We will plan to run the IMSA series with shorter races and NO team racing while the new iRacing Endurance Series will feature longer races and team racing, although we will not require a driver change.
Yikes. This format did NOT play out well for BES, which, after one season as a bi-hourly series, resulted in the races being cut back to just 2-3 races and only on the weekends. I'm not complaining about longer races, but I agree with Matt that burying your golden GTE cars inside a series like this is really dumb. There is no way that you can sustain a series that requires this much time. There are only going to be a handful of races, at times that work for 60% of the player base, and everyone else is going to get hosed. And yes, the races will probably need to be 2 hours long! The races will need to be long enough to facilitate a 30 second driver change without incurring a penalty. For GTE cars, that basically guarantees a full tank of fuel as the stops are 33 seconds. There is no way the races could be fuel restricted, or else no one would do a driver change because you'd lose so much time on the pit stop. I'm not complaining that they would add an Endurance Series, because actually that is a really good idea (albeit somewhat devaluing to the Special Events which are already over-saturated with these cars..), but this CLEARLY should not be the only way to access, what is arguably, your most popular sports cars.
I think ProtoGT would have been the logical option to be stripped down, and yet it's being left untouched? Even though it is nice having a series with one single-era ACO cars, that era is over, and iRacing series show a history of becoming less popular as the series becomes less relavent! A new ProtoGT could thrive with the LMP1, and the GTE cars. You could even throw in the HPD but you wouldn't have to. It wouldn't be 100%, but it would be close enough. GTE cars have no standalone championship, they don't exist outside of ACO multi-class racing (IMSA/fmr. American Le Mans Series, European Le Mans Series, Asian Le Mans Series). GT1, on the other hand, did. The GT1 Championship stood alone, in real life, as a single-class precursor to BSS, and it could do so in iRacing as well. The Corvette and the Aston Martin had a huge following, it was just wiped out by bad HPD drivers and the GTE's taking over as the most relevant multi-class option.
Also, side-note, as much as people don't like the Corvette DP, the reality, I believe, is that the car is still too new to iRacing for them to consider retiring it. I also think the sole reason they're taking GTE's out of IMSA, a series where those cars clearly exist IN REAL LIFE iRACING! is to end the GTE's pillaging the GT3 field, and while I get that, that also frustrates me.
