IMSA champions crowned, celebrated in Atlanta

By Tony DiZinnoOct 10, 2017, 12:05 PM EDT

Photo courtesy of IMSA

IMSA celebrated its 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season Monday night at Chateau Elan in Braselton, Ga. A recap of that, as well as a look at the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup champions as well are below.

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WeatherTech Night of Champions Honors IMSA Victors

Champions across the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship came together Monday night to be recognized for their achievements and to celebrate the conclusion of a thrilling 2017 season.

Held at the Chateau Élan Winery and Resort in Braselton, Georgia, drivers, teams and manufacturers received awards for their performances throughout the year. The four class champions received new TUDOR watches to honor their titles.

Receiving awards for their championships in the twelve segments at the series’ four endurance events were the four Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup champions.

Those races include the Rolex 24 At Daytona, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen, and the 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans.

FOX Sports personalities Justin Bell and Brian Till hosted the proceedings, which began with a one-hour reception, followed by a two-hour presentation ceremony, before ending with a lively after-party featuring live music from The Business.

“Of course, the four teams, drivers and manufacturers that we honor as class champions earned that right through near flawless execution and extraordinary performances against fierce competition on and off the racetrack,” said IMSA President Scott Atherton as he opened the ceremony. “I’m fortunate to be among the first to offer my congratulations here this evening. To our champions: Well done, all of you.”

In the Prototype class, brothers Jordan and Ricky Taylor as part of their father’s team, Wayne Taylor Racing, dominated the first half of the season in their No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R. to take home the Prototype driver and team championship. After winning five straight races to open the season, the Taylors are now the winningest drivers in WeatherTech Championship history with 12 victories apiece.

“This is something that obviously our family has been around my whole life, and I built it up in my mind what it’s going to be like,” said Ricky Taylor. “This is obviously a dream come true. I never would’ve imagined that I’d get to share this experience with my family and such a great group of guys and great group of partners we all have here tonight. I’m just really going to soak this in. It’s nice we’ve got another three months until Daytona to enjoy being the champions.”

One of the highlights of the evening was when Wayne Taylor came out on stage to receive his team owner’s award. He was wearing his trademark blue glasses and before his interview started Till reached into his suit pocket to produce his own pair of blue sun glasses. The crowd laughed and then enjoyed an emotional speech from Taylor about his family and their life in racing.

Cadillac also took home the Prototype and Patrón Endurance Cup manufacturer championships with additional wins from each of the two Action Express Racing teams. Those teams were the No. 31 Whelen Engineering team of Dane Cameron and Eric Curran and the No. 5 Mustang Sampling team of full-time drivers Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa with Filipe Albuquerque who won the Patrón Endurance Cup team and driver championships.

Performance Tech Motorsports came just shy of winning everything the Prototype Challenge (PC) class had to offer in 2017. The team won seven of eight races, while James French took home seven TOTAL Pole Awards and co-driver Patricio O’Ward posted the fastest lap at each event. Performance Tech, French, O’Ward and endurance driver Kyle Masson received the following awards – the Patrón Endurance Cup driver and team championships in PC’s final year of WeatherTech Championship competition.

In the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class, Chevrolet and Corvette Racing outlasted intense competition to bring home all three class championships. In what many consider to be the closest GT racing in the world, the No. 3 Corvette C7.R duo of Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen recorded a top-five finish in every race this season, including three victories. These championships were the second consecutive for the manufacturer and team.

“This Manufacturer Championship is so special because of the amazing team effort in this intensely competitive GTLM class,” said Mark Reuss, executive vice president of General Motors. “Corvette Racing’s passion, dedication and perseverance made the difference. We love racing and learn from every lap about how to deliver the right combination of power, reliability, efficiency and overall performance. We apply those lessons to every Corvette on and off the track. I’m so proud of everyone on the team.”

In a close competition, the Patrón Endurance Cup championships went to two GTLM separate entities, neither of which won the class championship. Ford was presented with the manufacturer trophy, while the No. 911 Porsche GT Team with full-time drivers Patrick Pilet and Dirk Werner took home the team and driver championships.

