Image: Daytona International Speedway
Look forward to the racing world because the sports car resurgence is among us. After the collapse of the LMP1 and GTE classes around the world, I thought we were headed for a racing lull for a while, at least in sports car competition. IMSA seems to be the exception proving the rule When you think about it today, Racer.com said that the field for the Daytona 24 was booked out with 60 confirmed cars and a few more were on the waiting list. 60 cars entering the grid is an improvement of 11 cars over the 2021 run of the twice-round, 24/7 endurance classic.
Last year’s race featured just six cars in the dying GTLM category, and the class it is replacing for 2022, GTD Pro, will feature an impressive 13 cars from factory-backed teams with all-pro driver line-ups. Impressively, the spread of GTD Pro does not mean that there will be fewer GTD Am cars, as this class will also grow from 19 in 2021 to 22 in 2022. That means 35 cars on the grid will be GT3 machines that will improve the road of the race car relevance for the average fan.
The top of the line prototype will be a Cadillac Vs. Acura affair, with a total of seven cars, five of them from the performance / luxury brand GM. It is all the more devastating when the Mazda is removed from the starting list. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still going to be a good fight between the two manufacturers and DPi is still holding the same seven cars as it was back in January this year. It’ll be really exciting to see what happens when the LMDh cars debut in 2023, but let’s focus on the DPi swan song for now. It’ll be fine.
Add 10 Pro-Am entries in the LMP2 category and eight more in LMP3 and it looks like a pretty full field for the Daytona race. I suspect that every racing series in the racing world would be thrilled if the number of participants increased by 22 percent from year to year.