The penultimate set of predictions will take a look at the major sports car series around the world and in the United States. One season is currently in the midst of a lengthy winter break but three others will get started in 2019.
1. IMSA: Japanese manufactures win at least half the races overall (excluding the GT-only races)
Cadillac has been the top manufacture in the short history of DPi but this year sees Acura Team Penske enter its second year, Nissan move from Extreme Speed Motorsports to CORE Autosport and the Mazda program enters its second year with Team Joest.
Team Penske had a respectable first season with the Acura ARX-05 and it is not inconceivable to think that was only the foundation for an improved sophomore season. Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya had four podium finishes but did not win a race while Ricky Taylor and Hélio Castroneves won at Mid-Ohio and had a runner-up finish at Belle Isle. Each car had a pole position.
Nissan won at Sebring and Laguna Seca last year with Extreme Speed Motorsports and CORE Autosport was a championship contender with two victories and five podium finishes with Colin Braun and Jon Bennett.
Mazda did not win in 2018 and a Mazda prototype has not won since the 2012 American Le Mans Series race at Virginia International Raceway but last year ended with both Mazdas on the podium at Petit Le Mans, granted that was aided with the #5 Cadillac running out of fuel.
Cadillac sees an increase in entries. Action Express Racing keeps up its two car operation with the #5 Mustang Samplings Cadillac and the #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac and Wayne Taylor Racing will still have the #10 Cadillac for Jordan Taylor and Renger van der Zande. The #5 Cadillac will continue to have its all-Portuguese lineup of Filipe Albuquerque and João Barbosa but the team has added a new Lusophone driver. Eric Curran steps back to the endurance races with Pipo Derani moving over from Extreme Speed Motorsports to join Felipe Nasr in an all-Brazilian lineup.
Three more Cadillacs will be on the grid. Juncos Racing has expanded its program to IMSA with Will Owen being one of its drivers. Owen has been successful with United Autosports in European Le Mans Series but the team has yet to announce his co-driver. JDC-Miller Motorsports will field two Cadillacs. Stephen Simpson and Simon Trummer will drive the #84 Cadillac and Tristan Vautier and Misha Goikhberg will team in the #85 Cadillac.
Cadillac has power in numbers and the three teams Cadillac already had won their fair share of races but I think we will see all three Japanese manufactures make a step forward.
In the case of Acura, with Team Penske running the organization you know it is only a matter of time before it is highly competitive. The Mazda program seems to make progress but not get over that hump but Team Joest is in the same boat as Team Penske. It is only a matter of time before Mazda is winning races. As for Nissan, if CORE Autosport was winning with an LMP2 car, I think it will plenty of good days with Nissan.
The one concern is Cadillac was dominant in the early days of the DPi and Balance of Performance brought it down to earth. With DPi and LMP2 splitting into separate classes we are hopeful DPi is unleashed and if that is the case it is not crazy to think Cadillac will rise to the top and reclaim the top spot. However, the DPi category is more competitive than day one and each manufacture has spent plenty of time developing their entries and I think the DPi class will be a competitive competition all season.
2. The GTLM champion has at least three victories
Jan Magnussen and Antonio García won the GTLM championship last year in the #3 Corvette without winning a race. GTLM is a tight class. It seems every race has every team on the lead lap in class for 80% of the race. Four of five manufactures won a race in 2018 with Ferrari being the only one not to win a race and the Italian manufacture was part-time only running in the North American Endurance Championship with Risi Competizione.
Magnussen and García won three races when they won the title in 2017 and all but one GTLM champion since the ALMS/Grand-Am merger in 2014 had three races or more. The other exception is Kuno Wittmer, who won twice in 2014 driving the #93 Dodge Viper.
Corvette has won three consecutive championships while Ford Chip Ganassi Racing has come close in each of its three seasons. Ford has retained its driver lineups with Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook in the #67 Ford and Joey Hand and Dirk Müller in the #67 Ford. Porsche continues with a strong duo of entries. Patrick Pilet and Nick Tandy continue in the #911 Porsche and Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor share the #912 Porsche. BMW won twice late in 2018 but it sees Alexander Sims leave the program to focus on Formula E commitments. Tom Blomqvist moves over from Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters to join Connor De Phillippi in the #25 BMW with John Edwards and Jesse Krohn set to remain in the #24 BMW.
It feels like now or never for the Ford GT team. It has won at Le Mans, Daytona and plenty of other races but it has yet to take a championship.
3. GTD has its fourth different manufactures' champion in four years
Maybe it should not be surprising that in a Pro-Am, Balance of Performance class there have been three different manufactures' champions in the last three seasons but with nine manufactures entered in GTD for 2019 it feels like all signs point to a fourth different champion.
