On Saturday morning, John Doonan will bypass through a convenience store, grab a bottle of chocolate milk and a newspaper, and then locate a position and close the rest of the world. It’s his quiet time, a time to transfer his brain to fairness. before the noisy roars of the engines for 24 consecutive hours.
It’s his culture before each and every Rolex 24 At Daytona, a time when he was a competitor, as Mazda’s motorsport director, a name he kept for 8 of his 17 years with the OEM, and now his supervisor, in his current year. as President IMSA, the sanctioning framework for the U. S. Endurance Sports Car Racing Championship, is the only one in the world. But it’s not the first time When he’s done, he’ll be walking down the paddock and pit street at Daytona International Speedway, before the groups arrive, getting ready to think.
“A calm before the storm, ” he said. For me, it’s a validation of what it takes to organize an occasion like this: the organization, effort and preparation needed in the look of the race, in the cars and in their garage setup and their pit lane configuration. “
Your concern is legitimate. His finger was attentive to each and every detail of the competition, however, it was only since last year’s 24-hour race that he understood how gigantic it is to have a career.
“I showed up at the races and everything was settled,” Doonan said of his time in Mazda. “The tickets were printed, sold. The paddock where the trucks are parked, I introduced myself and the hard paintings made. Someone did. I never took it for granted or gave up, however, I never fully learned how much effort it takes to lead a championship in which I participated, as I saw among the staff (at IMSA), among our promoters and what it takes to achieve it. Prepare an installation to host an event. “
Last year’s edition of the Rolex 24, a festival considered to be the continent’s most prestigious sports car race, was the only historically popular occasion before COVID-19 forced closed-door sports. The pandemic put some of its new concepts on the shelf. and forced him, together with the show’s stakeholders, to identify more effective and affordable strategies for the execution of the occasion, one of which was a consolidated verification and racing schedule around this year’s 24-hour race, which included a 100-minute qualifying occasion. Array creating a two-weekend commitment similar to how NASCAR in the past operated its Daytona Speedweeks.
So far, this has been a great fortune in the paddock, according to Doonan: “Our groups are grateful to have the program compressed on consecutive weekends. Many of our colleagues talked about the savings of having to make two express and separate trips to Daytona. – the last positive of a race last season.
After some schedule changes, IMSA led a full WeatherTech SportsCar championship in 2020 that resulted in a one-year problem war in its flagship DPi category, even though everything was achieved through one point on the last day of the season, and 21% construction. in audience compared to last season, on NBC and NBCSN, a quote that helped the first IMSA series increase the audience by 89% since its inception, a considerable achievement given the complexity.
Making sports car racing popular in the United States has long been a hard-to-break shell: not only NASCAR and IndyCar have strong control among car racing enthusiasts, but also the access barrier for passers-by or inventory cars or wheels opened specifically for this weekend’s Rolex 24 , there are five individual races (classes, each with other cars and regulations) within the starting race itself. Competitors face opposition on the circuit that has no effect on their results. .
For informal observers, for those who resonate with individualized race genres, there is much to deal with, which Doonan is completely about.
We want to teach everyone, even the existing audience, about the categories competing here, said Doonan, who believes that the unified era of sports car racing stems from the birth of the Le Mans-Daytona hybrid car, eligible and capable of competing in America and Europe, adding up to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, will make a first impression and an herbal starting point for foreign sports racing enthusiasts than in the past they didn’t take into account their American form.
The schooling procedure for non-enthusiasts is another precedent for Doonan. In the program, IMSA presentations and their quirks to potential young enthusiasts through e-sports (their iRacing Pro series) and a call to those with STEM interests, the latter that, according to Doonan, can foster expansion in the sports car racing industry, as well as its network of enthusiasts.
“It’s definitely anything on my radar, either personally or professionally,” Doonan said. “I in the generation movement that happens at IMSA, the application of what we do on the circuits, the schooling of the real world in the classroom. opportunity here. “
“We have this kind of lab that runs around the country a dozen weekends a year, and it’s our duty as administrators (sports car racing) to teach the next generation that this is surely relevant, not just to someone who is an engineer. or a driver, however, the number of car drivers in our sport, be it marketing and public relations, logistics and occasion planning, whether vehicle engineering or tire engineering or other components.
“This is a pattern representative of another set of industries and disciplines. Therefore, we can use it as a wonderful marketing tool, but also like anything with a purpose, to teach other people about the future. “
Some of those other folks bring with them a shallow wisdom from another motorsports bureaucracy, from which so-called popular drivers come to the moonlight at IMSA.
That NASCAR and IndyCar protective champions Chase Elliott and Scott Dixon, respectively, are competing this weekend, as well as seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, recent Formula One converter Kevin Magnussen and 4 other winners of the Indianapolis 500, among others, in fact. It does not prejudice IMSA’s attempts to capture the audience. These stars bring an impressive number of fanatics, measurable footprints on social media and an intelligent religion on the right path that further legitimize the occasion for unknown observers of the past.
“I think they can be a channel for other people who are from other motorsport disciplines,” Doonan said. “You have all the marks (cars), 18 of them. You have a wide variety of career talents from around the world and we do a greater education task. “
“I like our development. “
David Smith is a MotorsportsAnalytics. com analyst and co-amphitrion of Positive Regression: A Motorsports Analytics Podcast. Before Forbes SportsMoney,
David Smith is a MotorsportsAnalytics. com analyst and co-amphitrion of Positive Regression: A Motorsports Analytics Podcast. Prior to Forbes SportsMoney, he was a contributor to The Washington Post, NASCAR. com and The Athletic. thirteen years as NASCAR’s power skills finder for MMI, Spire and RSMG sports agencies.