Open Wheel racing vs. Road racing in the United States, what a difference…

This time it’s all about the IRL Indy Car Series vs. the Champ Car World Series (formerly known as CART) for Open wheel racing and the American LeMans Series vs. the Grand American Road Racing series in what is commonly referred to as Road racing at least in my eyes.

Starting with the Open wheel racing, the IRL Indy Car series this year has been not all it should be and it’s really not surprising. Thoughout the season, I have picked and watched the races that I wanted to watch which included the Indianapolis 500, ironicly enough the Chicagoland race yesterday was one of the best races all season long only second to the Indianapolis 500 and I will say this, I am proud to say that after a late race shootout, Dario Franchetti has won the race and more importantly the 2007 IRL IndyCar series championship and that’s perfect in my book. What a way to cap off a season for Dario, first the Indy 500 and then the championship…perfect. I have to say that my predictions for this season was a little off, including after the first race, I thought this season would be a wash with a Penske vs. Ganassi duel in victories and Penske would win, it turned out to be Ganassi vs. Andretti-Green Racing and in the end, Ganassi Racing was beat by for an interesting thing, themselves. I like the caption on Motorsport.com under the photo on the right, "It's been a crasy year!"

As for Champ Car, I stopped all together with them as that series continues to race outside of the US, as of now, Champ Car is done in the United States with how boring there races are, although next season could have something…

What about Road racing with first being the American LeMans Series, what a series you have here, LMP1, LMP2, GT1 and GT2, this series does have a could of concerns sort of speck, it’s really unknown to me why there is an LMP1, a LMP2, why not combine both classes or at least give Audi back at least half of what ALMS took away from them at the beginning of season in the amount of fuel and something else. There needs to be competition for the overall victories between Audi and Penske Porshe’s. One thing I have noticed is Corvette racing running unopposited and from one article I read, that wouldn’t happen in 2008, GM-Chevrolet has three choices for 2008, unless another competitor manufacturer enters the GT1, they wouldn’t compete and that would leave Corvette to either GT2 or withdrawal from the entire series. Bottom Line, why not have either two classes being LMP and GT or three classes being LPM1, LMP2 and GT, either way I hope Corvette Racing continues in 2008 even if they are in GT2, besides GT2 is very interesting to watch.

Finally it’s on to the Grand American Road Racing Series that has two classes being the Daytona Prototypes and the GT classes. It’s interesting to watch, but the calls from the officials are terrible at times.

One thought for Road racing in this country would be combining both series at three races being in the 24 hours of Daytona, 12 hours of Sebring and 24 hours of LeMans with two separate championships (one for each series), that would be exciting to watch.

If you look at Open Wheel Racing and then Road racing in the United States, one thing that some may not know is both have similar histories, the IRL and Champ Car was created after a split of the series years ago and ironicly the same can be said for Road racing as a split creates Grand-Am and the American LeMans series, but that’s were the similar histories end as there is only room for one large open wheel series here and on the other hand, maybe two road racing series