Finally, the GT Daytona (GTD) class saw exponential growth heading into the 2017 season, which saw a total of eight manufacturers compete full-time and seven of which won at least one race this year. However, it was defending champions Alessandro Balzan and Christina Nielsen in the No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 that were crowned yet again after finishing on the podium seven times.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge,” stated Nielsen. “We always come in with the mentality that every championship, we have to come in starting from zero and you can’t rely on any of the results that you’ve had. We had the championship for Ferrari in mind, but honestly, at Scuderia Corsa, we always go into every race to fight. That’s the beauty of this team, and that’s what makes it so special.”

Newcomer Mercedes-AMG won the Patrón Endurance Cup manufacturer championship and the No. 33 Riley Motorsports-Team AMG Mercedes-AMG GT3 with drivers Ben Keating, Jeroen Bleekemolen and Mario Farnbacher secured the Patrón Endurance Cup team and driver championship.

Additional awards presented at Monday evening’s WeatherTech Night of Champions and are listed below.

Thank you @stevensonmotor for all the great moments you have brought to the IMSA paddock! We hope to see you around the IMSA paddock soon. #LifeTimeHardcards pic.twitter.com/zaQNVrBzuZ

— IMSA (@IMSA) October 9, 2017

Johnny Stevenson Painting Presentation: Artwork from renowned motorsports Bill Patterson commemorating Johnny and Susan Stevenson’s achievements in the WeatherTech Championship and Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge since the team’s involvement began in 2003. Stevenson Motorsports announced its intention to cease operations in early September.

Continental Tire Extreme Spirit Award: Presented to the individuals who demonstrate respect for fellow competitors, sponsors, track operators, officials, media and fans, and act as ambassadors for IMSA on and off the track based on their qualities of sportsmanship and commitment to excellence.

GTD: Ben Keating, driver of the No. 33 Riley Motorsport-Team AMG Mercedes-AMG GT3
PC: James French, driver of the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA FLM09
Prototype: John Church, JDC-Miller Motorsports CEO and Managing Partner
VP Racing Fuels Front Runner Award: Presented to the team that had the most lap-leading efforts
-GTD: No. 93 Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura NSX GT3
-PC: No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports ORECA FLM09
-GTLM: No. 25 BMW Team RLL BMW M6 GTLM
-Prototype: No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R.
DEKRA Green Award: Presented to the GTLM team that is the cleanest, fastest and most efficient on the racetrack – No. 67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT
Bob Akin Award: Given to the top Pro-Am competitor in the GTD class – Ben Keating, driver of the No. 33 Riley Motorsports-Team AMG Mercedes-AMG GT3
Jim Trueman Award: Presented to the top Pro-Am driver in the Prototype class – Misha Goikhberg, driver of the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports ORECA LM P2

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Patrón Endurance Cup Champions crowned after 4 races, 52 hours

With class championships all but decided entering the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans, the focus for some teams shifted to the final segments of the Tequila Patrón North American Endurance Cup.

The Patrón Endurance Cup rewards top performers in the four WeatherTech Championship endurance races: the Rolex 24 At Daytona, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and the 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. Points are awarded at strategic intervals for each race, with five points going to each class leader at those intervals, followed by four points for second place, three for third, and two points for all others from fourth place onward. Motul Petit Le Mans points were awarded at the four-hour and eight-hour marks and the finish.

The No. 5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi-V.R and drivers Christian Fittipaldi, Joao Barbosa and Filipe Albuquerque did just enough to win the Patrón Endurance Cup in the Prototype class by four points, 46-42, over season-long champions Jordan Taylor and Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Cadillac DPi-V.R.

The Taylors won the opening two rounds at Daytona and Sebring, but scored the minimum two points in the five remaining segments at Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta. Those finishes, combined with a win by the Mustang Sampling team at Watkins Glen and a second-place run at the end of the opening segment at Road Atlanta, were enough to give the No. 5 team the title. The performance of both teams gave Cadillac the manufacturer championship in the Patrón Endurance Cup.

In the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class, five teams went into the season finale in contention for the Patrón Endurance Cup with the No. 911 Porsche GT Team of Dirk Werner and Patrick Pilet up by two points on the No. 66 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT of Dirk Mueller and Joey Hand. That gap proved to be just enough as the No. 911 scored eight points in the Motul Petit Le Mans, four points for running second at the four-hour mark and the minimum two points in the remaining segments, with the No. 66 falling just short with nine points. The results were flipped, however, in the manufacturer battle with the season-long performance of the two-car Ford Chip Ganassi Racing team earning Ford the title.

