IMSA Race 2017 Continental Tire Road Race Showcase(IMSA @ Road America) Aug 03-06

[Matt]

The cars and stars of IMSA make their return to the 4-mile "National Park of Speed," Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin's Road America. The Weathertech Sportscar Championship will compete in a 2 hour, 40 minute race on Sunday afternoon. Can the Action Express 31 make it three consecutive wins at Road America, or will another team be able to take the fight to them?

Also competing over the weekend is IMSA's Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, Lamborghini Super Trofeo, and Porsche GT3 Cup USA series.

The race will be broadcast on a five minute delay, starting at 230P Eastern, on Fox Sports 1.

Essentials:

IMSA Radio

IMSA WSC/CTSCC Spotter Guide

Entry List for WSC(35 cars)

Entry List for CTSCC(32 cars)

Entry list for Porsche GT3 Cup USA(21 cars)

Entry list for Lamborghini Super Trofeo(21 cars)

Event Schedule(at bottom of page)

Elkhart Lake, WI Weekend Weather

Event History

Track Layout

Track Graphics c/o RacingCircuits.info

Last Years Race:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNSHhs7-Vsw

[MaskedRacer]

12:35 pm is the schedule announcement. Would be neat if there was a stream for it. IMSA radio I would hope.

[jjvincent]

32 cars in Conti. That must be a mistake. There were 34 cars last year and we all know the reason why (nobody knows how to build GS racecars anymore). So with the explosive growth of GT4, the Conti field has to be at least 50 for the whole field.

If the 32 is true, I know IMSA will be smart enough to just make all cautions a short one because spending 20 minutes farting around doing split pit stops, wavebys and whatever else, makes no sense any more (God forbid it rains then we might as well extend it to 45 minutes). There are around 40-45 pit stalls at Road America (that doesn't count the 1/4 mile of the old pits). Even if the whole field came in along with the pace car and every safety vehicle at the facility, you'd still have room for the Elkhart Lake Police cruisers and an ice cream truck out on pit road.

[jjvincent]

Would be neat if there was a stream for it. IMSA radio I would hope.

You mean like the stream listed here?
https://www.imsa.com/events/continen...ace-showcase-0

[DeezPutz]

Originally Posted by jjvincent

32 cars in Conti. That must be a mistake. There were 34 cars last year and we all know the reason why (nobody knows how to build GS racecars anymore). So with the explosive growth of GT4, the Conti field has to be at least 50 for the whole field.

If the 32 is true, I know IMSA will be smart enough to just make all cautions a short one because spending 20 minutes farting around doing split pit stops, wavebys and whatever else, makes no sense any more (God forbid it rains then we might as well extend it to 45 minutes). There are around 40-45 pit stalls at Road America (that doesn't count the 1/4 mile of the old pits). Even if the whole field came in along with the pace car and every safety vehicle at the facility, you'd still have room for the Elkhart Lake Police cruisers and an ice cream truck out on pit road.

Go away.

[MaskedRacer]

Race control finally realizes that not being happy with the yellow flag is good. This race at Road America could go full course yellow free. Good chance at it I think.

[jjvincent]

When you keep reducing the amount of cars on the track and you are running on a 4 mile one, the cars can spread out. On the other hand, one mistake in the kink by one driver can throw out the caution. Like last year where two drivers couldn't calm down early and that turned into a debacle. So, it takes 20-25 minutes for a typical IMSA Road America caution and you only have a 120 minute race. So, a short 2 lap one where everyone can come in right away makes more sense. Split class pit stops were because in GA, we ended up having 105 cars show up at VIR back in 2005 and there were only 35 pit stalls. Now you only have 32 cars and 45 stalls. many just sit empty and you can literally put enough of a gap on pit road that everyone has plenty of room.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by jjvincent

32 cars in Conti. That must be a mistake. There were 34 cars last year and we all know the reason why (nobody knows how to build GS racecars anymore). So with the explosive growth of GT4, the Conti field has to be at least 50 for the whole field.

Well, GS has grown by 50% over last year, which is hardly stellar, considering the numbers they're coming from, but the place where cars are being lost this year is ST, with a field that has dropped by almost 40% over last year.

The reasons for this drop are pretty obvious, I think: With no firm commitment by the management to ST having a future in the series, teams are not very eager to build new cars, while the old cars are slowly dwindling away.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Speed-King

Well, GS has grown by 50% over last year, which is hardly stellar, considering the numbers they're coming from, but the place where cars are being lost this year is ST, with a field that has dropped by almost 40% over last year.

