Friday, September 13, 2019
IMSA Throwback: 2002 VIR 500
It's a Throwback double whammy, and Throwback Friday, to the 2002 Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series, 2002 VIR 500, which was brought back that year, for the first time in 26 years. Sports cars returned to VIR for the first time since 1976. SPEED Channel has the coverage. Gregg Creamer and Jeremy Dale call the racing action topside from the broadcast booth, while Guy Hobbs and Sandy Heng report from the pit lane.
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Let me correct myself. It was 1974, that was the year that the racing at VIR ended for a while, until this race back in 2002.
ReplyDeleteOne of the other things you'll notice, is a feature in the race broadcast about the then current, Daytona Prototype cars, that would debut in 2003 and run all the way until 2016. There had not been any kind of merger in the sports car racing world as of yet, and there were two clearly defined sanctioning bodies at this time, before the unification of Grand Am and the American Le Mans Series into IMSA in 2014.
ReplyDeleteThe feature shows the vision of what the first generation Daytona Prototypes would look like, and at the time, they were very much lambasted for their appearance and design concept. But then, of course, things changed again in 2017 with the introduction of what is now Daytona Prototype International (DPi). Still, I must admit, the days of the open cockpit sports car, the Sports Racer, as these cars are, are long missed, and yet, long remembered as a great era in the saga of sports car racing and it's rich history.