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A longer Battle on the Bricks makes for more to think about at IMS

A year ago, Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.439-mile, 14-turn road course was new to many of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teams and drivers. Porsche Penske Motorsport used that, and a lot of home-track testing, to its advantage and dominated the 2h40m race with a one-two finish for its Porsche 963s. This year the track may be familiar to most everyone, but the twist of the Battle on the Bricks now being a six-hour race will certainly change the fortunes of some.

“The Indianapolis six hours will be a new challenge as it enters the endurance rounds of the championship,” said Pipo Derani, whose Whelen Cadillac Racing V-Series.R showed good pace at Indy last year, but not on a level with the PPM Porsches. “It’s also a very peculiar racetrack, one that can create a lot of marbles off-track. It’s most likely going to create a very interesting endurance event, and I am looking forward to that.

“I also think it’s nice that the championship will now finish with two endurance races in a row, which can create a lot of interesting battles and different strategies around not only the overall championship but also the endurance championships.”

Tire strategy will play a big part as the GTP teams have seven sets of hard-compound Michelins to use for qualifying and race, notes PPM’s Nick Tandy, who would like to see a better result for the No. 6 963 he shares with Mathieu Jaminet than they have typically had in endurance races.

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“The obvious point around it, I would say, with Michelin limiting the amount of tire sets that we get for all races, it changes how you go about the race, from a strategy point of view,” he said. “From a driving point of view, I wouldn’t say it changes too much going from just under a three to a six, but I guess we’ll find out.

Bourdais knows all too well how fast things can go south on the IMS road course, as he and Cadillac teammate van der Zande got off to a rough start in last year’s race. Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images

“Indianapolis is a short lap. The tracks where there are short laps tend to make the stints feel very long. If it’s a hot day — which it can be — it’ll be tough, but managing tires really is going to be is going to be key.”

With 56 cars on track — eight more than 2023 — surviving the early part of the race is going to be the first task. Traffic can make or break every lap, and Indy only presents a couple of spots where passing is a little less harrowing.

“Physically, it’s hard. It’s a track that doesn’t give you much rest and it’s seriously difficult in traffic,” said Sebastien Bourdais, who, along with Renger van der Zande will be trying to put the No. 01 Cadillac back into championship contention. “There are a lot of sections on the track where you can’t pass. Once you get into Turn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you’ve got to wait all the way until the backstraight and same thing when you get to 7, 8, 9, 10. If you don’t clear just before you get to the long right, the marbles build up and you can’t pass either.

“There are few places to clear traffic and it’s really a game of patience because if you try to force the issue, it can go sour pretty fast. You have to be careful but at the same time you can’t be too careful. In a 2-hour, 40-minute race, you can’t take it that easy. In a six-hour race, I guess there will be more management because it will come down to what happens at the last safety car, so it might be a bit easier to manage frustration.”

The six-hour IMSA Battle on the Bricks takes the green flag at 11:40am ET on Sunday, Sept. 22. The full race will be streamed on Peacock beginning at 11:30am, and outside the U.S. on IMSA.tv. NBC will feature the second half of the race beginning at 3pm. Qualifying begins at 3:40pm ET on Saturday and will be carried live on IMSA.tv and Peacock. Audio commentary from most sessions will be featured on IMSA radio at IMSA.com and RadioLeMans.com.

Story originally appeared on Racer