Insight: Why IMSA is Rolling Back its BoP Process for GTD Pro/GTD
IMSA senior technical director Matt Kurdock, VP of competition Simon Hodgson speak on decision to sideline manufacturer-nominated BoP following Daytona...
The Balance of Performance system from the GTD Pro and GTD classes at January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona could go down in the history books as a well-devised experiment that ultimately didn’t pan out in the long-term for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
That’s because the process, which had GT3 manufacturers nominate their own performance parameters, won’t be used moving forward this season, following an announcement by the sanctioning body on Friday that it will revert to last year’s tried-and-trusted BoP process beginning with next weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring presented by Cadillac.
The ambitious system, which took shape during the second half of last year before debuting in IMSA’s blue-ribboned event, resulted in nearly a dozen technical working group meetings with OEMs that ultimately put the BoP into each manufacturers’ own hands.
As IMSA’s senior technical director Matt Kurdock recalls, an immense amount of work went into validating the new procedure, including organizing a controlled Balance of Performance test during December’s IMSA-sanctioned test days at Daytona International Speedway.
"IMSA dictated what the run plans were, we dictated what tires needed to be on the car, what fuel loads needed to be on the car, what drivers are driving the cars and we were able to collect a lot of data in controlled and similar circumstances, which is something that's very difficult to do during a normal sanctioned event or a race weekend,” Kurdock says.
"Using that data, we were able to then, over the course of the December test, refine the performance targets with the OEMs and have another round of BoP adjustments during the test, again with the goal of working towards common performance targets.
"The performance targets range from lap-time based targets that use a lot of the sector data that IMSA has access to, top speed targets, acceleration targets, things like that. It wasn't just about targeting the lap times, it was targeting an array of performance parameters with the intent to balance the on-track performance not just in one lap but over the course of a stint and taking into account the degradation of performance as the stint carries on.
"We worked through that process at the December test and were able to leave the test with a lot of good, empirical data. We then had a series of working groups with the OEMs where we transparently shared that data and than arrived at targets for the Roar and a collective BoP for the Roar."