2012 Rolex 24 TV and online coverage.

[Dino Scuderia]

GT field getting much more interesting with Ferrari and Audi joining in.

SPEED, SPEED.com to Cover Rolex 24 Flag to Flag (http://www.grand-am.com/news/index.cfm?series=r&cid=51004)

[RacingManiac]

Interesting they don't go to VIR anymore now that ALMS is going there...

[Dino Scuderia]

Interesting they don't go to VIR anymore now that ALMS is going there...

ALMS will be very popular at VIR, good move.

Grand Am is picking up a couple new venues, a third roval event at Indy and Belle Isle which Indy Car is returning to also. Always enjoyed watching the Indy cars there, don't know how it'll work for GA.

[RacingManiac]

Actually now that they will be at Belle Isle, I might consider going, if not just to check out the cars....the track is typical street course and its meh for photo or viewing(went in 2008 with free tix from Pratt & Miller). Might get free tix again since both the "Corvette" DP and the Stevensen Camaro in GT are their babies...

[Kitdy]

Actually now that they will be at Belle Isle, I might consider going, if not just to check out the cars....the track is typical street course and its meh for photo or viewing(went in 2008 with free tix from Pratt & Miller). Might get free tix again since both the "Corvette" DP and the Stevensen Camaro in GT are their babies...

How many free tickets?... Heh.

[RacingManiac]

I won't know until closer to the event...last year for PLM I could get the tix covered for the 4 people that were supposed to show....1 did...lol

12 hours road trip proved to be a stumbling block for some...

[Cobrafan427]

That's great that they're gonna stream it on the internet, all the best action happens thruout the night and gets missed when they turn their TV cameras off

[faksta]

I'll be away from home on Sunday, but hope to see at least part of the race.

[Dino Scuderia]

The grid:

Results (http://www.grand-am.com/schedule/results.cfm?series=r&eid=3428&sid=2394)

[kingofthering]

I'll be pullin' for the Rotaries in GT like I do every year. :)

[Cobrafan427]

Gotta go with Starworks with Luhr and McNish in DP and TRG with Henzler and Pumpelly in GT

[faksta]

My choices are Starworks and Flying Lizards.

[faksta]

Any (working) live video streaming there? Speed shows onboards only, Justin TV switches off constantly...

[faksta]

Not much inteerst to this race at UCP? It was interesting, at least those parts I've seen given the coverage was far from perfect even when you could find live Speed TV or Motors TV streaming.

American love to taking the pack together by neutralizations (thus making all efforts useless) played an important role, of course, but still the battle for P1 was there up to the last half an hour, when the DP leader started to get away. GT victory came to the crew that didn't seem like favourite to me neither before nor during the race. Also on Porsche, though. Lizards failed, don't know why - I missed the moment when they lost half of their rear end (before the middle of the race as far as I could get).

All in all, feelings are still mixed. DP cars are outdated, yep, but are like some blast from the nineties and provide some close racing at comparatively low cost. GT battles were great, especially between TRG and Brumos Porsches during the night.

On the other side, it was very tough to follow the race - timing never worked for me, Speed website was showing only onboards most of the time - interesting, but only for the first half an hour. At night they have thankfully switched to track cameras, but only roof camera was commented as far as I could understand, so the whole night was shown from one camera. Then, when morning came, damned onboards were back at the same time as Speed TV picture disappeared completely. In general I could follow some 10% of the race. Not mentioning my own problems like not having a paid Justin TV account which led to a two-three hours of watching minute-long bits interrupted by 'Too many connections for your country' messages.

If you want my personal opinion, Speed guys, look at GT1/GT3 websites and you will realize what the best 'online coverage' is - live, multi-camera, commented video on their own site supported by live timing. Never seen anything better than that yet. I know we could have had nothing at all, but what was there on Speed was just a joke on everyone outside US :(

[henk4]

Not much inteerst to this race at UCP? (

UCP is in the snow.....but we will be going to Paris for Retromobile tomorrow....:)

[faksta]

Snow is another reason to watch something from warmer places like Daytona :)

The major reason for me to watch was the fact that even Sebring is looong to wait yet.

[henk4]

Snow is another reason to watch something from warmer places like Daytona :)



lack of reception facilities was another reason...

[RacingManiac]

I would've followed the race more if it weren't for the fact this weekend I've been driving back and forth between US and Canada. The little bits of the race I caught were pretty exciting. And the new DPs are way better looking than the old ones...

