That was a simply spectacular Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.
Congratulations to all concerned; to IMSA, the Daytona International Speedway, and to all of the teams.
Relevance
With Tequila Patron ESM scoring the first ever overall win for an LMP2 spec car, and the first non-Daytona Prototype win since TRG took the overall win with a GT Porsche in 2003, the IMSA-run WeatherTech Sportscar Championship has reached a crossroads.
That it has done so at the dawn of a new era in P2 regulations should not be overlooked, and as will be seen later in this article there’s an irony there too, but it wasn’t just the Prototype class that saw the sands shift towards international relevance.
GTLM is GTE in ACO language and the battle here was stunning throughout the race.
We’ll come to Ford’s less than golden start shortly but the remainder of the field showed sustained pace and, for the most part, reliability enough to raise expectations with the new breed of GTLMs for future races in the US and elsewhere.
It was no real surprise that the more evolutionary cars present (Corvette & Porsche) came out on top but the Ferraris and BMWs gave them a hell of a run for their money!
GTD saw the hugely successful GT3 formula come to US endurance racing for the first time and it was another big success. Variety, and quality in depth again provided some great battles with much more to come as the newer cars bed in; another good move from IMSA after its original GTD formula was exposed as short-sighted. It takes a mature organisation to recognise and repair its own errors.
Stars
That Luis Filipe ‘Pipo’ Derani was a driver of high quality was not a surprise to those who have met him and witnessed his attack in other formulae, and in particular in the FIA WEC. This was though, undoubtedly, a breakthrough event for the Brazilian. Whilst it is arguable that the P2 cars had the best of the BoP tombola here that advantage was assuredly marginal – until Derani got behind the wheel at least. A race-winning performance from a young man that should have had an LMP1 test at the end of 2015, and most likely will find that error corrected in 2016 if anything like that standard of performance can be maintained.
Katherine Legge was awesome from the off in the DeltaWing – again the naysayers will bleat about BoP but lets not overlook a team performance in depth here – the car has clearly had a comprehensive close season of development with a new gearbox adding massively to the car’s reliability.
The level of commitment from the Brit through traffic, and in particular through the Bus Stop was wonderful to behold and the manner of the car’s exit from the race was just cruel, though it seems likely that clutch issues were looming.
Either way this was a head-turning effort. BoP willing, the DeltaWing has to be considered seriously for the remainder of the season.
Oliver Gavin’s run at the end of the race to defend his lead from team-mate Antonio Garcia had the crowd, and most of the media, on their feet. It was marvellous stuff, the fan-base owes a vote of thanks to Doug Fehan for letting his men race to the flag.
PC was a melt-down for much of the race but JDC Miller’s Stephen Simpson deserves recognition for a cool-headed and blindingly quick opening spell that saw the car draw out a 50 second lead on a troubled pack.
Daytona
The new $400 million Daytona ‘Stadium’ is a magnificent facility, and all involved should be correctly proud of the achievement. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of the first broadcasts from it. It is NOT though the “first ever motorsport stadium”. It is however, a truly world-leading motorsports facility. To real marketing bods that should be enough!
BoP
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah!
Anyone that heard my contributions to this debate should be in no doubt as to where I am coming from.
If you want sustainable and varied fields representing varied and interesting cars then some form of Bop is inevitable.
With such variations there is the crushing inevitability of a couple of issues sneaking through.
At Daytona those were:
Did the DeltaWing have an advantage via BoP?
Did the P2 cars have an advantage via BoP?
Did the Lamborghinis in GTD have an advantage via BoP?
In the case of the #0 car and the Huracans the answer seemed to be: yes they did.
However, they didn’t win and didn’t finish on the podiums – Time enough now for the issues to be examined and fixed so if the teams involved had the opportunity to profit from that they blew it!
In the case of P2 this writer’s view is that any advantage was way more marginal, was likely flattered by the P2’s inherent aerodynamic superiority over the DPs and was flattered even more by the likes of Olivier Pla and Pipo Derani.
I’d love not to add that any criticism on this front from teams running DPs is pretty rich bearing in mind recent history, particularly at Daytona, but my inherent sense of fair play simply doesn’t allow me to ignore it!
Ford
The Ford GT is, hands down, one of the most spectacular race cars that this writer has ever seen.
The team behind its design and those running the cars are almost peerless in their levels of experience and success at this level and in this arena of motorsport.
This was however an embarrassing start to a very important programme with a combination of bad luck, seeming odd decision making (why was a brand new, different and apparently untested dash installed during race week) and good old fashioned racing unreliability.
The team will have been encouraged by the pace available from the cars when they ran cleanly but we’re prepared to guess that the testing programme for the Fords will be being heavily revised on Monday morning!
With all of that said the result at Daytona serves a useful purpose. Nobody within that programme now underestimates the challenges ahead!
Gathering of the Clans – Alliances New and Old
As always the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona offers the opportunity for a gathering of the Sportscar racing clans and this year was no exception.
Amongst those ‘on the property’ during the week were Bentley Motorsport representatives, principally there for meetings with members of the team responsible for the forthcoming Bentley Team Absolute effort in the Pirelli World Challenge.
Head of Bentley Motorsport Brian Gush was present together with Absolute Racing’s Ingo Matter, plus now ex-Effort Racing team manager Ricky Martino who is set to take up a similar role with the new Bentley effort.
Greg Gill and Marcus Haselgrove from the new look management team of the Pirelli World Challenge were there too, at the invitation of IMSA no less. The pair have plans aplenty for the series, and potential it seems for a friendly level of interaction, in the regulatory and calendar senses at the very least, with their erstwhile North American rivals.
But by far the most significant presence for the future of the sport was a high-powered delegation from the FIA WEC and ACO as meetings were scheduled to discuss a variety of matters of mutual interest, principally the future of the LMP2/DPi concepts for 2017 and beyond.
Here there is a real likelihood of further strife.
IMSA is now fully aware of the likelihood of multiple manufacturers being interested in the new formula for its premier prototype class from 2017 with Honda, Mazda, GM (Cadillac), Bentley, Ford and Alfa Romeo all known and/or rumoured to be developing or evaluating programmes.
With that level of potential new corporate ‘punch’ IMSA are working as hard as they can to accommodate the needs and wishes of the big names. That process is not proving easy to accommodate within the tight ‘spec’ framework developed by the ACO/FIA for their future LMP2 vision.
The issue for the ACO and WEC is a potential muddying of the waters, the LMP2 class is seen outside North America as a purely Pro-Am, privateer teams formula, this is an issue on several levels. If the big names want to go to Le Mans then the preference, or rather insistence, from the event organisers is that this should be in LMP1 or GTE.
Those marques that want to go racing in North America in prototypes though do not have that option – but may well be looking to activate their North American investment further at the biggest endurance race in the world, spec bodywork or not!
The question now is, will they be permitted to do so or are the directions of the two major organising bodies taking increasingly distant courses?
GG
