Are DPs still as slow as they are ugly?

UPDATE #2 The Atlantic Series cars qualified 5 mph faster than the Grand-Am Rolex Series Daytona Prototype Series today at Miller Motorsports Park. Since the Atlantic Series is considered a third tier ladder series below IndyCar and Indy Lights, one might think that the Grand-Am Series is a fourth tier ladder series for training kids right out of go-karts or Formula BMW.

09/14/08 The Atlantic cars that ran at NJMP this weekend clocked 1m10.211s for pole position, even they are faster than the Daytona Prototypes, which had a pole time of 1m11.76s. Not only were the Atlantics faster – they actually used the chicanes that the Grand Am did not! The Atlantic Series is a development series, so not sure where that puts the Rolex Series on the food chain.

09/13/08 In a word, "Yes." A couple years ago, I compared the qualifying times of the Grand American DPs to those of the American Le Mans Series LMPs. As expected, the DPs were slower. The only surprise was that they were so much slower. Having heard that the DPs are considerably quicker now, I decided to compare them again.

Both series ran at Mid-Ohio, about a month apart, this year. The pole time for DP was 1:17.883. The pole time for LMP was 1:07.969, (average speed 104 vs. 119). Put another way, the fastest DP was slower than all of the LMP1 and LMP2 cars, and only 7/1000's of a second faster than the lead GT1. The slowest DP was well off the pace, so I excluded it. The second slowest DP was slower than the first four ALMS GT2 cars.

A comparison of Laguna Seca times yields about the same results — taking DP from this year and LMP from last year. The DP pole time was 1:19.843, while last year's LMP pole was 1:10.528, (average speed 100.9 vs. 114.2). The DP pole sitter loses out to all LMPs (except for one that was 7 seconds off the pace) and both GT1 Corvettes. The slowest DP would have started behind three GT2s.

Dumbed down racing just doesn't work for me, even though they have some excellent drivers and go to some great tracks. Roger Wyman, Pleasant Hill, CA