IMSA notes: Pre-Sebring BoP; Entry lists; OAK's TUSC lineup - MotorSportsTalk

IMSA’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship and Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge are back in action this week, with a two-day test Feb. 20 and 21 at Sebring International Raceway. Several staffing changes have taken place since the week at Daytona ended in January. Additionally, there have been a couple Balance of Performance changes.

A quick recap:

The full breakdown of BoP adjustments is linked here (P classes, GT classes), but there’s been several changes for the GT classes. The GT Le Mans-spec BMW Z4 and SRT Viper GTS-R each gain 15 kg while the Aston Martin Vantage sheds 20. The Aston has also been granted a 0.3mm restrictor increase; SRT’s restrictor has gone down by that much. In GT Daytona, both of the Daytona pace-setting Ferrari 458 and Audi R8 cars have received changes. Both gain 20 kg while the Ferrari has a 5mm restrictor decrease; Audi’s is 2mm. P class adjustments will likely be finalized after this week’s test.
As far as the TUDOR Championship 42-car entry list goes, no major surprises. Starworks Motorsport’s P class car is entered, still with the same Dinan-powered Riley it ran at Daytona. Team Falken Tire is expected to make its debut with its new 991-spec Porsche 911 RSR; the team missed Daytona. In GTD, Rum Bum Racing appears to have partnered with Snow Racing, and the team shifts to No. 13 from 58 for Jan Heylen and Madison Snow. Matt Plumb is listed as third driver; Snow needed a third for Sebring as Marco Seefried will join Magnus Racing at the 12-hour race in March.
There’s just 29 cars on the CTSC entry list. Notable here is the Fall-Line BMW team, which originally finished 2-3-4 in Daytona but had one car penalized (No. 47) and the other two promoted to first and second after the winning BMW failed post-race technical inspection. Only Rod Randall and Ken Wilden are listed in Fall-Line’s three M3s; the Daytona lineups of Shelby Blackstock/Ashley Freiberg and John Edwards/Trent Hindman aren’t for now. The 11-car ST class includes five BMWs, three Honda Civic Sis, a pair of Hyundai Genesis and an Aston Martin Vantage.
OAK Racing, too, has confirmed its driver lineup for the rest of the TUDOR Championship season. Olivier Pla (5 races), Alex Brundle (5) and Ho-Pin Tung (3) will rotate at various times alongside the team’s lone full-season driver, Gustavo Yacaman, in the No. 42 Morgan Nissan.

The two-day test at Sebring sees the TUDOR Championship on-track both days from 9:30 a.m. to noon, and 2:45 to 5 p.m. ET. CTSC will be on-track both days from 8 to 9:15, and 1 to 2:30 p.m. ET. Live timing will be available on the IMSA website.

Follow @TonyDiZinno

Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

IMSA notes: Pre-Sebring BoP; Entry lists; OAK’s TUSC lineup

Hunter Lawrence defends Haiden Deegan after controversial block pass at Detroit

Read more about SuperMotocross