Change Is on the Horizon This Weekend at Watkins Glen
By David Phillips
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – What a difference a year or two makes in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship! Need proof?
Consider the results of the most recent Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. The last time IMSA visited New York’s Finger Lakes region, Mazda finished a rousing 1-2 in Daytona Prototype international (DPi) ahead of Team Penske’s Acura ARX-05 in the 2019 Sahlen’s Six Hours, Porsche bested Corvette and Ford in GT Le Mans (GTLM), and Acura came out on top of BMW and Ferrari in GT Daytona (GTD).
Go back another year and ORECA Le Mans Prototype 2s from JDC-Miller MotorSports and CORE autosport took the top two spots overall, with Penske’s Acura in third. Ford won GTLM from Corvette and Porsche, while BMW captured GTD honors from Acura and Lamborghini.
What to make of all that now that the Ford GT has been put out to pasture, the Corvette C7.R and Porsche 911 RSR have been replaced by the mid-engine C8.R and 911 RSR-19, respectively, and Team Penske’s sports car program is on hiatus before resuming with the LMDh Porsche in 2023 – just to name a few major changes.
There’s at least one constant in GTLM. Nick Tandy steered his Porsche onto the podium in ’18 and into victory lane in ’19 before changing horses to partner with Tommy Milner in a Corvette this year. But where Tandy’s Porsche days featured multifaceted GTLM battles between BMW, Corvette, Ford, Ferrari and Porsche, this time ‘round it’s Corvette versus BMW versus Porsche.
That said, as Corvette Racing’s solo competition at Detroit showed, you only need two cars to have a race. And, in contrast to Motown, Corvette won’t have any guarantees of a GTLM win if the two BMW Team RLL BMW M8 GTEs and WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19 have anything to say about it.
Like Tandy, Bill Auberlen has been a constant in IMSA’s recent appearances at Watkins Glen, coming home second in GTD in the Turner Motorsport BMW in ’19 after taking the win the previous year. Auberlen and co-drivers Robby Foley and Aidan Read will have their work cut out if they want to stand on any step of the GTD podium this weekend, given the fierce competition BMW faces from Acura, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Lexus, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche, all of which have finished on the podium at one time or another this year. And that’s not to forget the No. 39 CarBahn with Peregrine Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 took the checkered flag first at Detroit only to be penalized for a fuel delivery that was a tad too speedy.
Although it’s unlikely any of the LMP2 entries will be vying for the overall win this weekend, PR1 Mathiasen Motorsport starts as the defending class winner at The Glen, thanks to a win in 2019. The No. 52 ORECA LMP2 07 is also the most recent winner on the 2021 schedule, having bested the No. 18 Era Motorsport ORECA for the class win in March at the Mobile 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts. Coming off a break of their own, albeit a shorter one, Le Mans Prototype 3 (LMP3) returns to action for the first time since mid-May, when the No. 74 Riley Motorsports Ligier JS P320 captured its second win of the campaign from the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier and its sister No. 91 Riley Motorsports entry at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
Which brings us to DPi. Although it may be the ersatz defending champions, Mazda Motorsports will not be able to duplicate 2019’s 1-2 finish for the simple fact that there’s a single Mazda entry this year – the No. 55 for Oliver Jarvis, Harry Tincknell and Jonathan Bomarito. But just as Corvette showed at Detroit that you only need two cars to make a race, Mazda will be out to demonstrate you only need one car to win at The Glen.
The No. 55 has shown plenty of speed this season, witness Tincknell’s pole-winning effort at Mid-Ohio and front-row starts at Detroit and Daytona. But so far, victory has proven elusive. Much the same could have been and indeed was said about Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 01 Cadillac DPi-V.R heading into the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic at Detroit. Then, Kevin Magnussen and Renger van der Zande put their stamp on Belle Isle by leading the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Racing entry home to a convincing 1-2 for Cadillac. Now that the Ganassi gang has broken through in the win column, they could be tough to beat at The Glen.
Then again, Wayne Taylor Racing’s No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 has already won twice this season and leads the DPi standings. And what of the No. 48 Ally Cadillac’s return to DPi competition this weekend? The car’s star-studded lineup features two-time Rolex 24 at Daytona winner Kamui Kobayashi, Indy 500 winner and IndyCar champion Simon Pagenaud and seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson … all of which should make for a formidable challenge to the DPi regulars.