The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has come up with a strange addition to the 2021 schedule.
It’s no surprise that the teams will go back to Detroit, which was already put on the schedule, but without a final date.
The race will be run over 4 and 5 June, while the Indycar races will be run at the same circuit, one week later. The two series usually share the track time, on the same weekend.
Photo Courtesy of IMSA / Richard Dole
The really strange thing, from an IMSA point of view, is that the DPi, GTD and LMP2 will be running at the event. The event is the weekend prior to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and that’s the reason why the GTLM cars don’t participate, which they usually don’t do. But by welcoming the LMP2 cars to Detroit could point towards, a word from the current teams, that none of them has any plans of competing in France – or if they are going to do so, it will be with another car, based in Europe.
The GTD Championship only counts towards the Sprint Cup, which is for the races of 2 hours and 40 minutes or less, with no points scored for the overall championship. That is made for the GTD drivers, who have Le Mans ambitions, so they are able to skip the weekend, if they don’t wanna fly from Detroit to Le Mans overnight, which many drivers have done in the past.
