Talk:World Sportscar Championship

message: "GT (closed bodywork) and Sports (open bodywork)" I take this to mean coupé (coupè? coupê?) or speedster, but it could equally be open wheel/not. Can somebody clarify? Also, I changed the "championship" header to dab from class winners. And if anybody's got good info on the '50s-60s rules, add it here & here? Thanx.  TREKphiler hit me ♠  04:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Shut up?

message: There are many subjective remarks in this voice's text.
It will be good to restore a little bit of balance, if you will, and leave out subjective judgements that reflect your support for this or that marque or this or that nationality...
For example, I'll cite 2 things :
1) "Notably absent from the overall results were the Jaguar works team, who did not enter any events other than Le Mans, despite the potential of the C- and D-Types"
Jaguar works team and affiliated private teams (benefiting from works support) took part in the championship from 1953 to 1957. Only then, and because of numerous aspects, the Ecurie Ecosse entered cars only to the 24h of Le Mans for some years.
Every marque had its strategy and tried to win as many events as possible and the championship but, given the scoring system, it happened that after a few races, sometimes only by misfortune, sometimes because of reliability issues, they were so down on points that winning the Championship seemed such a remote option that they invested all their money in a few events [NOTE], leaving private, works backed, teams to enter which other races they could.
Nobody questions the potential of the jaguar racing department. The problem was the cost and the multiple difficulties associated to endurance racing in the 50's and 60's (general lack of munific sponsors, general state of technical development, safety on the circuits etc).  
[NOTE] While the other marques that were still battling for the championship had to prepare cars for many events (just think about refurbishing engines after stressful long distance races), with the available money. The ones that were already out of the battle for the championship could enhance their chances of winning the selected events by entering "fresher" cars and limiting their presence on the other race events or sometimes even not entering them.
In the end, everyone was happy it seems... Some make won the championship, some make make won prestigious events.
Supporting journalists or the marque marketing could boast the wins and tell you that they didn't give a damn about the World Championship Title. But, as it is documented, the next season they would again enter as many events as possible (paying for logistics, car development, car testing, car refurbishing etc) until it was sound for them. 
If you are able to put away with the nationalistic fervour of the author, a good read that gives an account of what was like racing in these days, is Cyril Posthumous " World Sportscar Championship".       
 
2) "The period between 1966 and 1971 was possibly the most successful era of the World Championship"
That is debatable : the 50s and early 60s were immensely popular also, with competition coming from Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar, Aston Martin, the small Porsches...etc
Also the first 2 seasons in the "Ferrari VS Ford battle" (i.e. 1964 and 1965) were really succesfull in terms of media exposure, due to the expectation for the racing duel between Maranello and the Ford GT40s. That, even if in the end Ferrari come out the winner in these 2 seasons. 151.68.208.8 (talk) 13:39, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please improve the balance of the voice 

message: Since templates from both WSC and FIA-WEC don't keep continuity between the 2 eras we shouldn't write of return but something almost totally new. mcg (talk) 11:43, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paragraph title "rebirth"