derBayerische May/June 2024 - 21

D A Y T O N A 2 0 2 4 T H E R O L E X 2 4 W E E K E N D
■ Cars preparing for the start of the Rolex 24.
Consequently, the weight of each car is known, the shape is homologated
(and they scan the cars to confirm full compliance). IMSA sets these
numbers for each GTP car for each race. It's up to the teams to develop an
internal combustion engine and to get the most out of what they have.
Setting the BoP for the GTD/GTD Pro cars has historically been done by
evaluating data from the cars during testing and the races. It's never been an
easy task and continues to be a never-ending process. Before the start of the
new season in January 2024, IMSA decided to conduct a December 2023
test at Daytona to develop a BoP for the Rolex. You can read about IMSAs
plans for " Targeted Performance Testing " in the Sportscar365.com news
from December 19, 2023. If you want more detail on the
IMSA program you can review; Andrew Cotton, " New Age
Thinking - Balance of Performance " , Race Car
Engineering, Feb 2024, p 22-28.
Daytona itself is a bit of an anomaly compared with
the rest of the tracks with its long straights and tight
infield. So, this test would create a BoP just for Daytona.
Beyond Daytona IMSA would revert to the traditional
BoP process. There is a test regularly conducted each
December at Daytona for the IMSA teams. This past December an extra test
day was planned with cars and gold & platinum drivers from each of the
manufacturers to carry out a test plan for IMSA. All the data would go to
IMSA, but it would also be shared among the teams. IMSA gets a lot of data
from the teams anyway, but this should allow the creation of a better understanding
of the BoP. IMSA publishes the BoP document, so we should be
able to see the result. The first use of this BoP would be at the official test
just prior to the Rolex 24 known as the Roar Before 24. I was very surprised
to see that the BoP for the M4 GT3 at the Roar was the same as that used for
last year's 24. This didn't make sense to me. The M4 GT3 wasn't particuMay
I June 2024
larly competitive at the 2023 Rolex 24. This could suggest that IMSA was
using the BMW as a known entity, as the median, and the other car's
performance would be clustered around it. In the six sessions at the Roar,
neither the Paul Miller car nor the Turner car made it into the top ten.
Qualifying for the Rolex takes place as the final event of the Roar.
We had a Rolex 24-hour
race, in front of a record
crowd, in beautiful weather
offering us much
competitive racing through
the night into the morning
and to the end.
In GTD Pro, the Paul Miller (2023 champion) qualified twelfth and in GTD
the Turner car would start in seventeenth. Not such a good result for the
BMW GTD cars. The BMW M4 GT3 is in its third year of competition, so
they should be rather familiar with its capabilities. However, neither car was
competitive at the Roar. It didn't seem like IMSA had this right. As everyone
was arriving at Daytona for the 24, a new BoP was
published by IMSA which made significant changes.
Ten of the eleven GTD cars were given changes in power
and/or weight and fuel capacity. The BMW M4 GT3 was
given a 12 HP increase in power. The pole sitting Porsche
was given a 20 kg weight increase. The Mercedes AMG
got a 15 kg weight reduction and an 11 HP power
increase. Obviously, this amounted to significant adjustments
to most of the cars. This would mean wholesale
changes to the performance of the field. With qualifying having been done
previously at the Roar we would not really see what these changes
amounted to until the race started.
For the Rolex 24 at Daytona, we had the #25 M Hybrid V8 in fourth and
the #24 in eighth. BMW M Team RLL had assembled another stellar driver
lineup; in the #24 Philipp Eng, Jesse Krohn, Dries Vanthour and Augusto
Farfus, in the #25 Connor De Phillippi, Rene Rast, Maxime Martin and Nick
Yelloly. The fourth place BMW was less than half of a second behind the
pole position Cadillac. The two M Hybrid V8s were showing more competitive
speed than last year and better reliability. The race started under blue
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https://sportscar365.substack.com/p/insight-inside-imsas-revamped-gt
derBayerische May/June 2024

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