Only 12 cars are entered for next week’s Nov. 15-16 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship test at Daytona, which owes a lot to the fact the new Daytona Prototype international (DPi) cars haven’t been revealed yet (that will come next week in Los Angeles) and a number of new GT cars haven’t yet arrived to teams.
Nonetheless there’s a handful of key entries among those 12 running. One car apiece comes from Prototype, Prototype Challenge and GT Le Mans, with the debut of PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports’ new Ligier JS P217 running alongside a single BAR1 Motorsports and BMW Team RLL BMW M6 GTLM in the other two classes.
In GT Daytona, there’s nine cars. The pair of Michael Shank Racing Acura NSX GT3s make their public debut; Mark Wilkins and Tom Dyer join the four announced drivers of Andy Lally, Katherine Legge, Jeff Segal and Ozz Negri. Lally and Segal are paired in the No. 93 Acura with Legge and Negri - who shared Shank’s No. 60 Ligier JS P2 Honda at Detroit this year.
The Montaplast by Land Audi and EBIMotors Lamborghini are also on the grid, along with the No. 6 Stevenson Audi, Dream and Paul Miller Lamborghinis, and Sandown GT Racing’s USA Mercedes (the test chassis pictured above from 2015) make up the numbers.