no spoilers since no broadcast! ugh! another sign of the coming doom.
apparently the live steaming with Hindy was a bit hit when it worked - read some good comments about it Laguna Seca's date is stupid when looking at the calendar for scruteenering for the 24h - the first of the cars at Laguna are on the sked on Sunday, 6 June at 17:40-18:10. Seems they will all have to be hurried to get back to respective bases, fix cars, ship cars and be at LM in under two weeks time. Laguna Seca should have been 15 May instead. All it takes is the volcano causing havoc and they could have some real problems. Carol
It looks like it might only be 1.5 hrs of coverage on CBS next week, which means we'll see the start, 75 min of tow trucks, and the finish.
I watched it live online on the ALMS website, anyone else do that? I believe the video feed was synched with the Radio LeMans commentary.
One of the coldest weekends I have ever dealt with while there. In all honety, it was a very bad time for the event to be scheduled. Some of the IMSA crew as well as many other higher ups in the series were not able to make it due to Graduations, INDY 500 Qualifying and other stuff. The fans were pretty scarce too. No matter how short the coverage is, it is being done by the Film crew for the "TRUTH IN 24". So it should be very good coverage highlites. I watched all the races from Turn 11 Gate. "Show me your credentials!"
Tried tuning in Radio Le Mans twice during the race and heard nothing but static. Ten minutes of Hindy's hysterical ravings is exhausting though so not much of a loss there. Agree that timing of the ALMS race at Laguna Seca is a bit curious though. Teams musnt be too pleased about having to run a six hour race then travelling clear across the Continent and on to Le Mans. Hopefully, this won't compromise the ALMS teams at Le Mans too much. Interesting to note no GrandAM at Laguna this year. Perhaps this void was taken up by ALMS which promised a better product but failed to deliver? RM
I don't recall Grand-AM ever being at Laguna. And Laguna has so few events that I think I'd remember it.
This does not bode well for ALMS. With all the media outlets availabe today, if you have to wait a week to get your event on the air you don't have much clout.
The Rolex Grand-Am Series was at Laguna for several years. They (Grand-Am) decided to not have it this year. As far as ALMS changing to May, it was due to ALMS & IMSA wanting to have Petit Le Mans as the final race of the season so that they can be close to most of the teams home bases. Since Grand-Am backed out Laguna changed the race to May to fill the void so that the series could have Petit as the final event. This will not be the case for 2011. MRLS wants it to be changed again to a different month. I'm not sure yet what will take place in May next year. They are also still trying to pen down the 2 events not in the line-up for this year. One I know of doesn't look to be to interesting. We Shall See!
yup, you are right. i guess i just never cared enough to attend or even to bother checking the schedule.
I think just the opposite is true here, do you have any idea what the cost to broadcast a 6 hour event live would be (plus pre and post race) ? I boat load! I think what the ALMS is doing is fairly smart here, they did cover the event live and broadcast it live for the die hards on line( advertising free I might ad) and then provide the 90 minute program a week later for the rest of the viewing public that even folks who saw the race might watch for the added "behind the scene" coverage. Full discloser, I am one of the crew members from "Truth in 24" that worked at this ALMS event for the "behind the scenes" stuff and I can tell you that we got some very good stuff that rounds out the on the track footage nicely, and the ALMS is going to have us do the same thing for one other race this year. I found the series and teams as a whole very welcoming and they are bending over backwards to make the events fan friendly, and coming from a few other series that I have worked with over the years, they are on top of that list for sure.
I'm sure all that's true, but still...any sports series that wants to be taken seriously has to have a live TV deal. SPEED covered Sebring virtually uninterrupted. Why couldn't ALMS make a similar deal for Laguna? I would have watched ALMS instead of Indy quallies if I'd had the choice.
But if you're like me and can't seem to find all that time to watch the race, I don't mind having it reduced. But then again, I was there for a week. Watching a reduced well made 90 minute presentation will be worth watching for me.
Complain all you want. I'm just gonna be giddy watching a race from Laguna Seca. I won a race there last fall and it'll bring back some fond memories.
No worries, consider yourself part of Edmundson's non-traditional sports car fans whom are staying away in droves. In delaying the broadcast to this weekend though, aren't they runnning up against a bit of competition? Hmmmm, Grand Prix of Turkey, Indianapolis 500, World 600, even GrandAM at Lime Rock. Then there's basketball playoffs, French Open tennis, on and on it goes. Fairly arrogant to think a race which happened a week before where everyone knows the results is going to pull any sort of viewership. RM
A 90 minute (delayed) race on a major network ( CBS ) will far, far exceed the # of viewers that a live ALMS race would receive on Speed simple due to the # of people that the two stations reach, and after all is not one of the reasons that sports are on TV, to broaden the fan base? Keep it on Speed and you only reach your normal viewership. If you think about it this way, perhaps this is a victory for the series. Porsche sponsored the program to help bring it to air with "limited" commercials so hopefully that will help extend the amount racing that the viewer will see, which is always one of the issues on network racing programming IMHO.
I can't believe I let my hopes get up that it would be good. Absolutely awful. I gave up after 20 minutes. - pre-race turn description named the turns incorrectly - in-car sighting lap (driver's eye tour of the track) commentary was not synced to video - i only saw the first 20 minutes but in that time there were several cases where the color commentary was for action at a corner which was not what we were being shown on video awful decision to let the truth in 24 team do it. they tried to make it into this drama however since this is a single race all it did was serve to kill the pace of the whole thing. even as a drama with some racing footage thrown in it was awful. especially i hated the constant switching between the exciting live commentary and the melodramatic narration. hugely disappointing, don't waste your time.
From memory, "Truth in 24" was done by the NFL Films crew, with their Riefenstahlesque ability to make seemingly the ugliest things look beautiful on film; in the most complimentary way. It was interesting how this style translated in "Truth" but then there was much more than a week to produce the final product as with the ALMS Laguna Seca show. Compliments for the interesting approach but as pointed out audio wasn't matching video at times. Narration wasn't irritating until it was indespersed with Radio Le Mans commentary which is, at best, over the top. It was unnecessary as Hindbaugh's raving lunatic style (a novelity in 1999) is now like verbal assault, he's exhausting. If they really want to make it more intetesting, eliminate Radio Le Mans and add more of the officials and pit to car radio transmissions; much more entertaining! RM
I guess I'm in the huge minority. I liked it very much . It gave them time to pick the very best footage instead of missing good stuff. I like the GT classes more then the unbalanced prototypes and there is hardly any footage of GT cars in regular broadcast. It did ad some drama that is not there lots of times due to directors cuts at live broadcast. I don't really have time to watch a full 6 hr broadcast on a great spring Saturday or Sunday. I would rather be driving my own Ferrari then sitting inside. I think they should rebroadcast it on speed instead of one of the thousands of nauseating NASCAR shows. Just my opinion.
I'm kinda mixed about the docurace. I thought they had an interesting approach to it, but the flow didn't really work well for me. It was nice to have some more input and background stuff from the teams/owners. Personally, I would rather watch a 6 hour broadcast and be surprised by the potential incidents at each curve. I'm a huge fan of endurance racing, and will watch a long race straight through if I have the chance. Overall, I enjoyed the coverage and wouldn't really mind seeing it again. I'm glad they did something since they didn't broadcast anything live on TV.
