While Porsche Caymans, Aston Martins and Ford Mustangs have been prevalent in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge over the past several years, the McLaren GT4 is a newcomer to the Grand Sport (GS) class in 2017.
The GS entry list at the Roar featured an impressive 21 entries for the non-mandatory season-opening test, including six of the new McLarens built to international GT4 technical specifications. GT4 cars are eligible to compete alongside some “grandfathered” previous-generation GS cars in 2017 ahead of exclusive GT4 technical regulations to be used for GS in 2018.
One of the McLaren GT4 “early adopters” is longtime Continental Tire Challenge competitors, C360R. The team fielded a pair of McLarens at the Roar – the No. 76 Alpha Clone/Aero Paint/Audrain Motorsport-backed machine for Paul Holton and Matt Plumb, and the No. 77 Aero Paint/Misahara/Pfaff McLaren GT4 for Matthew Keegan, Nico Rondet, Bob Doyle and Jeff Westphal.
Among them, Plumb turned McLaren’s fastest lap of the weekend on Saturday afternoon at 1 minute, 56.457 seconds, making him the 10th fastest driver of the Roar in the GS class.
“We’re still working through some stuff,” said C360R Team Principal Karl Thomson. “They’re great cars, but it’s been good to test. I didn’t think we’d be ready for the Roar, and there’s a bunch of stuff we still have to work through, partially on the electronic side, partially on fuel consumption and partially on tire wear, so again, these are very new cars for us.
“They run in a different specification than we’re used to, ‘cause there’s so much of GT4 that’s a little different than what we’ve been doing previously in GS, but I think everybody in the pit lane is doing exactly the same thing because all of these cars are GT4 cars now. But I think GT4 is going to be good for GS as we see the arrival of new cars from BMW, Mercedes, Audi. This is going to be a really sexy-looking paddock.”
Thomson noted that the team’s No. 77 McLaren arrived by air on Wednesday night, but still managed to participate in the test. The team – which hasn’t missed a Continental Tire Challenge race since 2004 – already has committed to fielding both the No. 76 and 77 entries for the full, 10-race Continental Tire Challenge season, in addition to the No. 75 Audi S3 in the Street Tuner (ST) class.
Speaking of Audi, C360R also was responsible for the Daytona appearance of the new Audi RS3 LMS race car built to international Touring Car Racing (TCR) specifications. The RS3 was on display in C360R’s Continental Tire Challenge garage during the weekend and participated in on-track photo and video sessions. IMSA officials continue to study the possibility of introducing TCR-spec machinery to the Continental Tire Challenge as early as 2018.
“What we had here in our garage was Audi’s premiere of that,” Thomson explained. “They’re calling it the ‘America Clubsport.’ It’ll be eligible to run in another series in its existing class this year. I think that’ll be interesting to get a handle on what that car is like.
“The real key there is, Audi has brought this car and it’s great. Everybody likes it. There’s as much interest here as anything else in the paddock, simply because it looks like a DTM car. It’s got these wide fenders and stuff. It looks really cool.”