LEO PARENTE: Still here at Canadian Motorsport Park.
USCR, the United Sports Car Racing, is the 2014 clan for
North American racing.
And Scot Elkins is the COO of the American Le Mans Series.
He's one of the two people charged with putting the new
series together, from the standpoint of the schedule,
and the technical parity to make all
these cars run together.
So on the internet, maybe we should call this a "Drive"
exclusive because we're going to talk to Scot Elkins and
find out, maybe first hand, maybe first time, what's going
on with the new plan for the new racing series.
This is a great opportunity to find out what's going on with
the USCR for 2014 with Scot Elkins.
But cards on the table--
we have a professional history together.
So I'm going to make every attempt to be the professional
that he wishes I was, and Scot's going to do his job as
he does for not just ALMS, but USCR.
You are the vice president of competition.
So the first question has to be--
everyone is waiting for a sense of the schedule.
And I know we're going to not trade big secrets, but tell us
a little bit about the process of what's happening to pull
the schedule together for '14.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, the biggest thing that we're dealing with
for the 2014 schedule is the fact that we've got 22
racetracks that we know we can't have 22 different events
next year because of budgets for the combined team.
So what we've got to do is go through and pick and choose a
little bit as to what tracks are going to make it and what
tracks aren't.
So that's the long term process right now of going
through and trying to make sure what makes sense.
LEO PARENTE: Now, you're really good at not answering
the questions that you don't want to.
So I respect that.
But here we've got 22 tracks.
I think you've talked about maybe 11 or
12 events next year.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah
LEO PARENTE: We've got five classes.
So is there going to be a way to make everyone happy?
Or?
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, and I kind of messed up a little bit.
There's 22 events this year.
There's actually 17 racetracks.
So the numbers work a little bit differently than that.
LEO PARENTE: Still bigger than the 11 or 12
that you need to race.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, there are more than what we need.
And the truth of the matter is, with the combination of
the two series, we're going to have higher car counts, too.
So part of it boils down to what track has room for us and
what track doesn't.
LEO PARENTE: What criteria, can you share,
do you use to evaluate?
I mean I'd hate to think it's like a bad NFL bidding on the
quarterback, best team gets it.
I'm sure there are a ton of criteria that go into it.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, there's lot more than just what you talked
about with the NFL thing.
And the biggest part of it really boils down to the
partnerships we've had in the past.
We do have relationships with these people.
We want to do business in the same way.
We don't want anybody to be left out, but, at some point,
somebody's going to have to be because we can't increase
budgets for the race teams in a massive way because then we
won't have any teams to run.
And one of the big concerns is it, for the LMS teams, we're
adding 24 hours of racing at Daytona.
For the Grand Am teams, we're adding 10 hours and 12 hours
at Seabring because we know those events are going to be
part because that's some of the great events that we have.
So adding that--
you're basically adding 30 hours of running to each side.
That already increases the budget.
So you can't do 17 races.
It just doesn't work.
LEO PARENTE: I've kind of figured out that the budget,
you could project it as maybe 1 and 1/2 what people are
spending now [INAUDIBLE].
SCOT ELKINS: I don't think it's that big.
LEO PARENTE: OK.
SCOT ELKINS: I think it's a multiplier, yeah, and it's
going to be--
I mean, just by default, everybody either does they do
their budgets either by a number of miles
or number of hours.
And we know that it's going to be more.
LEO PARENTE: So you're also responsible for basically the
technical aspect of making each class work.
And you're doing that in concert with another friend of
mine, Richard Buck, came up from Grand Am, has champ car
experience, oh and by the way, as a sidebar, you have NASCAR
experience.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, I do.
LEO PARENTE: [INAUDIBLE]
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, I know, I spent five seasons as an
engineer with Robert Yates Racing in NASCAR.
LEO PARENTE: They accomplished nothing.
SCOT ELKINS: Uh, they did OK.
LEO PARENTE: They did OK.
So take me through a little bit of the process that's
happening to come up with this technical balance and probably
even the schedule.
My question is very simple--
I'll set it up this way.
I have a feeling your job is a lot like that scene from the
movie "Departed" when Dicaprio goes into the bar and asks for
a cranberry juice, and then the guy intercedes and says,
hey, I'm the guy that decides who you hit and
who you don't hit.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah.
LEO PARENTE: Is your job diplomacy between the
manufacturers, the team, the series, the set?
Take us through this whole process of how you're pulling
all this stuff together.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, it's exactly like that.
And it's funny because I just watched "The Departed" on my
flight back from Germany Sunday or Monday.
