IMSA held its fourth WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race of the 2021 season at The Raceway at Belle Isle the second weekend of June. To date the series has held two endurance contests – the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, together with two sprint races, at Mid-Ohio and in Detroit.
The Chevrolet Sports Car Classic at Detroit represented one of the shortest races of the season at 100 minutes and that was an optimal occurrence, as the race was pushed back from its original start time Saturday afternoon, when a massive shunt in the NTT IndyCar Series contest that preceded it necessitated a great deal of wall repositioning and repair.
Accentuating their return to the IMSA prototype championship, Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 01 Cadillac DPi earned the pole position and won the race, giving team owner Chip Ganassi an excellent day of racing, as his team triumphed in the earlier INDYCAR race with first-time winner Marcus Ericsson.
In similar fashion to the race that came before the IMSA contest on the 2.35-mile, 14-corner Belle Isle racetrack, the competition was stopped by a yellow (not red) flag with only a few laps remaining. There were just under three minutes remaining on the clock when green flags flew and Renger Van der Zande was able to hold off the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac DPi to take the win, by a scant 0.573 seconds. The Wayne Taylor Racing Acura ARX-05 of Felipe Nasr and Ricky Taylor finished third and continue to lead the championship by 71 points over the No. 55 Mazda RT24-P, which finished fourth on Saturday.
Ganassi put this team together rather late in the going, but was never lacking for talented drivers to race for him. This was the first race win for pole man Kevin Magnussen since his Renault 3.5-series tally of five wins in 2013. “It feels great,” Magnussen said. “The whole season we’ve been fast but we just haven’t been able to get to the end in the lead. We’ve led a lot of laps this year; finally, we led the right lap!”
Van der Zande, who brought the No. 01 home to the checkered flags said, “We got it together. I’m just super proud of the whole team, how they managed it. I think we can only get better from here,” he declared. “We’ve been a little bit unlucky and made some small mistakes as well, but here we are. This is our first win and we can build from here.”
Ganassi, who always says, “I like winners” had plenty to celebrate on Saturday as he gained his latest pair of wins, giving him more than 230 victories in 31 years, competing in NASCAR, INDYCAR and the changing iterations of sports car racing. “I don’t think it’s any secret that this [IMSA] team was put together at the last minute in the fall of last year,” Ganassi said. “After what we’d all been through in 2020, we really didn’t know where we were at going forward. It’s really special to have an availability of talent … that want to come drive for you.”
There was some turmoil in the GTD ranks as the No. 39 Audi LMS GT3 had its apparent victory removed and was relegated to the rear of the 20-car field for a fuel delivery system penalty (they refueled too quickly). That elevated the No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin to the top spot on the podium. This win gave Aston Martin its first IMSA WeatherTech victory, with Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis, the latter a Canadian who grew up close to the Belle Isle track.
“To say that we won the Detroit Grand Prix and that the Heart of Racing finally won their first race with the Aston Martin is just unbelievable,” de Angelis said. “Whether you take it after the race or during the race, it’s always going to say that we won the Detroit Grand Prix in 2021. I’ve always dreamt about winning an IMSA race, let alone competing in one! It’s so amazing to do it in front of pretty much my home crowd.”
GTLM were competing at Detroit for the first time since 2008 but no points were awarded, as it was simply the two Corvette C8.Rs fighting amongst themselves. Since the 24 Hours of Le Mans was postponed to August this year, due to the pandemic, Corvette Racing elected to compete for the joy of it – and for future race preparation. This squad didn’t compete at Mid-Ohio so it’s had a mighty long layoff since Sebring in mid-March.
Still, they battled like there were points and glory on offer, with the No. 4 of Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner beating the No. 3 of Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia across the line by a razor-thin 0.226 seconds. “The whole point of coming here was to showcase these Corvettes,” Milner said. “This team hasn’t been here since 2008, so it was a great opportunity to showcase Corvette Racing to all the engineers and to a lot of the people who work for Corvette Racing.” In addition, they gained information that could be useful when the WeatherTech series goes to Long Beach in September, as this was its first time on a street circuit.
The WeatherTech SportsCar Championship resumes with two races at Watkins Glen International: the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen takes place June 24-27 while the WeatherTech 240 takes place a week later at the same track.