Yahoo Autos Michelin Endurance Cup adds another layer to IMSA points battle
Depending on your point of view, the Michelin Endurance Cup is either a sideshow to the overall IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, or the main event. For some, winning the IMEC is a consolation prize if they miss out on the overall title. For others it’s every bit as important, and sometimes even more so.
For those teams that contest only the endurance events, the Michelin Endurance Cup is indeed the only thing, and there are many teams who concentrate on the events that are six hours or longer, such as Iron Lynx, Risi Competizione, Cetilar Racing, Magnus Racing and others. Outside of contesting the full season, the IMEC is the only championship that matters.
This year’s IMEC may take on greater significance, as it’s now comprised of five races compared to four in recent years. The change of this weekend’s TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to a six-hour race from last year’s 2h40m sprint added to the number of endurance events, and perhaps to the prestige of winning the title.
Manufacturers, certainly, love to crow about Michelin Endurance Cup championships to demonstrate the durability of their cars. In 2023, Cadillac seemed to place as much emphasis on winning the IMEC as it did the overall championship with Whelen Cadillac Racing in the inaugural season of the new era of GTP.
The No. 31 squad of Jack Aitken, Pipo Derani and Tom Blomqvist sit second in the 2024 IMEC points in GTP with a shot at the title, although this year the team has no real chance at the overall championship with two races left. The IMEC might be the team’s sole bragging right for 2024.
“We’re definitely within reach, so we’ve got one eye on it,” says Aitken. “We want to win races overall, not just at the halfway mark. It’s a balance. When we get to Petit Le Mans, then I think one of the marks is quite close to the end, within a couple of hours. That’s when you really have to start questioning if it’s worthwhile, if you really want to compromise yourself that much, if you’ve got the time to recover. We’ll take it if we can, absolutely. It’s a championship and we want to win it.”
For those not familiar with the Michelin Endurance Cup and how it’s scored, each endurance race is divided into segments – two for six-hour races, three for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and Motul Petit Le Mans, and four for the Rolex 24 At Daytona. At each segment end, the leader in class is awarded five points, second gets four, and third gets three. Every other entrant gets two, whether the team completed the segment or not. For example, Era Motorsports is second by one point in LMP2 after winning Daytona and Sebring, but the team also scored two points for both segments in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen despite being eliminated from the contest on the first lap.
The fact that IMEC points are scored in the middle of a six-hour race, and after four and eight hours in the 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans, illustrates the balance in play. A team putting itself in position to score maximum IMEC points within the race could compromise the strategy needed for race victory. Mike Skeen, Mikael Grenier and Kenton Koch took the 2023 IMEC GTD title for Korthoff Preston Motorsports and have a shot at repeating it this year. But having won it before, the team would like to have more race wins.
“We got it last year, and since we’re not really in the championship overall, I think the next best thing is to try to win the endurance cup,” explains Koch. “But also, we want to win some races, so we’ll see how we go about that the last few races; I think we’re still kind of debating what focus we want to take. You can sacrifice your strategy for one over the other. Obviously you would like to do both, and that’s the goal, but if we have to make a decision, that’s what we’re going to have to talk about.”
With the final two races of the 2024 season being endurance events with a total of five segments, here’s how the IMEC points stack up after three races and nine segments for each class:
In GTP, Daytona winner and overall points leader Porsche Penske Motorsports No. 7 (Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr) lead with 33 points to Whelen Cadillac Racing’s 28. The No. 01 Cadillac Racing team and the No. 6 PPM team are tied for third at 26.
LMP2, as in GTP, has the overall points leader also leading the IMEC – Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports at 29 points. This is despite the fact that the team’s only victory for Nick Boulle and Tom Dillmann came in a sprint race. The second-place team in the overall standings, Riley Motorsports, is nowhere in the IMEC. Instead, Daytona and Sebring winners Era Motorsport with Ryan Dalziel, Dwight Merriman and Connor Zilisch are in a tie for second at 28 with CrowdStrike Racing by APR, although the latter is not expected to return this season and is definitely out for Indy. That leaves the No. 11 TDS Racing squad in, effectively, third at 25.
Sprints have paid off for Paul Miller Racing in the IMEC standings. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images
The GTD PRO IMEC standings are also led by a team that has won only a sprint race — Paul Miller Racing. Bryan Sellers, Madison Snow and Neil Verhagen lead the Risi Competizione duo of Daniel Serra and Davide Rigon, 30 points to 28. Risi is an IMEC-only team, while PMR is contesting the full season and third in the overall points. The No. 3 Corvette Racing team is third at 25. The overall-championship-leading AO Racing is in a three-way tie for fourth at 23.
Winward Racing has won every endurance race in GTD so far, plus the sprint at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, so is naturally leading both championships by a rather significant margin. Russell Ward and Philip Ellis, along with endurance addition Indy Dontje, have 31 IMEC points to Inception Racing’s 28. Korthoff Preston Motorsports sits in third at 26 to lead Triarsi Competizione by two points.
