Yahoo Autos Resurfaced Road America will throw IMSA teams new curves
For the first time in 2023, all five IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship classes are in action this weekend in a sprint race. With the entry for the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America at 50 cars — the most for any race this season so far that’s not part of the Michelin Endurance Cup — it will be an interesting test for many. Particularly as the familiar track will throw a new twist at the drivers and teams — a new surface that by some accounts offers more grip on line, less grip off, and reduced tire degradation.
“Watching the IndyCar race, everybody made a big deal of how it looked like it was one line,” said Ricky Taylor, driver of the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport Acura ARX-06 with Filipe Albuquerque. The pair won last year’s race with a dramatic late-race pass in traffic by Albuquerque on the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura. Taylor and Albuquerque, being in the championship hunt only 29 points out of first place in the GTP category, are looking for their first victory of the season to move into first.
“I think when you get a multi-class series there, it’ll be interesting how we sort of widen the track up,” Taylor said. “But everybody says it’s just super-high grip, so I don’t know what it’s going to be like. Road America is always a great track for racing, just because the way the corner layouts are — long straights, heavy braking. There’s a lot of places where you can get really held up in traffic, which provides opportunity for inter-class battles. I think that part of Road America shouldn’t change. But definitely, it’ll mix up the field in terms of who adapts to the track change the best and how it is on tire degradation and all that stuff.”
Ricky Taylor and Albuquerque played Road America strategy perfectly last year, but new cars and a resurfaced track make it a whole new ballgame. Richard Dole/Lumen
WTR hasn’t tested on the new Road America surface, so the team will be leaning on fellow Acura team MSR, which did. Championship leader Action Express Racing did a test for Cadillac Racing. Alexander Sims, who shares the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R with Pipo Derani, says that, at the moment, the one-line assessment is correct.
“It was helpful to test there with the track rubbered in since our pre-Le Mans test, when we were there in the snow, and get a proper read,” Sims said. “Extremely low grip offline, so that is going to be difficult for racing the GTD cars. The car was working well, and we were able to gather valuable information on car setup. There will be some challenges to get through the traffic cleanly throughout the whole race to not lose any time and have any off-track excursions. I’m looking forward to the race and continuing the fight for the championship.”
Harry Tincknell, who will be driving with Gianmaria Bruni in the debut of Proton Competition’s new Porsche 963, has tested the new surface in another car, and the thing that stood out for him was the tire degradation, or rather the lack thereof.
“There seems to be almost zero tire deg, which was incredible,” he noted. “We were doing like 50 laps on the set of tires and barely losing any performance. We were very early on [after] the track resurfacing, I believe, so the track officials and people we saw there were saying the grip was actually still coming up and up. I didn’t really feel like it was a huge grip increase — maybe slightly, but the standout was that it was very smooth and zero tire deg on a track that traditionally is quite high on tire deg.”
That will make the strategy in the 2h40m race around the 4.048-mile 14-turn road course known as “America’s National Park of Speed” quite interesting if it holds true, opening up the possibility of more double stints on tires. Of course, weather can throw a wrench into any strategy, as it did last year with a brief shower, adding to all the other variables that Road America can deliver.
“The weather seems to be always a factor there, with the rain last year mid-race on slicks,” said Taylor. “The pick up [on the tires] is always really bad. The GT traffic can be really unrelenting. And this year with P2 cars, the way that we race together, it’s going to be difficult.
“To generalize Road America, it gets into this rhythm where you just have to predict the traffic well, and I think you can feel comfortable. And then you catch the three wrong cars in the wrong segment of the track, and like the 60 saw last year, the guy behind is going to take some risks like Filipe did to get by. That’s going to be sort of what can determine the race.”
With 50 cars among the various classes, handling traffic is always pivotal to success at Road America. Richard Dole/Lumen
With only three races left for the GTP teams, this weekend’s race could prove pivotal in the championship. It’s a virtual dead heat at the top, with the fight between Derani/Sims, the second-place BMW M Team RLL No. 25 with Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly, and Taylor/Albuquerque in third separated by less than the points difference between first and second. Fourth-place Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy for Porsche Penske Motorsports are only 34 points back of third.
LMP2 features a more heated neck-and-neck race at the top, with the top three separated by only six points. George Kurtz and Ben Hanley lead for Crowdstrike Racing by APR, followed by TDS Racing’s Steven Thomas and Mikkel Jensen, and Ben Keating and Paul-Loup Chatin for PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. Of course, all three will be fighting Dwight Merriman and Ryan Dalziel in the No. 18 Era Motorsport ORECA for victory, as they seek to make it three in a row at Road America. In LMP3, it’s the team that’s won all three points-paying races, Riley Motorsports with Gar Robinson and Felipe Fraga, all alone at the top with a 181-point lead. And, by the way, the pair won at Road America last year
Defending Road America winners Ben Barnicoat and Jack Hawksworth recovered from a rough weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park to score another podium at Lime Rock and strengthen their lead in GTD PRO for Vasser Sullivan Lexus Racing. They lead Corvette Racing’s Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor by a healthy 151-point margin. Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow don’t have quite that lead over Marco Sorensen and Roman De Angelis as Paul Miller Racing fights Heart of Racing and BMW fights Aston Martin for the GTD title, but 86 points is still somewhat comfortable with four races left. Russel Ward and Philip Ellis were the victors last year for Winward Racing in the No. 57 Mercedes AMG.
The first practice for the IMSA SportsCar Weekend at Road America begins at 12:05pm Eastern on Friday (11:05am local time). Qualifying, carried on IMSA.tv, will be Saturday at 2:15pm ET. The race, broadcast live on USA Network and streamed on Peacock, is scheduled for a green flag at 11:10am. ET.
The IMSA Weather Tech SportsCar Championship is joined at Road America by the Michelin Pilot Challenge, Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup and Lamborghini Super Trofeo.
