There isn’t any racing going on right now thanks to the hellscape that is planet Earth amid a deadly international pandemic. Obviously racing doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it is a piece of normal life that I must admit to missing right now. Thankfully, most of our favorite international racers are committed to continuing racing.
IMSA has a full field of 50 racers running in the virtual world at Laguna Seca right now. It’ll be fun, it’ll be cool. Qualifying just ended, and Rodrigo Pflucker took pole position in a Ford GT. It’s a shame Ford GTs don’t race anymore, they still look great!
The race is not being run with the traditional IMSA format of multi-class racing, which is also a shame, I would love to see the prototypes dicing with the GTLM and GTD classes, but c’est la vie. The 90 minute race is starting right now, and will be the closest thing to racing that I’ll get to see for quite some time.
Just look at those names. A lot of your favorite drivers will be battling for the race win, with all of them running GTLM classed cars. The choice here is to race in a Ford GT, a BMW M8 GTE, or a Porsche 911 RSR, which means many of the team drivers have simply plopped their own race livery on top of those chassis. Which explains why you will see a Ford GT with an HPD livery on it.
So, let’s do a little bench racing. Who do you think will take the win after 90 minutes of digital motorsport? I’ve got some money on the #97 of Shane van Gisbergen. I don’t know why, but that dude has always impressed me. Let’s hear it, what are your predictions? Do you even care?
And if you’re looking your digital racing to be a little more unrealistic, the Dinner With Racers crew is running another round of its infamous Thursday Night Blunder races tonight at 7:30 Eastern. That race has the balls to run multi-class racing, and they’ll be running a slew of different open-wheel cars at the famous Long Beach Grand Prix circuit. Racers can choose from current-spec F1 cars, current spec IndyCars, the old Lotus 79, Formula Renault, Formula 3, and the Skip Barber Spec Racer. What a wild show this is going to be.
Here’s a few highlights from qualifying run last night.
I don’t normally care, but hey digital motorsport is better than no motorsport.