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IMSA drivers ponder just how hard good racing should be

IMSA fans enjoy watching “good, hard racing,” and many of its drivers enjoy taking part in it. But it was clear that after the Road America weekend two months ago that a threshold had been breached.

After a two-hour, 40-minute race marred with unnecessary contact and blocking, in which more than half the race was spent behind a safety car, It was clear that “good, hard racing” had been twisted into something that was hard to watch, and harder to be embroiled in.

Race Director Beaux Barfield and IMSA’s stewards needed to step in. Beginning at VIRginia International Raceway later in August, and continuing through the Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis, there have been many more penalties handed down for avoidable contact and blocking. Ahead of this weekend’s Motul Petit Le Mans, many of the series’ top drivers were eager to weigh in on the subject.

“Everyone can make mistakes, and that happens,” said Alexander Sims of Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports. “But there has certainly been a lot of racing in the near past that was not just people making mistakes: It was people knowingly driving other people off the track, going beyond what I think the spirit of the racing should be.

“So I think the stewarding has been forced to take a very hard line, and maybe they’ve had to go maybe too far the other way to make a point, but that’s just the reality of the situation. I think the right decision has been made.

“Having been in the stewards’ room in other championships myself, I can understand how difficult it is from their point of view to officiate correctly every single time. But I think on the whole, the IMSA championship is officiated very well. I think we can all probably agree that Road America was too out of hand and so I think the right reaction has happened.”

Sims is embroiled in a tough, winner-take-all fight for the GTD PRO title with DragonSpeed and its lead driver, Albert Costa – who feels the racing has been much more respectful after the initial change in direction from race control.

“I think we got all over it,” said the Spaniard. “Especially the last two races, because the respect I got from the other drivers while overtaking, that made me fight for the championship. Driving like before Road America, maybe I was not overtaking – maybe I was going on the gravel, and maybe I was not fighting at the end of the championship.

“I’m thankful for that change of mentality and being more strict to us, the stewards, on the briefing and everything. I think the racing has been nicer, more respectful between drivers, and at the end, it’s what we all want, so I’m happy with that.”

The rough driving in Road America was particularly pronounced in the GT categories, and it wasn’t just in the nominally Pro/Am GTD class – GTD PRO in particular has had some very bad-tempered racing, even going back to the infamous scuffle between Tommy Milner and Augusto Farfus at Daytona. Milner’s co-driver Nicky Catsburg was particularly pointed with his criticism of his GTD PRO peers when it came to the driving standards at Road America.

Over in LMP2, Dan Goldburg of United Autosports USA now faces an uphill climb to take the championship in large part due to a first-lap collision between himself and George Kurtz on the first lap of the Road America race. He isn’t bitter about it, though.

“Look, I’m a racer. We all are. Watch the video: I don’t think there was intent,” Goldburg said. “I don’t think he was like, ‘Let me run Dan off the road here’ – I think he didn’t have the front end, and he hit me.”

And while stricter penalties wouldn’t have changed Goldburg’s predicament after Road America, he is supportive of the new direction, and would be in favor of looser enforcement as long as that is communicated clearly to drivers.

“Even if he got responsibility for that, it wouldn’t change my championship – and at Indy, we had one incident towards the end of the race where we felt we weren’t given the racing room on the outside. One of the specific rules that Beaux put out there. Maybe it wasn’t as easily seen with the cameras in that area.

“But overall, I’m happy to hear things clarified. And we’ll play by those rules, whatever they are. As long as we know them and it’s equal treatment, I’m all for it.”

“For sure, it’s good to see everything get pulled back a little more into the space that we want, so I think we all support this,” said Dane Cameron, Goldburg’s championship rival at AO Racing, the main benefactor of that Road America incident. “When the change is so drastic and so sudden at a critical point of the year, it can be a little bit tough, for sure.

“It always tends to get more aggressive through the course of the year. It’s pretty standard. It starts to get a bit desperate – everybody wants to get the win they haven’t got on the course of the year, and you start to get a bit of hurt feelings over contact throughout the year.

