A Happy New Year to all! Happy 2023! To your health, happiness, prosperity, and a new era of endurance sports car racing!
Excitement and anticipation (maybe too much of it) mounts. The new Grand Touring Prototypes are coming and coming fast! As I have mentioned before, my friends at Action Express Racing with the Cadillac, they are the team I am watching. Choose your favorite. Are you a Cadillac, Acura, BMW, or Porsche fan? The GTP-V.R, the ARX-06, the M LMDh, and the 963 are the specific model designations. We have talked about the configurations, the ruleset of these new cars. Keep in mind, three of the four brands that are entered, are using V8 power in different forms. Cadillac, Porsche, and BMW. Acura are using a turbo V6 motor that is loosely based on their IndyCar Honda badged powerplant.
In case you've forgotten, let's break this down.
Lots of questions will have to be answered about reliability, about performance of the cars. It is going to surely be an adventure when we get to the high banks of Daytona in three weeks. First, for the Roar Before the Rolex 24 and the qualifying. Secondly, for the Rolex 24 itself.
As I have explained, there is no qualifying race this year. We are going to see a regular qualifying session just like we do for any other IMSA race. I shall be brutally honest here. The qualifying race idea works for the stock cars. It does not work as well for the sports cars. Oh. I know what you will say. But the stock cars are now very much built the same way as the sports cars are. Yes, that is true. The NASCAR design of their cars surely resembles what modern day endurance racers have to offer. Witness (if you have not seen it yet), the Lanky Turtle video I posted of the new Hendrick Motorsports Next Gen NASCAR racer that is being converted and tested so it can possibly race at the Le Mans 24 Hours, if the French governing body, the ACO, allows it to. But stock car racing, is a totally different kettle of fish. Therefore, a short, sharp qualifying race is probably not the best idea.
For that, I suggest highly, that you tune in either to IMSA TV/IMSA Radio or to Peacock if you have that service, to check out all the action. To whet our appetite for the qualifying session, there will be two short, sharp races for the new IMSA VP Sports Car Challenge series, at 45 minutes apiece. One on Saturday afternoon and the other on Sunday morning just before the Rolex 24 qualifying session takes place. So, tune in for those events, and you shall be able to read about them on the blog. They are short and sweet. I hope I can get all the details of them into the blog posts. Talk about bringing the action! A true sprint series!
Excited for that. Still wondering about the reliability of these new cars. As fans, we must be conscious that these new cars are under a baptism of fire with their first ever race being the biggest, the longest, the greatest of them all in IMSA's calendar as the Atlantic Ocean tides and waves break on the white sands of Daytona Beach. So many questions. So much anticipation. How will the new cars hold up? The factory drivers signed up for each brand and each team, are ready, and they are up to the challenge, especially, our trio for Cadillac at Action Express. Pipo "The Dynamo" Derani, Alexander Sims, and Jack Aitken. A capable trio indeed.
Every one of these cars also has the hybrid electric element, the 67-horsepower electric motors for the hybrid drive on the rear wheels. Unlike the Euro Hypercars in FIA World Endurance, no all-wheel or four-wheel hybrid drive for the GTP's. Just rear wheel hybrid drive. The batteries, developed by Williams Advanced Engineering, and the motors themselves, developed by Bosch if I am right. Teams using extra personnel just to assist with the complexities of these spec hybrid systems. We just do not know enough about this new technology.
Will it be reliable? I wonder. I think many of the teams if not all of them, will be dealing with the systems working, and then, somehow, not working, as the race goes on. It will be just like any electrical appliance or like your computer at home, and the three key words for rebooting the cars will be Control, Alt, Delete. I believe the internal combustion engines ought to be reliable enough. It is definitely the hybrid systems that will be the possible Achilles heel of the new cars. I am crossing my fingers for my pals at Action Express to do well. Us, and the other teams, we just don't know what is going to happen.
That is part of the excitement and anticipation, like a kid at Christmas. It is going to be like man's first walk on the moon. A small step for the teams. A giant leap for the sport of endurance sports car racing.
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