INDIANAPOLIS — For the first time in nearly a decade, IMSA invades the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Battle on the Bricks (1 p.m. ET, NBC). Here are five things I’m watching for this weekend’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race.
How The INDYCAR/IMSA Teams Fare
This one is obvious for me. I’m an INDYCAR guy so it’s only natural for me to watch how their IMSA teams do. Since 2014, five different INDYCAR teams have won the Indianapolis 500. All five will be represented in Sunday’s race.
Reigning series champions, Chip Ganassi Racing, has the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series R that’s driven by Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande. Team Penske has a pair of Porsche Penske Motorsports entries. Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet is in the No. 6 Porsche 963 and Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr in the No. 7 Porsche 963.
Andretti Autosport doesn’t have their own entry but they’re joined with Wayne Taylor Racing on the No. 10 Acura ARX-06 with Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque driving. Meyer Shank Racing has the other Acura in the No. 60 driven by Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has a pair of BMW M Hybrid V8’s driven by Philipp Eng and Augusto Farfus in the No. 24 and Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly in the No. 25.
That’s 7 of the 10 Grand Touring Prototype cars with INDYCAR ties. Can they pull off a win?
Parity
Each of the four GTP manufacturers, Acura, BMW, Cadillac and Porsche, have each won at least one race this season. Wildly enough, the top four in points are represented by 1 car each for them too and 98 points separate the top to fourth. Also, no one has won two straight races this season among this class either.
Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 60 Acura won Daytona. The Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing (No. 31) team won Sebring. Porsche Penske Motorsports (No. 6) won Long Beach. Ganassi’s Cadillac Racing (No. 01) car won Monterey. BMW M Team RLL (No. 25) won Watkins Glen. MSR won again in Mosport. Then, the No. 7 Penske Porsche won Watkins Glen.
Does Campbell or Nasr win on Sunday or do we see another winner?
The only full-time cars yet to win is ironically enough the points leader in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura and the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL entry. That’s it.
Porsche led Day 1 of the test here in July while BMW led Day 2.
Also, in LMP2, we’ve seen five different winners in all five races run this season including the top three in points winning the last three.
Meyer Shank Racing’s Battle Back
When Meyer Shank Racing announced that Tom Blomqvist would be one of their INDYCAR driver’s in 2024 and that Helio Castroneves would stay with the team but as a part-time driver and full-time owner, one under the radar tidbit from that press conference was the future of their IMSA program.
“We’re still working on that. They’re up in the air right now,” Mike Shank said that morning of the shared INDYCAR-NASCAR race weekend.
The reason being in flux is due to the Daytona incident this past January.
HPD well after the race finished discovered some tire pressure data manipulation and reported it directly to IMSA officials. As a result, a bevy of penalties was unleashed on MSR and at that moment, some friction between HPD and MSR came about.
There’s been some awkwardness ever since. Then you get to WTR Andretti announcing that they’ll field a second car for 2024 with the Acura badge. Is that in addition to MSR’s team or is WTR Andretti getting MSR’s program?
Then you read statements like we saw in the press release with WTRAndretti and you get a sense that this relationship between MSR and Acura is more than likely done.
“We’re looking forward to working with both (cars),” said HPD President and Technical Director, David Salters. “I’m stoked to see we have a super strong driver line-up across both our electrified Acura hypercars.”
“Both” of our electrified Acura hypercars. Not three. I feel like that’s some strong wording there. Which is why I’m not shocked that after Shank made his comments last month, he then went off the cuff and spoke of almost as if it his words were an audition or job interview for other manufacturers paying attention.
“Those guys, through our tough January, have battled back and they’re in the championship again, which is unbelievable,” he continued. “You put those points back on the board and they’ve checked out on the championship.
“We don’t know yet, is the answer. We’ll know probably in four to five weeks. This is my 20th year as a team in the Rolex. We’ve won it three times. We’ve had much success. It was kind of the start of all this. We’re doing everything we can to stay on.”
In saying that, you’d think a team of that much success, one that is the two-time defending Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona champions, more on that in a second and the defending IMSA champion would be attractive to remain inside the HPD camp.
They’ve ran under the HPD badge since 2015. Why stop now?
Well, that Daytona tire fiasco could be why.
However, as Shank said, they went from a hole of 200 points back up to fifth (-118) with two races remaining. It was a remarkable comeback for which they feel like they have a lot to offer.
But, if HPD doesn’t support them, where do they go?
“I don’t know what the odds are. They float. It goes from 50/50 to 80% right now,” Shank said on if he’ll be on the IMSA grid in 2024. “It’s coming down to the last minute, which I don’t like a lot. That’s the way it is right now.”
How much of this is manufacturer dependent?
“That’s a good question. In my life, Jim (Meyer) and I yelled at each other over this for a while now, the team that Jim and I have created on that side has won everything, is extremely competitive, fought back from a 200-point deficit, has a chance at the championship again. In my mind, they’re at the pinnacle level of sports car racing,” Shank said. “That’s where they deserve to be. You can imagine where I think we need to be.”
Meyer chimed in and said don’t count them out just yet. They’re in the thick of it and we’re about to see the aggression get ramped up even more.
“If we’re in contention when we leave this place in a month, might as well come (to Road Atlanta, season finale) because it’s going to be a Martinsville short track race,” Shank agreed.
We’re reached that place. Blomqvist and Braun have put together a hell of a run with three straight podiums including a win in Mosport and a runner-up in Road America. Can they continue this string through Sunday?
There’s a lot riding on the final two races for MSR and one of which could be their sports car future. Ironically enough, MSR shares an alliance in INDYCAR with Andretti and it appears at least for today, Andretti is taking their IMSA car.
How Much Did Test Carry Over
The stars of the series were here at the end of July in a two-day test in preparation for this weekends’ race. However, how much did they learn those two days that will translate over to Saturday-Sunday?
The first day of the test saw temps soar well into the 90s with a heat index pushing 100. The next day, it was in the mid 80s again.
Conditions will be far different this weekend. Mid to upper 70s and much cooler. How much of a role will the weather conditions play?
Sebastien Bourdais said back in July here that the tire fall off is pretty big and that in traffic in what should be cooler conditions, simulating tire fall off in the heat could in directly translate over to data that they could use. So maybe it does play a role after all.
Traffic
All five classes will compete simultaneously during the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks, with a nearly 10-second gap in lap times during the test between the GTP and GTD cars. That should ensure plenty of action and drama as quicker prototypes will have to navigate lapped traffic of the production-appearing GTD classes.
Bourdais says that’s going to make this weekend’s race a tricky, yet thrilling one. With so many cars around here, there’s going to be traffic and going to be plenty of times with that gap in a speed differential to have the GTP cars catching the others.
However, you can’t just pass as easily as you’d like and if you catch a slower car in the wrong place, it could be a massive loss of time which could make for a race to where no one is going to get too far ahead.
Plus, the braking zones here will make for a lot of moves too.
With how tight these individual classes are and how close the margins should be, catching traffic at the wrong time could make or break your chances of kissing the bricks at the end.
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