ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s annual midsummer tour of North America’s iconic road courses continues with a trip to Road America for the Motul SportsCar Grand Prix.
Opened in 1955 and celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2025, the 14-turn, 4.048-mile circuit’s basic layout has had minimal design changes albeit several surface changes.
Set an hour north of Milwaukee in Elkhart Lake, Wis., the track has rightly earned the nickname “America’s National Park of Speed.”
It’s an apt moniker, one that pays homage to the bucolic nature of the facility’s park-like 640 acres along with the breathtaking character of a track where some of the world’s fastest race cars may top 175 mph three times each lap.
In addition to great vantage points and camping sites for throngs who flock to the track, Road America is also known for some of the world’s best “track food” available at nearly a dozen concession stands. Is it any wonder Wisconsin’s Road America vanity plate is the state’s most popular automobile license?
Another Event, Another Format
For the first and only time in 2025, all four WeatherTech Championship classes race together under the series’ standard-length two-hour, 40-minute race. They’ll do so for the last time at Road America – for now – with a bump up to a six-hour race in 2026.
A whopping 49 cars will joust for position along pit lane during green flag pit stops as well as on the track, including the flat-out blasts on the long Road America Straightaway, the Moraine Sweep and Kettle Bottoms, and the heavy braking zones at Turn 5, Hurry Downs and Canada Corner, not to mention the ultra-fast Kink and Carousel corners.
The Kink, too, has a new “grasscrete” surface on corner exit this year, with a mix of grass and concrete on curbing at track-out.
The track’s long straightaways and overall length should make life a bit easier than some circuits for the drivers when it comes to dealing with the disparate performance characteristics of the various categories, particularly compared to the winding, corner-heavy Watkins Glen Int’l where all four classes last raced together.
“I would say the traffic, having several cars on track is always what brings more of the race excitement in Road America,” said Felipe Nasr, co-driver of the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963. “Depending on where you catch cars or traffic, it’s always changing from time to time. And I’ve seen the good and the bad sides of it, but it’s definitely a place that can really, I would say more than the tire itself, like tire strategy or tire deg, I would say it’s just depending where you are in traffic and how you manage yourself there, it can make a big difference.”
“The whole track is a bit like Spa,” added Louis Deletraz, co-driver of the No. 40 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R. “If you compare, it has a lot of elevation, high grip, pretty smooth. So, there’s a lot of nice corners like the Carousel. It’s a good mix between technical, low speed, and high speed. It is a challenge to put a big lap in. It’s always rewarding when you see a good lap time and you’re up front to have made a lap there.”
Energy Management
Road America presents unique challenges to WeatherTech Championship race strategists, because it takes no prisoners when it comes to fuel mileage and energy usage calculations.
Get it wrong, and your driver will have to coax their thirsty car around the track’s 4-plus miles. The last corner onto the front straight and pit-in is an uphill climb, compared to downhill finishers at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew, Virginia Int’l Raceway’s Hog Pen or Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta’s Turn 12 where you can coast to the pits. Run out of energy here, and you’re toast.
“You need more energy accelerating out of the last corner to the start/finish,” said Tom Blomqvist, co-driver of the No. 60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-06, who finished at Watkins Glen with one percent of usable energy per IMSA telemetry.
“It is not one where – for example – if you’re running out of energy you can coast to the line. So that’s the stuff that’s all well-factored in; the guys behind the computers are the ones who are really on top of that stuff. It’s a bigger lap, so you need more energy to do the whole lap. It’s not going to change anything but obviously, it’s one where you need more energy to get to the line.”
With one lap at Road America roughly equal to two laps at most tracks on length, the pressure is on the strategists to nail the stop timing and the pit crews to best service their cars on stops.
Pit windows aren’t the tightest, but they’re not as open as other tracks. This may limit alternative strategies. May the best crew win.
Championship Changes
Since the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, all four WeatherTech Championship categories have undergone shakeups, and all four class championship leads are less than 100 points – only a handful of positions on-track.
In Grand Touring Prototype, early-season leaders Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 now find themselves second in the championship, 12 points behind teammates Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet in the sister No. 6 Porsche. After an incident at Watkins Glen, will the No. 7 car be able to recover from this setback?
AO Racing used its first Le Mans Prototype 2 win at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park to its advantage, with PJ Hyett and Dane Cameron in “Spike,” the No. 99 ORECA LMP2 07, only 78 behind Daniel Goldburg in the No. 22 United Autosports USA ORECA. Don’t look now, but Felipe Fraga, Gar Robinson and the No. 74 Riley ORECA are also in the hunt, just 46 points back of AO Racing in third.
Just 53 points cover the top three in Grand Touring Daytona Pro. The No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims are clinging to a 39-point lead over Laurin Heinrich and Klaus Bachler in AO’s “Rexy,” the No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R, with Albert Costa lurking in third in DragonSpeed’s No. 81 Ferrari 296 GT3.
In Grand Touring Daytona, Philip Ellis and Russell Ward have won twice this year aboard Winward Racing’s No. 57 Mercedes-AMG GT3 and lead Jack Hawksworth and Parker Thompson in the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 by 93 points.
Ellis and Ward bounced back with a runner-up finish at CTMP, crucially one spot ahead of the No. 12 Lexus which has been a consistent top scorer this year but hasn’t won its first race.
