As watch out, the British, French, Germans, Portuguese
and Brazilians are coming...
In case Y'all didn't get Thy Witty Repartee
above, perhaps you've heard by now that the IMSA Weathertech SportsCar
Championship will finally resume it's Stilted 2020 Season, having last held the
Rolex 24 just over five months ago in Florida.
As Sports Car racing returns over this action
packed July 4th weekend as part of a Triple Bill on Big NBC & NBC Sports,
including IndyCar and NASCAR's Xfinity series. With Sports Cars serving as Thee
Nightcap with the running of its 2hrs 40mins Paul Revere 250 at Daytona
International Speedway.
Three of IMSA's four Classes will contest the
event slated to begin at 3:05PM pacific on NBC Sports. Led by Ye DPi Prototypes
Big Boyz' along with the two Tintop Saloons' categories, i.e.; GT Le Mans (GT
LM) and GT Daytona. (GTD)
As the full complement of the current eight
Daytona Prototype International (DPi) Top Bananas will be on hand, the second
tier LMP Prototypes will be absent, before making their return at the following
Sebring "Sprint" round on July 18th.
Although the top three categories seem fairly
stable, albeit not knowing how many LMP2 competitors will show up at Sebring?
and GT LM having one less entrant this weekend, the landscape's Ah-Changing' in
the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) Class. With the biggest news being past GTD
Champions Paul Miller Racing putting it's #48 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo on
Hiatus for the 2020 season.
Paul Miller Racing Pauses IMSA GTD Program
While Wright Motorsports is parking it's
second GTD entry, the No. 91 Porsche 911 RSR, due to Financial woes incurred
due to the COVID 19 Pandemic and will soldier
on with just its #16 entry for the remainder of the season.
Also, my Beloved Hometeam, now known as the
Heart of Racing with its shiny new #23 Aston Martin Vantage GT3, will Skip the
July 4th Daytona event and will decide when to return to racing this season at
a later date. Hmm? Perhaps they'll pass upon the Cross Country trip for both of
Florida's July events?
And the AIM Vasser Sullivan Lexus Squad will
have a new HotSchue' in one of its Hot Rod Lexus's, as the team has parted
company with driver Parker Chase, who Co-drove the #14 Lexus RC F GT3 with Jack
Hawksworth.
But it's not all Bad News in the GTD
category, as there will be one new entry making its Debut at Daytona, for which
I must say I've never heard of either
Team Hardpoint or its owner Rob
Ferriol. But am familiar with the name Spencer Pumpelly, who's Ferriol's Co-driver,
and Pro HotSchue' aboard their #30 Audi R8 LMS GT3.
As I included the Paul Miller Racing Racer
article link above since it includes Ye 'lil tidbit 'bout Porsche ending its
Factory GT LM effort at season's end, which surely is another Blow to this
Shrinking Violet category!
And I have Zero Clue on how the category will
look next year, Arse-sumin' the Werks' BMW and Corvette teams remain, can more
Privateers/Customer teams be enticed to step up to this dwindling Grand Torismo
class?
As this is the next category that both the ACO/FIA
and IMSA need to address after fixing the LMDH Prototypes, unless the GT3
chassis will take over this class with the GT4 cars becoming the new GTD
entrants?
Alas, we've lost six GT Saloons since this
year's 24 Hours of Daytona, where 38 cars took the green Flag, with 18 GTD
entries alone if i recollect correctly?
ROLEX 24: Roar Before Daytona Test Highlights Lamborghini Armada Chasing History at this year's Race
Whilst it's All
the rage now, with every motor racing series racing to return paying customers;
Err Fans into the Stands, that IMSA joins the Queue...
Next, as I thought I'd finished this elongated
No Fenders tome, Racer's Marshall Pruett wrote about IMSA switching three of its
latter 2020 season's Makeover events in order to not clash with other racing
events. Since we'll be basically
Non-stop thru December now with
everybody competing on the same weekends...
