Three weeks on from IMSA’s six-hour endurance race at Road America, a race littered with nine full-course yellows for incidents and plagued with controversies during and after the race, leading officials from the series debriefed with the media in a roundtable discussion held Thursday afternoon at VIRginia International Raceway.
During the hour-long roundtable, Senior VP of Competition Simon Hodgson and Race Director Beaux Barfield said that IMSA’s drivers will be under tighter scrutiny to meet their expectations for fair racing going forward, similar to last year when the sanctioning body took a stricter stance against instances of drivers not leaving racing room, blocking, and making avoidable contact.
“[It was] disappointing to see the number of potentially avoidable incidents we had, both single-car incidents and multi-car incidents,” said Hodgson, “so there’s been a lot of questions that have arisen out of that.
“I think the priority for IMSA is obviously safety, the second is ensuring the competition is fair. We recognise that IMSA competition is tough. Sometimes it can be aggressive, but in the case of WeatherTech, with the very nature of the four classes running together, cars running at different speeds, taking different lines in traffic, it’s complicated.
“But IMSA’s messaging has always been, and will be moving forward: You need to race responsibly, and you need to provide the competitor you’re racing with racing room.
“What we want to state here is that the regulations aren’t broken. What we’re seeing is some behaviour starting to escalate. IMSA understands its responsibility in stating clearly to the competitors where that line is. I feel that message has been delivered already, however, we saw nine full-course yellows in Road America, which certainly isn’t what any of us wanted.”
Barfield, for his part, admitted that after very tight scrutiny in the last three races of 2025, IMSA relaxed its enforcement driving standards at the start of 2026. This more moderate approach had led to quality racing in the early rounds of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, right up until the recent six-hour enduros at Watkins Glen and Road America.
“It felt like we were getting good buy-in, we were having some good races, and then things just seemed to sort of come undone at the last two races for all classes together,” said Barfield, who also declared an incident at Watkins Glen between the #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R and #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 as a “missed opportunity” when looking at it between Watkins Glen and Road America.
“One thing I had stated to the competitors is this puts me in a position to give a lot less benefit of the doubt. In fact, I said in the drivers’ meeting that I’m pretty much a ‘smoking gun’ type of person: You have to have absolute hard, clear evidence to make any kind of call,” Barfield said.
“And this put us in a position potentially to use a little bit more conjecture and connect some dots to arrive at penalties to get the kind of accountability that we need on track. That’s a statement that I made that was outside of the norm of maybe the last ten years or so have been, when we got to Road America.
“I don’t feel like we’re changing anything other than to restate those positions: We want to call things tight because expectations aren’t being met on track that are in line with what we want the product to be.”
This weekend’s race at VIR will be exclusive to the GTD Pro and GTD classes, and when the GTP and LMP2 classes return next month at Indianapolis, the premier GTP class could be the one where drivers are most heavily scrutinised based on what was seen in their last two races.
“Simon challenged me a couple of days ago to take a snapshot of all of the incidents that were reviewed, and look at them in a different way. And when I put them on a piece of paper, I looked at every car number and every class of all the incidents, I thought – frankly, we always poke fun at the P2 guys, they’re not the problem. All of our racing is intense, but GT can be over-the-top in ways – they were pretty well-behaved.
“It looks like we have a GTP problem, just at Road America. Based on this challenge, I plan on going back in the season and creating a pretty big spreadsheet to track all of this in a way that’s helpful for us to address specifically.
“This weekend is with GT guys, does that mean we don’t have a problem and we won’t have problems? No, but I feel like I should pat them on the back and say, ‘Road America wasn’t pretty, but good job to you guys. Let’s keep that theme alive here at VIR, and then we’ll go to Indy with the rest of them and see what we’ve got.”
The race-ending collision between the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 of Kévin Estre and the #31 Whelen Cadillac of Jack Aitken ended the race on a particularly sour note.
For his role, Estre was put on probation for the remainder of his 2026 campaign, but not immediately suspended for a race. “If there was any discussion about suspension, that was not in line with precedent that had been established over the last ten years,” Barfield said about the disciplinary action taken.
“The precedent for an offense like this, with the history that we’ve had with these teams and drivers, was such that it was more in line with probation.” But Barfield did warn that a repeat of the events of last race would warrant a violation of Estre’s probation.
“He’s on an an extremely short leash that could lead to him serving the remainder of his probation on the sideline. That’s the intent. That’s the purpose is. In terms of trying to give you some understanding on how long that leash is, I think that would be pretty difficult. But if he’s involved in similar on-track incidents, then I think he’ll be finished pretty quickly,” he said.
Meanwhile, SVP Hodgson also addressed the growing number of critical voices that have accused IMSA of a conflict of interest as it pertains to Action Express Racing, which is part-owned by NASCAR Chairman Jim France.
After receiving no further penalties for both the incident at Watkins Glen with the AF Corse Ferrari, and then with the #7 Penske Porsche of Felipe Nasr at Road America, some writers, influential critics, and even fellow competitors have alleged favouritism towards the #31 Cadillac.
“The way the regulations, processes, and protocols are established, that doesn’t play into any decision making at all,” said Hodgson.
“We’re not subject to any kind of outside pressure, influence, or conjecture that people may have an opinion or perception of. We judge each incident independently. We don’t look at who it is, and we don’t take external feedback in those times. We recognise the responsibility IMSA has to maintain its competition integrity, and all those processes are established in that manner.
“I think it’s occurred in some other series as well, where there might be that perception from some people. Certainly, we can assure you, and anybody else that the process is insulated completely, and based on direct assessment by the Race Directors, by the Driver advisers in the room, in consideration of regulations and prior precedent.”
Images © Jack Webster / dailysportscar.com
