Speed Series and other support races
The Speed Series for smaller Group CN prototypes, fitted fit 2-litre Honda engines, were chosen as a main support championship of the Le Mans Series this year but we are not sure they are fulfilling their promises. With only 15 entries, more than half of which were black cars, and more than one third were almost identical Wolf GB08's, the field could hardly attract anybody's attention. And after the first one and half hour race, which we missed completely due to its very late Saturday scheduling, there were less than 10 cars capable of racing on Sunday for the race that directly preceded the main 6 Hour event. After the quick orange WF 03 was retired after some two or three laps, we had almost boring circulation of 7 black cars, five of which were Wolfs, against one white Ligier. It all took 45 minutes and we could really imagine better race to fill the gap between the LMS warm up and the race.
Apart from appearance of three news Wolfs added to the three ones already seen at Spa, everything else was a decline compared to the Spa race. Much less Ligiers, not a single Norma, and very low reliability added to all that, was a real disappointment and unless some miracle happens in the final two races, it is doubtful, the series would survive another season on its own and may end up as a part of the LMS, similarly as Formula Le Mans did after one year of pure showing on its own. To add CN cars to LMS is really not preferred option by us but having heard that LMS wants to separate from ILMC, now WEC races, having only 4 decent LMP1 full-season entries ad with the voices being heard that it might be the final year of LMP1 in LMS, 15 CN cars could really boost the grids. A question would be how such championship could be still labelled by the Le Mans name. Hopefully this will not happen and LMS will become somewhat of European championship within WEC with some separate races like it was for example in 1983. Anything else would strongly decrease its importance, we are convinced.
Other support races included, CER reported separately, Radical Master, which are traditional part of the LMS races visited by RSC and also Formula 2000 Light, which joined LMS/ILMC race only here in Italy, and which we honestly did not follow at all, apart from a few moments, when was see the cars running next to us over the wall, while arriving to the track. The Radicals were fine with a very strong field and despite the time did not allow us to pay much attention to them; here we bring to you at least some photos:
