IMSA 2023 IMSA Season

[Nick Woodbury]

Originally Posted by joeb

I don't know why nobody has posted this beast yet, but AO Racing is making a statement with the livery on their new Porsche:





Immediately great!
https://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/a...r-full-season/

"Rexy", Love it!

[skycafe]

They've got something to involve the kids with that!

[skycafe]

From FB (sorry)

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbi...pv=0&source=48

[skycafe]

Originally Posted by joeb

I don't know why nobody has posted this beast yet, but AO Racing is making a statement with the livery on their new Porsche:





Immediately great!
https://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/a...r-full-season/

They have a "Hot Wheels" and other merch in the works. A "Rexy Hot Wheels!"

[skycafe]

And, it is St. Paddy's Day, so green themes are in.

[broadrun96]

Well 2 more years of LMP2s so how many who get booted from WEC come to IMSA vs ELMS?

https://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/i...-through-2025/

[pach233]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Well 2 more years of LMP2s so how many who get booted from WEC come to IMSA vs ELMS?

https://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/i...-through-2025/

I'm not sure that many. Prema, WRT, Vector Sport and Jota are all headed into Hypercar and at some point you would expect the United Autosports announcement. So that leaves just InterEuropol. Think IMSA and ELMS entries will stay about around how they have been.

[peetleouf]

Originally Posted by pach233

... at some point you would expect the United Autosports announcement.

Do we know if United is in contact with a brand? That leaves only Honda / Acura, right?

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by pach233

at some point you would expect the United Autosports announcement.

Originally Posted by peetleouf

Do we know if United is in contact with a brand? That leaves only Honda / Acura, right?

They have put the feelers out for other partners, but realistically they're waiting for Zak Brown to put McLaren into LMDH. Their close association with McLaren seems to have worked against them.

[S griffin]

I think we will see someone else take over. There's no guarantee that McLaren will enter LMDH. Zak seems to be concentrating more on the F1 team right now than other potential projects

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by S griffin

I think we will see someone else take over. There's no guarantee that McLaren will enter LMDH. Zak seems to be concentrating more on the F1 team right now than other potential projects

With Extreme E, plus Indycar, FE, and F1 all needing to be winning some races or contending for championship's before Zak tries anything new, I can't see a decision being made on McLaren anytime soon. His share in United also includes LMP2 and Australian Supercars....
He's already extended himself across a number of categories in the last three years and the F1 team has had a downward trend since that expansion began.

[S griffin]

That's a good point, he's got so many fingers in pies. He needs to concentrate on the main ones. It's amazing he's still kept UA going as well. You do wonder how long he can he can keep going with so many projects. He's hardly doing well with the F1 team atm

[broadrun96]

McLaren has always had a bad run in F1 when they're in other series and rear of the field isn't great the last 2 weeks.

[Adam43]

It’s a thing, but this time is it related to that? It could as equally be related to just getting the new F1 regs wrong. Like Mercedes, but worse? Didn’t it coincide with that? I confess I might be a little off here.

Of course we could argue that if more resources were spent on F1 then they wouldn’t have got it wrong. Although with the cost cap does it matter as much? Surely can’t be just because Zak spread himself thin?

[Teretonga]

McLaren has always had trouble when aerodynamics have been the primary consideration.
Historically the intro of ground effects 77-79 was a difficult time for them until Marlboro brought in Project 4 with Dennis who then contracted John Barnard into the scheme of things.
Then later Newey joined after leaving Williams and that brought an upswing.
When Brawn then RBR came in with the diffuser stuff 2009=2013 they still struggled.
They were picking up things 2018-2021 but when the new aero era came along in 2022 they were short on a good wind tunnel again.
They have never really had good aerodynamic in-house development other than when Newey was involved.
They're building the new wind tunnel but do they have the people to maximize and interpret the data, and lead the aero team?

[GT3_Fan]

Next up is Long Beach. First regular season race so to speak. I like this one since there is no P2 or P3 filling up space and TV time. My favorite race outside of the two all GT races. I think it would even be better if it was GTP and GTD Pro only. LB in the past felt like the series' all star race when it was DPI and GTLM only. And that format rarely produced safety cars.

Anyhow, can anyone guess on what the GTD field will look like here? The enduro only cars will not be there however. I am not sure who those are.

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by Adam43

It’s a thing, but this time is it related to that? It could as equally be related to just getting the new F1 regs wrong. Like Mercedes, but worse? Didn’t it coincide with that? I confess I might be a little off here.

Of course we could argue that if more resources were spent on F1 then they wouldn’t have got it wrong. Although with the cost cap does it matter as much? Surely can’t be just because Zak spread himself thin?

I've just seen a couple pieces on McLaren and their race history. Slight dip with CanAm but with the F1-GTR they had GT success but those same years weren't great F1 success. Went winless a couple years and then Mikka, Couthard and some dude named Adrian joined the team about when the F1GTR program had concluded major development. Yes, possibly coincidental but it feels like too many programs and F1 takes a hit

[joeb]

Latest in BOP for Long Beach. All cars are getting changes:

https://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/g...or-long-beach/

[broadrun96]

Seems like they were spinning the wheel of adjustment

12kg drop 963 with drop 2kw (~2.6hp) peak and 5MJ over a stint
9kg drop ARX-06 with drop 3 MJ over a stint
7kg drop V-Series.R with drop 2MJ over a stint
4kg drop BMW with add 2kw peak and 2MJ over a stint

Anyone else have a headache?

[JT240Z]

What ever happened to "bring the best car you can and lets see how she works according to the same spec". All of this "fine tuning" leads itself to too much potential favoritism. Between Full Course Yellow rules and BOP, it's giving me a major headache. Can't imagine what the teams are thinking.

[seanyb505]

The teams are thinking this is the best solution to prevent runaway spending while keeping highly cautious corporations involved from a funding perspective.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by JT240Z

What ever happened to "bring the best car you can and let’s see how she works according to the same spec". All of this "fine tuning" leads itself to too much potential favoritism. Between Full Course Yellow rules and BOP, it's giving me a major headache. Can't imagine what the teams are thinking.

I presume they are thinking this is the series we (the teams) signed up for?

This is a BoP series so What ever happened to "bring the best car you can and let’s see how she works according to the same spec" is completely irrelevant!

In an ideal world I wouldn’t have it either, but the cars aren’t even designed to the same spec. In some areas they are close, but let’s consider, say, the engines. In this version of this series you can’t apply the false logic at all. Actually, on engines, we’ve not been there for a long time!

And we haven’t even considered balancing with Hypercar.

And the FCY are applied quite consistently and the approach they apply is detailed for us, so not sure we’re any headache can come from there.

I’d have different spec. rules, albeit to seanyb505’s point, maybe no competitors if it was run to that. I’d have a different FCY procedure, but it is what it is here.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Seems like they were spinning the wheel of adjustment

12kg drop 963 with drop 2kw (~2.6hp) peak and 5MJ over a stint
9kg drop ARX-06 with drop 3 MJ over a stint
7kg drop V-Series.R with drop 2MJ over a stint
4kg drop BMW with add 2kw peak and 2MJ over a stint

Anyone else have a headache?

That is quite a lot of tweaking!
I can superficially see why the Porsche gets a bigger weight drop. Although didn’t really notice any stint length issues (not checked and this is an area I would imagine there is good data).

I guess they’ve seen the Beemer engine is a bit behind too.

[Adam43]

Two races again this weekend in our unified sportscar world. What will the power rankings be:

https://tentenths.com/forum/showthre...02#post4151502

[GT3_Fan]

The S365 notebook talk about potential current teams interested in the Ford Mustang. I'm already speculating Weathertech and Heart of Racing myself. Just a guess.