The Patrón Endurance Cup race in the GT Daytona (GTD) class ultimately came down to the season-long, championship-winning No. 63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 team of Christina Nielsen, Alessandro Balzan and Matteo Cressoni and the No. 33 Riley Motorsports – Team AMG Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Ben Keating, Jeroen Bleekemolen and Mario Farnbacher.

The No. 33 Mercedes-AMG team trailed by one point entering the Motul Petit Le Mans. They rode a third-place run at the four-hour mark of the race and led at the eight-hour mark to separate itself from the No. 63 Ferrari to win the Patrón Endurance Cup by four points, 40-36. That effort was enough for Mercedes-AMG to win the GTD Patrón Endurance Cup manufacturer title as well.

The No. 38 Performance Tech ORECA FLM09 team of James French, Pato O’Ward and Kyle Masson clinched the Patrón Endurance Cup in the Prototype Challenge (PC) class before the Motul Petit Le Mans. The team looked to not only sweep the season in the PC class, but also every Patrón Endurance Cup segment. After leading at the four-hour mark, Masson was involved in an incident with a Prototype car, removing the team from contention. The No. 26 BAR1 Motorsports ORECA FLM09 of John Falb, Garett Grist and Tomy Drissi went onto lead at the eight-hour mark and win the race.

A deep dive into the new GR Cup as Toyota branches into single-make sports car racing

By Nate RyanMar 30, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT

Swikar Patel/Toyota Racing Development

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Inside this former textile mill, a retro building built in 1892 with massive floor-to-ceiling windows and sturdy brick, Toyota has planted a future seed with the GR Cup.

Once a hub for making cotton dye, the first floor has been turned into a factory that churned out spec sports cars for the past year as Toyota Racing Development prepares to launch its first single-make series.

The inaugural season of the Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Cup will begin this weekend at Sonoma Raceway, the first of seven SRO-sanctioned events (each with two races) featuring a field of homologated GR86 production models that have been modified for racing with stock engines.

Under the banner of its Gazoo Racing (a high-performance brand relatively new to North America but synonymous with Dakar Rally champion Nasser Al-Attiyah), Toyota will join Mazda, Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini as the latest automaker to run a single-make U.S. series (with Ford recently announcing plans for its own in the near future).

It’s grassroots-level amateur racing for manufacturers that are accustomed to racing at motorsports’ highest levels, but there are many benefits through competition, driver development and marketing despite the lower profile.

“It’s not the easiest thing or cheapest thing to do,” TRD executive commercial director Jack Irving told NBC Sports. “But there’s massive value to be a part of it and have our DNA in the cars. You get to race a bunch and get a bunch of data. You get to engage directly in feedback from the people beating those cars up.”

The GR86s being raced are very similar to the street versions that retail for about $35,000 at dealerships that annually sell several thousand.

“It’s a test of the car and your design,” Irving said. “We take an engineered vehicle designed to spec for the road and then apply our resources to make it race ready. Some of those things cross over.

*The first floor of Toyota Racing Development’s Mooresville facility that finished the vehicles for the new GR Cup (Swikar Patel/TRD).*

“Everyone approaches it differently. It’s a marketing piece for us. It’s a development piece for drivers. We’re supporting grass roots racing. This is a very long-term deal for us. This isn’t something we’re doing two years and done. It’s got a long-term vision. There’s big value in it, and there’s a lot of responsibility with that, too.

“You’re ultimately supporting it. You’re not just selling cars into a series and hoping it goes well. You have to be involved in a very material way to make sure it goes off well and has your fingerprints and represents the brand.”

Early indications have been solid. The GR Cup cars were rolled out on iRacing in January and immediately became one of the platform’s most popular vehicles (with 212-horsepower engines, the cars handle well and are difficult to spin).

*TRD’s GR86 factory floor (Swikar Patel/TRD).*

TRD has sold 33 cars for GR Cup with 31 racing in Sonoma, easily surpassing initial expectations.

“Our target was to sell 20 cars in the first year, and we could have sold 50 if not for supply chain issues with some vendors,” TRD president David Wilson told NBC Sports. “We basically came up with the idea of taking the GR86 and looking at what it would take to turn that into a little race car and do it affordably and competitively, and what’s come along with that is just a tremendous interest level. It seems like a market that perhaps has been underserved right now.”

