VIR Has Been Cleanest Track on Schedule Since GTD PRO Introduced in 2022
By John Oreovicz
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Just over 12 months ago, competitors in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) and GTD classes arrived for the Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway following a rough-and-tumble race at Road America.
The all-class 2025, two-hour, 40-minute race produced five full-course cautions and more than an hour of running behind the Safety Car. On the heels of that race, penalties started flowing and then VIR witnessed stricter enforcement. Six GTD PRO and GTD competitors were penalized for incident responsibility there.
Quite how the 46 drivers entered will respond to this year’s VIR GT-only showcase is a topic of conversation once again, following a longer yet similarly treacherous Road America round in 2026. The nuance is slightly different this year, since most incidents at Road America were among prototype competitors.
“I think last year it was the GT cars that were exhibiting the poor driving standards at Road America, and I felt our class was pretty good at Road America this year,” commented Tommy Milner, who shares the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R with Nicky Catsburg in the GTD PRO class. They’re second in the tightly packed GTD PRO standings, 15 points behind leaders Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi (No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO).
“I think the race will be officiated similarly to last year,” Milner continued. “I think we’re going to have another long drivers’ meeting again – not that we don’t need to listen to what Beaux (Barfield, Race Director) has to say, but I think there’s going to be a little bit of a crackdown. We had a good race last year at VIR with not many cautions. So, I predict something similar. The racing’s been, by and large, quite good for us in GTD PRO.”
Race Director Barfield actually agreed with Milner’s assessment regarding GT racing as part of a wide-ranging media roundtable discussion Thursday in advance of VIR, providing more clarity and insight into the race officiating process.
Racing at VIR has been clean in the last decade, which covers both the four years of GTD PRO and even earlier for the rural Virginia circuit as a part of the IMSA calendar. The 2017 two-hour, 40-minute race, for example, ran caution-free and was won by Corvette Racing’s No. 3 entry driven by Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia. The 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2024 races only had one caution apiece.
The general cleanliness at VIR can be put down to its long, flowing nature. But the smaller field resulting from the absence of IMSA’s prototype classes (GTP and Le Mans Prototype 2) no doubt also contributes.
Two of the three cautions last year came later in the race, one due to Danny Formal’s incident that saw him escape a conflagration from his No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.
“We were leading in class but yeah, obviously, no one remembers that and everyone remembers the moment with 40 minutes to go at the end of the backstraight, right?” Formal said. “That’s probably the scariest moment of my career and probably in my life. I got really lucky there. I count my blessings every time.”
Ironically, Formal’s car number is in the GTD championship battle, even though he isn’t. Just 45 points cover the top four GTD entries.
Dudu Barrichello leads in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO. Russell Ward and Philip Ellis (No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3) sit second, 24 back, with Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher (No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 EVO) third and 26 points out. Aaron Telitz and Benjamin Pedersen (No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3) are fourth, 45 back.
Foley is appreciative of IMSA’s efforts to keep the action clean on the track.
“Last year, IMSA had to crack down a little bit harder and officiate more,” Foley observed. “I personally was a fan of that, because you knew where you stood, you knew where the lines were.
“I think, in general, we do have, I would say, good racing,” he added. “I’m a fan of good hard racing; a little touching here and there is okay. But I think now with how close the cars are, there’s an extra level of aggression that we all have to deal with. I think we’re close to finding the right middle ground – at least in the GT classes – between good, hard racing, but not silly racing. For me, that’s been a fine line in the past year and a half or so.”
The Michelin GT Challenge at VIR runs from 12:10-2:50 ET on Sunday, August 23. It airs live, flag-to-flag, on NBC with streaming coverage available on Peacock in the U.S., and internationally via IMSA.TV or the official IMSA YouTube channel.