Explanation of the Race & IMSA Cars

Okay, so the Detroit Grand Prix. What does it consist of? And why was the race on Saturday and not Sunday? Simply put, the main event was an Indy Car race on Sunday, but Saturday held the slightly less popular, but more interesting to us, IMSA Sportscar Sprint Race. The IMSA Sportscar Championship is a racing series that consists of multiple classes of cars competing at the same time. The racing season for these cars mostly consists of long endurance races such as 24 Hours of Daytona, Petit Le Mans, and 12 Hours of Sebring. But they also have 4 shorter "Sprint" races each year, with Detroit being the shortest race at 100 minutes long. There are a total of 4 classes that race in the series, but they only sent 2 classes to Detroit this weekend because the circuit is short (1.61 miles) and narrow since it's on city streets. The faster class is called Grand Touring Prototype (GTP). These cars look totally out-of-this-world, and are built purely for endurance racing. The slower class is called Grand Touring Daytona - Pro (GTD-Pro). These cars were about 5 seconds slower per lap than the GTP cars and are based off of real production sports cars such as the Porsche 911, BMW M4, Lexus RC F, and Chevrolet Corvette. Except the difference is that they are total race cars as well; completely gutted, caged, and with more aero + much more horsepower than their road-legal relatives.

Like I said, they race both classes at the same time, so the faster cars eventually have to navigate through slower traffic, but in terms of points, the two classes do not compete with one another. It is relatively easy to tell the difference between the two classes even if you are new to racing because the faster cars look out-of-this-world while the cars in the slower class look like you could fathom driving them on the road.   

Our Personal Race Experience

SO! We left Kalamazoo at 10am on Saturday. We jumped in my Focus ST and had a very smooth drive east towards Detroit. We arrived in the city at about 12:30pm and took the Q-Line & The PeopleMover to the Renaissance Center which was the main venue for the race. After we arrived at the Renaissance Center at about 1:15pm, we exited the building to the East via a skybridge which connected to the neighboring parking garage. We crossed the parking garage and were dumped out straight onto the race track! We were lucky enough that at that very moment, the track was open for crossing into the pit area & paddock. At first, we didn't go into the pits and instead walked around the paddock for a little while. On our walk, we saw tons of Indy cars getting ready for their race the following day. 

At 2:15pm, we heard over the loudspeakers, "Grid Walk Starting Now Until 3:00pm." We did not buy passes to enter the grid walk. But nonetheless, we headed back towards the pits to "follow the crowd" in. It turns out that we didn't need to pay any extra to participate in the grid walk, but we didn't know that at the time. We thought we had snuck in! Anyways, what the grid walk meant was that we got to get up close to every car that was going to race that day. Now - all of these cars were extremely cool to see up close, but there was one car that we all wanted to see: “Rexy,” the Porsche 911 from the slower GTD-Pro class. Rexy is the name of the Porsche 911 that is fielded by AO Racing. It's called that because the livery looks like a T-Rex and features a huge mouth at the front of the car, similar to an old fighter jet. It's simply one of the coolest racing liveries that has ever existed. During the past 2 years, ever since this car came out, I have "oohed and aahed" at it over social media, and on Saturday I was right in front of it!

Some other cool details from the grid walk: We got to get up close to both pole sitters. In the faster GTP Class, the black, white, and red Porsche 963 qualified with the fastest time. And in the GTD-Pro class, one of the Corvettes was sitting on pole. In Detroit no less! Super cool. 

After the grid walk, we headed to our first viewing location, the SP Parking garage on Franklin Street. We had access to 3 different parking garage rooftops for the race. This garage placed us right next to the start/finish line, and right in front of the pit lane. The race started at 3:10pm. It was so cool! Hearing the engines go by was unbelievable. The front runners for the GTP Class for the first portion of the race were the Porsche 963 that I previously mentioned, a blue Acura, and then the yellow Cadillac. You could really hear the differences between the different motors. The Porsche and Acura had higher pitched screams, and then the Cadillac would absolutely shake the floor as it went by us with its huge V8 powertrain. 

About half way through the race, there was a big commotion because one of the BMW GTP cars hit the wall and damaged its wheel & suspension assembly. Debris + the car had to get cleaned off the track. We took this opportunity to head to our second viewing location where we watched the rest of the race: Center Garage on Renaissance Drive. In this spot, we got to watch more turns and some strategic moves from the cars. We watched as the blue Acura suddenly came around the corner ahead of the red Porsche for the first time with about 24 minutes left in the race - we later found out that this move would win the race for the Acura. We also watched as lap after lap, Rexy the Porsche kept climbing the ranks in the GTD-Pro class. Rexy ended up winning the race for that class which was unbelievable!

After the race concluded, we headed through the Renaissance building, back across the original parking garage that we came in at, and over to the winner's circle. We watched as the podium finishing drivers got to spray champagne down at us and toss their hats into the crowd. As we were leaving the venue, we crossed paths with Laurin Heinrich and Sebastian Priaulx, the two drivers of the Rexy 911! My friend yelled "Yeah Rexy!" and they cheered back at us.

We got back to the car and drove to Buddy's Pizza in Ann Arbor for dinner, and then headed the rest of the way home. We got home at around 8:30pm and watched the highlights of the race from the TV broadcast together. All in all it was the best way to spend $100 in a day!"