The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) is having a moment. Buried for decades behind bigger and more-popular racing series, the Florida-based IMSA series is fighting back — and gaining ground on its closest rivals.
The momentum is building at the right time, as it heads into this weekend’s 24 Hours of Daytona — its grueling two-day-long Super Bowl — which launches a season of 11 races that run through October.
IMSA was formed in 1969 by NASCAR founder Bill France and the husband and wife duo of John and Peggy Bishop as a nationwide sports car endurance racing series to complement the burgeoning-but-regional stock car organization that dominated the South. At its peak in the 1980s, IMSA rivaled IndyCar as North America’s most popular form of motorsport while NASCAR held third place.
Times changed, though. IndyCar fractured into two warring series in the 1990s, and with NASCAR starting to expand west and into the Northeast, stock car racing was primed to blast past both and take pole position — a place it continues to hold — as the leader among U.S. championships. In the background, IMSA fell to third on the depth chart, and while it remains behind IndyCar in television ratings and audience size, the gap is decreasing.
Huge year-to-year growth in its digital reach, largely through YouTube and Instagram, has drawn waves of new young fans to the series while IndyCar’s numbers are comparatively flat. But there’s more to the story on why IMSA is surging at a time when other homegrown series are searching for ways to remain relevant.
It’s here, in a break from the norm where team owners usually love to grouse and complain about each other and the series they’re in — Formula 1’s “Drive to Survive” is a perfect example — where IMSA has the opposite dynamic taking place.
Asked to explain why IMSA is rising in recent years, some of its most significant entrants, starting with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, whose company is preparing to build new cars to race in IMSA’s top GTP class, lined up to give the series led by chairman Jim France, CEO Ed Bennett and president John Doonan their flowers.
“They came out with a great technical formula that is very current and relevant, and I think you’ve seen the manufacturers respond accordingly,” Brown told ESPN, referencing the hybrid GTP cars that debuted in 2023, the class in which Acura, BMW, Cadillac, Lamborghini and Porsche currently compete. Aston Martin will join midway through this season. Hyundai’s Genesis brand arrives in 2027, and Ford is also understood to be preparing an entry for GTP, which, if all comes to fruition, would have nine major auto manufacturers battling for victory.
“I think their leadership is very engaged, communicates very well, are youthful in their thinking,” added Brown, whose privately owned United Autosports team competes in IMSA’s LMP2 class. “What’s led to these great new rules is them listening to teams in the marketplace. And the competition remains great. It has the cornerstone races at Daytona, Sebring, Petit Le Mans (at Road Atlanta), so it’s got some real marquee events. And especially as things go more digital, I think their digital products are pretty good. I think they’re doing all the right things. I think it’s just going to continue to go from strength to strength.”
Roger Penske’s illustrious career as a team owner spans more than 50 years of participating in IndyCar, IMSA, F1 and some of the great series of the past like Can-Am and Trans Am. In 2020, he bought the IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and runs both under the Penske Entertainment banner where his three-car Team Penske program also races and has won back-to-back Indy 500s.
Penske also returned to IMSA in 2017 with Acura and later switched to lead Porsche’s GTP program, which won the 24 Hours of Daytona and the GTP championship last year. Like Brown and McLaren, which also fields a three-car IndyCar effort under the Arrow McLaren squad, Penske has seen IMSA take big strides — reeling in the series he owns, in fact — while competing as one of GTP’s marquee teams.
“The IMSA SportsCar Championship carries a lot of momentum into the 2025 season,” Penske told ESPN. “Since we returned to the series with Porsche Penske Motorsport in 2023, we have seen increased manufacturer participation, a commitment to hybrid technology, great racing on track and continued growth in attendance and broadcast coverage. Certainly, the alignment of racing classes globally (in conjunction with the World Endurance Championship) has helped open new doors in sports car racing and IMSA has made the most of its opportunities.
“Our team was proud to win the GTP class championship last season and we know it will be an even tougher challenge in 2025 competing against the strong Cadillac, BMW, Aston Martin, Acura and Lamborghini teams. As IMSA looks to build on its positive momentum, there’s no better way to wave the green flag on 2025 than at the biggest event of the year: the Rolex 24 at Daytona.”
Penske’s mention of auto manufacturers is a critical component in the tailwind that’s propelling IMSA.
In 2025, IMSA has 18 car brands participating and promoting their involvement in the series and its range of classes. Combined, their sizable marketing budgets are driving awareness for the series through TV, print and digital advertising, and ambitious social media campaigns. For the sake of comparison on the manufacturer tally, NASCAR has three; IndyCar has two.
