As the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season heads toward its conclusion, several teams are hard at work preparing for new or expanded programs in 2024. That includes Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport, which expands to a two-Acura ARX-06 GTP car operation next season.
“We’re on time, maybe a bit ahead of time in terms of getting people,” said Wayne Taylor. “We’re pretty confident that we’ll have all the right pieces in place. We put out a fairly aggressive ad on social media for people and we’ve been inundated. We’re short two or three people now, which is pretty damn good. But we’ve also got other teams in our organization we can call on for people, so we’re in good shape.”
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AWA Racing is moving from LMP3 to GTD with a pair of Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs. Team principal Andrew Wojteczko reports that he expects a driver announcement to come just before Petit Le Mans. Meanwhile they’ve been delving into the Z06 GT3.R program wherever they can.
“We were able to participate with the test at Road America,” said Wojteczko. “It was great to have a bunch of my staff on hand. That was our first opportunity to see the car in action, which was great, we learned a lot, and it started to prepare ourselves on the equipment side and what we’re going to need to support the cars. We’re two months out now to our first test with our cars at at Sebring.”
Wojteczko says that scaling up to the GTD program won’t involve much change in the way of procedures and equipment; the bigger change will be more races — 10 weekends instead of six or seven — plus a new track for the team, Long Beach.
“I think from an operational standpoint, as a team, there’s more similarities than dissimilarities. So you know, we adapt our equipment and get rehearsed on the car, but I don’t see any any fundamental changes in approach. Some detail stuff like driver changing and stuff like that — with the prototype, we use a driver changer and in GTD, it’s still to be decided if that’s something we’re going to use or not. But the majority of our processes will remain and just move on.”
In the LMP2 category, which is set to grow for 2024 as some LMP3 entrants move up and new teams come in, some teams are reporting progress, and others are finding some challenges. United Autosports, which will run two cars in the class, including one for Ben Keating and Alex Quinn, has found its new home in JR III’s shop in North Carolina, as well as its general manager in Billy Glavin. Sean Creech Motorsport is moving from LMP3 with the unique choice of the Ligier JS P217. The team, however, is waiting for a lot of parts and spares to arrive at the shop before it can get to work. They do expect to meet their testing schedule, though.