At the start of the series, it seemed to be a battle of the car companies. Over the years we have seen factory entries from names like Audi, Cadillac, BMW, Panoz, Corvette and Viper among others. In the past, the factory teams have dominated the Winner's Circle because the cars they brought to the track were the best each factory could produce.
Since then, we have seen the two factory entries from BMW pulled off the track due to a tragic accident that was blamed on the car's flawed design. Then we saw the Oreca Vipers, a factory owned effort from Dodge, sold to American Viper Racing - a private race team. Too add to this, only one of the two Viper GTS-Rs still attend the races.
Later, we saw the two-year stint of the factory owned Cadillacs. The cars had improved dramatically in the short time they raced, but the program was still dropped by Chevrolet. The company had no interest in racing two factory teams and with the success of the Corvettes, the Cadillacs were made available for purchase to private race teams. They have not yet been back to the track.
The latest factory team to go private was the Joest Audi R8s. The dominant cars in the LMP 900 class had cost the factory literally hundreds of millions of dollars to race the two-car team. With a budget like this, it was of no surprise that the team almost always won. It was also of no surprise that eventually the cars would also be sold to private teams.
The future of the factory Panoz entries have also been determined. The team is scheduled to be sold to private race teams at the end of the 2003 season. The program had just gotten too expensive for Don Panoz, the man responsible for the American Le Mans Series' creation.
Can ex-factory cars still win? The answer to this question has traditionally been no. We all remember when the dominant cars in GTS had been the factory Vipers. It was just a few short years ago. However, after the team went private, the wins stopped happening and the cars were no longer in contention for the championship.
The reason this tends to happen is the simple fact that private teams do not have the same amount of financial backing to pump into the cars as the larger factory teams are able to. Without this extra money, the team's development is dramatically reduced and more often than not, the cars are never able to return to their previous glory.
Go To Page: 1 2
