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Stories Of The 2001 ALMS Season

06/10/2001

Looking Back

At The 2001 ALMS Season

© Tom Kjos

The American Le Mans Series 2001 season may look a little different seen from the vantage point of its closing event at the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta than it did while we were trekking from track to track in the United States and Canada. This isn't intended to be a commentary. It is just a few stories that seem more important or more fun now than they did at the time.

The Last Roval

Roval--noun, colloquial contraction of "road course in an oval," usually pejorative.

We started the season in early March in Texas. The whole thing had the feel of a pre-season. More like baseball's Florida 'Grapefruit League' playing games before they really count. This one counted, but one hoped teams would go to Silverstone or Jarama and throw this one out--on principle, if nothing else. Texas Motor Speedway is as sterile as any oval racetrack, and putting a small carnival in the middle did little to give it any charm. The only way these places warm up is when they get a couple hundred thousand fannies in the seats; then I suppose they rock. A Texas-sized version of the similar track at Las Vegas, it gave us nothing but fear and loathing over the idea of ending the season at another such facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mercifully, that never happened. The highlight of the weekend wasn't the race at all; at least not that race. The first thing on BMW Motorsport's Sylvia Proudfoot's agenda in Texas was to find a place to gather to watch the F1 opener in Australia. She found a sports bar not far from the track, actually, and alerted them to the rather odd (for Texas) race crowd that would be on hand. ALMS media, drivers, and crew pretty much filled the place, characters from Derek Bell and Dindo Capello to John Brooks. They'll never see the likes of that in Texas again. Then again, they didn't notice this time either, did they?

Le Clown Shoe to Batmobile and Back Again

When Panoz first took his LMP-1 Roadster S to Le Mans, the French dubbed it "Le Clown Shoe," which, in profile it certainly resembles. Efforts with that car and its coupe predecessor to win Le Mans, or anything else of importance, came to naught, and Don Panoz decided he needed a replacement. What a replacement it was, too. New tech from top to bottom, lots of interesting (and good) innovations, and a look just as funky as "Le Clown Shoe". It was quickly called The Batmobile, among other things. We were hopeful that the high revving, stressed-member 4 liter would power a true challenger to Audi's domination of the top of the sport. Its outing at Texas gave us some false hope. It seemed to be at least reasonably competitive right out of the box. We so much wanted this strange car to work that we ignored the warning signs. Vibration, among other things. Vibration so serious it was reportedly shaking off exhaust headers in testing at Road Atlanta. By Sebring the problems were right in front of us. There was some improvement, of course. The 07 was only shaking off alternators. Through the races in Europe before Le Mans, hope faded. The car was under-powered, but at least it handled poorly (to paraphrase an old stand-up line). At Le Mans, all it did well was shed its wheels. In an act of courage, or perhaps desperation, the decision was made to bring back the thundering LMP-1 Roadster S, with its push-rod 6 liter V8. At least, perhaps more than ever, it was a car "for the fans." That much seemed fitting for Panoz.

At Sears Point it grabbed a podium spot, but we were hesitant to take it seriously. Sure, it finished the 2000 season strong, but Audi was running the new specification R8, and even the earlier Audi models weren't doing all that well against the Joest team. Portland turned it all around--for Panoz, for Audi, for the series, and for the fans. The Roadster S was better than the Audis from the first day, through practice, qualifying and in the race. There was no weather factor like Nurburgring in 2000. Just a funny looking car that was better on that day than the modern, swoopy Audi, and its equal on most others. And one other thing (or two). Jan Magnussen and David Brabham--the best driver pairing in prototypes--anyplace. The rest of the season would be flat-out fun--for the fans.

The 49th Sebring

Fitting perhaps for a nondescript number like forty-nine, Sebring did not rise to the level of a great race. Perhaps it was too many Audis at the front. Perhaps it was the fact that only two of the four were racing for the win. Certainly the Saleen S7R was impressive in its first real ALMS outing. The win here against Corvette established an expectation of dominance that was not realized in the subsequent season. The second place by BMW's GTR set the same expectation--that was realized. Callaway and Corvette ran new purpose-built GTs, and there was hope that GT would be other than just a BMW-Porsche show in 2001. That also came to naught. In the end though, it was probably the pall over the whole event as a result of the tragic accident that took Bob Wollek's life on a public highway near the track that took the fun out of this event. I just know that we left the track on Saturday feeling very empty.

