BRASELTON, Geo. — IMSA held their annual State of the Sport address Thursday afternoon (Oct. 1) at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. As is the norm, the subject of discussion is general growth in sports car racing in the United States.
NBC/USA Sports’ Leigh Diffey hosted the event alongside IMSA president John Doonan. Overall, the mood was extremely upbeat and a continuation of the sport’s Golden Age.
This year, every race on the IMSA schedule has broken attendance records. Multiple events have had 100,000 spectators in total over four days. Certain tracks have instituted projects to expand on-site parking to accommodate the increased attendance. Since last year, Road Atlanta has constructed multiple parking lots in order to try to prevent last year’s problems where there was a three-hour traffic jam on race day and they had to rent local farmland to park cars.
Doonan indicates that IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races between linear TV, Peacock and YouTube are averaging 700,000 viewers per race. They have had seven million views on their YouTube channel this year and have just a shade under two million subscribers. Nielsen reports that IMSA is the fastest growing form of motorsport in the United States.
Doonan also announced that Westin Workman is the winner of the 2027-28 IMSA Diverse Driver Scholarship. Workman is the champion of IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge’s GSX class with 10 victories in 11 races, including Race No. 1 today. He will use his scholarship to stay with RAFA Racing Team and move up to race full-time in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge.
Additional partnerships with companies such as Horizon Hobby will result in the general public seeing more IMSA-related merchandise in big box stories such as Walmart, Meijer and Target in the coming year. There will also be more diecasts available for purchase.
In addition, Motul announced an extension of their partnership with both IMSA and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. They will remain the title sponsor of the Motul Petit Le Mans for the foreseeable future along with their existing relationship with the sanctioning body.
Looking into the future, there will be a new technical framework for what is now the GTP class in IMSA and the Hypercar class in the WEC starting in 2030. The framework was announced back at Le Mans in June, something that Doonan described as “an LMDh evolution.”
There are groups that will be working hard over the next few months in order to deliver the first set of regulations for manufacturers so that they can gauge their interests and begin their chassis designs.
What was not announced: The 2027 entry list. As of now, that is a work in progress. IMSA has already confirmed a couple of teams for next year, such as YRB Racing under their “Car Blanche” branding in the GTD Pro class full-time, or Bartone Bros. Racing expanding from just the Rolex 24 at Daytona to the five Michelin Endurance Cup events.
Doonan indicated after the address that there is no official timeline for the full entry list to be released. Teams are still continuing to flesh out their lineups at the current time.
Phil Allaway has three primary roles at Frontstretch. He's the manager of the Frontstretch email newsletter that publishes Monday-Friday and occasionally on weekends. He keeps TV broadcasters honest with weekly editions of Couch Potato Tuesday and serves as the Frontstretch Sports Car racing editor.
Outside of Frontstretch, Phil is the press officer for Lebanon Valley Speedway in West Lebanon, N.Y. He covers all the action on the high-banked dirt track from regular DIRTcar Modified racing to occasional visits from touring series such as the Super DIRTcar Series.
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