Dayton 24hr 2023
 

Classes finally look great, again.
GTD (closest to street cars) ended up with Mercedes, Corvette, Lexus & Lamborghini in the top four spots, all on the same lap. Some great competition.
GTP was Acura, Acura, Cadillac, Cadillac. Supposedly BMW and Mercedes are to join in the fray later this season. GTP is a hybrid class with battery regeneration on braking.
Maserati was 1, 2 in one of the LMP classes. Not sure about the other.

It was some great racing with at least four (4) cars on the same lap at the end in three of the four classes, so no one could "skate" to the win. The LMP(2?) was decided by about 2ft at the line after 24hr of racing.

Hopefully, Craig was in attendance this year and will give us a full report.

Yep, watched the last 90 minutes. Tom Blomquist did a great job in the last stint.

Great race weekend!

He did. But, it helps to have the fastest car. :yes:

Yes, the #60 clearly pulled out of corners stronger than his competition.

My understanding is the GTP cars all ran the same electric/electronic portion of the hybrid system, so the #60 somewhere found that extra bit of "gasoline powered" torque to launch them out of the corners while not sacrificing the HP needed to stay out front on the straights. Ganassi should have ordered the #01 Cadillac to let the #02 Cadillac by as it appeared to be to at least able to keep up with the #10 Acura. Instead they raced each other and fell behind. Porsche was fast at times, but obviously has some work to do to be competitive in GTP.

Will guess the Mercedes & (maybe) Maserati GTD Pro & GTD cars will get some weight added after the GTD Pro/GTD results. Interesting that 3 privateer GTD Mercedes & a Maserati finished ahead of the factory Mercedes & Corvette. The factory folks will likely be talking to IMSA about slowing down the GTD cars. Porsche will likely get some relief on the BofP in GTD Pro/GTD.

Should be an entertaining year for sports car racing at the highest level.

I binged out on the racing this past weekend. Up at 2:30 AM watching. The racing was spectacular as always.

I was particularly pleased with the MPC race on Friday though. Great results from some young upcoming drivers.

I really enjoyed the two Mazda MX5 cup races. Very competitive as designed. Nothing like watching 3 or 5 MX5s going tail to nose around the banked super speedway sections.

If one of them pulled out to pass he/she would lose 20mph and likely the draft.

The winner used the draft to pull ahead in the last turn by ‘slingshotting’ around the leader at the time.

Same thing happens in LMP2. That’s what makes Daytona kind of special in the sportscar racing world. The long stretches on the super speedway bring drafting into play.