North American Nothing

After Sebring--nothing. At least in North America. Sorry, I couldn't get excited about GARRA. (Daytona excepted, of course. I'll always pay attention to that, just like I usually watch the Daytona 500, and then leave the rest of NASCAR to itself.) So four months with no races of interest, a period a long as the 'winter break' that it seemed had just ended. There was some interest in the two points-scoring events at Silverstone and Jarama--but not much. In 2000, Silverstone in particular was interesting from here for the novelty of the first venture of the ALMS into Europe, and Nurburgring, well, because it is Nurburgring, even if not the Nordschliefe. If my favorite baseball team hadn't had an exciting run before the All-Star break, I might have had to take up fishing or gardening this summer. The return of the ALMS to North America saved me from having to follow closely the second half collapse of that same baseball team.

There are Porsches and then there are Porsches

There has long been an assumption that Porsche has had 'factory teams', or at least 'most favored teams'. We don't know about that, but we do know that there is a huge gulf between the best and the rest. Last year the best was Barbour Racing, and Alex Job Racing was close enough to take a couple of wins at the end of the season. No one else was even close. This year, without Barbour, AJR was the best, and Petersen Motorsports was close, not close enough to win, but right there mixing it up with the Alex Job Racing cars and the BMWs. The rest were pretty much nowhere. Or further than nowhere. In fact there were two distinct Porsche classes. When Porsche upgraded the 911 GT3-R to the GT3-RS, not everybody believed they needed to shell out the approximately $60,000 required. They did--believe us they did. Maybe not in Grand Am, but certainly in ALMS. Maybe there is another way to look at it, though. If you are going to field (by rental we assume) the drivers in those R-model cars, why spend $60,000 and still mark the back of the field.

In the Eye of the Beholder

Someone once said, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The Bard, perhaps? Didn't he say everything worth quoting? Much in California is beautiful, but brown-grass-almost-bare hills don't do much for my eye. I don't consider Sears Point to be a pretty track. In fact you have to go some distance to find anything remotely aesthetically pleasing. The part of the track you can see from the pressroom looks like a parking lot autocross. Climbing up and down from parking is a murderous effort. The paddock is ugly and dirty (ok, most paddocks are ugly and dirty). The saving grace of this place is that it is near San Francisco and some really good wines (making it one of Brooksie's favorite stops, I suppose). Oh, I almost forgot. The wineries in the area can provide a place for a really good party. Thanks, Yokohama and PTG.

Satch

Satch Carlson was always my favorite motor-anything columnist. In Autoweek, and then in Roundel. The adventures with "Blackbird" were some of my favorite reading. At a function at Sears Point we met the great man. We didn't chat. We didn't "tip a few." Just met him. It was enough.

What is a GT (or a GTS)?

Steve Saleen should give Gerhard Berger a big hug. From its introduction at Laguna Seca in 2000, the Saleen S7R was criticized as a 'rule-busting supercar'. Maybe, maybe not. But then along came BMW's GTR, and the Germans took all the heat. Corvette helped Steve, too, as did the occasional Lister and Ferrari win in Europe. Those efforts kept the Saleen from sweeping everything and everybody in its first year on the track. BMW tore through the ALMS field like..well, fill in your own description. When the ACO imposed a restrictor reduction at Laguna Seca, JJ Lehto went out and set a track record in qualifying on Saturday after "struggling with setup" in the morning (Tylenol might have helped, too). The jokes flew around the paddock. "Make us mad and we'll connect the eighth spark plug wire," and other such. Porsche has met such competition before. They likely will again. They have to.

In the Pacific Northwest

Where else do you run a full natural road course in the midst of a major city? In a city park? Only in Portland. It has its charms, but not a great deal of it is easily accessible to spectators, resulting in an unusual sight for sports car racing--lots of folks rooted in stands. Noise restrictions take a little edge off the aural enjoyment. Portland did turn out the largest car clubs contingent in the schedule, though, and this was the notable site of the end of the Silver Streak. ALMS is giving up a market, from Portland up to Vancouver, but what other track would they drop, if one had to go?

The Silver Streak

Yes, we were pulling for the red Roadsters at Portland and after. Before that, we have to admit that we thoroughly enjoyed watching one of the greatest sports cars of all time add to its record-setting string of victories. We say to our friends "You should see those cars." One day that will be "You should have seen those cars." Low, smooth, fast. Pretty. I remember seeing Jim Hall's Chaparral in 1969, Porsche's 962s throughout the 1980s, Jaguar's XJR-14 and its various predecessors, including Bob Tullius' Group 44 XJR 5s and 7s. They were all wonderful cars. So is the Audi. It may be the greatest.

