Michael Shank Racing w/ Curb/Agajanian Ligier JS Judd Powered car making it’s way to tech.
If this year’s running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona is any indication, the 2015 TUDOR United Sports Car Championship is going to have one fascinating season.
IMSA is to be commended for getting the BOP (Balance of Performance) just right in the three classes that they have been juggling – Prototype, GTLM and GTD. The LMPC class is already balanced by design – all the cars are spec with the same engine.
However, in the other classes you have a wide variety of machinery from different chassis and engine manufacturers and the results at Daytona don’t lie – the competition was close and exciting from the very first practice session to the checkered flag on Sunday afternoon.
On pole was the all new Honda HPD Ligier JS P2 of Michael Shank Racing, followed by a variety of P2 and DP cars powered by a variety of engines. The top 10 cars were separated by only 1.136 seconds in qualifying. It was an amazing result and a testament to the quality of IMSA’s BOP formula.
In GTLM, the top professional GT class, you again had very close competition in qualifying, with the Corvette C7.R taking the top spot, followed by such varied machinery as the Ferrari 458 Italia, Aston Martin Vantage V8, BMW Z4 GTE and Porsche 911 RSR. Again, qualifying was extremely close with the top 10 cars in class separated by less than one and one half seconds. Again, hats off to IMSA.
In the GTD class, again made up of a variety of manufacturers, the grid was tight as well, with the top ten cars separated by less than one second in qualifying. This included cars from Aston Martin, Viper, Porsche, Ferrari and Audi.
Qualifying set up an outstanding race, with 53 total cars taking the green flag for what most people regard as the toughest endurance contest in the world. More night racing, more traffic, more tight competition and a track short enough to require 100% concentration at all times is what makes Daytona so different from Le Mans.
In the end it was the well prepared, and well driven, Ford EcoBoost DP of Ganassi Racing that took home the top honors, winning the 24 hour classic by only 1.33 seconds over the second place Corvette DP. Perhaps more telling, among the top running prototype cars, they were all driven flat out for the whole race, with most of the prototype cars lapping at very close to their qualifying speeds, lap after lap and hour after hour.
It was the same story in LMPC, GTLM and GTD, again with multiple cars finishing on the same lap as the class winners and running qualifying pace for the entire race.
Long gone are the days when a team would plan a pace at which to race in this endurance contest, planning on keeping their car in good shape for a sprint to the finish on Sunday afternoon. To win at Daytona now, you have to run every lap flat out; every driver on the team must be at 100% all the time. One slight mistake at anytime during the 24 hours, either on the track or in the pits can cause victory to slip away, not be recovered by waiting on the misfortunes of others.
Such is the state of endurance racing today in the TUDOR United Sports Car Series – flat out all the time. We are sure we will see more of the same at the 12 Hours of Sebring. It is hard to image, but the competition will get even more intense once we get to the shorter races in the rest of the season.
The Rolex 24 at Daytona has set the stage for what promises to be an outstanding season of sports car racing in the US.
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