“Most of us learned the hard way in Indy, for sure. And there’s going to be some calls that you feel are fair, there’s some calls you feel are not fair. But that’s always typical, regardless.”

Traffic density makes for frenetic action at places like Indianapolis – and Road Atl anta. Jake Galstad/IMSA

Indianapolis was a difficult race due to traffic density in particular, and Cameron hinted that it could be a problem at Road Atlanta, where the lap is short, the layout is more treacherous, and the field is just as dense.

“Indy is just a really difficult place to manage traffic. Traffic-wise, it’s not great,” he said. “The speed of the cars in the categories at the moment, there’s a lot of strange overlaps between all the classes that make for some really tough interactions for everybody. So I’d like to see a little work done in this department.

In one instance, the renewed push for clean, responsible racing has altered a key championship battle in the last two races. The Bob Akin Award, given to IMSA’s top GTD Bronze driver and conta ining an automatic invitation to Le Mans, swung one way at VIR and the other at Indy because of stricter discipline for blocking.

“We were on the receiving end of one of these new harsh penalties in VIR, which moved us from fourth to last – so it was painful, and we were obviously not happy about it, it’s not what you’re used to in IMSA,” recalled Inception Racing co-driver Ollie Millroy, co-driver to Akin Award contender Brendan Iribe. “But I think generally, the message is definitely getting across to all of us as drivers what they’re expecting to see in race control.

“I actually said to Beaux after Indy that I just thought, even between different classes, the driving standards were just so much better in the last two races.”

“I completely agree that what we saw at Road America was going a little bit too far there,” said AWA’s Matt Bell, co-driver of Orey Fidani, who received a blocking penalty of his own late in the race at Indy. “But perhaps I’m not too sure going the equal and opposite reaction on the other side of what the line should be for IMSA was the perfect solution so far.

“I would say there’s been some calls that I don’t think were quite in line with what IMSA racing has been about the last few years. It was a little bit too tight in reaction to everything that happened at Road America.”

It’s likely to be the case at Petit Le Mans as well. It won’t be an easy task with the challenging course layout of Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta and the density of traffic.

Count BMW’s Dries Vanthoor among those who feel pendulum may have swung too far against hard racing. Jake Galstad/IMSA

Of course, not every driver is pleased with the new direction from above. Along with Bell, BMW M Team RLL’s Dries Vanthoor feels that the pendulum may have swung too far in the other direction when it comes to policing contact.

“I do think now they went a bit too much to the other side of the wall,” said the Belgian. “There should be somewhere in the middle, because now I find that you still need to be able to race. IMSA was always cool because you could race and you could lean a bit on each other, as long as you left each other space and were fair to each other.

“OK, at Road America, everybody didn’t care about each other, just had no respect and pushed each other off. But now I feel like you also can’t really race anymore. Because as soon as you do something wrong, at least on the GTP side – let’s say, moving under braking, which is not allowed. But what

is moving under braking?

“I think there’s still a big topic to talk about that as well. At least the message is clear. But I do think that maybe a conversation with a couple of drivers, together to Beaux, I think, would be a good idea. And hopefully we can find the ‘middle way’ which I think would be really great.”

At Indy, Genesis Magma Racing’s Pipo Derani was clearly unhappy with the new direction, writing on social media: “What is going on with IMSA race control? The series that was all about hard racing is now giving drive-through penalties exactly for hard racing?”

Of course, Derani was involved in a controversial clash with Filipe Albuquerque at this race two years ago, one which ultimately decided the inaugural GTP championship in favor of Derani and Sims’ Cadillac V-Series.R. Race control ruled it a racing incident at the time.

The temptation to make an aggressive move for a championship will be hard to resist, even in the last hour. If race control and the stewards call this race as they have the last two races, however, it’s clear that an incident like that, or the incident two years ago involving Ricky Taylor and Felipe Nasr that decided the 2021 DPi title, will be met with harsh discipline. Whether it’s in the beginning, the middle, or the end of the race.

But there is still the chance that they will be a bit more lenient with rough driving, knowing the stakes at hand. It’s something worth watching once the green flag drops tomorrow…