(image credit: Morgan Rhodes)

With both IMSA and PWC racing on the streets of Long Beach over the weekend, it gave us a good opportunity to compare and contrast the times for each series’ GT3-spec classes. Considering each is on different tires and use completely different BoP models, the times really aren’t that far off given the conditions – pretty interesting stuff. For this post, I have taken the top 10 fastest qualifying and top 10 fastest race laps and also compared the same cars from each series against each other.

In IMSA qualifying it was the Paul Miller Lamborghini driven by Bryan Sellers that lead the way with a time of 79.243 seconds. In PWC it was the McLaren of Alvaro Parente who took pole with a time of 78.883 seconds, just .36 seconds quicker than IMSA’s pole time. The average times of the fastest top 10 were extremely close with the IMSA cars hitting on a 79.714 average qualifying lap and PWC hitting 79.221 average qualifying lap, a difference of just under a half second.

You’ll notice the Ferrari 488 GT3s were quite a bit stronger in PWC than IMSA as both ran laps in the 79.1’s where the sole Ferrari in IMSA was 80.203, a difference of just over 1 second. The sole PWC Lamborghini Huracan GT3 (which arrived in the Dime Racing shop earlier in the week) ran a time of 80.213, .97 seconds slower than the fastest IMSA Lamborghini. The fastest Porsches ran 79.375 in IMSA and 78.983 in PWC, a gap of .392 seconds. The fastest IMSA Mercedes in qualifying went 79.867 where the fastest PWC Mercedes went 79.247, a difference of .629 seconds. The Audis were similar to the Porsches in terms of gap with the IMSA Audi running a 79.752 and PWC clocking 79.323, just .429 seconds apart. The new Acura NSX GT3s ran 80.173 in IMSA and 79.536 in PWC, a difference of .637 seconds.

In terms of race pace it was mostly Mercedes who lead the way in IMSA, taking three of the four fastest race laps with the top time of 80.206. In PWC it was again Alvaro Parente’s McLaren fastest with a 79.070 lap, 1.136 seconds faster than IMSA’s. Keep in mind IMSA is running three different classes on the track with a race time twice as long as PWC’s. The average fastest race lap for IMSA was 80.657 where PWC’s was 79.535, a difference of .877.

Comparing each car to it’s brother under race conditions goes like this: Fastest Ferrari in IMSA hit 80.657 with PWC’s going 79.381, a difference of 1.276 seconds. The fastest IMSA Lamborghini was 80.501 with PWC’s going 80.047, just .454 off. IMSA’s fastest Mercedes went 80.206 where PWC’s fastest Mercedes was 79.700, .506 seconds off. The fastest Porsche in IMSA hit 80.244 where PWC’s Porsche was 79.232, a difference of 1.012 seconds. The fastest and sole IMSA Audi ran a 80.527 with PWC’s running 79.929, a gap of .598 seconds. The IMSA Acura did a best lap of 80.435 where PWC’s Acura did a 79.749, a .686 difference.

Again, different rubber compounds, different BoP methodology and of course multi-class racing create these gaps, but it’s still very interesting to see how close IMSA’s GTD performance is to full-on SRO/PWC GT3 machines.