, I'm kinda lucky.
56:26
I get up every day, get to do what I want to do with the
56:28
people I want to do it with.
56:29
How cool is that?
56:29
Right?
56:30
So I think for me, what I would like to see, and you kind of touched
56:33
on it, is what do we do next?
56:36
You know, in 2030.
56:38
It took four years to create the LMDH car from concept with the oes all involved.
56:44
Or how about we're gonna do it this way, what?
56:46
So it was very cooperative effort by all the people in LMDH
56:51
in the beginning to do this.
56:52
That took four years, well, it's 2026, it's kind 2030.
56:57
Gonna be honest pretty quick.
56:59
So the question is what do, what do we do next?
57:01
And when I say we, what does the industry do that keeps the entertainment part
57:06
of it and the return on the investment to the people that funded, engaged?
57:11
That's been the problem with the end of GTP, the end of world sports.
57:14
All those programs went downhill because return on the investment versus the
57:20
investment wasn't hitting the marks.
57:22
So we gotta do that.
57:23
And it's gotta be technological, which means it's difficult.
57:27
Well Mark, before we close out now, I would love to pass the microphone
57:31
to our a CO representative David Lowe, for some parting thoughts.
57:35
Mark, on behalf of the a CO and Endurance Racing fans everywhere, thank you
57:39
so much for your time this evening.
57:40
It's wonderful to hear you again.
57:42
Always enjoy your stories and I'm sure on our rebroadcast we're
57:46
gonna reach out to a lot of people.
57:47
So thank you again.
57:48
Enjoyed being here.
57:49
I gotta say, I mean our, we have a really good relationship with
57:53
the A CO, but we have different business models, so to speak.
57:56
Um, they have different influences.
57:59
We are actually lucky to be able to do what we do.
58:03
In one country to do what they do as an operations guy at events, they
58:07
come to Daytona all the time and they come up to our race control and they
58:10
just go compared to what we have to deal with from country to country with
58:13
different people, different systems.
58:15
We use the same people in the same stuff at Long Beach in a few weeks for a hundred
58:20
minute race that we use at Daytona for 24.
58:22
So we are lucky or have the opportunity to do that.
58:25
Some of the hurdles or some of the things they have to deal
58:27
with, they're problematic because that's just the way it is.
58:31
But we're all in one place, big place.
58:34
But we get to do things a little bit differently.
58:36
I think because of that, we certainly enjoy the partnership
58:39
and, and the interaction.
58:40
So again, let's keep it rolling.
58:42
Yeah, and like I said, we gotta get together and decide
58:45
what's 2031 gonna look like.
58:47
That's, that's to me, to Eric's question.
58:49
I think for me, I would like to see us get through that and see
58:54
what the next product looks like.
58:56
You know, the people listening gotta understand sports,
58:59
car racing has to change.
59:01
If you do the same thing for more than five years, they look the same.
59:05
I just told everybody, we need to tell these guys change the bodies.
59:07
They did, they did all the evos.
59:09
If you have the last year Porsche, and this year, Porsche next to each
59:13
other, you would see the differences.
59:14
Same with all of BMW Acura.
59:16
They've all made changes to their body work, but as they're styling changes on
59:21
their road cars, that's the next step is between now and 2030, upgrade 'em
59:25
to what the latest product looks like.
59:26
That's what it's all about.
59:27
As our conversation winds down, it's impossible not to appreciate just how
59:32
much of this sport Mark Raffauf has carried on his shoulders and just how much of
59:36
it he's preserved for the rest of us.
59:38
His decades inside of IMSA didn't just shape the rule book.
59:42
They shaped the culture, the competitors, and the very identity
59:45
of North American endurance racing.
59:47
And if tonight's stories only scratch the surface for you, that's because Mark has
59:51
spent years documenting the rest of them.
59:53
His two books on IMSA's history published through Octane Press are essential
59:58
reading for anyone who wants to understand how this world was built, race by
1:00:02
race and personality by personality.
1:00:04
They are the written counterpart to the wisdom he shared with us here tonight,
1:00:08
and we hope that Mark's perspective helps you see the 24 hours of Le Mans and the
1:00:12
global endurance landscape with a little more clarity and a little more context
1:00:17
with a deeper appreciation for the people who've kept the sport moving forward.
1:00:21
Like Mark.
1:00:22
And with that, we hope you enjoyed this presentation and
1:00:24
look forward to more evening with the legend throughout the season.
1:00:27
And on behalf of everyone here and those listening at home, thank you
1:00:30
Mark for sharing the microphone and sharing your stories with us tonight.
1:00:34
If you see me at a race, don't hesitate to walk up.
1:00:37
Our policy here is we engage with everybody one-on-one, but I
1:00:41
have spectators that come up to me and go, can you explain BOP?
1:00:44
And I said, it's gonna be the four minute version.
1:00:47
But yeah, I think so.
1:00:48
And I think maybe that helps everybody understand how hard this
1:00:52
stuff is technically these days.
1:00:54
I mean, back in the GTP days, like I said, it was didn't say you couldn't.
1:00:58
You could.
1:00:58
Now it's the exact opposite.
1:01:00
If it doesn't say you can, you can't.
1:01:02
And it, and it's a completely different dynamic.
1:01:04
But I hope I was helpful to some people or many people that understand
1:01:08
a little bit more about it.
1:01:09
And like I said, if you haven't been to Le Mans, you can go.
1:01:12
You need to go just because it is a great event.
1:01:26
This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and
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