DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — A quartet of full-season driver pairings are clustered within just 74 points at the top of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Grand Touring Daytona Pro class.
That margin is the closest among the top four in any of IMSA’s four classes through the first four race weekends of 2026.
The battle is even closer among manufacturers, with Chevrolet, Porsche, BMW, and Ford covered by just 67 points heading into Detroit — arguably IMSA’s most important race market for the seven automakers competing in the factory-supported GTD PRO class.
If anything, the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic with its deceptively challenging downtown street course is a high-profile venue for a good old-fashioned Chevy vs. Ford duel.
Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ duo of Tommy Milner and Nicky Catsburg in their No. 4 Corvette Z06 GT3.R lead the 2026 GTD PRO manufacturer and driver points, but arch-rival Ford claimed victory in Detroit one year ago.
Not only that, Christopher Mies and Frederic Vervisch are coming off a win in the most recent WeatherTech Championship race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in the No. 65 Ford Racing Mustang GT3 with new-for-’26 Evo upgrades.
That win lifted Vervisch and Mies up to fourth in the championship chase for drivers, the aforementioned 74 points adrift of Catsburg and Milner. In between are Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi in Paul Miller Racing’s No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO (-51 points), and Harry King and Nick Tandy in the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (992), who trail the No. 4 Corvette duo by 63 markers.
Ford is determined to again deny Corvette the victory laurels in a race run in the shadow of the General Motors Renaissance Center, GM’s former corporate headquarters.
“GM and Ford are both there in Detroit,” Vervisch observed. “I think it’s nice for the fans and it’s also nice for the people who work there. We have a lot of attention there for both brands and I think it’s cool if you can win that one.”
“Obviously that’s home turf for Ford and we have a lot of fans there and employees who come over to see the race,” added Mies. “Last year, the win with Mike (Rockenfeller) and Seb (Priaulx) and the double pole position in qualifying was great. Obviously, we’ll be trying to repeat that.”
When was the last time Chevrolet won an IMSA race in Detroit? The answer is complicated, and it was all done on the former Raceway on Belle Isle Park.
The most recent Corvette win came in a non-points GT Le Mans race in 2021, when Milner and Tandy shared a Corvette C8.R prior to the Corvette by Pratt Miller team moving into GTD PRO. A Corvette Daytona Prototype won five straight overall from 2012 to 2016 with either Wayne Taylor Racing or Action Express Racing fielding the winning entry.
But you’d have to go back nearly 20 years to see a GT-class Corvette victory in Detroit, as Corvette Racing triumphed in the GT1 class in 2008 with the C6.R. A GT class Camaro GT.R won in both 2012 and 2013.
The WeatherTech Championship has competed only twice on the current 1.645-mile, 9-corner street circuit, with Mustang winning last year and the AO Porsche taking the glory in 2024 in the hands of Priaulx (a two-time Detroit winner) and Laurin Heinrich, who now competes in IMSA’s Grand Touring Prototype class. Corvette won the 2024 pole, while Ford won the pole in 2025. The Corvette drivers are still smarting from the Monterey race, where fuel strategy was the key factor that kept Catsburg and Milner in the No. 4 and Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims in the No. 3 Corvette by Pratt Miller Z06 GT3.R from vying for victory.
“We could have won, I think, but still P2 is super nice and very good to put us in first for the championship,” noted Catsburg.
“Starting the race fifth and eighth, we would have been very happy to settle for second and fourth,” Sims added. “A little frustrated that we weren’t first in our respective battles – me with the 77 and Nicky with the 65 – but nevertheless a decent result and the manufacturers championship lead.”
The No. 4 Corvette has used consistency as its biggest weapon in building its small early points cushion. Catsburg and Milner have finished fourth, third, and second in this year’s three GTD PRO races; Verhagen and De Phillippi have twice started from the front row, and they won the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona International Speedway. Like the No. 4 duo, King and Tandy have finished on the podium in two of three races.
Catsburg and Milner’s 323.7 points-per-race clip stacks up well with the average number of points scored per race by the champions in the four-year existence of the GTD PRO class. Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet set the benchmark of 349.7 points/race in 2022 when Pfaff Motorsports was campaigning a Porsche 911 GT3 R; Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat averaged 341.8 points/race in 2023 in the No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3. Heinrich claimed the ’24 GTD PRO crown in the No. 77 AO Porsche while collecting 312.2 points per race before Garcia and Sims notched a 326.5-point average last year en route to the class title.
A maximum of 385 points are available on a race weekend.
Hawksworth and Barnicoat have claimed the Motul Pole Award at two of three races this year, but finishes of 10th, 11th, and ninth have dropped the No. 14 duo to ninth in the standings, averaging just 240 points per race. They’re 251 points off the GTD PRO drivers pace set by Milner and Catsburg, while Lexus sits in seventh place in manufacturer competition.
The good news is that the difference between a really bad weekend and a really good one can be up to 170 points. Lexus will attempt to claw back some of its deficit by having Vasser Sullivan field two GTD PRO entries at Detroit, with Aaron Telitz and Chaz Mostert in the No. 15 RC F GT3 joining the regular No. 14 duo.
Vasser Sullivan generally splits its two WeatherTech Championship entries between GTD and GTD PRO, with the No. 12 RC F GT3 running full-time in the GTD class. But due to limited pit and paddock space, GTD is not part of the slate at Detroit.
At Long Beach, where the WeatherTech Championship race features only two classes (GTP and GTD) for similar logistical reasons, Telitz and Benjamin Pedersen took the GTD class victory in Vasser Sullivan’s season-long No. 12 Lexus, while Frankie Montecalvo earned the Motul Pole Award and teamed with Hawksworth to finish fifth in the ‘guest’ No. 89 entry.
