ALMS expects bigger Mosport field

Border problems and poor economy put dent in number of entries in 2009 event, CEO says

Jan 30, 2010

Motorsports Writer

American Le Mans Series CEO Scott Atherton says he'll be shocked if at least 30 cars don't show up for the Grand Prix of Mosport next August and suggested in an interview that problems at the Canada-U.S. border were responsible, in part, for the reduced entry list last year.

Atherton, who was in Toronto to participate in an alternative fuels seminar at last weekend's Canadian Motorsports Expo, was talking to reporters about the series' car count, which he said was uppermost in the minds of promoters who attended a recent meeting in Phoenix.

They had a right to be concerned. While the back-of-the-field ALMS GT class has remained healthy in recent years, the glamour-puss prototype entry list has been decimated.

Yes, some of the big European manufacturers – Peugeot, for example – will still show up for major ALMS races like the upcoming 12 Hours of Sebring and the Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta.

But they aren't participating in "regular season" races like the one at Mosport and that's where there's concern.

Two years ago, for instance, 31 cars turned up at Mosport. Of that number, a dozen were prototypes and included the Audi, Porsche and Acura factory teams. Ten of those exotic cars broke the track record during qualifying – it was all terribly exciting – and reporters from all four Toronto-based daily newspapers were in the press box.

Last year, the entry list for the race at Canada's most famous road-racing circuit was down to 19 overall and the Audi and Porsche prototype teams were missing. Nobody broke any records and the number of big-paper reporters was down to two.

Since then, Acura prototype teams entered by Gil de Ferran and Adrien Fernandez have gone out of business. No prototype teams announced they were joining. So it's no wonder promoters of ALMS races have been wondering who, what and how many could be expected to race in 2010.

Atherton refused to be specific and name names – he suggested manufacturers and teams would be making their own announcements – but insisted a dozen prototypes would be on the grid at Mosport this year: six factory entries and six in the new Prototype Challenge class (in which competitors buy their way in).

Overall, he said, the car count would be back above 30.

"If you go back over the years," he said, "in 2005-2006 there was a 30-car average. In 2009, it was a 25-car average. We expect it to go back above 30 this year."

So why, he was asked, if there was a 25-car average in 2009, did only 19 show up at Mosport?

"Well, we've had issues – to use that political term – and they've been increasing with the difficulty of getting across the border, when it's been getting harder, not easier."

(He seemed to suggest there was more trouble going back into the U.S. than crossing into Canada.)

"If the teams have a crew member who has something as innocuous as an unpaid traffic ticket, they can get stopped at the border and locked up. And when you've got an independent team that's funding their own operation, they say: `You know what? Let's avoid the hassle and the headache and just not go.'

"Having said that, I would be shocked if we didn't have 30-something cars at Mosport."

We'll see.

The ALMS, of course, is leading the charge to make racing – just about the most anti-social of all sports, in that it's noisy, dirty and smelly (which I personally find wonderful, by the way) – environmentally friendly.

Since 2007, the "green" series has been using nothing but alternative fuels such as diesel and ethanol and, according to Atherton, we ain't seen nothin' yet.

"The Yokohama tire company, for instance, is displacing petroleum content in their rubber with orange oil (a byproduct of the production of orange juice). All of their racing tires feature a higher content of orange oil and this (the ALMS) is where they're developing this technology.

"Soon, we will be able to buy street tires that are orange-oil based."

Atherton pointed out that – as it was when auto racing started and rear-view mirrors, disc brakes, rack-and-pinion streering and seat belts all found their way onto passenger cars – all of the development of these alternative fuels and other technologies is happening at the race track.

"Here's another example," he said. "We allowed the Mazda cars at last year's Petit Le Mans to compete using bio-butanol fuel. Bio-butanol is an unknown product. Most people have heard of ethanol. We are very proud of the fact that the first notification for most people of something called butanol occurred as a result of that car competing in the American Le Man Series.

"This is a fuel that replaces gasoline. Like ethanol, it can be made from any number of things. One of the limitations to the widespread acceptance of ethanol is the infrastructure – you can't go beyond a 10 per cent blend (of ethanol and gasoline) before changing out the pipelines, the pumps, the fuel stations, the holding tanks and so on.

"Why? Because ethanol attracts water and retains water. Water and ethanol together become very corrosive. Butanol eliminates that. You can go to a 15 or 20 per cent blend of butanol and not have the impact on infrastructure.

"Every car today in the ALMS is using some form of alternative fuel. It's either an E-10 gasoline, an E-85 ethanol or a zero-sulphur clean diesel. If we're going to add another fuel, it has to be consumer relevant. But the fact that there's a car out there racing on butanol at least gets people talking."

There was lots to report on at the Motorsports Expo. For more on the following topics, please see my blog postings at thestar.blogs.com/autoracing:

NASCAR: Matt Kenseth said during an interview that NASCAR is loosening the reins on the drivers in order for them to set their own limits and "police themselves."

ROBERT WICKENS: Canada's most talented young racing drivers has been cut loose by Red Bull energy drinks but expects to land a ride in the new European GP3 series. He has an FIA superlicence that qualifies him to race in F1 (as a result of finishing second in last season's F2 series) but no seat.

DICKIES AND KERRY MICKS: Dave Whitlock retired at the end of 2009 so Williamson-Dickie Canada Ltd. has moved its sponsorship to popular Kerry Micks for the 2010 and 2011 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series seasons. Dickies joins long-term Micks supporter Beyond Digital Imaging on the No. 02 Ford Fusion.

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