As IMSA Heads to Mid-Ohio, Some Drivers Already Have Wish List for 2023

This weekend, the Lexus Grand Prix of Mid-Ohio at Lexington, Ohio,will have four of the five classes—all the Prototypes, plus the GT Daytona class. There are six DPi cars, six LMP2 cars, and nine LMP3 cars, making for a nice 21-car Prototype field.

All IMSA races don’t feature all five classes, for two reasons: One is the size of the track – Long Beach, for instance, is too short to pack them all in. The other reason is cost containment, figuring that the teams save money by running a truncated schedule.

Some LMP2 and LMP3 drivers would like the run more of the races than they do on the current schedule.

“I’d definitely love to race in more venues,” LMP3 points leader Joao Barbosa, co-driver of the No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsports Liger, told Autoweek. “Seven races is OK, but we could definitely use a couple more races. It would keep things a little more exciting for everybody.”

Barbosa was a multi-time champion in the DPi class before moving to LMP3. In that class, “There is definitely a difference especially on the power and the braking. Cornering speeds seem a little bit low because everything is tuned down a bit, but everything else is very similar to the DPi. It’s a lot of fun to drive.”

LMP2 points leader Ryan Dalziel is the co-driver of the No. 18 Era Motorsports Oreca—all the LMP2 cars are Orecas, but there is a choice of chassis in the LMP3 class.

Dalziel, who has an overall win in a DPi at the Rolex 24 at Daytona on his resume, has also driven the LMP3 car. “The LMP2 is closer to the DPi. Our car, relatively speaking, is pretty much an Acura without the Acura engine," Dalziel said. "And that makes for a pretty big difference.”

As far as scheduling goes, put Dalziel down for a lot more races. “I was talking with somebody a couple of days ago about schedules—we used to run I think 14 Grand Am races a year, along with 10 American Le Mans Series races.

“It’s not as much fun, and harder for drivers to make a good living doing this when you have seven races in a season, especially when you have a wife who is trying to kick you out of the house because you’re home too much.

“I wish we could do more and I know the reason behind it is mostly cost, but everybody on our team are full-time employees so we wouldn’t need to add staff if we added races. It would be nice if we could get back to those double-digits in the future.”

Might that be possible? We won’t know until this summer.

“We are continuing to review class structures in the short and long-term and we will formalize the 2023 class structure and announce it at Road America the first weekend in August,” said John Doonan, IMSA president.