The reasons for this drop are pretty obvious, I think: With no firm commitment by the management to ST having a future in the series, teams are not very eager to build new cars, while the old cars are slowly dwindling away.

I don't think there's actually been a new car built for the series in a few years.

They're too expensive to convert from the street car. Modern factory electronics are a *****.

[nasportscar]

Originally Posted by Matt

I don't think there's actually been a new car built for the series in a few years.

They're too expensive to convert from the street car. Modern factory electronics are a *****.

There haven't even been discussions w/ IMSA about building new cars since 2015 in GS or ST. People complain about "not letting teams build cars", but nobody is/was building new cars to old GS spec or ST spec anyways. When was the last time a new car was built and debuted in CTSCC? 2015

[Matt]

still bitter, eh john?

[skycafe]

Another great Intro Matt!

[JHamilton]

A lot of salt in this thread for a race that hasn't happened yet. I'm looking forward to it.

[JeffB]

.

[Matt]

TCR.

It'll make the races more interesting too, because TCR cars are nearly as quick, or faster than GT4 cars at certain tracks.

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by Matt

It'll make the races more interesting too, because TCR cars are nearly as quick, or faster than GT4 cars at certain tracks.

The inter-class battles are probably not going to happen. Had a twitter convo with Karl Thomson of Compass 360 a bit ago and he thought that the TCRs would be pegged back by lower performance ECU settings. Apparently the Audi has four setting between 290 and 350bhp.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Speed-King

The inter-class battles are probably not going to happen. Had a twitter convo with Karl Thomson of Compass 360 a bit ago and he thought that the TCRs would be pegged back by lower performance ECU settings. Apparently the Audi has four setting between 290 and 350bhp.

IMSA has said they're going to let them run as full-bore TCR spec cars.

The Clubsport ones in PWC are de-tuned to compete int he TC class.

[fieldodreams79]

For the event itself, which should have some cars on course shortly, Friday looks wet, Saturday looks dry-ish and Sunday looks wet.

[fieldodreams79]

Sounds like there's been heavy rain and local flooding around and on the circuit itself, where some portions of the track were under water. With the forecast, it could be an ugly weekend.

Hoping for drier weather and good luck to those attending!

[chernaudi]

And more rain is forecast for the Elkhart Lake/Plymouth area. Friday there's a chance of rain, Saturday might be mostly dry, but there's a chance of rain again Sunday.

My main concern is how much water will it take to cause ponding, especially since there's already been heavy rain in the area this week.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

And more rain is forecast for the Elkhart Lake/Plymouth area. Friday there's a chance of rain, Saturday might be mostly dry, but there's a chance of rain again Sunday.

My main concern is how much water will it take to cause ponding, especially since there's already been heavy rain in the area this week.

A little wet weather action wouldn't be bad, but you're right, if the track floods it isn't good for anyone.

[chernaudi]

If the ground's saturated, it might not take much to flood parts of the track. Remember that the '07 ALMS race almost got red flagged and was under yellow for almost an hour because of heavy rain.

If the ground can't hold anymore water, a decent thunderstorm could cause the track to flood in low areas.

[MaskedRacer]

Nice to see under certain wet/tire conditions the GTLM's can get up in the overall top 5 for brief periods at least.

I wish the DPI/Gibson engines did not have so much horsepower, then we could get more of that.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by MaskedRacer

Nice to see under certain wet/tire conditions the GTLM's can get up in the overall top 5 for brief periods at least.

I wish the DPI/Gibson engines did not have so much horsepower, then we could get more of that.

thats what we used to have and the drivers hated it.

[chernaudi]

Power is nothing without control, as Pirelli says in their ads (ironic given the junk tires they use in F1 and to a lesser extent, SRO GT). DP's had 600+bhp at Road Atlanta in '15, but they couldn't keep it on the road. Of course, the then contemporary Conti Prototype rain tires were just junk. Michelin's better rain tires on GT cars had a lot to answer for that day. One would hope that Continental learned their lesson on that one and the current LMP2-based cars seem to be a better match for that much power.

And I know that the first session was held in mixed conditions, but that's has to be encouraging for VFR, and Ligier, now that they do have a car with an all-pro driver line up.

Probably does go to show what most of us already know or accepted, that the basic Riley was just horrible.