PRUETT: Rolex 24/IMSA year of changes
Image by Jake Galstad/LAT
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Marshall Pruett | 10 hours ago
Welcome to an undeniably different opening to IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar championship season where change is the main story.
Teams and drivers have come into the series, others have left, new developments abound, some old questions remain, and in many cases, you’ll find the usual assortment of positives and negatives to process before the green flag waves today in Daytona, starting with:
NBC TrackPass: Having used NBC’s Gold live streaming service to watch a lot of IndyCar action last year, I’m pleased to see IMSA’s TV partner has added endurance racing to the dedicated streaming world with TrackPass. Like Gold, it isn’t free, but that’s no different than Netflix or any other streaming solution that I pay for. For the first time, I’ll watch the entire Rolex 24 At Daytona via streaming, and expect to do so at other IMSA races where I need to focus on the home front.
Click here for sign-up info.
Jan The Man: The Rolex 24 will take the green flag without Jan Magnussen for the first time since 2004. The mighty Dane, a Corvette Racing legend who parted ways with the team after October’s Petit Le Mans, will be missed by his many IMSA fans this season.
GRT/Magnus: Team Fun, aka Magnus Racing, has morphed into something rather different with owner/driver John Potter sending his car and equipment to Grasser Racing to run on his behalf. Potter’s girded by his familiar co-driver Andy Lally for the year, which is excellent, but the team’s primary instigator of fun,
PR ace Sean Heckman, has stepped away from racing. Will they produce fewer laughs but more wins with the switch to Grasser?
New President: Scott Atherton steered the American Le Mans Series from its infancy, brought the ALMS together with Grand Am to recreate today’s IMSA, and presided over the series through the end of 2019. He’s remained an advisor to IMSA after handing the keys to new president John Doonan, who left Mazda to fill Atherton’s considerable void. Doonan pulled off the biggest move to date for IMSA with getting prototype convergence over the line and signed with the ACO, which could be hard to top.
A fun note about IMSA’s new boss: Volunteer corner workers reported that early Friday morning at the Roar Before The 24 test — which would have been Doonan’s first day on the ground as president — he showed up at their group meeting and privately thanked all of them for their contributions to IMSA. First day. At the crack of dawn. I think we’ll be in good hands going forward.
No Ford GTs: They might have sounded like they needed to drink a few gallons of Maalox, but there’s no doubt the absence of Ford’s bellowing GTs from the grid will make the year less fun. Ford’s four-year factory GT Le Mans program was a great addition to IMSA, and with convergence in the works, it might not be a long wait until the Blue Oval is back with a new hybrid prototype.
In The Middle: With Ford’s GTs on the way out, IMSA’s rich GTLM class has received an infusion of interest with Corvette’s brand-new mid-engine C8.R, which sounds like nothing we’ve ever heard from a V8-powered entry produced by Corvette Racing. Defending GTLM champions Porsche also have a new model, with its mid-rear-engine 911 RSR ‘2.0’ taking pole at Daytona. GTLM is down a couple of cars for the year, but the quality hasn’t been lost.
How Corvette’s new C8.R will match up against the latest Porsche is one of the key’s to the GT season ahead. Image by Michael Levitt/LAT