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American Le Mans Series - Unlimited Racing Championship
A new arrive-and-drive spec series with identically prepared McLaren M8D lookalike cars (so not exactly "unlimited" :rolleyes: ). Somewhat interesting, I guess.
http://www.americanlemans.com/files/...C_091611_1.jpg
Monsters of the past killed off by the 917K. Who's building the chassis?
Looks like a company called Nuart.
Link: Nuart CanAm
Kelly Collins has been signed to replace Max Papis as development driver and driving coach for the series. I ran into him yesterday at the ALMS race at Laguna after he did some demo runs in the cars. He's very enthusiastic about the cars, as you might expect from a "hold-on and punch it!" guy like he has always been. He said that the first thing that he did when he got in the car was turn the scalable engine management controller to "Full" and the traction-control to "Zero" just like Revvie and Denny had it long ago when I saw them drive the original papaya-orange M8F's in anger. Wow-za. What a sound...
It'll probably be a crowd pleaser, but how long will seeing a bunch of identical neo-M8s thunder around in various period paint schemes keep ALMS crowds entertained? As a colorful pre-game show, they could've just invited the Cayman Interseries guys. IMHO this might have been a much more interesting retro series with common tubs but variable everything else. At least in the spirit of CanAm, if not the budget required... the entry price for the NuArt car is something like $485K or so. Since TV and sponsor dough isn't a factor the field will be guys that can stroke a check, or as the NuArt site puts it, with "a wide range of driver skills”.
My interest level would be pegged if this were like the old BMW M1 ProCar series for F1 drivers. In other words, take the top current ALMS drivers and put them head-to-head in these faux McLarens in exhibition races on ALMS weekends. That would be a hoot. Watching a bunch of check-writers with 'a wide range of skills' drive around ... probably not so much. :D
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