Craig T. Nelson has car trouble. It all began at the 1991 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, where Nelson, the star of "Coach," one of television's most popular shows, competed in the pro/celebrity race and finished an impressive third. Three years of racing addiction later, Nelson has landed near the top of the IMSA Exxon World Sports Car Championship. Quite simply, his car trouble is this: With a schedule that includes juggling the responsibilities as star, co-executive producer, often director, and sometimes writer on "Coach," and still trying to find time for his wife, kids, and grandsons, Nelson has precious little time to indulge in his racing passion.
After the Long Beach experience, Nelson enrolled in the Russell Racing School.Under instructor Dan Clark's tutelage, Nelson found he had something beyond just passion-he had talent. With Clark serving as his racing manager and occasional co-driver, Nelson rapidly advanced through a series of progressively faster race cars, even campaigning a Carrera Cup Porsche at Monaco during Grand Prix weekend, finishing fifth in the fiercely contested American Cities Racing League (ACRL) in 1994. Nelson also tested Firestone Indy Light cars, but found he was, at 48, "a little too big and a little too old" for open-wheel competition. But when the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) created the Exxon World Sports Car (WSC) series in 1994, Nelson knew his experience in the open-cockpit, flat-bottom ACRL cars had been perfect training for this new, similarly flat-bottomed race series.
IMSA's WSC was formed in response to the increasingly unsustainable expense of its Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) series. GTPs were noted for their tremendous downforce created by underbody tunnels, exotic 800-plus-horsepower, pure-race turbo engines, and beautiful, efficient, full-envelope bodywork. At their pinnacle, GTP cars stood out as the fastest road-racing cars in America-even quicker than Indy Cars. GTPs also were wildly expensive-so expensive that the series was consistently dominated by whichever manufacturer was willing to commit the biggest budget during a particular season.
Despite the GTP's mesmerizingly wondrous and advanced technology and its essentially preordained winners, it attracted sparse crowds and, even worse, little television exposure. By the time IMSA was purchased by Florida businessman Charles Slater (just prior to the 1994 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona), the organization was already committed to a change.
Except for the open cockpits, the new WSC cars resemble their GTP counterparts. But the real WSC difference lurks beneath, where required flat underbodies eliminate hundreds of pounds of "ground-effects" downforce-producing bodywork. Aerodynamic devices are, in fact, prohibited except for a fixed rear wing of restricted height and size. This results in dramatically lower corner speeds and "looser" race cars that are more dependent upon driver skill than budget-busting technology for success. IMSA also reduced expenses by banning turbochargers and instituting a sliding scale for engine type and displacement, effectively encouraging the use of production-based engines. Transmissions are limited to five forward gears (six for rotary engines) and rpm limiters are used to restrain engines on the verge of dominance. Electronic goodies like ABS, active suspension, and electronic gearshifts? Not in this playground.
Understandably, the WSC got off to a slow start at the 24 Hours of Daytona in February 1994. Only eight cars entered this new open-cockpit class. But by the third race at Road Atlanta in March, where Ferrari made its first sports-car racing appearance in two decades, things began percolating quite nicely. Jay Cochran won Atlanta for Ferrari, and the prancing horse dominated the next four races until Jeremy Dale won the Portland, Ore., event in a Brix Racing Oldsmobile-Spice.
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