IMSA Rolex 24 Hour Race Next Month

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. To put it politely, Joey Hand expects to see some close racing in the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) classes in 2024.

To put it bluntly, that means occasional damage.

“There are bound to be some dive planes lost, and some body panels touched,” Hand said with a laugh. “There are going to be feelings hurt at some point. There are going to be high-fives around at some points. All that stuff that makes sport sport. Passion and emotion will be there. There is no way that passion and emotion don’t show up.”
The proof for his prediction lies with the numbers. Both GTD classes GTD and GTD PRO in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will experience increases in car counts when the season opens Jan. 27-28 with the 62nd Rolex 24 At Daytona.
Hand will be one of the key figures in that expansion in his role with Ford Multimatic Motorsports, which will field two new Ford Mustang GT3s in the GTD PRO class, placing the Mustang in the same category as the also-new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.

“The two iconic American sports cars, head-to-head,” said Hand, who will co-drive the No. 65 Mustang with Dirk Mueller. “There’s nothing better than that. What I’m most excited for is the fans. There are going to be a lot more people coming to races. They’re going to come cheer for their car, whatever car that is.”
Tommy Milner, Hand’s longtime friend and competitor, agrees. The fields in both GTD and GTD PRO will be deep and experienced. That translates into some busy, entertaining races, which translates into increased interest.

“It is hard to win races, period,” said Milner, who will team with Nicky Catsburg on the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports entry. “There are so many guys doing everything they possibly can.
It’s going to be hard, but that’s what makes the success you have, hopefully, that much better.
It means that much more to drivers, the team, the manufacturer. Having success in IMSA is a huge challenge.”

Of the 43 cars that participated in testing last week at Daytona International Speedway, 27 of them were GT cars.
The pre-race entry list for the Rolex 24 At Daytona on Jan. 25-28 has 60 cars across four classes, 38 of them in the GTD and GTD PRO classes.

The return of the Mustang nameplate to American sports car racing has enormous potential, Hand said, noting the breadth and intensity of the team’s preparation.
“It’s probably going to have to prove itself a little bit, to be honest,” said Hand, who served as a primary development driver for the Mustang GT3. “We will all have to prove ourselves. If we put on good shows, people will watch.”

After seeing IMSA’s GT classes evolve and improve during the course of his 19-year career, Milner lead development driver for the Corvette Z06 GT3.R expects 2024 to be a pinnacle season.

“Every year we came back here or to Sebring, the competition level got a little bit higher and everyone worked a little bit harder,” Milner said.
“It seemed like every year was more difficult to be the best. I’m looking at next year and thinking, ‘This is going to be the hardest that it’s ever been.’”

Full fields, notable brands, skilled drivers. The potential of the new era of GTD is here, and its participants are raving about it.
“As a fan, I want to see a show, right?” Hand said. “I think you’re going to see that.”

 

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The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is wrapping up its four day, pre-season homologation test at Daytona International Speedway Saturday. Forty-two cars took part, including all the factory-backed GTP cars, plus a complement of LMP2, GTD PRO and GTD teams.

The first day featured GTP and LMP2 only, while all cars participated in the second day. Days three and four were reserved for GTD PRO and GTD while the series conducted targeted performance testing to help set the Balance of Performance for the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

New cars

Testing featured the IMSA-sanctioned debut of the new Ford Mustang GT3 (run by Multimatic Motorsports) and Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R (fielded by Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports). Both cars logged a lot of miles, although
the No. 4 Corvette shared by Nicky Catsburg and Tommy Milner suffered a fire due to a refueling rig problem.
Damage to the car was minimal, but did require a substantial amount of cleanup of fire bottle residue.

The Mustangs were quick, keeping near the top of the unofficial time sheets, although the No. 1 Paul Miller BMW M4 GT3 was consistently at the top, despite the BMW’s Daytona struggles in the past two Rolex 24s.
Heart of Racing had one car at the test, the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, although Aston Martin is still playing with cards close their chest with the car. It was shared by Roman De Angelis whose full-season co-driver in GTD has yet to be named and the GTD PRO squad of Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas and Mario Farnbacher.

Each manufacturer nominated a team and driver to carry out its testing; Bryan Sellers and Paul Miller Racing were the nominations from BMW, and Mercedes AMG put Adam Christodoulou into the No. 32 Korthoff/Preston Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3 for example
. Each participating team had to complete three runs each of a five-lap qualifying simulation and a 28-lap full stint. Once those were completed, teams could continue with their own testing program. Teams not involved in the performance testing were able to run their own tests concurrently.

