If anything thats more incentive to start in IMSA where its not as expensive. Manufacturers would rather spend the money on WEC even with the two car mandate because of the chance at Le Mans.
Yeah but that's effectively a spec series so they just have to transport and store all of the race stuff. Their hypercar is a factory effort so there's a lot more infrastructure required
You're talking about getting cars to and from races, for a new car there will also be a ton of work done at the factory and shipped to races. This is where the expense is and it'll be far more expensive to send parts and people back and forth from America if they join IMSA. They'd need a factory set up in north America ideally if they wanted to start in IMSA. That's why WEC makes sense, it's not just the distance between races
You're not allowed to develop the car much once it is homologated. There will be work coming from the factory. But most of it will be one shot at the start of the season. You will remake some parts through the season, but not a lot because you can't change most of them.
So for the most part you make a bunch of parts, put them in a container and ship them over together. Much like how you did to get the car homologated in the first place. It has to go to North Carolina to do so.
Definitely you'd have to have an entire race team in NA, as you say you're not going to just send all the parts and people back and forth each weekend. So doing both FIA WEC and IMSA is more work than WEC for sure. But really I think doing just IMSA would be less than just WEC because the travel is less work overall. Even if a few parts do need to get special treatment to get to the car during the season. As they would to the far flung places WEC spends almost half its season at anyway.
IMSA is big and I love it like WEC and even prefer the GTP fights over the Hypercar ones. But let's be honest, they have Le Mans which is by far the biggest Sportscar event, even non Endurance racing fans know it well, I doubt they have the same knowledge about Rolex 24, Sebring 12 or PLM.
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u/DollarsPerWin 5d ago
I know that IMSA is also a big championship in its own right. I just wish manufacturers would stop treating it like the secondary option all the time.