By David Phillips
BRASELTON, Ga. – Just a guess, but I figure the line of fans outside the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta box office looking for a refund for the cost of their tickets to the 2024 Motul Petit Le Mans was a short one. Likewise, I doubt the phone lines at NBC lit up with disappointed viewers or that Peacock is bracing for a wave of non-renewals from disgruntled customers in the wake of the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season finale.
For it would take a seriously grumpy racing fan to have found Saturday’s 10-hour classic wanting in just about any manner. There was hour upon hour of fast, close and squeaky-clean sports car racing. The top honors in two of the four season-long contests for class championships came down to the final laps and, yes, the overall race winner was in doubt – make that very much in doubt – until the final lap.
What else did we learn or, in some cases, re-learn?
High Standards
GTP winners Renger van der Zande, Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon were downright effusive in the praise for the high driving standards displayed by their Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) and Grand Touring (GT) colleagues on Saturday.
And rightly so. Whether due to all the prerace talk in the media and (more likely) team meetings focusing on the need to save the cars until the end of the race, be they Bronze-, Silver or Gold-rated, amateurs, semi-professionals or professionals, the level of driving at Michelin Raceway was at an all-time high. Of course, the fact that Michelin Raceway was blessed with four straight days of “Chamber of Commerce weather” didn’t hurt, either.
Regardless of the reasons, the racing was as fierce as ever even as it was noticeably lacking in the “yellows breed yellows” environment that has characterized more than a few previous iterations of Petit Le Mans. That remarkable five-hour stretch of “caution-less” racing – with some 50 cars vying for space on the 2.54 miles of asphalt – from before 5 o’clock until shortly after 9 p.m. helped make this the “greenest” Petit Le Mans of all time.
It’s also worth noting that the common rules package adopted by IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) affords drivers competing in both series (either full time or occasionally) a common playing field, so to speak. A GT3 car in WEC behaves about the same as its GT counterpart in IMSA, the LMP2s are identical and the GTP and Hypercars are as well.
Thus it was that Mikkel Jensen, who drives a Peugeot 9XB Hypercar in the WEC used his familiarity with characteristics of the top prototype class – the challenge of getting a sticker set of Michelin tires up to peak operating temperature and, thus, performance – to pass a couple of the considerably more powerful GTP cars in his LMP2 ORECA on the fateful final restart to seal the class win for himself and the TDS Racing team.
So You Want a Job in Race Control?
Like any sport, auto racing is “blessed” to have its share of Monday morning quarterbacks who seldom hesitate to rake officials over the coals for what, in their less-than-humble opinions, were block-headed calls in the heat of competition. But whether it’s the speed of stick and ball athletes who run the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds, hit 100-plus-mph fastballs, serves, slap shots or race cars traveling 100 yards in the blink of an eye, officials have a tough, tough job.
So, how would you like to have been in Race Control late Saturday night watching the No. 01 Cadillac’s flickering headlights, knowing that if the situation persisted, you’d have no choice but to black flag the leader and do what no sports official wants to do. Namely, make a judgment call that determines the outcome of the contest.
I can well imagine the only people more relieved to see the Caddy’s headlamps come back to life than those in the Cadillac Racing pit stall were IMSA Race Director Beaux Barfield and his crew in race control.
Date Equity
As was the case at almost every event on the 2024 calendar, IMSA and track officials announced record crowds last weekend at Petit Le Mans – a claim that easily passed the eyeball test for anyone who made their way through the crowded prerace grid walk, strolled around the infield throng during the race or arrived at the track just after sun-up on Saturday to be greeted by a flashing sign saying that infield parking was sold out.
There is a welter of factors behind IMSA’s surge in popularity, not least of which is 18 (soon to be 19) manufacturers competing in IMSA-sanctioned series and the state-of-the-art GTP cars in a racing landscape that, in too many cases, is one step (or more) behind the rapid rate of consumer cars’ evolution.
But I would also put a word in on behalf of the IMSA schedule, particularly that buzz phrase “date equity.” Doubtless I show my age by thinking back to the halcyon days in the late 1960s and ’70s when, as a resident of the Middle Atlantic/Northeast, I looked forward to an annual orgy of racing packed into 10 days when the Canadian and United States Grands Prix ran on back-to-back weekends.
Just as surely as the autumn leaves would begin to turn, so would my friends and I head off to Mosport/St. Jovite and Watkins Glen for the two Formula One races we had been anticipating all summer; and in my case, my annual rendezvous with some friends from Quebec who I first met sitting around a campfire at Mosport and who I only saw once a year, every year. And I would argue that Formula One has only lately begun to recapture the magic it once enjoyed on these shores in the wake of forsaking Mosport, St. Jovite and The Glen for more glitzy stages.
I was reminded of that last weekend, first while driving down to Michelin Raceway amid the changing color palette of mid-October hardwood forests and, later, while making the rounds of the paddock late Saturday night, looking to encounter friends and colleagues, wish them a happy winter and vow to reconvene at Daytona International Speedway come January.
Doubtless, thousands of fans express similar sentiments to their racing pals – some of whom they only see at one or two races a year – throughout the IMSA season from Daytona to Sebring, Long Beach, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, The Glen, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Road America and VIRginia International Raceway to Michelin Raceway.
For sure, it’s also great to add new locales like the streets of Detroit and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the hopes they too will become fixtures in place and time on the IMSA calendar, not to mention those of race fans around the Midwest. In the meantime, the fact that the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship schedule has been out for several months and, once again, features all the familiar events at the same locales on the same weekends, is yet another thing to celebrate at the close of this hugely successful season.
Have a good winter and see you at Daytona!
P.S. Here’s a bonus takeaway: For my money, the most fun moment of the 2024 racing season. Following Saturday night’s victory podium celebration, Messrs. van der Zande, Bourdais and Dixon duly paid a visit to the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta press room for their post-race press conference. As they entered the press room some unknown wag at the back of the room flicked the overhead lights on and off, on and off, on and off much to the delight of one and all who were present. Unforgettable.