They need to clip the apexes, hit their braking marks and maximise cornering speeds, but that’s only part of their job, especially in the modern era. Endurance racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is a multi-class discipline: dealing with slower or faster cars — or both — is an important part of the game. Then there’s the task of optimising the electronic systems, increasingly part of modern motorsport, in the name of performance.
IMSA has four classes. The high-tech GTP hybrid prototypes at the front of the field are joined by their slightly slower siblings in LMP2, a much more controlled category using a spec normally-aspirated V8 engine, and then there’s the GT3 machinery in the twin GT Daytona divisions. These cars are split in two according to the make-up of the driver line-up: GTD Pro allows, as the name implies, all-professional crews, while GTD is a pro-am category in which the place of the amateur, so important in endurance racing, is enshrined in the rules.