That's really funny.
It's exactly like that.
It's trying to figure out how to make peace with everybody.
And that's kind of the hardest part because we have different
stakeholders at every level.
And whether it's a stakeholder that gives us money or
doesn't, the majority of the people do, whether it's a
team, or a sponsor, or whatever.
And we need to try to figure out a way to
make everybody happy.
It's not possible to make everybody happy.
But in terms of the technical aspects of everything, we're
trying to do, and we keep saying it over and over again,
but its actual fact, we're trying to meld the best of
both worlds.
LEO PARENTE: How soon do you feel you have to tell the
world series and technical so that everyone
can do their job.
SCOT ELKINS: We need to have everything together in a draft
form, which is kind of the way we do things in
terms of rule books.
We publish a draft and then let competitors and everyone
take a look at it, give us feedback, and then we go with
a final release.
I think if we don't have something ready by October,
we're in big trouble.
And I think we're going to hit that target.
I mean, we've got an internal timeline.
Everybody moans and complains to me on Twitter and
everywhere else that nobody's doing anything--
speed up, speed up, speed up.
But the truth of the matter is, what we're trying to do is
a big deal.
LEO PARENTE: So, and not to pretend I'm doing your job for
you, but one of the things to make clear is, the dialogue is
happening right now.
You are not living in a little bubble.
You're talking to manufactures.
You're talking to all those constituents.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, constantly.
LEO PARENTE: OK.
My fans would hate if I didn't cover the classes and get a
little taste of what the challenges are.
I'm going to leave DP and P2 a little bit
more toward the end.
SCOT ELKINS: Thanks.
LEO PARENTE: You are welcome, GTLM is stay the
course, just carry on.
SCOT ELKINS: Yep.
LEO PARENTE: Pretty much straightforward.
GTD, GT Daytona is the combination of our GTC and
ALMS and the Grand Am GT class?
SCOT ELKINS: Right.
LEO PARENTE: And there's this elephant in
the room called GT3.
What can you share with me that's going on
with this GTD category.
SCOT ELKINS: So the idea was to have a secondary class
that's not so dissimilar to GTC that has a driver rating
system, that provides the opportunity for amateur
drivers to drive with pros, and have a fair
opportunity to win races.
LEO PARENTE: Which is GTC right now?
SCOT ELKINS: Which is GTC right now, which has been,
honestly, pretty successful.
It's not been too bad.
We always said there was going to be a 10 car cap.
We've always had 8, 9, 10 cars.
And it seems to be really successful.
So we want to carry that over to the class below GTLM.
So what we'll have is, we'll have GTD, which is the Rolex
GT stuff, like you mentioned.
The truth of the matter is, the Rolex GT is a little bit
different because it's always been a specification that's
not like anything else in the world, right?
LEO PARENTE: They take a GT3 car, and then they morph it
into their thing.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, and so the idea for next year, 2014, is
to still have a GT3 car that can come and race but to have
very, very minor modifications.
So that it's not going to race as an [INAUDIBLE]
GT3 car because it can't.
Because the truth of the matter is, those things are
faster than GTLM.
right?
LEO PARENTE: Now don't lose your place, but give me the
simple reason why GT3 is not the solution.
SCOT ELKINS: It's not the solution because it is purely
a customer-based form of racing.
The truth of the matter is, a lot of them, they're at good
price points because they're based on the road cars.
And what happens is, because they're based on the road
cars, as weird as it sounds, their performance level is
sometimes higher.
That makes it difficult to say that that's just the answer.
So for us, we find it a temporary solution because we
are making these plans for '14 and '15.
I think we've been pretty open about the fact we're having
these GT convergence meetings at the FIA, and the ACO, and
every manufacturer in the world.
And we're talking about, OK, well, what do we do in '16 to
make things a little easier for worldwide
specification, right?
LEO PARENTE: And without sounding like I need to
translate, a new GT spec for the globe.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, correct, exactly.
LEO PARENTE: Got it.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, so--
LEO PARENTE: It may be two classes but
something new and unified.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and we've decided, yeah, it's going to be two classes.
That's defined.
So for me, what makes sense is for us to allow GT3 cars to
come over but have some minor modifications.
And what we mean by that is that right now Grand Am has a
single specified rear wing that everybody has to run.
So I want that rear wing to still be on there because I
want the cars that exist now to still run
with the new cars.
We'll put an engine restrictor, not a sonic air
restrictor like we use in some of the other places, but some
form of controlling the horsepower of the cars.
