Article and photos by Ben Kuhl
If you’ve been keeping up with the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship during the month of January, then you know it’s been an exciting time to be a fan of Prototype and Grand Touring racing in North America. On January 27th2022, IMSA announced a name change for its developing Le Mans Daytona Hybrid (LMDh) class that is set to come to fruition for the 2023 season in conjunction with the World Endurance Championship’s (WEC) current Hypercar regulations.
Out is LMDh, taking its place is Grand Touring Prototype (GTP). If you have been a long-time fan of IMSA racing, and enjoyed the epic battles from 1981 to 1993, that sentence just excited you incredibly. A rebranding of IMSA’s top class will allow the current IMSA on track product the ability to look back in a nostalgic way while at the same time making what seem to be continuously momentum growing regulations. But why GTP?
The IMSA Daytona Prototype International (DPi) product of today has given its audience a wide variety of makes and models. 2021 provided five-liter Cadillac thundering V8’s, turbo-charged 3.5 liter V6 Acura’s, and even the gone but not forgotten two liter inline 4 that powered the Mazda program to some memorable wins. The IMSA has given significant effort to lay out its sporting regulations in a way that allows potential manufactures and engine suppliers to break out of series killing “single engineering philosophy” scenarios. And as us race fans had the pleasure of seeing at the recent 2022 24 Hours of Daytona, those diverse cars battled it out until the end.
In 2023 with the introduction of GTP we are starting to see that philosophy be expanded even further with manufactures Audi, Porsche, Acura, Cadillac, BMW and potentially more all choosing the LMDh regulations that allow for the selection of chassis from Dallara, Ligier, Multimatic, and ORECA who all have significant experience building prototype cars. The engines and stylized bodywork will be totally left up to the team’s creativity. The significant shift will come in the addition of a spec “off the shelf” hybrid system developed by BOSCH, Williams Advanced Engineering, and Xtrac. Bottom line, automotive diversity is at the forefront and high-level manufactures are buying in at a record pace.
And the draw of top-level involvement does not stop at just manufactures. World recognized names such as Dixon, Magnussen, Rockenfeller, Kobayashi, Pagenaud, Montoya, and Bourdais were just a few who made up the stacked field of top-level drivers during the 2021 season. And now as the field of GTP entries increases, experienced drivers will be needed to pilot the next generation machines around some of the best driving circuits the world has to offer.
Now if we wind our clocks back to IMSA in the 80’s and 90’s, we see some similarities that show the GTP throwback is more than just an effort to appease the generation that grew up watching the original iteration of GTP. Just as class convergence is on the horizon between IMSA and WEC, the American GTP and European Group C cars would battle it out regularly around tracks like Watkins Glen, Road America, and Portland International raceway.
As well, IMSA GTP in the 80’s and 90’s became a battleground of racing mentality. Teams could choose between high or low displacement, turbocharged, or naturally aspirated. Electromotive’s Nissan GTP-ZX took its Nissan supplied VG30ET turbo V6 engine which produced 200-230 hp stock and though an apparent deal with the devil, developed an estimated 739 hp at 8,000 rpm and enough downforce to suck up welded down manhole covers on more than one occasion. The Tom Walkinshaw Jaguar hedged its bets by running a naturally aspirated V12 and turbocharged V6 in each of its team cars.
And believe it or not, we are still having this discussion today. As mentioned before, the Cadillac DPi still uses its 5.5 liter naturally aspirated V8. And while all we have from Cadillac is a computer-generated video of half car, it would be very surprising for Cadillac to move away from its brand recognition points of throaty V8’s and bold styling. And while details of what each manufacturer and team is going to run for the 2023 season, we are guaranteed to see the battle of naturally aspirated vs turbo aided play out with the added factor of hybrid power.
Now I fully understand that at the ripe old age of 25 that youthful enthusiasm might have a big part to play in why I think we as race fans should be so excited about what is coming up in 2023 and beyond. It’s like a Rolling Stones reunion tour but instead of getting a winded You Can’t Always Get What You Want, its 1975 at the Inglewood forum in Los Angeles California and Mick Jagger is belting out Sympathy For The Devil and hoping we guess his name. In short, reviving the GTP name connects back to IMSA’s roots at a point in time where it just feels right. IMSA has even acquired Historic Sportscar Racing (HSR) who quite fittingly have a strong history of running retired IMSA cars varying between very vintage and only somewhat vintage, though that is another topic to be discussed in this ongoing story that will be updated in the not-so-distant future.