[Cobrafan427]

Not much inteerst to this race at UCP? It was interesting, at least those parts I've seen given the coverage was far from perfect even when you could find live Speed TV or Motors TV streaming.

American love to taking the pack together by neutralizations (thus making all efforts useless) played an important role, of course, but still the battle for P1 was there up to the last half an hour, when the DP leader started to get away. GT victory came to the crew that didn't seem like favourite to me neither before nor during the race. Also on Porsche, though. Lizards failed, don't know why - I missed the moment when they lost half of their rear end (before the middle of the race as far as I could get).

All in all, feelings are still mixed. DP cars are outdated, yep, but are like some blast from the nineties and provide some close racing at comparatively low cost. GT battles were great, especially between TRG and Brumos Porsches during the night.

On the other side, it was very tough to follow the race - timing never worked for me, Speed website was showing only onboards most of the time - interesting, but only for the first half an hour. At night they have thankfully switched to track cameras, but only roof camera was commented as far as I could understand, so the whole night was shown from one camera. Then, when morning came, damned onboards were back at the same time as Speed TV picture disappeared completely. In general I could follow some 10% of the race. Not mentioning my own problems like not having a paid Justin TV account which led to a two-three hours of watching minute-long bits interrupted by 'Too many connections for your country' messages.

If you want my personal opinion, Speed guys, look at GT1/GT3 websites and you will realize what the best 'online coverage' is - live, multi-camera, commented video on their own site supported by live timing. Never seen anything better than that yet. I know we could have had nothing at all, but what was there on Speed was just a joke on everyone outside US :(

That's just the problem tho, it is America and if it's not NASCAR, a vast majority aren't interested and if you read some of the chat on the Justin TV streams, everyone was pulling for Allmendinger at the end... a NASCAR regular. This could attribute for the sh*tty coverage and plus it's SPEED, pretty much a strictly NASCAR channel (and other retarded shows like Pass Time and Dumbest Stuff on Wheels but that's another topic).

As for the race, i watched probably a good 8 hrs of it and it was very good. I didn't know they were letting the head of the lapped cars around and giving them their laps back so that coulda lead to some confusion as to who was running where and who was still in contention. There at the end, the other Shank DP ended up 3rd overall completely out of nowhere once the Ganassi car had their gearbox issues. I felt like GT was somewhat of a disappointment, 45 cars and only 4 were really competing for the win, not to mention that about 30 of the cars entered were Porsches. But all in all i couldn't complain, the racing was good the whole 24 hrs and there was plenty of drama but you're right, Sebring is still a longggg ways away

[faksta]

Grand-Am is still NASCAR, so no wonder the TV and Internet audience was wide. What made me feel sorry for the organizers were nearly completely empty grandstands on the outside of the circuit. Or maybe I just looked at them when the guys had some beer in the surroundings, don't know. Maybe only 4 real contenders in GT, but what they did deserved following them for sure. Wow, yay, and that Shank/Speedworks battle with ramming at the oval!

By the way, have you noticed how they presented McNish - '3 times Sebring 12h winner'. Le Mans? Never heard... :D

[RacingManiac]

People watch the 24 hours from the infield, you don't see as much on the banking...

He is only a 2 times Le Mans winner afterall...lol

They did mention Pirro(APR Audi R8) as a 5 times Le Mans winner...

[faksta]

Yeah, but still... 2x24 > 3x12 :D

Didn't know that 24 is watched from the inside - saw people there, but I thought they just went off from the grandstands for some time.

[csl177]

Infield tickets sold out two weeks before the race... I heard it was packed. I've been several times over 30+ years and the stands are always pretty thin, but it was weird to see it even emptier than usual. The grandstand on the south side is strictly for NASCAR events. BTW, whoever has the concession for chainlink fencing is makin' some dough... it's EVERYWHERE. Used to be you could walk around the track easily, and late at night some of the best viewing could be had just wandering around the banking. You can't do that anymore, so
the vibe is totally gone for me. Well, to be honest, it slipped alot when the DP cars came in.

[Cobrafan427]

By the way, have you noticed how they presented McNish - '3 times Sebring 12h winner'. Le Mans? Never heard... :D

Maybe they just wanted to keep to the American or Florida theme for that matter and Le Mans is in some strange far away land called France that all the NASCAR fans have prolly never heard of. I'm being a conspiracy theorist, i know, but i like to take any opportunity i can to denounce that joke of a series