“I think this BoP testing is awesome for Daytona because it is unique,” said Turner Motorsport principal Will Turner. “I think IMSA realizes that they had to do something to try to make the cars more equal for Daytona. I think they did a great job at the rest of the tracks they’re doing better and better every year getting the cars closer and closer.
But Daytona has always been where the widest gap is from the fastest car to the slowest car, so this is an awesome idea. I hope that data they collect is constructive and all the cars have a chance to win this year.”

IMSA is introducing a new approach to gathering Balance of Performance (BoP) data for its large field of cars in its GTD and GTD Pro classes.
Having assembled a full assortment of GT models for this week’s pre-season test at Daytona International Speedway, the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is engaging with each manufacturer and a chosen team along with a professional driver attached to the brand to work through an in-depth run plan that’s designed to generate accurate data for the series to build its BoP tables.

The change in BoP information gathering is significant as it brings every manufacturer involved in GTD and GTD Pro into the BoP process with the series’ technical team as a partner, rather than an opponent.
“Without going completely back to the drawing board on BoP, I think all of us are trying to achieve the same thing, and that is to provide a platform for the most equal competition among the most different vehicle platforms in motorsport with front-engine, rear-engine, turbo, and non- turbo cars, with aerodynamic capabilities that are all entirely different,” IMSA president John Doonan stated.

“Based on the overall design of the cars, there’s a huge variety. And while that is one of the biggest blessings of what we do in endurance sports car racing, with so many manufacturers competing, it also presents one of the biggest challenges.

“What IMSA has tried to do is take a very pragmatic, technical approach to it all. And what [senior technical director] Matt Kurdock and his team have done in working with the manufacturers, since we started these GT technical working groups in August, is taking the BoP formulation process to the next level of collaboration.”
Three new cars came to GTD in 2023. IMSA’s extended attempts to successfully integrate Porsche’s new 2023 911 GT3 R model among its rivals presented a number of lessons that inspired the series to revisit its pre-season BoP information gathering policies.
Based on its peerless reputation, and the GTD championship it earned with the previous 911 GT3 R model in 2022, Porsche’s newest derivation of the car was expected to perform at the same levels as its predecessor.

But those targets, namely in the top speed category, were significantly down during last December’s BoP tests at Daytona. The gap at the test between the car’s expected performance and its actual performance led to questions as to whether all of its speed was being shown. In most BoP tests, manufacturers go to great lengths to hide their car’s true capabilities with the hope of using those hidden doses of extra performance to their benefit in the races.

It’s an age-old routine where series that use BoP and its manufacturers are often pitted against each other during the BoP creation process like detectives and suspects, and that’s why IMSA decided it was time to change the way that it captures performance data and avoid new-car balancing issues as it encountered with Porsche.

Looking to next season, among the 11 unique models found in GTD, four are either brand-new, led by Corvette’s Z06 GT3.R and Ford’s Mustang GT3, or heavily revised in the cases of Aston Martin and McLaren after receiving evolution kits from their manufacturers. Creating equal footing for those four brands among the other seven to allow all 11 to vie for wins in January at the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the rest of the events on the calendar drove the BoP process tweaks in action this week at DIS.

“We wanted to make this process something that was different, that was built on trust and integrity,” Doonan said. “When you’re launching a new vehicle or a new platform or a new powertrain and expectations are high, collaboration with the manufacturers on BoP is the best way to do it, and IMSA wants to make sure that happens from the outset.”

Led by Kurdock, IMSA’s technical staff has spent recent months in dialogue with each GT manufacturer and designed individualized test plans for Acura, Aston Martin, BMW, Corvette, Ford, Lamborghini, Lexus, McLaren, Mercedes-AMG, Ferrari and Porsche to ensure the Daytona test generates all of the information the series needs to set the opening BoP specifications for 2024.

“After the cars have gone through a complete technical inspection, we’re going to have our technical officials embedded with the teams as they’re running the test programs,” Kurdock said. “We’re going to control various aspects of what tires can be on the vehicle, the fuel loads that are prescribed, and aspects like that. In my tenure here and having been involved in some of the previous testing efforts, I don’t think it’s been done to this scale before.”

Greater transparency is another key aspect of IMSA’s BoP process where the data will be shared across all 11 GTD manufacturers. Any aspects of the information that looks odd or stands as an outlier to the rest of the data will be placed under the group’s unified microscope. By asking all of the manufacturers to give 100 percent in testing, and to keep each other honest by scrutinizing everyone’s BoP data, IMSA is confident it will meet its performance-balancing goals.

“After we proceed with the testing this week, we’re taking the data and running a thorough review to then determine if that data should be used to determine if it all makes sense,” Kurdock said. “The group is only as good as the sum of its components here. IMSA is trying to cover off all aspects of potential performance that could be held back, and we’re not naïve.