Here’s a deeper look at the Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Cup and how the manufacturer built the new series:

THE CARS

The race cars start as production models that are shipped directly from the factory in Japan to a port in Charleston, South Carolina. After being trucked to the Mooresville facility, they are stripped and sent to Joe Gibbs Racing to be outfitted with a roll cage.

Upon return to TRD, the transmission and stock engine is added. The body remains virtually the same as the street version with a slightly altered hood, decklid and splitter for ride height and aerodynamics.

The cars mostly are customized to help manage the heat – the stock versions aren’t designed to handle the oil that sloshes around in the high-speed left- and right-hand turns on the road and street courses of the GR Cup schedule. TRD puts about two dozen parts on the cars, using Stratasys 3-D Printers to manufacture many on site (which allows flexibility for adjusting on the fly during R&D). In addition to help with cooling, many of the tweaks focus on allowing a limited number of setup changes.

“You don’t have a lot of ability to adjust these cars,” Irving said. “It was done on purpose. The intent was you have three spring sets, and you can adjust the shocks and do air pressure. That’s it. We seal the engine and components of it. We dyno everything. Everyone is within range to create as consistent a series as we can.

“Some of that is to mimic what Mazda did. They’ve done a really good job with their series. Porsche, Ferrari and other OEMs have done it very well. We had a learning that was easier to go through their book and see the Cliffs Notes version to get where we are.”

After taking delivery, GR Cup teams are responsible for transporting the cars to each track (and can buy up to three sets of Continental tires per event). Toyota brings two parts trucks to each track

THE SCHEDULE AND SCENE

After Sonoma, the GR Cup will visit Circuit of the Americas (May 5-7), Virginia International Raceway (June 16-18), the streets of Nashville (Aug. 4-6), Road America (Aug. 25-27), Sebring International Raceway (Sept. 22-24) and Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Oct. 6-8).

Though Nashville (IndyCar’s Music City Grand Prix) and Indy (SRO’s eight-hour Intercontinental Challenge) are part of weekends with bigger headliners, the GR Cup mostly will be the second-billed series (behind SRO’s Fanatech GT World Challenge) for events that will draw a few thousand. Sonoma had a crowd of about 4,000 last year, and SRO Motorsports America president Greg Gill said its events draw a maximum of about 13,000 over three days.

“There are some iconic venues, and the SRO it’s not IMSA,” Wilson said. “It’s got a different feel to it. It’s not the show. IMSA is kind of the show. I actually think it’s a good place for us to start, because it’s a little bit under the radar relatively speaking. It’s not a venue where you see the grandstands full of fans. It’s very much racers and their families. It’s got a neat vibe to it because it’s kind of small. So for our first effort as a single-make series, it’s the right place for us.”

Toyota GR Cup — *The interior of the GR86 that will be raced in the GR Cup (Swikar Patel/TRD).*

Though the attendance will be much smaller, Toyota still is bringing a large hospitality and marketing activation area with two 56-foot trucks that will provide a central gathering area for the series.

Teams’ entry fees will include meals there and provide a place to connect with Toyota engineers and other officials.

“I think we have a very different way of engaging with our group of drivers, and this series is similar to that,” Irving said. “Knowing that this isn’t going to get 100K people watching, but we want to have a direct connection with the drivers and understand their feelings about car, how do we make it better and empower them to be brand ambassadors for GR.”

BUDGETS, PURSES AND TEAMS

Toyota has positioned the GR Cup as filling a price gap between the Mazda MX-5 Cup (a spec Miata Series known for high-quality racing at very low costs) and the Porsche Carrera Cup

“If you look at the ladder of MX5 to Porsche Cup, the difference in cost is massive,” TRD general manager Tyler Gibbs told NBC Sports. “We slot in closer to Miata than Porsche. We’ll slot another car in potentially in the future above that. It’s a good place for us from a price point perspective. Our road car is slightly more expensive than a Miata, so it makes sense our performance on the car is higher than Miata.”

A GR Cup car will cost $125,000. Full-season costs will vary depending on how much teams spend on equipment and transportation with estimates from $15-35K per event. So a competitive full season probably could be accomplished in the $250,000-$300,000 range.

“The goal was if you can ‘Six Pack’ it like Kenny Rogers and throw it in the back of a trailer, that would be amazing for us,” said Irving, referencing a movie about being an independent racer in NASCAR. “That would make it more of what we hoped it would turn into, just being as accessible as we possibly can make it.”

