The IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship returns to Detroit for the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic after a 2 absence owing to the cancellation of the 2020 event by the COVID pandemic.
Much about the WeatherTech Championship has changed since Dane Cameron & Juan Pablo Montoya steered Team Penske’s Acura ARX-05 to the overall and Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class win in Motown in 2019, even as Jack Hawksworth and Richard Heistand captured GT Daytona (GTD) honors in the AIM Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3.

For openers, the DPi and GTD cars won’t have the 2.35-mile Belle Isle circuit all to themselves as, only fitting for a race entitled the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic,
the GT Le Mans (GTLM) class will be represented by a pair of corvettes Racing Corvette C8.Rs.

Interestingly, each of the 3 classes will be competing for different spoils in Saturday’s 100-minute race.
Points for the season-long WeatherTech Championship are on the line for DPi competitors, while the dozen GTD cars entered will vie for IMSA WeatherTech Sprint Cup points awarded in the second of the season’s eight non-endurance races.

And those ‘Corvettes?

They’ll compete against each other in a non-points-paying race between the No. 3 of Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor and the No. 4 piloted by Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy.
While Corvette Racing will surely look forward to putting on a good, clean show in their hometown, suffice to say the elbows will be out in force on a day when there’s nothing more (or less) than bragging rights at stake among those four alpha males.

As for DPi, whether you consider “recent form” to be the 2021 season to date or the most recent Chevrolet Sports Car Classic, it would seem Wayne Taylor Racing’s No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-05 must count as a favorite this weekend.
Acura is the “defending” DPi winner at Detroit and the combination of WTR, Acura and Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque lead the team, manufacturer and driver championships, thanks to wins at the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Acura Sports Car Challenge Presented by the TLX Type S at Mid-Ohio.

Speaking of redressing things, the No. 01 Cadillac Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi V.R has been positively snake-bitten to date, snatching defeat (or having defeat snatched) from the jaws of victory on a couple of occasions.
Needless to say, CGR would like nothing better than to celebrate its return to prototype racing by claiming its first overall win in IMSA competition since 2015 in front of the Cadillac/General Motors brass.

Catch all the action from Detroit on NBCSN and IMSA Radio beginning at 5 p.m. ET Saturday.


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