DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – A grid of 49 hopeful teams arrived at the opening round of the 2024 IMSA Esports Global Championship at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta with aspirations of victory on Sunday. As it happens in multiclass sportscar racing at any level, those aspirations were met with challenges throughout the two-hour, 40-minute event as cars in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) classes went to battle, racing for glory while also racing to avoid the other class throughout the day.
Early and late incidents involving class leaders set the tone for the overall results. For GTP, the pole-sitting BMW M Team Redline No. 20 entry was taken out of the lead from the pole position on the fourth lap of the race, the first time the classes came together on track. In GTD, the dominant No. 170 Team Redline Ferrari, less than 20 laps away from seeing the checkers, found themselves wrecked and on the side of the road instead.
These two instances gave way to the races for the win in both classes. The No. 171 Team Redline Ferrari assumed the lead and led the final 19 laps to an opening round victory. With even more team restrictions this season, there wasn’t another Redline GTP entry to fall back on this time, so the race fell into the hands of the No. 5 Williams Esports Chillblast BMW.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple for the No. 5 team of Jaden Munoz and Matt Farrow. A fueling issue in the middle of the race set the leading Williams Esports entry behind the No. 89 BS+COMPETITION BMW driven by Daniel Alves Lourenco and Niklas Beu. Munoz pulled it in while leading, but Farrow left nearly five seconds to the deficit of the No. 89. Working back through traffic, Farrow managed to catch and pass the No. 89 of Beu back before the final pit cycle.
“We didn’t know how the strategy was going to play out with BS,” Munoz explained postrace. “We thought we were equal with them on the fuel after our little glitch after my last stint, but I guess we were actually better than them on fuel, and Matt did a great first stint, then he pulled away from BS after doing the overtake as well, so props to Matt.”
“I was quite surprised, because I hinted I was going to do it a couple of times, but he never defended it,” Farrow said postrace regarding what would end up being the move for the win. “(BS) got held up coming out of Turn 7, and yeah, I just put it into attack mode and just sent it.”
While the entirety of the GTP class finished the race, some of the GTD contingent were not as lucky. The early incident that involved the No. 20 BMW M Team Redline entry also got the No. 18 Coanda Esports Porsche as well as the second Williams Esports GTP, the Racing Prodigy No. 33 BMW. The damages set all three back, but they were all able to ultimately continue. The No. 20 of Chris Lulham and Diogo Pinto even came back to finish seventh overall.
Those unlucky GTDs included both MAG – Performance SRT entries— the No. 151 Corvette and the No. 150 McLaren—as well as two of the BS+COMPETITION affiliates, the No. 10 MAHLE Racing Team BMW and the No. 196 BS+Turner Motorsports BMW. Some GTDs took heavy damage but continued on as well. Both Apex Racing Team Mercedes-AMGs were neutralized in early incidents, and perhaps the biggest retirement of the race came in the closing stint when the class leader crashed out.
It’s unclear whether it was malice or a technical issue, but with less than 30 minutes to go, the No. 4 CrowdStrike Racing Acura caught the No. 170 Team Redline Ferrari with a huge rate of speed on the frontstretch. The No. 170, driven by Luke Bennett at the moment, held the proper line, allowing for the faster No. 4 GTP to pass on the right, but the No. 4 instead kept running the same line, bowling over the GTD leader and taking them out of contention.
Both Team Redline entries were far and away the fastest in the GTD class, gapping the field by nearly a full pit stop towards the end. The No. 170 was able to get the better start from the pole, but the No. 171 was also just as fast. With the lesser attrition rate, the No. 170 dropped from first down to finish 28th out of 33 cars in class in those final 19 laps. The No. 171, driven by Enzo Bonito and Florian Lebigre, managed to still win over the field by a large margin.
“I should have not let Sven (Haase) pass at the start, that was a mistake,” Bonito explained postrace. “I realized he was pushing really hard, so I was just chilling behind. Then we got them (No. 102) in the pits and it was back to 1-2 (for Team Redline). Overall, a pretty fun race, I’d say.”
“The other car (No. 170) got really unlucky, and we got really lucky,” Lebigre added.
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There were a number of compelling battles outside the lead as well in both classes. The No. 8 Coanda Esports Porsche fought against the No. 95 Channel 199 Sim Racing Cadillac for the final step of the podium throughout the event. In the last stint, they got too close, and the Porsche managed to knock the rear wing off of the Cadillac as a result. Owen Caryl kept the Cadillac on the track for the final stint, but the loss of the rear wing cost them multiple spots, ultimately knocking them down to 10th.
The top four GTP entries had all distanced themselves from the rest of the field, so when the No. 8 Porsche was issued a penalty for the contact, even after having served it, they returned to the track still in podium position.
The GTD podium battle was also fiercely fought. The No. 114 Team PGZ Porsche got around the No. 102 Grid-and-Go eSports Ferrari late in the going. The latter then fell into the clutches of Rexy, AO Racing by Coanda’s Porsche GTD entry. On a late lunge, Michael Janney took a look inside with Rexy on Miguel Costa’s No. 102. The two made contact and sent Rexy around. The No. 102 held on for the podium while AO Racing by Coanda settled for eighth, just ahead of the Michelin Wild Card entry, the No. 116 SCHERER eSPORT McLaren, which finished ninth.