Story and photos by Tim Adams
The week following IndyCar, the Trans Am series and International GT rolled into Road America for an action-packed weekend.
The Trans Am series has a long and storied history. The first Trans Am race was held in 1966 at Sebring International Raceway. In the early years it was a series dominated by factory teams from US manufactures like Chevrolet, Ford, and Chrysler. The first Trans Am race at Road America was held in 1970. The legendary career of Mark Donohue was born racing in the Trans Am series. Donohue won 29 times, and won three championships driving for another legend, Roger Penske.
The top-class TA, while not having the large factory-based teams anymore, is filled with Camaros and a few Corvettes from Chevrolet, Ford Mustangs, and Dodge Challengers. The TA cars are outputting close 900 horsepower, and are purpose built custom tube-frame chassis with a lot of aerodynamics, but no modern driver aids. There were 6 cars entered in the TA class.
Joining the 6 cars in the TA class on the racetrack at the same time were 12 other cars in various classes. All slower than the TA cars. There is TA Cup which slots between TA and TA2. There is the XGT class for older GT3 cars, the SGT class which featured cars closer to their factory cousins, and rounding out the racers are the GT class which closely resemble a factory racer that you could buy of the showroom floor like a Mustang GT 500. In total five classes can race together at the same time. It can get kind of confusing.
With up to five classes all on track at the same time, this can make for some interesting racing, because the performance gap between TA and the others is very large. Matthew Brabham set a track record in qualifying, putting his Ford Mustang on the pole in under two minutes, 1:59.996. The slowest car in the group qualified at 2:27.210. The almost 28 second gap per lap is a remarkable difference in speed. All the races are sprints now with the longest at one hour, with the difference in speed, the TA cars easily lap the back of the field.
While the TA class is the top of the heap, by far the largest class is now the CUBE 3 Architecture TA2 class, or just TA2 for short. The TA2 class is more cost controlled with spec-built cars that have 530 horsepower engines. Three manufactures are represented in the TA2 class. Chevrolet with the Camaro, Ford with the Mustang, and Toyota with the Camry. 31 cars were in the class and only TA2 cars race at the same time against each other, it is not multiclass like a TA race.
Matthew Brabham also took the pole in the TA2 class at just over 2:09. You can see how much slower the spec built TA2 cars are, ten seconds a lap slower. You may recognize the last name Brabham; Matthew is the son of top sportscar racer Geoff Brabham and the grandson of three-time Formula One champion Sir Jack Brabham. Brabham has dominated TA this year, winning six of the seven races. This was his first race ever in TA2, while taking the pole position, he would finish second in the race. Not a bad result for his first race in TA2.
International GT is comprised of three different championships for Porsche and Ferrari competitors. This series is home to mainly sportsman, or gentleman drivers. The first championship is The Stuttgart Cup for Porsche Cayman cars with the 3.4-, 3.8-, and 4.0-liter engines. The second championship is the Mission Foods GT3 Cup Trophy for older Porsche GT3 cars from the past decade. The third and final championship is the Maranello Cup that includes Ferrari Challenge spec cars.
For more information about Trans Am, I encourage you to visit, https://www.gotransam.com/ and for more information about International GT you can visit, https://internationalgt.net/
All in all, it was a great weekend of racing. If you are looking for a weekend to spend some time at Road America, this is a great event to check out. While the official 2027 schedule has not been released for Trans Am, or Road America, tentatively Trans Am will be back the last weekend of August in 2027.
