IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has chosen to change the format of qualifying for the Rolex 24 at Daytona 2023.
The series will go back to a regular qualifying session for the 24 hours race, after having tried to run a qualifying race for the past two years.
The 2021 and 2022 editions both had a qualifying, which decided the starting grid for the 100 minutes qualifying race. All that happened during the ROAR test, on the weekend prior to the 24 hours race itself. The result of the qualifying race, would set the starting grid for the 24 hours race itself.
Photo Courtesy of IMSA / Jake Galstad
The hope was to see plenty of battles between the teams, since points were up for grabs in that race, and not to dismiss the prestige of starting at the front. But the teams didn’t grab the bite, so it would be more or less 100 minutes of the show running, with only mechanical issues or a pit fumble would make big changes.
The qualifying will now be run in four parts, with GTD Pro and GTD having 15 minutes together, LMP3 15 minutes, LMP2 15 minutes, and the new GTP category getting 20 minutes. All this will still happen at the ROAR test.
The qualifying will be run on 22 January 2023, and is the final thing on the schedule for the ROAR test, with 5 previous practice sessions happening with both daytime running, and night practice.
