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Corvette Racing Not Competing On Even Ground With GTLM Rivals, Magnussen Says

Jan Magnussen writes frequent columns for Motorsport.com, and this week used the space to address the unfair Balance of Performance rules being handed down to the Corvette Racing team as the 2015 TUDOR United Sportscar Championship season begins to come to a close.

You may have noticed Corvette Racing’s No. 3 and No. 4 C7.Rs finished uncharacteristically far back in the running order at the recent Oak Tree Grand Prix at VIR. This is because series rule makers have slapped the car with Balance of Performance adjustments designed to give Corvette Racing more of a challenge, putting them at a significant disadvantage to the Porsches and Ferraris.

As a result of these BoP adjustments, the Corvette C7.R is currently the heaviest car on the GTLM grid with the smallest fuel tank. Magnussen says they are a victim of their own success, with IMSA likely sticking them with the BoP adjustments after their wins at Daytona and Sebring earlier in the year.

“It’s frustrating as hell,” Magnussen writes. “But that’s what we got, and it will be what we have at COTA and Petit Le Mans. We’ll just have to make the most of it and make sure that we’ve done all that we can.”

Corvette Racing isn’t overfly confident it can pull out a good result at either of the last two races of the 2015 TUDOR season, but it stands a better chance at winning Petit Le Mans considering the team shines in endurance events. No matter how much of a disadvantage they are at, you can still bet on Tommy Milner, Antonio Garcia, Oliver Gavin and Magnussen to try their hardest to get the yellow Corvettes out front.

We’ll find out if Corvette Racing can overcome IMSA’s frankly unfair BoP adjustments later this month when the team takes to the track for Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of the Americas. The race will be aired live on FOX Sports 2 on Saturday, September 19th, and will be shown again the following day on FOX Sports 1.

Sam loves to write and has a passion for auto racing, karting and performance driving of all types.

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Comments

  1. I don’t think anyone is surprised by this.

    IMSA is a pure joke in itself. I don’t know if anyone recalls 2014’s Sebring race, which was a total joke. Bad calls all around, the show was terrible. Most other races were also a total mess. But the worst part isn’t even the bad calls in the races, it’s the BoP adjustments which are basically made arbitrarily depending on the mood of a couple of old folks.

    In 2014, Corvette Racing started the season with a new car, had 2 tough races, adjusted themselves to the new car, and then won like 4-5 races in a row. BoP kicked in, and they got relayed at the end of the pack because they were at a serious disadvantage against everybody else.

    In 2015, Corvette Racing started strong, winning the first two races. IMSA then imposed BoP which put them at a disadvantage against everybody else.

    I think it’s time for GM to get out of that terribly managed race league and hop in WEC. I get that this is a series that GM just uses to do R&D and to showcase the Corvette to Americans, but as a fan, it leaves much to be desired, and I think WEC is a better series for this purpose as well.

    Reply
    1. Oh right! The WEC sets the standards for BoP, and Corvette, Ford, Porsche, Ferrari and Aston are all in France right now getting their BoP set by the WEC.

      But the WEC BoP is totally fair and correct, but the IMSA BoP isn’t…

      Look up the Dunning Kruger Effect, and get yourself some lemon juice!

      Reply
  2. This sounds just like you “Old Trombone”: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. The bias was first experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in 1999.

    How is it fair to make any car the heaviest car on the GTLM grid with the smallest fuel tank just because it wins? Lets just keep adding weight until it cannot compete and then it will be fair. Is this correct? How does this encourage teams to make better cars? All it does is punish winners and reward lesser cars and drivers.

    Reply
    1. Thanks for your summary of Dunning Kruger, it is the best summary I have seen yet, better than Wikipedia and psychology specific sites, honestly. Cheers!

      About the racing though, do you know how the Pirelli World Challenge started? It used to be the “Playboy Showroom Stock” championship until Porsche kept losing it to Corvettes. That’s right, showroom stock Corvettes kept beating everything Porsche could build AND sell for road registration. Quickly, every competitor needed a Corvette and the organizers had to apply … wait for it … a BoP!!! They renamed the series “World Challenge”.

      If you don’t have a BoP, you always end up with spec-racing of the product which suits the rules more than any other product.

      WEC uses BoP
      V8s use BoP
      DTM uses BoP
      WRC uses BoP
      GT3 (& PWC) use BoP

      Reply
  3. Why is it corvette fans are whining so much? You dont hear anything from Bmw fans, the z4 has been the most handicapped car out there. They have four wins in three years , one was a gift from viper at long beach 2013 and one was a gift from Ferrari this year.

    Reply
    1. Porsche sucks and they kissing IMSA’s smelly behind.

      Reply
    2. tell me what Z4 you can get with a V8? I thought so… BMW has the cars with the least production components out of any other manufacturer in GTLM. Its been that way since the E46 M3 GTR.

      Reply
  4. I sent an email to IMSA, I doubt they read it. I told them not to be like Nascar. I used to be a big fan of Nascar, but no more. I to like to see BMW, Audi, Corvette, Ferrari place well but this favoritism to Porsche just plain sucks. I stopped following IMSA many years ago as I got tired of Porsche. Any way I did not Mention Corvette. I did tell them that if they continue they will loose fans and the $$ fans spend, which then will affect sponsors and them leaving.

    Reply

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