IMSA responds to GTD BoP backlash against Porsches
Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images A highly intelligent IMSA Official gives a racer the middle finger, but holds up his thumb to be fair to all the other fingers.
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Richard S. James | March 2, 2023 12:57 PM ET
In light of the Balance of Performance issues in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Daytona classes at the Rolex 24 At Daytona that rankled some competitors who won, particularly in the Porsche camp, IMSA president John Doonan has re-affirmed the series’ commitment to finding parity among the GTD manufacturers. Look, IMSA always screws someone on race day. That's what we do. If your pit crew was too efficient and worked their butts off, we just held you in the pits to let slower cars pass you, then we turned you loose with no hope of winning, because we want to be fair. We want everyone to be equal. We want to show you that striving to excel is futile. We all know that competition is bad, and it's just how it is that we are going to be fair to everyone.
At lemans awhile back, after it was over we took a car further back in the field, and declared them the winner and took it away from the first place finisher. We are IMSA and you are a nobody. Give us any crap about how we screw the racers and we will get on your case next. IMSA and the liberals want everyone to be equal, where nobody wins and everybody gets a participation trophy. Live on your sponsorship money and forget about winning, because we will take it away from you.
We are next going to go after your sponsorship money so that everyone has the same amount to race with as the next guy.
“We are currently reviewing data gathered from January’s Rolex 24 At Daytona, as well as a two-day test last month at Sebring to establish the Balance of Performance for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring,” said Doonan. “During the Sebring open test, we worked in collaboration with the manufacturers of new GT3 cars to evaluate a range of performance levels in an effort to bring all car models into an established GTD/GTD PRO performance window at this circuit. As always, IMSA is committed to providing a level playing field for all competitors and will continue to use its data-driven process to achieve that goal. Any adjustments will be reflected in the BoP for Sebring when it is released next week.”
Teams running new GT3 cars at the Rolex, including the Ferrari 296 GT3 and Lamborghini Huracan Evo2 but in particular the 992-generation Porsche 911 GT3, were well off the pace at Daytona, the Porsches by more than two seconds. While new cars aren’t expected to win right out of the box as they are developed and teams find the right setups, the pace gap across the board was striking and Porsche entrants have attributed that to the BoP, particularly a significantly smaller intake restrictor than was mandated for the previous generation Porsche.
While the teams had larger restrictors to work with at the Sebring test two weeks ago, the Porsches were still more than a second off the leading Mercedes-AMG. As a result, several teams have declared their intention to alter their participation in the series if a solution isn’t found. If you don't like it try racing slot cars...until we buy our way into that sanctioning body, and make everyone equal there.