And the idea in general is to take the performance level of
GTD and move it back a little bit.
We have to do that to make sure that it
matches up with GTLM.
The same way we did with GTC.
The GTC cars have restrictors to do what we need to do for
the GTLMS cars, so.
LEO PARENTE: I was going to use something differential.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, same difference.
Same difference.
LEO PARENTE: --as a stepping off point for
getting into the DP P2.
But let me finish with the speed differential
for these two cars.
How much of a gap do you need to create?
SCOT ELKINS: It varies per track.
And I don't have the number of the top of my head,
unfortunately.
But we'll define a percentage that needs to be 4% difference
here and there.
And it will be based on last time.
We can't do corner speeds and straight line speeds because
we just can't tweak it that close.
It's just not possible.
LEO PARENTE: What do you want say about the biggest
challenge for this whole DP P2 discussion?
SCOT ELKINS: Nothing.
LEO PARENTE: What am I going to ask you to say in terms of,
everyone seems to fear slowing down the P2 to make it no
longer a race car and speeding up the DP, which is unnatural.
You've got two years of transition, right?
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, it's funny because the primary basis
behind what we're doing with the DP P2 integration, as
we're calling it--
the fact of matter is the DP cars have to be sped up no
matter what.
If we didn't have a single P2 come race with us, which is
not what anybody wants, not what I want, not what Jim
France, not what anybody wants, but if that happened,
the DP cars still have to be faster to kind of get up and
out of the way of the GTLM cars.
Right?
So we have to make that change no matter what.
And what will happen is, we're focusing on that.
We're focusing on that change and getting the DP cars sped
up to that point.
Once we get to that point, that goal is really based off
the GTLM cars, not off P2.
We'll get it to that point, and then I'll start working on
balancing P2 and DP together.
Because the changes we make the to the DP are kind of
organically going to make it a little bit more like the P2
car anyway.
LEO PARENTE: Continental tire will be the
tire of that class.
SCOT ELKINS: We think so.
We haven't finished the contracts.
We don't really know for sure what it's going to be.
Commercial deals have to be put together.
I can't say yes or no.
LEO PARENTE: Then, I apologize for leading
the witness too much.
SCOT ELKINS: No worries.
LEO PARENTE: But let me ask the question this way.
Will the same tire be on a DP that's on a P2.
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, it seems like that
would be the same thing.
And we've asked some of the guys to create some different
specifications, do some different work for us, so
that's all ongoing as well.
It's all part of the process.
LEO PARENTE: So last question of all this.
How are we doing the process of this equalization?
Is it all computer simulation?
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah.
LEO PARENTE: When we get to the racetrack, will there be
people shooting pictures, again, of cars--
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah.
LEO PARENTE: OK, so--
SCOT ELKINS: Yeah, I mean, and not specific to this process,
but over the course of, I guess, a guy's experience in
working in motor racing, which is, you know, I think I'm
going on 18 years now or something like that, which is
really weird for me because I still feel like
I'm 25 years old.
We're all the same.
But the process of making a change the
way we're doing it--
it's very modern.
It's very common.
It's that you start out with simulations.
You take the high points and the high levels that you find
in the simulation.
You validate those changes through, like, CFD, through
the aerodynamics, because that's probably the biggest
place where we are going to be working.
And then you take those CFD changes, you make real size
parts, you put them on a wind tunnel model, or you do it on
a scale model, and you validate the CFD with the wind
tunnel model.
And then you go and run it on the racetrack.
And that's a process, whether it was speeding up the DP, or
creating the new champ car that we did in 2007, or any
aspect, whether it was the Gen6 NASCAR or Cup Car,
whatever it is, we all did the same thing.
That's the process you use today.
LEO PARENTE: So JF loves when I break
the rules last question.
But here we go.
So the fans have their opinions.
And I can walk the paddocks above Grand Am and ALMS and
hear some stuff.
How are the manufacturers responding to this whole DP,
P2 discussion.
SCOT ELKINS: They are very supportive and
very happy about it.
The truth of the matters is, a lot of the work we're doing
involves them.
We've got some manufacturers doing simulations for us.
They've given us some ideas.
I mean, we're all tying this together.
The truth of the matter is, if we don't all say, yeah, that
makes sense, then we're not all going to
buy into it in '14.
So that's the way it needs to work.
LEO PARENTE: Thanks for the time.
SCOT ELKINS: Sure, brother.
LEO PARENTE: Let's go back to work.
SCOT ELKINS: All right.
LEO PARENTE: All right.