SEBRING, Fla.—The Tudor United SportsCar Championship Sebring Winter Test showed how the new merged sports car series comports itself on a real road-racing track, and the results were wholly positive.
Forty-two cars showed up to test at North America’s most iconic road circuit—a dozen Prototypes, four PCs, eight GTLMS, and 18 GTDs.
The two-day test proved a lot of things—most important being that the premier Prototype class, composed of two radically different types of cars, can be made to work on a natural-terrain road course.
TUSC’s Prototype class is composed of Daytona Prototypes—originally simple, heavy, tube-framed, V8 -powered cars with primitive aerodynamics—and P2s, originally Le Mans-compliant LMP2 cars with modern carbon-fiber monocoques, a variety of stock-based motors, and the latest aerodynamics.
DPs were designed to be simple, rugged, and cheap to own and operate. P2s were designed to be quick, and while the engine and chassis were cost-capped, spares and replacement parts might have been a bit steeper.
The #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Dallara-Corvette leads one of the Corvette Racing C7.Rs through Turn 11. (Chris Jasurek/Epoch Times)
DPs were generally a few seconds slower than P2s at any track where both types of cars raced—and many people thought that was an unbridgeable gap.
DPs have been allowed a wider variety of engines, including turbocharged V6 options from Ford and Honda, while also receiving an array of mechanical and aero upgrades, including carbon brakes and paddle-shift gearboxes.
Upgrading the DPs was expensive—no reliable figures have been released but a reasonable estimate is between a quarter and half-a-million dollars. The finished product is worth the price, though.
