Petit Le Mans entry list is out. 54 cars! https://www.imsa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2023/10/04/2023_IWSC_RoadAtlanta_PreEvent_EntryList.pdf
Oh and that little Aston Martin Valkyrie announcement for both WEC and IMSA in 2025. Some good info on Midweek Motorsport today about the annoucement. https://www.dailysportscar.com/2023/10/04/aston-martin-confirms-valkyrie-hypercar-programme-revival-for-2025.html
The IMSA website is far and away the WORST site I can think of. It is horrendous to navigate and full of dead links. I can't imagine how one site can be so bad.
lol If you are a nerd like me there are some hidden gems under the For Competitors and Marketing Resources links. Only other place I go to is for the specific event I am interested in.
What ya want to know? Crossing my fingers we don't have 10 hours of cautions. Today's Michelin Pilot Challenge race was a bit of a cluster....even before the rain. Image Unavailable, Please Login _7506687 by Alex Eichmiller, on Flickr Image Unavailable, Please Login _7505706 by Alex Eichmiller, on Flickr Image Unavailable, Please Login _7505141 by Alex Eichmiller, on Flickr Image Unavailable, Please Login _7504585 by Alex Eichmiller, on Flickr
I wish that IMSA would find a way to add a Hypercar class and bring the WEC prototypes over. That would provide more interest than LMP3, which isn't even raced over there.
The Petit Le Mans was a fun race, watched it pretty much from start to finish. Wish Ferrari did better in the GT class. Looking forward to seeing what the 296 GT3 will do next year.
This is the last year for LMP3 in IMSA. Lots of LMP2 cars for next year. After this weekend...I'm not sure that is a good thing. Entire weekend was a cautionfest. All of the support races had a ton of incidents. Not sure if there is something that IMSA can do but it was a little frustrating at times.
There have been some spectacular finishes in the past. They really need to change how they do the restarts at Road Atlanta. I think that is part of the problem.
Split the prototypes and GT cars. Gt cars can't go till they get to the start/finish line. Basically how they handle the start of the race.
In theory it shouldn't. They do the class split and everything already so they should just be deploying a 2nd car and having the GTs drop behind that one. I don't know if it is even needed at other tracks. The issue at Road Atlanta is the 10a/b is so slow and with 52 cars the train of cars lasts 1/3 of the track. Remember this one? Entirely due to how the restarts work there and everyone trying to get a jump on the restart.
52 cars was too many IMO. Road Atlanta in particular, with a slow corner at 10, then the hill, then a very fast turn 11 and relatively short front straight into a fast turn 1, makes for bad starts/restarts. not sure splitting the classes will make a difference. the crash you referenced above wasn't necessarily a P/GT class issue.
Everyone can go once the lead car gets to the flag. So I think the leading DPi had seen the green. So we had the GT cars in the back trying to jump the start while other cars were still bottled up in 10a/b. My thought for splitting is that you don't get the one massive line of cars. GTs have to wait till they get to the flag instead of going when the P cars do. 52 cars is a lot. There were supposed to be 54 but one of the Porsche GTD cars and an LMP3 pulled out. Good thing for us i believe they announced 57 entries for the endurance rounds next year. I thought 54 was capacity for Road Atlanta so we will see how that works out.
maybe they either need to change to "green at start finish", or give them the green on the back stretch, like Mid Ohio. there's a corner station right at the crest of the hill on the backstretch, so it could work. next year is going to be a cluster pretty much everywhere if all the "confirmed" entries actually show up.
