Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA
***The No. 99 AO Racing Oreca 07 Gibson returned to action in Thursday’s second IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship practice session for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, less than five hours after an accident by PJ Hyett that appeared to have severely damaged ‘Spike’ the LMP2 dragon after Hyett spun and backed the car into the Turn 17 wall.
***Team principal Gunnar Jeannette confirmed to Sportscar365 that the majority of the repairs were made at the rear of the car, which included a “precautionary” gearbox change.
***The No. 79 JDC-Miller Motorsports Oreca was handed a 60-minute stop-and-hold penalty during Practice 2 for technical non-compliance for unhomologated components installed on the car.
***Sportscar365 understands that the car, which is making its first start of the season, was equipped with laser ride-height sensors, which are forbidden in LMP2. Three LMP2 cars also faced 60-minute stop-and-hold penalties during the Roar Before the Rolex 24 for the same infraction.
***A total of 51 drivers, mostly FIA Bronze or Silver-rated, will be required to turn laps in tonight’s night practice in order to be eligible to drive during periods of darkness in the race. Click Here for the list.
***IMSA’s announcement of the 2027 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge calendars marked the third consecutive year the sanctioning body confirmed next season’s schedules for its two top series at Sebring International Raceway, months ahead of other motorsports series.
***In addition to IMSA President John Doonan, Sebring International Raceway President and general manager Matt Muha, Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta President and general manager Rick Humphrey and Dicky Riegel, President and CEO of Lime Rock Park, which was announced to be returning as a Pilot Challenge headline race, were all in attendance (pictured above).
***Humphrey revealed that Road Atlanta will be adding more than 1,000 parking spaces to the west side of the property, behind Turns 10a and 10b as well as a new access road in time for this year’s Motul Petit Le Mans following a sell-out of the 2025 event.
***Despite no new venues on the WeatherTech Championship calendar for next year, Doonan reiterated that they continue to “investigate a bunch of different places that we can go” in the future as a sanctioning body.
***Doonan said: “The consistency we’ve seen, I think has been a driver from what [we] saw at Petit, what Matt [Muha] and his team are seeing here, and all the promoters are seeing when it comes to record attendance. We continue to look at places that we could go to keep it continuously fresh. This switch to Lime Rock is a touch of freshness for the ’27 calendar. But just know we continue to look at places where our partners want to go and activate and markets where we think will put on a great show.”
***When asked if an additional race could be added to the existing schedule, Doonan said: “I think if you added something, you’d have to try to take something away because you can’t do that to the teams and the manufacturers and everybody that is building out the budgets. If we added one, we’d probably have to take one away.”
***IMSA’s plan to extend sanctioned testing to all Michelin Endurance Cup venues next year was based on team feedback, for cost-saving measures, but will also benefit the sanctioning body in terms of data collection for Balance of Performance purposes. Organizations such as APEX ONE have hosted private testing sessions at many IMSA tracks for teams, which were forced to use up their test day allocations.
***Doonan said: “They either come and test alone or they have a few that test together. By bringing everyone together I think we can save everybody some cost. I think there is additional data that we can gather closer to the event, within a 60-day window to the event. That’s really the driver.”
***He acknowledged that IMSA still has “some planning work to do” in determining how many private test days teams will be eligible for in 2027 when factoring in the increased sanctioned testing opportunities, which have not traditionally counted towards that tally.
***Doonan indicted the discussions will also involve the FIA and ACO, which along with IMSA, have a common testing protocol for the Hypercar/GTP classes to ensure parity between top-class manufacturers. “Definitely for the top category, GTP, we have a testing blotter of where people are going testing,” he said. “We’re trying to think like a race team. We’ve had OEMs say ‘Save us from ourselves and put some constraints around testing.’ Because if there were no constraints, they’d go testing every day, probably.”
***Sennan Fielding is making his IMSA debut, with the 30-year-old Brit, who raced against George Russell in the 2014 BRDC Formula 4 Championship, joining Gerry Kraut and Josh Burdon in JDC-Miller’ LMP2 entry, which makes its first start of the season.
***Fielding, who was recently downgraded to FIA Silver driver rating, tested the Minnesota-based team’s Porsche 963 at Sebring last year, producing impressive results according to team advisor Richard Westbrook, who said that test helped lead to the LMP2 opportunity this weekend.
***Sportscar365 understands that both of Proton Competition’s Porsche 963s have been transferred to collectors, with the first chassis now in the possession of WeatherTech founder and CEO David MacNeil, who had pre-purchased the car, and the second 963 having gone to an undisclosed entity.
***The development all but rules out an imminent return to top-level prototype racing for the Christian Ried-led team, which recently completed the full absorption of Porsche single-make and 24H Series team Huber Racing under the Proton Competition banner.
