LuigiVampa

I have driven a few races with AER the last two years and really like the series. The rumor mill is saying that the NJMP race this past weekend is going to be their last race because of dwindling car counts.

Their website has no dates for 2023 but also no explanation as to why not. Anyone in the know that knows what is going on?

PGas32

Someone mentioned that same rumor to me, but they put a schedule out over the weekend on their social media accounts

Jeff951NJ

They released the schedule over the weekend on there Facebook page.

Pitt = March 31-April 2
The Glen = May 5-7
Summit = June 2-4
VIR = July 14-16
Mid- Ohio = Oct 20-22
NJMP = Nov 17-18

LuigiVampa

That is good news - I would hate to see the series die.

I guess their delay in putting up the 2023 schedule caused people to make up stories about the series' demise.

Frank 993 C4S

Looks like they were only down 4-5 cars over the previous year at NJMP. Link to the results where you can compare year over year participation:

https://race.americanenduranceracing.com/events/9

pewpewpew3000

I had the same thought and I can't help but feel that what happened was WRL. It's a lot more fun to race roughly the same performance cars vs the racing you get with AER classing. AER added Class A that is roughly WRL GTO but it feels like the car counts are too low to have solid racing. I feel like the only teams I've seen there have been testing for WRL.

Frank 993 C4S

If you look at the carnage in the most recent WRL races I bet some of those teams will be back in AER.

Jas0nn

Different audiences ...

There certainly may some team overlap between the series (we're one), but AER just doesn't satisfy the competitive streak that drives so many GTO teams.

38D

NJMP class A seemed to be mostly WRL GTO cars from what I saw.

what is odd to me is that class A overlaps with the regular class 4. What AER should have done is just add the power/weight max and kept 5 classes. They also charge more for class A.

MSTACH

They charged more for class A and when we were forced to class 4 because there were not enough class A cars we didn't get credit back.

Jas0nn

Those are former AER cars that now race in WRL as well. I can't think of a single WRL GTO team who came over to race in Class A ...

MoD

I think the rule set of AER is a bit annoying. We did a race there with 3 fast drivers and in a 2.5L boxster we were stuck with 3.4 caymans driven poorly (didn’t have fun racing that way). Honestly, if AER just wanted to see a path to success and adopted WRLs power to weight rule book they’d do better. The momentum behind WRL is too strong at this point. The WRL pointy end of the field is also very very competitive in all classes with very talented drivers. I’m not saying great drivers don’t frequent AER (they do) but there are far far more of them in WRL.

I think if AER wants to survive they should work on the lower power to weight classes of WRL that may end up being too slow for WRL soon. There’s a bit of a void for what would be a well set up GP3/4 car pace. GP3 is still awesome in WRL but the GTO cars are getting too quick for them. I think the spot between champ car and WRL is a void that AER could fill if they got away from their rule book. This won’t be as sexy as having the faster GT3/4 cars but it’s not going to keep that share of the cars as long as WRL is around because simply put WRL does it better.

Their survival will depend on whether they take advantage of the void that’s starting to form for the guys/gals that want 20-50k competitive cars that are well driven/set up. If they didn’t have that Watkins date and WRL did most the northeast folks would just migrate to WRL I think.