Endurance Season 2020 and Beyond

[Blerpa]

It must be different demographics: in here everyone watches WEC for the prototypes. And the big names like Valentino Rossi or Alonso when he did the Toyota stint, obviously, no matter what class they are driving in.
LMP2 is something for connaisseurs, GT3 are like "people not able to drive a proto but with cars that manufacturers have to field anyway and bring up numbers".

Also, if you want to see proper GT3, at least in here, you watch Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe (which is often deemed with stronger drivers than the ones in WEC or IMSA - although now there's a quite big overlap).
Last year of GTE in WEC saw an epic battle among Ben Keating and the Iron Dames, I personally loved it... but everyone was sure that both teams would have barely made regular top 10 finishes in SRO due to the higher pool of talents in the GT3-only series.
At least now many SRO talents have switched to WEC.

In comparison look at IMSA entry list: 11 LMDh, 13 LMP2 and 32 GT3 among GTD Pro and GTD.
That to me is like old "on the verge of closing down" endurance series where almost no proto were racing - not even a dozen cars. [and no, no one gives a damn about P2 - although some cheers are given for Spike or United Autosport - proper proto = hypercars in the mind of fans]

EDIT: almost forgot, there are fans of DTM - deprecated by veteran fans because they do race GT3 cars and not the useless Class 1 vehicles of old - and British GT (which is a national mix of GT3 and GT4 on the grid together - Italian GT, which is nothing on par, run a similar mix, with GT3 and GT Challenge/Cup/Trofeo cars together).

[Blerpa]

Dunno what is up with Alpine and Peugeot.
Their crappy Mecachrome engines as usual shit the bed, but till they were going... well, they were majorly embarassing Peugeot.
If Alpine fixes their engine reliability they could do pretty well with their european Acu- oh, snap!

Peugeot and BMW seriously need to up their ante or they are not going to be around for much longer.
Well done, all things considered, to Lamborghini and Isotta Fraschini (which pilots are barely P2-level amateurs).

[Rare White Ape]

I’m watching Le Mans because of hypercar. I couldn’t give half of a flying shit about GT3. And even then, I don’t pay a scrap of attention to WEC during its regular season.

Top level sportscar racing only exists because the LM24 exists.

The only attention I paid to GT3 was looking for where the 46 car was in the standings. I only watched the last 6 or 7 hours and saw that it wasn’t listed, so my full attention was on the lead battle in the HY class.

[Blerpa]

I mean, that is a given RWA: 24 Heures du Mans is the most important motorsport race ever.
Then, way behind it, Indy 500, Daytona 24 and Sebring 12.
24 hours of Spa, of Nurburgring and 12 hours of Bathurst do not hold a candle to the triple crown of endurance (Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring) or Indy.
Any race in WEC that is not Le Mans is just "a race before Le Mans" or "a race after Le Mans to close up a proper championship".
And then obviously there's Petit Le Mans. Whatever.

EDIT: Rossi did actually pretty well till he was driving, he was immensively quick and surely contending the class victory.
Then the accident happened to Ahmad Al Harthy. Treacherous conditions, I would not put too much blame on the omani driver as many have done... more famous drivers have done worse. Shit happens.
And Marciello, which I rank pretty highly, spent all the Le Mans tweeting about Ferrari's 499p wings flexing suspiciously... I would have worried more about the abysmal performance of my own #15 WRT BMW hypercar, but what do I know how drivers spend their spare time at a 24 Hour race when not driving?

[Freude am Fahren]

I enjoy GT3, but if there's a battle for the overall, I understand the lack of coverage. Especially when the GT3 battle wasn't as close I think this year.

I think GT got a lot of good play in recent years, because GTLM was usually good, close and where we actually saw manufacturers battling in cars that looked cool but familiar, while the top LMP's were boring, all looked the same and there was really no competition.

[dodint]

There are some wild takes on here. Which is helpful, they help validate my waning interest in the sport. If pledging allegiance to 24LM (generally) and hypercar (specifically) is what it takes to be interested in sports car racing then I'm happy to put it behind me.

[Blerpa]

Wild? Endurance racing is prototypes and 24 Hours of Le Mans as much as tennis is Wimbledon and Roland Garros. Nothing wild about it.
Both are the epytome of sports car racing.

[Tom Servo]

There are some wild takes on here. Which is helpful, they help validate my waning interest in the sport. If pledging allegiance to 24LM (generally) and hypercar (specifically) is what it takes to be interested in sports car racing then I'm happy to put it behind me.

Speaking of wild takes...

[CudaMan]

I don't think anyone was gatekeeping what type of sports car racing to be interested in. There's tons of GT3-only stuff to pick from all over the world. I get it, though, if that was my favorite class and LM24 barely covered it I'd be disappointed too.

[Blerpa]

I don't think anyone was gatekeeping what type of sports car racing to be interested in. There's tons of GT3-only stuff to pick from all over the world. I get it, though, if that was my favorite class and LM24 barely covered it I'd be disappointed too.

I mean, GT3 is ubiquitous.
Fanatec GT World Challenge is present in Europe (Sprint and Endurance), Asia, America and Australia.
There's International GT Open.
There's Creventic endurance series.
24 Hours of Nurburgring and 24 Hours of Spa are GT3 mainly affairs.
Also national GT series are often GT3 based: British GT, Spanish, DTM (thankfully), VLN, Italian GT... with the exemption of japanese Super GT (MEH!) almost every GT series in the world is GT3 based.
Not enough GT3? You get some in Michelin Cup, ELMS, Asian Le Mans Series, WEC, IMSA...
And then you get also GT2 (MEH) and GT4 in various ways.

And if you want more GTs there's Michelin Pilot Challenge in IMSA, GT America, Lamborghini Super Trofeo, Ferrari Challenge, Porsche Cup and Supercup.
Actually sports car racing is overwhelmed by GT offerings... and even in sims is the same, as in iRacing, rFactor 2, ACC, Raceroom, etc. the most popular series are GT based.

So I dunno how a GT enthusiast could be feeling a waning interest in the sport in this actual period of time.
Sorry if the most important race in motorsport history, endurance and sport car racing, focuses on the major class (which happens to be prototypes) with the best offering of drivers, situations and drama.
And yet it is not like Rexy, WRT, Rossi, Iron Dames, Iron Lynx, AF Corse, United Autosport, etc. in GT did not get attention when needed.