***Action Express Racing team manager Gary Nelson has supported Cadillac’s decision to place Jack Aitken in a full-time FIA World Endurance Championship seat with Hertz Team JOTA, most notably as a co-driver to Earl Bamber, whom they share the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R in the WeatherTech Championship with.
***Nelson told Sportscar365: “We’re really excited about Jack doing those WEC races. With Earl and Jack working together to make a better car, almost on a weekly basis, it should pay off big-time for us. It’s hard to put a value on it but a guy that’s running a Cadillac every week, to us, makes things go smoother. Even no matter what their talent level is, you just pick up these small things that are intangible but they make a difference on a weekend.”
***Tom Gamble said the postponement of the WEC Prologue and subsequent Qatar 1812km event has made it “a little easier” for the numerous drivers, manufacturers and teams that were set to undertake a logistic exercise to get from Sebring to Doha in time for the second day of the Prologue on Monday. Both events were called off in the wake of the U.S./Israel attacks on Iran, which has caused regional conflicts.
***Gamble said: “We were kind of all prepared, ready to go in Qatar and I think it was very exciting to see how the Valkyrie is going to get on in the first round. It was actually the (global race) debut of the car. It was going to be exciting to see how we got on, but we’ll have to wait a little bit longer. Obviously sharing about the circumstances, I think it was definitely the right decision to be made.”
***Heart of Racing team principal Ian James said a decision on Gamble’s replacement for the two clashing WEC races on the weekends of Long Beach and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park has not yet been determined, although confirmed that Eduardo Barrichello, who was recently announced in one of the team’s WEC LMGT3 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evos, will prioritize his WeatherTech Championship GTD effort.
***James told Sportscar365: “We will slot somebody in beside Dudu. Unfortunately it makes it really hard to be consistent.”
***While Heart of Racing has continued to run a single Aston Martin Valkyrie in the GTP class, James has not completely ruled out seeing a second car in the future but it would depend on “so many different things.” The team runs a pair of Hypercar entires because of the WEC’s two-car per manufacturer mandate.
***He said: “It’s never a never. But lots of things would have to change or move into place for that to be the case. We run the three cars really well right now. To go up to four cars is not just adding a car, it’s a really big infrastructure change. There’s so many different things to think about. Let’s see, hopefully, the Valkyrie gets back to being competitive in IMSA and then nothing’s off the table then.”
***While having raced against each other in the WEC last year, Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor are embracing the return of ‘BamThor’ to the WeatherTech Championship paddock. “We’re going to bring back BamThor t-shirts and have a clashing race,” Bamber told Sportscar365. “It’s really nice to have Larry back. It’s cool to see the caliber of driver over there too. It’s a shame they’re not doing the WEC.”
***One of the overlooked changes to the GTP class Balance of Performance for this weekend has been a change in the torque threshold that affects how quickly cars get full power back after surpassing power limits. The ‘PPULimitRate_BoP’ regulatory BoP parameter has been adjusted from 0.2 kW to 1.0 kW, which Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid believes will have a knock-on effect on how teams and manufacturers tune their power controllers.
***The adjustment was already evaluated in the first two test sessions at the Roar Before the Rolex 24 in January and also in WEC competition. “You’ll get your power back quicker as it will decay quicker if you overshot the PP margin, it will decay quicker so you can have all your margin back to be able to overshoot again,” explained Diuguid.
***When asked how it could effect the Porsches, Diuguid said: “It’s tough to say. I think Porsche does a really good job on the software side and we do get some [info] from the WEC on how close people are to the PPU margin and Porsche was always at the forefront of that reduction. Obviously we try to say these rules apply the same to everyone but obviously with the DK rate increasing, you can have more overshoots and not have an accrued penalty there.”
***Diuguid, meanwhile, has responded to Ferrari and Toyota’s claims of IMSA GTP manufacturers having an advantage with Michelin’s new-for-2026 Pilot Sport Endurance line of tires due to the amount of pre-season testing they were allowed, which could benefit LMDh manufacturers such as BMW and Cadillac that are competing in both championships.
***It’s understood that IMSA GTP teams have yet to sample Michelin’s new Hard compound, which will debut at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, with private testing set to take place in May. “Nobody was able to have access to the tires until the November test in Daytona,” said Diuguid. “I’ve seen some other articles about Ferrari complaining by how much access we’ve had already. I think it just depends on your perspective.”
***Thursday’s WeatherTech Championship action wraps up tonight with a 90-minute night practice from 7:45-9:15 p.m. EST, ahead of qualifying on Friday at 11:25 a.m., which will be streamed live on Peacock as well as IMSA’s YouTube channel.
John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John
