SCCA Speed World Challenge Grand Touring Class

SCCA Speed World Challenge Grand Touring Class SCCA Speed World Challenge Grand Touring Class
Comparison Tests

Every type of racing has its hallowed era—sports-car racing in the '50s, Can-Am in the '60s, IMSA in the '80s. Of course, one could debate the dates of certain glory days—and we imagine the paddocks of vintage-car races are filled with such banter—but we would argue that we're in the midst of just such a golden era for production-based car racing.

It's housed in the Sports Car Club of America's Speed World Challenge, a professional road-racing series that runs production-based sports cars and sedans. The races begin with Formula 1-style standing starts and are 50-minute dogfights with a wide range of makes and models scrapping from start to finish. The races are televised on the Speed Channel and are by far the most entertaining and exciting racing on the tube.

There are two classes, Grand Touring and Touring Car, that compete separately. Touring Car is for vehicles that have back seats as well as naturally aspirated engines of less than 2.8 liters of displacement. Recognizable entries are the BMW 3-series, the Acura RSX, and the Mazda Protegé.

The GT class is the faster of the two and allows turbocharged engines and sports cars. The fields read like a who's who of high-performance machinery with the Dodge Viper, Chevrolet Corvette, Porsche 911, Audi RS 6, and Cadillac CTS- V fighting it out on the track. Last year, we published a story on the Touring cars ["Sport: TV's Touring Terrors," C/D, June 2003], so this year we arranged for some first-hand experience with four of the more powerful GT cars—a Viper, a Corvette, an RS 6, and a—at 1.9-mile GingerMan Raceway in South Haven, Michigan, for a heart-fluttering day of testing, photography, and driving. CTS- V

But before we got into the snug-fitting racing seats, we learned how the series manages to keep cars with a variety of different layouts and engines so closely matched on the track. The rules seem pretty simple. Competitors are required to gut the interiors and add the required safety equipment. Rear wings and front splitters can be added, and bodywork can be replaced with lighter carbon-fiber pieces. Suspension-mounting points may be shifted by about an inch, and teams can change the springs, the shocks, and the anti-roll bars.

Those are only the starting points. Each car model has its own set of allowed modifications. The job of writing the individual rule book for each car belongs to Aaron Coalwell, the 33-year-old technical administrator of the series. (The rules and specifications for each car are available at www.world-challenge.com.)

Making sedans such as the Audi RS 6 and Cadillac CTS- V competitive with sports cars like the Viper and Corvette is no easy job. Coalwell accomplishes this by adding weight or reducing engine power (via intake-air restrictors). He can also allow, forbid, or restrict modifications such as engine placement, cage construction, and aerodynamic devices.

Coalwell is aided by the Speed World Challenge system of reward weight. A car that wins is saddled with a 75-pound weight trophy for the next race. Weight is added in 15-pound increments depending on where the car finishes. For example, a third-place car gets a 45-pound penalty. Cars finishing seventh or deeper can remove weight in 10-pound increments. There's a limit, however, as a habitual 12th-place finisher can't continually remove weight, so again, Coalwell uses his discretion.

The so-called lead trophy doesn't necessarily react quickly enough to handicap a brand-new car. At this season's first race in Sebring, two factory-backed CTS-Vs—in their first race and therefore without any penalty weight—qualified first and second. When the green flag came out, Andy Pilgrim's CTS-V bogged and everyone passed him. During the race he passed 28 cars en route to a second-place finish, which was right behind the race-winning CTS-V of Max Angelelli, a show of dominance that's not supposed to happen.

Coalwell determined the Cadillacs should get a 200-pound lead sinker and reduced the engine's intake air by 50 percent with a 63.6mm restrictor.

The rule fiddling never ends. "We've always said that we'll make sure every car has a chance of winning," says Coalwell, "but we won't allow one car to dominate. I think I've done my job when everyone is a little pissed off at me."

It's a balancing act to be sure, made tough by the varying budgets of the teams. There are the two factory-supported teams of Audi and Cadillac. Neither will reveal its finances, but educated guesses put Audi's costs at a million bucks for its two cars and Cadillac spends maybe double that for its three cars. Then you have the rest of the guys who fill out the 20-car fields. Most of them have only their billfolds and some sponsorship. Either way, a one-car effort is about $400,000—not including the cost of the car—to run competitively.

Here—in no particular order—are our impressions and findings.