BiteSized: Recap of the 2023 IMSA Chevrolet Grand Prix Weekend

Welcome to another edition of Steve’s Motorsport Blog! Now that the wedding is passed and I have a bit more time to write, you’ll be seeing more posts in the future.

Now, I had the opportunity to go to Mosport last weekend for the IMSA festivities and took a boatload of photos, which you can see all the best ones I took/edited over on the latest edition of #SPS here:

First off, I hadn’t realized how much I missed the track and not seeing IMSA series, which makes me want to go even more and perhaps some other tracks in the future…perhaps in the USA next year for a big race or two! (Spoiler Alert: a trip to Daytona and/or Sebring is in the works in the next year or two)

As the racing its self, it was pretty good, as it always is. This weekend saw the (usually) Quebec-only Super Production Series (very similar to CTCC of old, TCB, TCA and ST), VP Racing Series (formerly known as Prototype Challenge), Michelin Pilot Cup and the main event, the Weathertech Chevrolet Grand Prix.

Watching Super Production reminded me of what the glory days of the now-defunct Canadian Touring Car Championship was all about (which I called 4 years ago and finally happened 2 years ago). Lightly-to-moderately modified cars you can buy from your local dealer and go racing on the big tracks. They had a 40+ strong field (!!) all weekend, which was awesome to see. The last couple of races that CTCC had were roughly half of that. Not bad for a series that normally only ran exclusively in Quebec.

Unsurprisingly, the quietest series of the weekend was the VP Series; having a field of around 20 cars between LMP3 and GT4 classes. These are always hard to watch, as they are only amateur-rated racers in quick cars, so the field gets really spread out, and usually very quickly. For example, Sunday’s race in GT4 was won by over 30s (by my watch). LMP3 was much closer, but I’ve always enjoyed watching these series for the ambient and entrancing nature.

The main races on Saturday and Sunday for the Michelin Pilot Cup and Weathertech Sportscar Series races were much, much better. The races for most of the class wins were tight until the end, with some hometown favourites coming close to winning or actually winning, which is always exciting. Having missed Wickens’ class victory at Mosport last year, I was almost treated to redemption. Had it not been for a questionable move by the race winner / fuel strategy on the #33, it would have probably gone that way.

Now, being the first race I’ve attended with the new GTP/LMDh cars, I am extremely impressed. I parked out at turn 3 for the GTP qualifying, and the acceleration coming out of that medium-speed corner was crazy. The sounds are all pretty awesome too, you can tell which is coming towards you without seeing them. It’s very uncanny how the Acura sounds like a current Formula 1 car. Makes me wonder how much Honda pooled resources for the Indycar and F1 engines (remember that the Acura LMDh engine will be the new Honda Indycar spec engine next year).

It makes me really look forward to 2024 with the addition of more cars from Lamborghini and more privateer team efforts from existing GTP manufacturers. Not only that, but we’ll have more cars from Ford and Chevy in the GTD classes, and I would be shocked if Toyota/GR didn’t send more cars for next years GT4 spec classes.

Well, that about wraps up this edition of BiteSized, I will have another regular length post put out sometime in the next week or so. Until then, please hit the buttons below to share, like and comment. I will see you all later!