Does less equal more? Acura makes a convincing case after winning first and second at the 2023 Rolex 24 At Daytona as the only GTP team using a V6–BMW, Cadillac and Porsche all used V8s.
[The details about the GTP hybrid engines]
The winning car, the No. 60 ARX-06 of Meyer-Shank Racing, crossed the finish line with a 4-second lead …
All that tells me is that IMSA has to tweak their BoP. Acura controlled that race too easily.
Why were they making such a big deal of the name GTP? That label has been gone long enough that if you know what it was, you know that the new cars are nowhere near what those cars were. And for the new people, it's just 3 letters put together. It's a good three letters, sure, but pretending that there's some kind of tie back to Dan Gurney's last winning GTP car 30 years ago was odd.
man, what happened to Porsche? All eyes were on them since they've been doing the majority of the testing.
In reply to j_tso :
One of the Porsche prototypes had a hybrid system issue, I was watching the race from the infield while a friend was walking the pits, and he said one of the Porsche engineers looked at the car's battery pack, threw a wrench at it and walked away defeated.
Toward the end of the race, it was pretty obvious that in GTP the Acura had more straight-line speed than the Cadillacs, same with Mercedes vs the Corvette. I was impressed that Lexus, whose car is sort of a dinosaur in the series compared to some of the competition, was running toward the front all day. The big surprise for me was how massive the spectator crowd was. Last time I went, in 2014, spectators were fairly sparse. This year, there were people absolutely everywhere. I suspect that Drive to Survive has generated interest for motorsports in series beyond F1.
In reply to dannyp84 :
More on the hybrid issues here: The details about the GTP hybrid engines | News | Grassroots Motorsports
More on the Lexus GTD car soon. 
dannyp84 said:In reply to j_tso :
One of the Porsche prototypes had a hybrid system issue, I was watching the race from the infield while a friend was walking the pits, and he said one of the Porsche engineers looked at the car's battery pack, threw a wrench at it and walked away defeated.
Toward the end of the race, it was pretty obvious that in GTP the Acura had more straight-line speed than the Cadillacs, same with Mercedes vs the Corvette. I was impressed that Lexus, whose car is sort of a dinosaur in the series compared to some of the competition, was running toward the front all day. The big surprise for me was how massive the spectator crowd was. Last time I went, in 2014, spectators were fairly sparse. This year, there were people absolutely everywhere. I suspect that Drive to Survive has generated interest for motorsports in series beyond F1.
I've been going to this event since like 1998 as a tween to now. I have never seen a crowd like that there. I've camped on and off in the Caveman Campgrounds area as well and some of the people were very hostile about "their" space. This shiny happy person tried telling me that I would get towed for camping where I was camping, the group got very lippy with my gf and I, who were literally sleeping in my Sequoia and not setting up anything other than a canopy tent to cook and hang out under. They got frustrated that we were dismissing their argument, went and got track officials in an effort to forcibly remove us from this open space we found, and they ended up having to move their whole camp because they setup in a fire lane like the morons that they are.
Other than that we had a great time and the racing was awesome. Made some new friends, got some cool swag, and my gf survived her first IMSA race weekend. "This was way cooler than the dirt track or Champcar stuff you've dragged me too"
In reply to j_tso :
It definitely felt like Porsche was the team to watch–like they were going to blow everyone else out of the water.
I've been thinking. The Acura is a V6 and there's a minimum engine weight of 180 kg.
I'm sure Acura's powertrain matches the prescribed power curve in the rule book.
Maybe the advantage is in how they place the weight with a smaller package (e.g. down low, toward the center of the car). Pure speculation.
Another wow on the crowd. It's like everyone brought a friend this year.
Colin Wood said:In reply to j_tso :
It definitely felt like Porsche was the team to watch–like they were going to blow everyone else out of the water.
I felt like they were sandbagging a bit, then started going full speed, and problems ensued. Sebring will be an interesting watch for sure.
Porsches new engine is actually based on the rs spyder engine. That was a normally aspired 3.4 and now it's a turbo 4.0.
MotorsportsGordon said:Porsches new engine is actually based on the rs spyder engine. That was a normally aspired 3.4 and now it's a turbo 4.0.
Yep, and we had a good talk with the man in charge of the new Porsche program:
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