The American road racing scene really stops after the Sebring 12 hour race. There are more races but few people other than racers really care. The only important race after Sebring is Le Mans. Sebring has really become a warm up for Le Mans. If you want a good idea of what's going to happen at Le Mans, keep an eye on the Sebring 12 hour results. This also makes it a very good time to look at the current state of the Corvette in racing.
The factory Corvette team would like to have Sebring disappear from the racing world-its been that bad the last couple of years. Pratt and Miller seem to do really well at the Daytona Rolex 24 Hours, and then it all falls apart at Sebring. Last year was a major disaster for the team. Much to their credit they turned the situation around and did well for the rest of the 2000 season. The Pratt and Miller C5-R brought Corvette its first victory in a major international race at Daytona this year. Gary Pratt and his crew did what no one else had been able to do in the history of the Corvette-they won the Daytona 24 hour race outright. All was right with the world, and all the long struggles had been worthwhile.
Then they arrived at Sebring and met the new Saleen. The Saleen is the next generation of GT racing. The brand new S7R is the GT racer that Chevrolet wanted to build. They were told they couldn't do it, that they had to build a conventional car. Then a few years later along comes Saleen and he gets his car approved. (Editor's note: Approved as a production car well before a single "production" car has been-or will ever be-built.) Such is the political nature of sports car racing in the world. Just when the Corvette started doing well on the race track they got beat in the boardroom.
You have to keep in mind that most racing championships are really won in offices where people wear suits and ties. By the time the cars actually get on the track all the major decisions have been made. The real racers will tell you that by the first race of the season all the critical decisions have been made. By the time you read this essay the technical people are well into the 2002 season, and have actually started planning for the 2003 season.
This is critical because by declaring the chassis design of the Saleen S7R legal the rules makers have given the Corvette a green light to create a brand new C5-R. If Chevrolet is going to continue world class racing, they'll have to develop a new car. Any further improvements in the C5-R are going to be incremental. The Corvette C5-R is at the top of the curve. On the other hand, the Saleen is new enough that even more performance can be expected in the future. The only answer for GM is to build a new car, and hope that Porsche doesn't come back into racing.
The political aspect of rules formation is also hurting the Corvette in the Speedvision World Challenge series. In the past few years the World Challenge Corvettes could stay with anyone. That's all changed this year. None of the Corvettes could finish in the top ten at the Sebring race. It was obvious that Audi and Acura had won the battle of the boardroom. The Pirate race team was the only Corvette that could even qualify close to the leaders.
This situation was so bad that six or seven Corvette teams didn't even bother showing up at Sebring. A lot of this had to do with tight budgets, but some of was due to the dominance of the Audis. Last year it cost around $20,000 to run a world Challenge event. Audi is spending a least triple that amount. A well funded World Challenge team was spending in the neighborhood of $300,000 to run the entire Speedvision World Challenge series last year. The Audi budget for the World Challenge is rumored to be about $1,000,000 per car for 2001. The only thing that beats cubic inches is cubic money. Don't look for much good news about the Corvette in the Speedvision World Challenge.