“We understand that if it’s someone’s prerogative to do that, that that may still occur, but what we’ve put forth is that we’re going to be doing this as a group; everyone’s going to be running the same program, under similar testing conditions. And that data is going to be made available, not just internally, and to each manufacturer, but to the entire manufacturer group. We not doing all of this with blind faith.”

IMSA and the 11 GT manufacturers are also using the BoP test to learn about Michelin’s new tire for the class and how each model reacts to the different rubber.
“We’re very anxious to get those four new platforms benchmarked, and I think what’s really important here is that all platforms are on a new tire,” Kurdock said. “And historically, even just changing the compound of a tire and not changing its construction has challenged balance of performance.

So we don’t quite know at this point in time whether the new tire affects everyone equally, or whether it’s going to benefit some platforms more than others.
“So, that is a major aspect of what we’re trying to learn this week and why we’re trying to run the testing under such controlled conditions on all on all 11 platforms.”

If, by chance, one or more manufacturers do try to game the system and hide some performance capabilities from the series, IMSA has its rulebook to regulate and resolve the matter by parking any models that exceed what was shown during the test. The image of having every car from a brand’s camp ordered to pit lane during the Rolex 24 or any other event with the NBC cameras rolling is a powerful deterrent and inspiration to comply with the spirit of the BoP tests

 

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Preparation for the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R’s competition debut in next month’s Rolex 24 at Daytona is “ramping up” according to Tommy Milner, who is looking forward to his full-time IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship return with Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports.

The factory supported squad took part in last week’s IMSA-sanctioned test at Daytona International Raceway with its pair of GTD Pro entries, sporting full race liveries and featuring new and returning drivers to the lineup.

Milner, who hasn’t contested a full WeatherTech Championship campaign since 2021, will share the No. 4 Corvette with Nicky Catsburg, while Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims will be in the No. 3 machine for the full season.

Milner and Catsburg will be joined by Cadillac factory driver on-loan Earl Bamber for the three long-distance races, with ex Mercedes-AMG factory ace Dani Juncadella completing the lineup in the sister car for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and Motul Petit Le Mans.
“It still feels like testing, but it’s definitely ramping up,” Milner told Sportscar365 at last week’s test. “We have a livery on the car now, and all the crew guys have new [uniforms].

“It does feel like a new season is coming quick.”
The 37-year-old Virginia native said he “by far” has the most mileage in the new-for-2024 GT3 contender, having been the designated test driver through the car’s extensive development period.

“For me, this car feels old already in some ways. It’s been a year plus [of testing],” Milner said.
Then you add in all sim work and stuff like that when we drove iterations of this car for another year-plus before that.
“I’ll be excited once we get to the race finally and push it to the grid and get the first race laps in. It would be good.
“The last six months has been the biggest difference of all the different new generation Corvettes we’ve done, just because there are some of the considerations to customers.

Having customer teams come to some of the testing and having some of the guys drive the car [has helped development].
“That part of it has been the biggest difference. Other than that, it’s felt as normal as we’ve done with previous generation cars.”
With Corvette back to a two-car full season program in the WeatherTech Championship, Milner said he’s excited about the battles ahead in GTD Pro, which will also feature the return of Ford with its new Multimatic Motorsports-run Mustang GT3s.
“The Corvette a GT3 car, which is obviously the biggest difference, so to speak, but it still feels like what I was used to in GTLM, when you have some big teams, big names,” he said.

The competition level continues to drive upwards again.
From that side, I’m really excited about what the class will have in the future. That will be fun to race against our old friends from Ford as well.
“As we saw the last couple of years, the guys from Lexus have been superfast. Ferrari has a nice new car.
There are a lot of good cars, good guys, good teams to race against.
“That usually means a good show. I’m excited for that.”

While the Pratt Miller-run team transitions to a factory supported team, Milner said the biggest change has actually come with the driver lineup.
“Over the last five years, the crew has changed quite a bit. But from last year to this year, it’s very similar,” he explained.
The biggest difference, realistically, is the drivers, which is not normal for Corvette.
But it’s fun to have Nicky full-time.
Obviously, he’s been around here a couple of years now. It’s fun to have Dani. Earl’s driven the car a bit, and he’s been a great teammate so far.”

 

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Canadian Corvette customer team AWA Racing has revealed the liveries that its Z06 GT3.Rs will sport in the GTD class during the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.

The two Z06 GT3.Rs, which are currently out in Daytona for a late-December test, will run with different color schemes.

The #13 will race in familiar black and yellow colors the team utilized in LMP3. It will be driven by Orey Fidani, Matt Bell, Lars Kern and Alex Lynn at the Rolex 24.



The #17 meanwhile will race in a striking green with a red and white trim. Anthony Mantella, Nico Varrone, Thomas Merrill, Charlie Eastwood will drive it in the opener.