Nah, just money talking way louder than skills. Also, just look at their history:Incompetence and sheer dumb luck brought 13 overall wins at Le Mans, 6 WEC championships, 1 DTM championship and a few more important wins in IMSA over the course of 40 years? Sure...
I think Joest did what they could with the dumpster fire that was given to them, at least bringing in some reliability to the car and even a few wins. They've done a lot better job than Speedsource ever did, that's certain.
Nah, just money talking way louder than skills. Also, just look at their history:
1995-1997 = They used a Jaguar XJR-14 chassis, the almighty Porsche Type-935 engine and F1 levels of driving talent (Wurz, Alboreto, Johansson, Kristensen). They were that one kid that picks an all-star team whenever he's playing FIFA/Madden/NBA/NHL/MLB against his friends.
2000-2002 = Their rivals were a project GM is ashamed of, something based off a failed GT1 car, something based off a failed GTP car (R8C) and a bunch of privateers (Dome, Courage, Lola, etc)
2003-2006 = A bunch of privateers (Courage mostly) and the evolutions of Audi Sport UK were the only opposition.
2007-2011 = Peugeot shows up, ends up beating them on the 3rd year even though the French never realized they could've been much slower and still won very often.
2012-2016 = Toyota's time, can the dudes that never made a competent F1 car build a competent high-downforce reliable car? Not really... Porsche, on the other hand, didn't need much time to punch them into submission.
Joest won the 2000 edition because the good manufacturers from the late 90s quit, then started winning against idiots, cheap bastards and privateers. Peugeot got them by the balls on their 2nd year even though by then Joest had been doing the same thing for almost a decade. They finally ended up facing some real competition but it was rookies against 13th-year veterans and they still lost rather early. They had no huge head start in IMSA, no magic combo, driving talent was somewhat level and Joest ended up becoming a burning (get it?) garbage can.
PS: Don't make me dissect Prodrive's career. I can do it and, SPOILER ALERT, it looks even worse.
Point-by-point...Which is it the second year or third year? Can't be both. Also ironic that a rookie team can beat them nearly a decade after they started (and stopped) their program but other teams didn't beat them with more time under their belts and money and yet you give them an out.
Teams that utilized their massive money pit former programs to be competitive in their debut seasons. Bar Nissan obviously. Then you claim they had all the money in the world and driver talent yet other teams did too and they never won. And then you say they aren't good when they're given no support, Damn they just can't win in your warped irrational rewrite of history.
In reality Joest is a great group of racing managers and engineers amd this effort highlights just how bad Mazda DPis were before them and how unfunded. Only group worse is again Nissan as ESM tried and also got a couple wins.
Of course Nissan has no money nowadays, they wasted it on stupid projects and by being a bunch of GT3 and GT500 tryhards to the point of almost driving themselves to bankruptcy. The fact they still have motorsports efforts showcases how Carlos Ghosn is overrated. No sane man would let Nissan have a racing team for like the next 10 years.
· Between 1998 and 1999, any decent rivals Audi could've had retired. BMW and Toyota decided F1 was cool again and Porsche cursed the World with the first non-US high-power SUV. After that, all you had to fight were LMP cars based after failed GT1 cars (why would Panoz & Nissan think that was going to work?) and Cadillac, a project so incredibly stupid and underfunded that GM has publicly expressed how ashamed they still are about it. Outside of that, they only competed against a bunch of privateers (reminds me of Toyota's 2018-present run, except no one has a boner for them).
Point-by-point...
· Peugeot was already faster than Audi by their 2nd year but they were too stupid to realize it, tried too hard and killed their own cars. They got their first LM24 win on their 3rd attempt.
· They never stopped worked on those cars. The Audi R8 eventually stopped receiving major updates but Joest never stopped working on them.
· Between 1998 and 1999, any decent rivals Audi could've had retired. BMW and Toyota decided F1 was cool again and Porsche cursed the World with the first non-US high-power SUV. After that, all you had to fight were LMP cars based after failed GT1 cars (why would Panoz & Nissan think that was going to work?) and Cadillac, a project so incredibly stupid and underfunded that GM has publicly expressed how ashamed they still are about it. Outside of that, they only competed against a bunch of privateers (reminds me of Toyota's 2018-present run, except no one has a boner for them).
· Why would Joest risk their prestige to run a factory team that actually gives them no support? Let me guess: you still think the Nissan LMP failed because of lack of support, not because it was incredibly idiotic from the very start.
Of course Nissan has no money nowadays, they wasted it on stupid projects and by being a bunch of GT3 and GT500 tryhards to the point of almost driving themselves to bankruptcy. The fact they still have motorsports efforts showcases how Carlos Ghosn is overrated. No sane man would let Nissan have a racing team for like the next 10 years.
They were 1-2% faster than Audi at times, that is not needed. Imagine Mercedes F1 winning by a full second per lap, winning races by around a minute. Peugeot was trying to do that and that is very dumb when you are fighting a manufacturer and not Courage.Peugeot knew they were faster not sure how they were stupid about it. They got beat on attrition.
Courage, Dome and the rest were only finishing high at some point because there were no other manufacturer entries. Also, they only put pressure on Audi because the car went on for a couple years without a major update.Pesca, Dome, Courage were far more capable of putting up a fight than you want to give them credit for.
How are they giving up prestige when they have a massive resume of success? They were willing to try a failing effort due to having no real racing projects in Sports cars and they did what they could with it and were able to eek out wins. Also GTPorsche did a good job explaining Nissan.
Carlos Ghosn is attributed with saving Nissan from bankruptcy and creating the whole Renault+Nissan thingy, he became so popular in Japan they awarded him Dad of the Year. If you're trying to save a car manufacturer from bankruptcy, allowing them to race in SuperGT, create the World's stupidest LMP1 car and the 3rd-most-stupid GT3 car are not wise moves. There's a reason why Mitsubishi disappeared from the motorsports world, they did the right thing (they also screwed up in other aspects).Based on what evidence? What does an ex Nissan chairman have to do with current or future Nissan racing endeavors? Also pretty sure you should not be a judge on sane people.
Regarding the whole TV thing, I think this is where the entire industry is behind/way behind the times. Live television is...more or less a dead thing. Particularly for support races and "also ran" series or TV shows. The idea that somehow millions of people are going to sit down to watch something at one time is an antiquated idea. We live in the world of "when I want to watch it".
What a wild off-season! Bourdais is out of his Indycar ride and into the #5 Cadillac which is moving to JDC :
https://racer.com/2019/11/22/bourdais-barbosa-headed-to-jdc-miller/amp/