Time to get North America racing again

After too many weeks of isolation and lock down to care to remember, this weekend sees the planned restart of the North American IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship take place from the scene of the series opening gambit into 2020 season way back in January at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida.

Sadly, the ongoing COVID-19 state of play within the continental United States has left some teams no option but to sit things out with the start of the revised calendar this weekend (maybe more) with one of those teams absent from Daytona being the Heart of Racing team and their Seattle Children's Hospital fundraising Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GTD (GT3) that drivers Roman de Angelis and Alex Riberas were due to drive.


After their disappointment at the Rolex 24 in January where the #23 car suffered race ending damage during the night after a bizarre incident near pit in, the team have placed the continued safety of the team personnel above all of their desire to return to the racetrack.

Whilst we hope that they decide to make a return at the next round at Sebring in just a couple of weeks time, that is yet to be confirmed particularly as many counties within the State of Florida continuing to experience dramatic rises in their CV-19  infection rate.


For the IMSA supporting Michelin Pilot Challenge Series, we will have to wait until the weekend of the 17-18th July at Sebring to see the colourful collection of the four expected full season Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's return to the track.

Then next weekend we have the SRO sanctioned GT4 America Series restart their 2020 calendar at the picturesque Virginia International Raceway after their last round was dramatically cancelled with cars on track during Free Practice at St Petersburg.


No entry list has yet been confirmed but we do expect to see most of the seven teams that enter an AMR Vantage GT4 in both the Series Sprint and Sprint X races to attend. Most teams in this series haven't raced since the opening rounds from the Circuit from the Americas back in early March where both the Flying Lizard AMR of Micheal Dinan and Rearden Racing AMR of Paul Terry diced things out over both races for the top step of the Sprint podium.


Whilst we will obviously miss the bigger Vantage GTD from the IMSA proceedings this weekend, we can't wait to see the many AMR Vantage GT4's get back to business at both Sebring and VIR over the next couple of weeks.


Whilst IMSA at Daytona will be restricting public access to low numbers of residents of Florida only and the GT4 America Series at VIR will have no public access permitted - its a start so let's get back to racing!!

Photo credits - IMSA / GT4 America