Shortly before the green flag waved to start the 63rd Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida, officials from the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) and the Automobile Club l’Ouest (ACO) announced a six-year extension of their strategic alliance to advance sports car racing in North America and around the world. The extension runs through the 2020 racing season. – See more at: http://www.imsa.com/articles/imsa-aco-extend-partnership-six-years#sthash.jh72ItOp.dpuf

The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) and iRacing.com today announced the creation of the IMSA iRacing.com Online SportsCar Championship. The online racing series features iRacing’s digital versions of Prototypes and GT cars competing on laser-scanned versions of Daytona International Speedway, Sebring International Raceway, Watkins Glen International and many other tracks on IMSA’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship calendar. – See more at: http://www.imsa.com/articles/imsa-iracingcom-announce-new-online-sportscar-championship#sthash.zHErTyv2.dpuf

Continuing a relationship that began in 2012, the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) and TOTAL Specialties USA (a subsidiary of the TOTAL Group) today announced a three-year partnership extension that makes TOTAL the Official Engine Oil of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship and the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge through the 2017 season. – See more at: http://www.imsa.com/articles/imsa-total-announce-multi-year-partnership-extension#sthash.0qXvlIBn.dpuf

Scott Atherton: I look at the relationship we have with the ACO as one of our strongest assets. We are formally aligned, and we genuinely like working with each other. This has been a very friendly, very productive, mutually beneficial alliance. Don Panoz, who founded the American Le Mans Series, deserves the credit for recognizing that opportunity way, way back. When we first started with the merger, I was concerned our link to the ACO and Le Mans was going to come to an end, because I thought Jim France [GRAND-AM founder and current chairman of IMSA] had his own vision that might not include continuing the relationship. But I was pleasantly surprised that he recognized the value from the start of maintaining that partnership. Under Jim’s leadership as our chairman, and under Pierre Fillon’s leadership as ACO president, I think the business and personal relationships in place today are as good – or better – than they have ever been. The fact that we now have a six-year agreement means we can focus on a lot of long-range strategies.

SA: IMSA and the ACO are committed to the growth and development of top-level professional sports car racing. We are focused on North America, the ACO focused on Europe and with their World Endurance Championship, around the world. There’s no doubt that Le Mans is the benchmark example of endurance sports car racing, but I think our championship in North America would be referenced in the same way as being the benchmark of a domestic sports car championship. The two of us work well together in that regard.

SA: It’s very much a work in progress. There are meetings continuing to occur – in fact, there was one as recently as 4 a.m. this morning with their technical team and ours. The teams are eagerly awaiting final details, and we’re working toward that as rapidly as possible. It’s safe to assume the Prototype will be a shared platform with some unique elements that the ACO will prescribe for their purposes and for the European Le Mans Series, another ACO-managed championship, and there will be unique aspects that are specific to the TUDOR Championship. But the core of the car – or the spine of the car as I call it – will be common to all the cars. Our teams will have the opportunity to race our Prototypes at Le Mans – our partnership with the ACO enables selected TUDOR Championship competitors to earn automatic entries – and the teams that are competing in the other ACO championships will have the opportunity to participate in our TUDOR Championship events, be they Daytona or Sebring or any other venue.

SA: Visually, subtle changes. Mechanically, more dramatic changes under the skin. There is a general move to increase the performance of the GTLM cars, which are a mirror image of the ACO’s GTE cars, and the reason is twofold: One, it has been the desire of the manufacturers to give these cars a higher level of performance. And two, with our GT Daytona category evolving to FIA GT3 specifications, it will enable us to properly separate the performance of the four classes to keep the appropriate separation on track. If you look at Sebring’s numbers, we were very happy to see this year that every class was about four seconds per lap apart from the next closest one. No guarantee, but it appears that some of the manufacturers will be evolving to turbocharged configurations, and that’s a byproduct of the 2016 regulations.

SA: Yes. There are a lot of GT3 cars that already exist, and there are a lot of manufacturers already producing cars to that specification. There’s no question that there are manufacturers who do not have a car consistent with our GTD regulations but do have a GT3-spec car, and they will have an opportunity to begin competing as of Daytona next year with no alterations to the car. We do reserve the right to adjust the performance of those cars as needed through weight and an engine restrictor, but we are not looking to make any radical changes that depart from the GT3 rules.

SA: We will work diligently to maintain GTD as a category for independent teams. In other words, we’re not looking to have factory-backed programs with all the trappings that come with a full factory effort. We would want to limit that level of involvement to our GTLM class. That doesn’t mean the factories can’t have some level of involvement in the GTD class, but it has to be limited.

[mudslide:picasa,0,racerviewsphotos,6140503101357182417,37,640,center]