Toyota has tried to bridge the gap by posting a purse of $1 million for the season. Each race pays $12,000 to win (through $5,000 for eighth) with the season champion earning $50,000.

“Our hope was if you won, the prize money would cover the cost of that weekend,” Gibbs said. “We’re not all the way there. But almost there.”

Toyota also has posted an additional $5,000 (on top of prize money) to the highest-finishing woman in every race (which dovetails with SRO’s 50 percent female-led executive team structure).

GR86 Manufacturing at GRG before the first 3 cars are picked up.
—Swikar Patel/TRD

“If you’re a female driver who wins, you could get very close to sustainable” and cover a team’s race weekend costs, Irving said.

There are four women (Mia Lovell, Toni Breidinger, Cat Lauren and Isabella Robusto) slated for the full schedule.

The 31 cars will be fielded across more than a dozen teams including Smooge Racing (which fields GT4 Supras in SRO) and Copeland Motorsports (with Tyler Gonzalez, a four-time winner in MX-5 Cup). After a test last month at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, teams began taking delivery on Feb. 24.

THE SANCTIONING BODY

Toyota fields Lexus in the GT categories of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship but elected to go with the SRO Motorsports Group (“SRO” stands for Stephane Ratel Organization; Ratel is the founder and CEO) as the sanctioning body for the GR Cup.

With a heavy focus on GT racing, SRO’s marquee events are 24-hour races at the Nurburgring in Germany and Spa in Belgium. In the United States, SRO primarily is focused on GT3 sprint racing, and Gill said it’s viewed as a “gateway to IMSA” and its endurance events.

In choosing SRO, Gibbs said “the schedule was a big part of it.” GR Cup races will be held almost exclusively on Saturday and Sunday mornings in a consistency that would have been difficult with IMSA (which runs a greater volume of bigger series).

“Our people can show up Friday, race Saturday and Sunday and be on the way home Sunday afternoon,” Gibbs said. “For our customer for this car, that was important. They still have jobs and particularly the younger drivers have to go to school. The SRO really fit us. They were very interested.”

Irving also was drawn to SRO’s flexibility with digital media right and free livestreams of races that Toyota can use on its platforms.

Said Irving: “It’s hard to get a schedule that made sense and having a break between races so an amateur can repair their cars and have a month to regroup was a big deal. The long-term vision of SRO was a big part of that. IMSA runs a lot of classes. How we fit in was difficult. Would they have done things to make it work, yeah. But they just didn’t work for the vision we were doing. This is its own thing for us.”

Gill said the SRO is focused on “customer racing” that balances individual interests against factory programs – while still putting an emphasis on the importance of manufacturers such as Toyota.

“We were very impressed with the development of sports car racing at Toyota and what they wanted to do for the brand and the very strategic way they looked at things,” Gill told NBC Sports. “We had enjoyed real success and had a lot of admiration for the programs that Honda and Mazda developed with sports car racing at the grass roots and entry level. We thought they’d done an excellent job. Toyota has taken it to another level and should be commended because it’s good for the entire industry.”

GAZOO RACING AND THE FUTURE

Irving said Toyota has set a goal of turning Gazoo Racing into the premier performance brand in the United States within a decade, and the GR Cup is part of that thrust.

Gazoo Racing is the baby of Toyota Motor Corp. president Akio Toyoda, who founded a separate company called “Garage Racing” while racing under a pseudonym for many years.

Toyoda, who eventually would race a Lexus LFA at Nurburgring, eventually transitioned the program into Gazoo Racing (Gazoo translates to photographs in Japanese; Toyoda often took pictures of vehicles he wanted to build and race) as he rose through the ranks of Toyota.

“The concept of the brand is we’re going to build cars that are fun to drive, not just for accountants,” Gibbs said.
Irving said the intent of GR is “the car is born on track and not the boardroom.” In order to be certified by Toyota for Gazoo Racing, the GR86 had to decrease its lap time by a certain percentage over its street model.

In the long-term, Irving said Toyota could work with another series to adapt the GR86 to endurance races. But in the short-term, there are plans to roll out a “dealer class,” possibly by its COTA round in May.

“That’s our version of a softball league with dealership principals who purchase cars and race against each other,” Wilson said with a laugh. “As competitive as dealers are, we’ll sell a lot of spare parts. It becomes a way to generate competition amongst our dealer body, and we’re going to have some fun with it.”