IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series on Verge of Becoming (Too Much) Contact Sport

• At Road America, two veteran drivers contending for championships were knocked off the track in the first six corners.

• The upcoming WeatherTech round at VIRginia International Raceway on Sunday is expected to be yet another form of “boys (and girls) have at it” as practiced in IMSA.

• Drivers say the competition within classes has never been closer, and collisions on track have never been more frequent.

Does the WeatherTech Championship have too much contact between drivers and their cars for a sports car endurance series?

At the most recent round at Road America, two veteran drivers contending for championships were knocked off the track in the first six corners after the green flag at the start.

Antonio Gracia, whose Corvette Z06 GT3.R was punted by the Mustang GT3 of Mike Rockenfeller, says that IMSA’s premier series is on the verge of too much contact.

“I never liked it,” said Garcia of the contact. But he blames incidents like the one at Road America on the ABS braking systems used in the GT3-spec cars. “Everybody just dives in and waits for the car to stop. So, there are a lot of big moves. You rely on the system and at times the system doesn’t work for you.”

The GTP cars, meanwhile, have braking systems at the rear of the cars that are challenging for drivers due to the hybrid system. Pipo Derani’s Cadillac V-Series.R was spun by a rear fender tap from the Porsche 963 of Nick Tandy at Turn 6 on the first lap and eventually finished in fourth place. Tandy, who served a penalty in the pits, and co-driver Mathieu Jaminet came back to win the race for Porsche Penske Motorsport.

The upcoming WeatherTech round at VIRginia International Raceway on Sunday is a stand-alone event for the GTD Pro and GTD classes. But it is expected to be yet another form of “boys have at it” as practiced in IMSA.

Mark Raffauf, the senior director of competition, said the WeatherTech drivers are not over the line on contact. He said that stop-and-go penalties can be adjusted to the severity of a driver’s error and that former IMSA drivers are employed to review incidents in race control using as many as 50 video views from the series’ TV partners.

“The drivers who compete at the pro level are paid to win and sooner or later they’re going to go for it,” said Raffauf, who currently oversees the sanctioning body’s race directors during WeatherTech events. “We don’t want drivers to worry about scratching the paint all of the time,” he said, “because it’s boring.”

Contact Is More Frequent

Older legacy fans from the original GTP era of the 1980s and 1990s may disagree, but the contact has not discouraged current ticket buyers, who continue to turn out in what track promoters say are record numbers. TV and social media participation by fans, according to IMSA, have also increased in the second year of the GTP hybrids and the first year of GT3 specifications used for all manufacturers in the GTD classes.

High-speed contact started in the days of the Daytona Prototypes in the early 2000s, the extra-sturdy class that evolved into DPi prior to the arrival of the GTP hybrids. With BOP in place for what are now universal car platforms in each of the GTP, LMP2 and GTD classes, the competition within classes has never been closer. And collisions on track have never been more frequent, although Raffauf said more full-course cautions are brought out by single-car incidents.

The contact is not just within classes. Cadillac Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais said his late race bid for the podium at Road America was turned around by contact with a GTD-class Porsche after exiting the pits.

“The GT Porsche making contact on the out lap with me, just gave me no chance,” said Bourdais. “I was down on the inside, he knew I was going to go by him in the straight, and I understeered a tiny little bit, but he just turned in and turned me around.”

How About a Penalty System

Would IMSA officials consider a points penalty system in addition to mid-race penalties? The system used in Formula 1 applies points to drivers who are forced to sit out a race if they accumulate more than 12 penalty points.

Drivers manipulate these points formats, said Raffauf—either intimidating those who are near the limit or taking extra chances due to their own clean record. But he said IMSA has increased the duration of some stop-and-go penalties to dampen overexuberance by drivers.

“The reason we ramped up penalties is that the prototype drivers have completely different platforms,” he said. “Looking at last year, every major incident, crash and long yellow was created by GTP drivers. It was all the good guys basically going for it at 110%. But that’s what they’re paid to do. They’re paid to win.”

What do you think? Are you a fan of bump-and-run racing becoming more a part of the game in IMSA? Start the discussion below.