ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — Road America is familiar territory to IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competitors, and six hours is a common race length in endurance sports car racing.
But six hours at Road America is a combination that hasn’t been seen in the modern era.
That all changes this weekend as the Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix more than doubles from the two-hour, 40-minute format used since 2015 (was two hours, 45 minutes in 2014) to six hours, making it the fourth of five rounds in the 2026 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup.
The expanded race length was greeted with enthusiasm by fans and participants, and the change will no doubt add a magnitude of unpredictability to what unfolds on the 14-corner, 4.048-mile road course over the span of six hours.
Last year’s sprint race at Road America featured enough door-banging action to rival a NASCAR short track, and IMSA officials responded accordingly with penalty assessment for incident responsibility in subsequent races.
When the law gets laid down, self-policing among the drivers has a way of calming down the aggression level. But there’s a healthy level of debate whether the six-hour format will also contribute to a cleaner Road America race than a year ago – an argument that rages even within the same team.
“I think if Watkins Glen is anything to go by, no. That was a pretty disastrous race, with a lot of guys crashing,” said Jack Hawksworth, who has teamed with Ben Barnicoat to win the last two Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) races at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and Chevrolet Grand Prix in the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3.
The Watkins Glen race featured nine full-course cautions, while Canadian Tire Motorsport Park eased off with just two.
“I was really surprised the amount of stuff that went down in Watkins Glen, but I do think Road America was just a one-off last year,” countered Barnicoat. “For a two-hour, 40-minute race, that was a lot of chaos. I just think sometimes it happens where people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it just kind of compounded. People just try a bit too hard to make something happen when it’s not really happening on some days. So, I do think it’ll be calmer than last year.”
Aaron Telitz stands second in the GTD class standings in Vasser Sullivan’s No. 12 Lexus with Benjamin Pedersen. He’s also a Wisconsin native who has a wealth of experience at Road America over the last 15 years.
“Funny enough, in IMSA, these six-hour races just inevitably end up being sprint races,” Telitz remarked. “Track position matters almost the entire way through the race. But I’m gonna say this year at Road America, I think there will be significantly less yellow than we actually saw in the sprint race – just because people will want to try to get to the end more than in the sprint race format.
“I mean, some of the restarts on in the sprint race the last couple of years have been absolutely wild. But I think we’ll see some more green flag running this time and hopefully that’ll make for some really exciting racing.”
Nicky Catsburg was behind the wheel when the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R was involved in contact in two of the most recent three races (Detroit and Watkins Glen). The Dutchman was assessed drive-through penalties for incident responsibility in both cases.
“I feel like [IMSA] made a good decision there last year after the race to kind of tone everyone down,” Catsburg observed. “But the way IMSA races, the way the championship works with the yellows and the restarts, you just get in many situations where it’s easy to have contact. I just feel like that kind of belongs in IMSA.
“Of course, we as drivers need to try and not constantly hit each other off,” added Catsburg, who ranks second in the GTD PRO standings with co-driver Tommy Milner. “But that’s part of it, you know. I like to go racing hard, and then you win some, you lose some.”
Kenton Koch, who shares the No. 023 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO with Onofrio Triarsi and Robert Megennis, is another who believes the longer race format will make a difference in the mindset of competitors. Koch and Triarsi won last year in GTD.
“Your strategy on long green flag runs can sometimes change, and when you throw a yellow in there, some people take it, some people don’t,” he explained. “When you just lengthen the race, it kind of changes the strategy and how people execute the race. You’ll get to the end and one guy that’s been leading for four hours ends up at the tail end because he’s just on a different cycle. Things just are gonna have a little bit more ebb-and-flow, depending on what stage of the race you’re in, just because it’s a longer format.”
Jack Aitken is also coming off two consecutive race wins (at the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen) overall and in Grand Touring Prototype (GTP). With assistance from co-drivers Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti, Aitken leads the GTP standings, and he insists he’s not going to change anything in his approach as he attempts to build on a streak of eight consecutive podium finishes.
Nor does he expect the fundamental character of the Road America race to change despite the extended length.
“We’re kind of expecting it to be a very yellow-heavy race, just going on previous years and the way that the endurance races often go,” Aitken commented. “The two-hour, 40-minute races are long enough that you get multiple stops, so it doesn’t affect as much as you might think.
“There’s no reason to change the way that we’ve been racing. because it’s been working well,” he added. “We’re certainly not doing the ‘Win it or bin it’ strategy at the moment, and obviously it wouldn’t make sense to switch over. I think we’re just looking to be as quick as we can and then make sensible decisions in the race. That gets you 99 percent of the way there, and it always will.”