Adding to the IndyCar/IMSA crossover trend, Mike Shank fields two entries in IndyCar and operates Acura’s factory IMSA GTP team. His professional racing roots are found in IMSA and its forerunners, and the Meyer Shank Racing outfit he owns with Jim Meyer has doubled in size — from one car to two — as Acura and its parent company Honda is going all-in with the series.
“There’s several tentacles to why IMSA is taking off, but number one for me is the push from the car companies that are behind it, right?” Shank said. “IMSA created a platform that’s attractive to them. That’s why they’re all back. Now that they’ve come back, they’re driving marketing initiatives about what they’re doing here. I can only talk about Acura, but you can look at Porsche, and you can look at all the others that are here, and now it sounds like Ford’s coming and McLaren’s coming, so there’s a lot going on.
“But specifically, they’ve made it an attractive category with regard to cost and electricity, which attracted manufacturers who like hybrids, which attracted a big marketing push and initiatives that have the ball going the right direction. There is so much positive news being spun out from not just GTP, but also the GT classes where factories are heavily involved. I think the feeling is this enthusiasm, a resurgence of a golden era.”
Shank houses his IndyCar and IMSA teams in the same Ohio shop. Entering 2025, IndyCar will rely on the same chassis it introduced in 2012, albeit with hybrid engines, which arrived last summer. He hopes the next-generation IndyCar chassis and engine formula can stoke the same interest the hybrid GTP cars have delivered for IMSA.
“But also, the technical side was the other part of this,” Shank continued. “When I look out at them in the same shop, one side is modern and current, and the other is not. So I think IndyCar can get there in a few years here, but what’s going down in IMSA right now, this all adds to this feeling of positivity. There’s so much positivity in the IMSA paddock, it’s hard to look past it. I believe that feeling is actually momentum of all the good things happening.”
Representing IMSA’s vast GT categories is James Sullivan, co-owner of the championship-winning Vasser Sullivan Lexus operation he co-owns with 1996 CART IndyCar Series champion Jimmy Vasser. They got their ownership start in IndyCar, branched out into IMSA as the factory team behind Toyota’s Lexus brand but were skeptical about IMSA’s reach while it was hidden in the shadows cast by NASCAR and IndyCar.
“I’ll tell you something, Jimmy and I had a front row seat to this one,” Sullivan, the Texas-based businessman, told ESPN. “So for 2020 and 2021, we had an IndyCar program and we had the Lexus sports car partnership at the same time. And I will tell you, and I’ve got no problem saying this, that certainly in the first year of our IMSA competition and into the second year, we were hesitant to engage and bring over any commercial partnerships from our IndyCar side, or anything new. We were hesitant. We didn’t know the landscape. We thought it’s really just a manufacturer series and it’s not a high-visibility sport from a fan perspective, and certainly from a commercial perspective.
“By the time we got through COVID and racing got back to normal, Jimmy and I looked around and we said, ‘Wow. Look at Daytona, look at Sebring, look at Long Beach, look at Watkins Glen, look at Petit (Le Mans).’ And we started having our partners asking, ‘Can we come? Can we come in?’ In that 2022 season, Sealmaster came over from our IndyCar team as the primary partner of Vasser Sullivan Lexus, both cars. And when you look up now, we have more engagement with our partners than ever before.”
Sullvan says the blend of million-dollar supercars and space-age prototypes mixed with the variety of different colors and looks and sounds of IMSA’s racing machines provide a stark contrast to other series where the cars look and sound mostly the same. The value of variety cannot be underestimated in the appeal for fans and auto manufacturers alike.
“We’ve got a huge heart and soft spot for IndyCar and the Indy 500 and we always will, I think,” Sullivan added. “But something that you get at an IMSA race is sensory overload. When you’re in the pits and those cars are coming from their tents to the grid, they’re popping the throttle, and it’s dads and moms and their kids right there. You see them. They’re everywhere. And it’s absolute sensory overload, because it’s not spec cars.
“They see a Lexus, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, a BMW. Just all in a row, boom, boom, boom, boom. It looks different. It sounds different. It feels different. There’s nothing that’s the same from one to the other, right? It’s not just the same cars with paint jobs, right? The sensory side is just pegged, and that’s a place we’ve never been before. We came here with apprehension and nervousness from our perspective on, ‘Can we bring partners here?’ And this place has proven to us, and them, that they could actually thrive and grow.”
Source: espn.com