The final IMSA DPi thriller that has set the foundations for a new golden era

The Daytona Prototype international class bowed out at Petit Le Mans with another humdinger. The 10-hour IMSA SportsCar Championship finale at Road Atlanta had everything we’ve come to expect: high drama in the last hour, that dash to the flag from a late yellow, and a margin of victory measured in single-digit seconds.

But for all the great racing DPi produced in its six seasons, the true significance of a category that only ever had double-figure grids in one year of its existence lies in the future: the bright new future of global sportscar racing that’s already unfolding.

DPi put down the foundation stone for LMDh. Put simply, no DPi, no LMDh, and no golden era at the top of the sportscar tree. The great age we are all predicting is just around the corner in both IMSA and the World Endurance Championship.

Without the ground laid by DPi, the list of manufacturers already signed up would be much shorter. The idea that a manufacturer could take an off-the-shelf chassis, stick its own engine in the back and give the thing to its styling department for a light dusting set us on course for LMDh.

The category changed the mindset of manufacturers competing at the pinnacle of sportscar racing in North America. They were persuaded by the DPi platform that it wasn’t necessary to produce their own bespoke chassis, but instead could go racing with something they could still call their own even if it was actually an LMP2 car under the skin. It probably didn’t knock a nought off the budget, but it made it a damn sight more affordable.

The lure of this new-found affordability spread to the WEC on the famous day of the convergence announcement at Daytona in January 2020. The WEC probably didn’t have a choice but to join forces with IMSA on a category that at that time was dubbed DPi 2.0 and already had the idea of a spec hybrid system ingrained in its DNA. Take-up for its Le Mans Hypercar rules hadn’t been as expected.

Testing for IMSA's new LMDh era began at Road Atlanta immediately after the Petit Le Mans

Photo by: Andreas Beil

The Daytona announcement was important because now manufacturers could get even more bang for their buck: they could race the same car in the two major sportscar arenas of the world and chase glory in both the Le Mans and the Daytona 24-hour classics. But it was DPi that had shown that this concept was a viable way forward, a category based on a philosophy compatible with the modern era that became even more appropriate in the straitened times that have followed courtesy of the ravages of COVID.

DPi showed that the concept worked in North America, so the manufacturers had to ask themselves, why wouldn’t it work on the world stage? Given that there are now six marques lined up to compete in LMDh over the next two years and at least four of them have plans to compete in both WEC and IMSA, the answer has to be that they reached an affirmative conclusion.

Yet there was another philosophical shift that came with DPi, one that was also an essential building block for the good times to come. DPi made the Balance of Performance acceptable in prototype racing; it legitimised or normalised it.

DPi was an important stepping stone on the road to the great position in which this branch of the sport finds itself today

The processes pioneered by the Grand American Road Racing Association during the era of the old-tech Daytona Prototype ugly ducklings that arrived way back in 2003 came of age during the time of the DPi.

That wasn’t the case, to my mind, in the three interim seasons of post-merger sportscar racing in North America when the DPs with added aero went up against the LMP2 cars from the American Le Mans Series. IMSA never quite got the balance right in that period with two types of car that tech boss Scot Elkins described “as different as apples and oranges”. I argued at the time that his analogy didn’t go far enough. I have a memory of suggesting he should have invoked the kumquat.

Balancing DPis, for all their different engine formats, was a much more straightforward proposition, and it should become even more so in the new era. Remember LMDh and LMH cars are designed to fit into so-called performance windows laying down maximums and minimums for downforce and drag.

Add in a myriad of other strict definitions in the rulebook, engine weight and weight distribution among them, and you don’t have apples and oranges, more tangerines and satsumas.

Arguably, the DPi's greatest success was normalising BoP in prototype racing

Photo by: Phillip Abbott / Motorsport Images

Don’t ask me to describe a four-wheel-drive LMH car in fruit-based terms, but let’s not forget that advantages of the front-axle drive from the hybrid system have now largely been mitigated by the increase in the speed at which electrical power can be deployed. So the LMHs are definitely not out there with the kumquats.

DPi was an important stepping stone on the road to the great position in which this branch of the sport finds itself today. It would be wrong to say that when the category was announced in October 2015 there was already a clear path to this new golden age; the sands have shifted too many times for anyone to be able to suggest that.

But in the aftermath of one final great show from the DPi cars, perhaps we should acknowledge the category’s role in laying the ground work for the new world order.