Oh, Canada

I love Canada. In my other life, I have spent much time working with clients in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. If there is a more cosmopolitan and friendly city than Toronto, I can't say what it might be (unless, of course, it is Vancouver). But is there a worse international airport than Toronto's Pearson? As for Mosport, (long "o" in that pronunciation, as it is a contraction of "motor sport"), there is much to like in the setting and the layout of the track itself. The Panoz organization has done significant work upgrading the track itself. Now it is time to do something with the facilities before some of them fall down.
What a crowd. And what characters. We visited the Mayor of Turn Two, and watched the first half-hour of the race from there. Nice people, great vista of the racing action.

The Heartland

The first two ALMS seasons had a great, huge gap--the size of the middle third of the North American continent. Most of the world may identify Florida, home of Daytona and Sebring, as the core of American racing--or maybe even the Northeast, with Lime Rock and Watkins Glen. It's really the Midwest. The circle tracks of Iowa, Illinois, and of course, Indiana. Towns as small as 2,000 population have busy quarter-mile, sometimes half-mile banked dirt ovals. I know, I grew up in one. Road courses host car club and SCCA events every weekend. Most of them you never heard of...Black Hawk Farms, Donnybrooke (now BIR), many more. Some are deservedly famous--Road America and Mid-Ohio. Although I have spent a fair amount of time in Columbus, Ohio not far from there over the past three years, I had never been to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. What a great, lush green revelation that place is! Absolutely beautiful. And what a jolt of contrasts when just minutes from the track I met a father and son, both dressed in black, hatted, the elder with a full beard, driving their one-horse buggy. This is Amish country, just over the hill from the thunder of the great racing engines. This is the track of Jim Trueman, who realized his dream of an Indy 500 win just before his death of cancer. His protegé, Bobby Rahal, is certainly well enough known. Michelle Trueman carries on running this great track. It hosts the SCCA National Run-offs. The most important announcement the ALMS has ever made may well be the addition of Mid-Ohio and Road America to the 2002 schedule. After the agreement with Hawaiian Tropic, of course.

The Greatest Meeting of Land and Sea in the World

That is Stevenson described the Big Sur coast just south of the Monterey Peninsula of California. Pebble Beach, Canary Row, and the history of the former Mexican capital of California. Seafood. Artichokes. Can there be a better place to have a sports car race than Laguna Seca? Even the track itself rises to the level of its environment, with its famous 'Corkscrew'.

American Viperacing

We gave extensive coverage to AVR all season, just for the reason that for good or ill, they were always a story. They struggled mightily right from the start, and they didn't much like what we said about them, though they did accept that we would take the same kind of license of ball sports journalism and call it as we saw it. The low point seemed to be Mosport. The red, black and white Vipers were up in the end of the paddock, pretty much to themselves, and seemed to want it that way. If you work as hard as that team always seemed to, you have the right to get a little down when everything seems to suck and there are folks saying so. That was also the place where David Donohue joined the team, and where we were able to confirm that these cars were leagues away from the Vipers that ORECA campaigned in 2000. We think that event was also a revelation (maybe a confirmation) for AVR. By the time they got to Laguna Seca three weeks later, they were a different team. Just as hard working, of course, but they were installing huge upgrades to both cars, and from their attitude we could tell that they absolutely knew that it would be different from this point forward. And it was. Laguna became little more than testing on brand new bits and pieces. At PLM, with further help from Carsport and a couple of top drivers, for the first time they were there with serious aspirations for a win. That wasn't likely, but it is the right attitude. We wrote more nice things about them, all earned. To be honest, of all the teams in ALMS this year, this is the one we would be most disappointed to lose. Hang in there Tom, Eric, and the rest of you. And our best to Tom's son Justin.

The Petit Le Mans

Why in the world did it ever occur to anyone to end the ALMS season at any other race than this one?

The Team

Janos Wimpffen, John Brooks, Kerry Morse, Andy Hartwell, Gary Horrocks, Jeannie Hutchens, Lyndon Fox, Editor Malcolm Cracknell, others who helped over the course of the season. It has been a privilege--period.

Thank you, Tom. You went the extra mile. Ed.