Story and photos by Tim Adams
IMSA rolled into the 2026 season finale at Road Atlanta on a high, with record crowds, amazing social media numbers, and good broadcast numbers. Joining the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship series were again support series including the VP Challenge, Mazda MX-5, Porsche Carrera Cup, and Michelin Pilot Challenge. There are a number of issues that need to be dealt with however, in this writer/photographer’s opinion. More on that later.
The weather, although the temperatures were not that bad, the humidity was off the charts. Raceday was particularly miserable. It was like standing in the middle of a Florida swamp the entire day. The pre-race activities were damped by some rain, and there was a short mandated red flag for lightning about fours hours into the race. The rain did not curtail the fans’ enthusiasm for the pre-race grid walk. Thousands of fans poured into the paddock, then out onto the grid to get a closeup look at all the cars. This is still one of the best things that any series does for fans. Every ticket is paddock pass.
The overall winner of the race was the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963. This was Penske’s first win since going back-to-back in the season opening races at Daytona and Sebring. Penske sweeps the long enduros for 2026. The No. 31 Whelen Cadillac took home the season long GTP points battle by merely just starting the race. In LMP2 the No. 4 CrowdStrike Racing Oreca took the race win, and the LMP2 season long points championship. In GTD Pro, Car Blanche in their Aston Martin GT3 Evo took home their first IMSA win, and even more impressive, this was the first time racing in GTD Pro. The season long GTD Pro points battle was coming down to the end between the Paul Miller Racing BMW and the No. 4 Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette. It all ended late in the race as the No. 4 Corvette was punted off the track by one of the Ford Racing Mustangs. The Paul Miller Racing BMW took the title. In GTD, the race win, and season long GTD points battle went to the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo.
I was only able to cover two races this year, the six-hour enduro at Road America, and of course this race, the 10-hour enduro here at Road Atlanta. Both of the races were unmitigated caution flag filled disasters. Petit featured a record 16 caution flags for on track incidents, and one red flag for lightning in the area. There were 6 cautions the last two hours. 16 cautions, let that sink in. This is crazy. If you throw out the approximate half hour for the red flag, 4 four hours were under caution, this is close to half the race. This must stop. Through some sort of miracle, the last 12 minutes of the race were caution free.
In my opinion, and one also shared by many fans if you pay any attention to social media, IMSA must implement Virtual Safety Car or VSC procedures. For fans not familiar with this, in the WEC under a VSC, the entire field is frozen, and all cars must slow to 50mph. The cars use a button on the steering wheel mapped to keep them at 50mph, just like the pit speed limiter that the cars also use. GPS is used to monitor all the cars to make sure no one is cheating and speeding up. This keeps the entire field spread out where they are, they do not all bunch together for the chaotic restarts that occur in IMSA. These restarts often lead to more cautions. With VSC, once the VSC ends, the teams and drivers are allowed to resume racing speed, all spread out, so no messy restarts. Under the VSC, the pits are open, and much safer for crews since the field is spread out, there is not a mad dash of multiple cars entering the pits at one time. Since the field is frozen, we do not have to waste all the time we do in IMSA with wave arounds, getting all the classes back together, cars rounding the track at close to race speed with safety workers on track as they try to catch up to the back of the back. There were some extremely dangerous situations at Road America with safety workers nearly struck by cars. NASCAR owns IMSA. It is time for IMSA to step away from their parents, and develop its own safety car procedures. We cannot continue like this. The product is unwatchable.
Driving standards need to be overhauled. The hammer must come down, for the lack of a better word, on idiotic driving. A drive through, a stop and go penalty, means almost nothing with the multiple caution flags and the ability to get your place back. The penalty needs to be a hammer. Park the car in the pits for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it takes to make it clear to teams and drivers that if you cause an incident, your possibility of a good finish in the race is over.
There is trouble brewing in the paddock as well with teams leaving IMSA. In GTD, PFAFF and DragonSpeed have both announced that they will not be back. Rumors are still swirling that your GTD Pro champion, Paul Miller Racing, will not be back. That is not a good look for your sport if a defending season long champion fails to come back. The silly season is upon us, so maybe we will see some good news before the IMSA testing in December at Daytona.
In the top class GTP, the numbers are dropping as well. Acura announced a couple of months ago that they are throwing all their eggs in the IndyCar basket and leaving IMSA. They were not a struggling team; they started the race qualifying in the No. 1 and 2 position. So, we lose at least two GTP cars in 2027. There are three new manufacturers, with GTP/Hypercars, however. Genesis, Ford, and McLaren. Unfortunately, none of the three have made any serious considerations of competing in IMSA. To me, the biggest mistake is Ford. You are a US based manufacturer, and you are not running in the top class in the US based sportscar championship. The costs are considerably higher now than when Ford ran in both the WEC and IMSA with the Ford GT in GTLM. All three can run in both WEC and IMSA, but Ford not being in IMSA is a bad look. That is just my opinion, but I don’t write the checks for the cost of these racing programs.
IMSA has a fantastic product, on and off track. On the track the racing is amazing, when they are actually racing. Big changes need to be made with the safety car procedures. Will IMSA have the stones to do it? Sadly, I think they will just try to tweak the current system.
Ending on a high note, I would like to highlight AO Racing. Classes should be taught at universities on Marketing 101 on the success of this team. It is amazing to walk around the track and paddock and see how many kids and parents are wearing AO Racing gear, have AO Racing stickers on coolers, or are carrying AO Racing plushies. It is crazy. Watching kids’ faces light up in the paddock when they are around the team is so much fun. For this race, skeleton Rexy was back in GTD Pro, this time with lit up ribs and teeth, and Rocky made his IMSA debut in LMP2.
That is it for the 2026 season. It is a short off season with testing at Daytona only two months away in December. I will see you at the track in 2027.
