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NASCAR's little bother IMSA delivers a French kiss to hybrid auto power | KEN WILLIS

Ken Willis
The Daytona Beach News-Journal

NASCAR has gotten in bed with the French and is bringing electric race cars to Daytona. 

How’s that for a headline? 

Not bad in today’s clickbait world. Pretty good, actually, which means it’s also a bit misleading. All the same, though, someday down the line you might think back to this particular time.

Maybe an explanation is in order.

NASCAR’s sports-car wing, sharing a roof, parking lot and Christmas cookies in the employee lounge, is the International Motor Sports Association — IMSA.

Like NASCAR, IMSA’s crown jewel is also at Daytona International Speedway — the Rolex 24, which, like the Daytona 500, also kicks off a new season each year. This coming January, the Rolex kicks off a whole new era of North American auto racing.

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Meyer Shank Racing's new Acura GTP got the feel of Daytona this week during a two-day test for new Rolex 24 prototypes.

Daytona’s endurance race gives up nearly 40 years of history, and therefore much prestige, to France’s famed 24 Hours of Le Mans, which dates back to 1923. But the Rolex makes up for it in other ways — splash and dash, close-quarters racing, international participation, and that advantage of cranking the racing calendar to life.

It would only make sense, you’d think, for the two continents’ racing lords to come together and create some exponential growth to the products even if it means using a corporate buzzword that now seems so yesterday: Synergy

2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona ushers in a new world order for sports-car racing

The 2023 international sports-car season will be just that — international — more than any previous effort. Along with the now-common array of worldwide manufacturers, there’s now a set of mechanical specs, agreed upon by IMSA and its European counterparts (the FIA and ACO), allowing each continent’s marquee prototypes to race on both sides of the Atlantic.

That’s right, an Acura, Porsche, BMW or Cadillac might bag the ultimate doubleheader, winning both Daytona and Le Mans in the same year. Lamborghini joins the prototype double-dippers next year, and others will likely follow.

“It was January of 2020, here at Daytona,” says IMSA president John Doonan. “We sat down with the ACO, the FIA and all of us from IMSA. Jim France led the way. We explained to everybody, now it’s time.”

It took a monumental effort, from a mechanical and engineering standpoint, to make it happen. Sure, in years past, you could look at each side’s cars and likely not see differences, but x-rays would’ve told a different story. Now, the bones and organs are aligned, and this week’s two-day test at Daytona, if you looked closely enough, showed the signs of a different world a-comin’.

“I think we have an incredibly cool product here, and at the same time it’s kicking our butts. It’s a lot of work,” said team owner Michael Shank, standing outside the garage stall where an elbow-to-elbow effort was focused on Meyer Shank Racing’s new Acura prototype.

The Daytona garage was an especially busy place this past Tuesday and Wednesday.

A few stalls down, Wayne Taylor Racing was dialing in Acura’s other piece of 2023 machinery, and truth be told, it's a structural beauty. You can imagine Batman staring at it and saying, "I want one when I grow up."

But beauty, especially when the co-desire is productivity, isn't always easy.

“Between our two Acuras, we probably have over 100 people here,” Shank said. 

While some of the work will always involve wrenches and sockets, the modern way leans heavily on laptops and keyboards.

“This isn’t quite Formula One technology,” Shank said. 

But it sure seems like the closest we’ve come to it over here in the New World.

“By a lot,” he said. “By a lot.”

Which brings us back to our clickbait headline: Electricity.

Hybrid tech juices IMSA's horses; how long before NASCAR modernizes?

IMSA’s new prototypes are introducing a hybrid component to American auto racing, with Bosch Motorsport leading the effort. 

The rear wing of each prototype touts the embrace of modern technology.

The folks atop the organizational pyramid, often through their appointed trumpeters, will often toss around one of today’s faves — “sustainability” — when talking up the hybrid factor. At first blush, you want to roll your eyes.

After all, the electric component of these new machines is only evident on the pit lane. By new rule, the prototypes will use electric power only when the jack drops and they zip away from the pits, eventually dumping the clutch and roaring back to internally combusted, God-Bless-America horsepower.

But settle down, Hoss, because up there in these cars’ innards, hybrid tech will be a major player all around Daytona's 3.56-mile road course. The initial thought was, the added hybrid boost (70 horsepower) would be used in a push-to-pass fashion, but Bosch’s smartest engineers cleared their throats and said, “we can give you a constant 70 hp if you want it.”

Then came the hard part — integrating it into various forms of automotive architecture, from Acura’s V6 turbo-charged power plant to the others’ V8 thunder.

“It’s interesting how it integrates into our car compared to the Cadillac,” Shank said. “With turbos, that’s a different animal. We have turbo lag with the turbo motor, so the hybrid helps fill some of that in. Cadillac has different issues.”

Team owner Wayne Taylor watches his team prep their brand new Acura prototype.

And wouldn’t you know it, they’ve found ways to harness that hybrid power to aid the braking effort, an all-important facet of road-racing.

“How?” you might ask. Well . . .

“We don’t talk a whole lot about that,” Shank said with a smile. 

That’s something that’ll never change in the garage. Proprietary secrets date back to Barney Oldfield.

“We have a spec hybrid system and we’re all getting things out of it,” he added. “We all have to work within the rules. We’re all trying to figure out the best way to work with it.”

Glad to hear a team owner toss out a line that was probably uttered by Raymond Parks, Holman, Moody, both Wood brothers and everyone else who ever nosed around for an edge.

As for IMSA’s big brother, NASCAR, changes have come and more are around the corner, no doubt. The electric-car wave is obviously still in its infancy, though many are wanting it to run before it can walk from here to there without a fresh blast of go-go juice. 

NASCAR has its own Le Mans partnership for 2023, with Hendrick Motorsports fielding a Next Gen entry in the race's set-aside, one-car division, "Garage 56," dedicated to showcasing new racing technology. That Cup Series car, by rule at Le Mans, will have a hybrid component.

This will be more than mere toe-dipping. NASCAR’s decision makers, like those in all other forms of racing, will eventually have to get involved and, at minimum, blend the technology into existing products. 

And come to think of it, with kid-brother IMSA now embracing those hybrid horses, maybe they already have.

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com