Welcome everyone! I hope the shock of seeing 2023 on calendars is beginning to wear off and wherever you are, your minds and schedules are sufficiently empty to be filled in with the molten liquid of IMSA's new beginning. Actually I am overselling this slightly, as four of the five classes remain unchanged since last year. However! The big point of newness is the DPI class, now renamed GTP like it's 1988 and Martin Brundle and David Brabham are the hottest pin-up idols in world sports car racing, and technologically revamped with: hybrids! new manufacturers! engines! IMSA is so hot right now. The new GTPs share a common chassis and hybrid system but each manufacturer does their own thing with engine and bodywork. The whole thing is balance-of-performanced by The Man so they all produce about 670hp + 40hp of electrical power, and achieve roughly the same laptime as long as everything electromechanical is running smoothly, which over the course of 24 hours it usually isn't.
So, we have the spectacle of four car manufacturers entering sports prototypes, with big naturally-aspirated Cadillac V8, contending with an M5-style twin-turbo BMW V8, racing against Penske's turbo V8 Porsche 963 (one higher than 962 innit), facing off against HPD's little turbo V6 Acura. Sounds... a bit like DPI? But with hybrid power? Below the line we have the same mix of LMP2 and LMP3 pro-am hilarity, and the slightly menacing and highly varied GT3-like GTD class, where every conceivable GT car you'll never own spends the day getting in the way of the racing cars and driving into each other at 3 in the morning.
You know the drill for Daytona. This is the other day-long sports car race, where instead of driving between some random points in northern France, they race around and through the car parks and access roads within the big track where they do the Daytona 500. It's daytime, the sun sets, the lights come on, the mechanical dark night of the soul commences, the sun rises, everyone pretends to have grasped the important points of race strategy that unfolded during the night, a yellow flag bunches them all up, somebody botches a pitstop and a winner is declared. Commentators commentate in shifts. There is something called the International Horseshoe. The Florida weather becomes increasingly attractive.
We have already had qualifying so I can run through the entrants in something approaching order.
The GTPs
There are nine of them! On pole is the Meyer-Shank Acura qualified by Tom son of Stig Blomqvist and backed up by MSR's Indycar duo of Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves, with IMSA veteran Colin Braun there to presumably say veteranic things like "remember not to race too hard on the first lap" and "make sure you stop your wheels spinning when you arrive at the pit box".
In second is Penske's Felipe Nasr, backed up by Porsche employees Matt Campbell and Andreas Christensen. Nasr's best time was eight-hundredths of a second off pole, so you can see the kind of race it's going to be. The other Penske, headlined by Le Mans winner Nick Tandy, is starting way down the order after crashing in the 20 minute shooutout last weekend.
The other Acura, this one run by Wayne Taylor Racing, lines up third after Ricky Taylor scored a time that was 0.167s off pole. Felipe Albuquerque, Louis Deletraz and ex-F1's Brendon Hartley are poised to step into the cockpit at pre-appointed moments, as sports car racers do.
Fourth, fifth and sixth are the three Cadillac GTPs, presumably biding their time and saving their strength for the weekend. Chip Ganassi Racing's #01 car perhaps inevitably got the best of the intra-GM battle, with Sebastien Bourdais putting in a fast lap on behalf of his cockpit mates Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon. They are followed by the sister Ganassi #02 team, featuring experienced names Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook, and finally it's Whelen Engineering with Pipo Derani (why did he never race in Indycar?), Alexander Sims and finally no longer the guy who stopped George Russell from winning a Grand Prix, Jack Aitken. Lots of familiar names here! Is one of them sponsored by Mustang Sampling? I don't know. My information may be out of date.
Bobby Rahal's two BMW GTPs occupy row 4, with four drivers each, although two of them are confusingly both Colton Herta. It's the rather touring car-y line up of Phillip Eng, Marco Wittman and Augusto Farfus in the lead car, and Conor de Philippi, Nick Yelloly and Sheldon van der Linde (great name) in the second. I think BMW are the weakest manufacturer.
Those are the nine GTPs! As for the rest, run through your favourites here (qualifying times) and here (Spotters Guide) but my favourites include Bog Habley and Esteban Gutierrez in the unfortunately named Crowdstrike LMP2 starting 13th, the all-British Hawksworth/Barnicoat/Conway Vasser-Sullivan Lexus in GTD Pro, 3 (three) BMW M4s, Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden in an Oreca LMP2, Jan Magnussen in a 911, and Alessio Deledda at the back of the grid in a GT3 Lambo. That makes 61 starters in all, which sounds great.
I think you can watch all this, somehow. Can someone fill in the details? I haven't looked that far ahead.
