[h=2]PRUETT: Lessons from the Roar[/h] Friday, 13 January 2017


Marshall Pruett / Images by LAT

Last week's Roar Before the 24 IMSA test at Daytona International Speedway was packed with action on pit lane, in the garages, and on track during seven sessions spread across three days.


Parsing through all of the information generated by the 55 cars in attendance would trigger an aneurism, so I've concentrated most of my efforts on Prototype – the one WeatherTech SportsCar Championship class where every single car is new for 2017.
A few GT-related nuggets have also been included, and as we get closer to the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona race on Jan. 28-29, we'll take a much bigger dive into the GT Le Mans and GT Daytona categories.
With six brand-new models in Prototype (three conforming to Daytona Prototype international rules and three to World Endurance Championship P2 regulations), the Roar provided an interesting look into the performance possibilities and readiness of each model.
Among the overriding takeaways, it's safe to say at least one DPi manufacturer was slower than expected, and with a long history of carefully managing its pace at the Roar, questions of sandbagging were rife throughout the test. Thankfully, IMSA – through its new standalone data loggers placed in each car – has the ability to identify those cars or teams running at speeds below their ultimate potential.
This should, in theory, help the series to disregard any requests for Balance of Performance adjustments made by manufacturers or teams that partook in sandbagging.
On an unrelated but pertinent topic, of the 12 cars entered in Prototype at the Roar, only one completed each of the seven sessions. Only four missed a single session. The remaining seven cars missed two or three sessions, which speaks to the ongoing mechanical or electrical issues that are to be expected for new models with an overall lack of testing time.
From that last note, it might help to explain why the one prototype, ORECA's 07 (pictured), that is heavily based on its predecessor, the ORECA 05, showed up in Daytona to make a loud statement on its pace and readiness