Lamborghini is the defending champions and it has strengthened its lineup. Paul Miller Racing returns and Bryan Sellers will have a new teammate in the #48 Lamborghini with Madison Snow retiring and Ryan Hardwick becoming his co-driver. Magnus Racing switches over to Lamborghini after three seasons with Audi. Percision Performance Motorsports steps up from Lamborghini Super Trofeo competition.
Ferrari won the manufactures' title in 2017 but at this point of time the only Ferrari entered is the #63 Scuderia Corsa Ferrari with Cooper MacNeil having Toni Vilander be his co-driver. Audi won the title in 2016 but it has two new entries with Starworks joining the class and it will have Ryan Dalziel and Parker Chase in the #8 Audi while Morespeeed will field the #19 Audi for Alex Riberas and Will Hardeman.
Meyer Shank Racing nearly won the drivers' title with Katherine Legge and it will field two Acura NSXs in 2019. Legge returns but has a new co-driver with Jackie Heinricher in the #57 Acura while Mario Farnbacher and Trent Hindman will share the #86 Acura. On paper, it does not seem Acura is nearly as competitive as last year's lineup.
Mercedes-AMG won a race last year with Jeroen Bleekemolen and Ben Keating and it won the NAEC manufactures' championship thanks to those two and Team Riley. Bleekemolen and Keating won the NAEC title the year before as well. P1 Motorsports joins Team Riley in GTD as a Mercedes-AMG team.
Porsche has a respectable pairing of Patrick Long and Patrick Lindsey in the #73 Park Place Motorsports entry while Pfaff Motorsports moves over from Pirelli World Challenge, bring GT Sprint champion Scott Hargrove and fellow Canadian Zach Robichon will be his co-driver.
AIM Vasser Sullivan has taken over the Lexus program and it sees Townsend Bell return to full-time competition with Frankie Montecalvo in the #12 Lexus with Jack Hawksworth back in the #14 Lexus with Richard Heistand.
It is really difficult to pick out one entry that could lead the way in this class. I really like the Team Riley and the Mercedes-AMG program but it would not come as a surprise if Long and Lindsey carried Porsche to the championship.
4. WEC: The #8 Toyota wins the world championship
There are three races remaining in the 2018-19 FIA World Endurance Championship season and Toyota has been close to perfect, albeit for a double disqualification at Silverstone, handing Rebellion Racing an overall victory.
The Japanese manufactures' two entries each have two victories after the #8 Toyota of Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sébastien Buemi won at Spa-Francorchamps and Le Mans and the #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López won at Fuji and Shanghai.
The #8 Toyota has a five-point lead over the #7 Toyota. It has been pretty split between the two entries and even if both cars had not been excluded from Silverstone it would still only be an 11-point gap in favor of the #8 Toyota.
While all signs point to Toyota letting the two entries race it out and not play favorites, the #8 Toyota is going to win the world championship. For starters, that lineup is too good to come in second. Although the painfulness of Alonso losing another world championship seems to fit the script, I think this team will pull it out. Buemi has already won a world title in the WEC. Nakajima has been plenty successful in champion.
The only thing that could derail the #8 Toyota from the title is a mechanical issue and that seems to also fit Alonso's script. However, this is one thing that will finally go in the Spaniard's favor.
5. Porsche does not win majority of the remaining races in GTE-Am
Porsche is four-for-five this season in GTE-Am with Aston Martin's victory at Spa-Francorchamps being the lone defeat this year. Dempsey-Proton Racing is responsible for three of those victories while championship leading Team Project 1 won at Fuji.
Dempsey-Proton Racing lost all championship points from the first four rounds of the season after it was found the team was manipulating the data and violating the minimum refueling time. In the next race at Shanghai the team finished first and third and it would come to no surprise if this team scorned because of a rules violation ends on fire and tries to salvage what it can from this championship.
However, Aston Martin has been quick and has been knocking on the door all season. The #98 Aston Martin won the pole position in the last two rounds and the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin had three runner-up finishes in the first four races. Aston Martin will get another victory.
None of the Ferrari entries have been particularly close. Clearwater Racing finished third at Spa-Francorchamps and Spirit of Race finished second at Le Mans but those are the only two podium finishes for Ferrari this season in GTE-Am and MR Racing has not finished better than fifth this season. Ferrari will have a good race and I don't think it will be shut out this season in GTE-Am.
6. At least one new team wins in LMP2
Similar to Porsche, Jackie Chan DC Racing has won four of five races in LMP2 with Signatech Alpine taking the class victory at Le Mans and Signatech Alpine has had a car on the podium in every race this season.
Both teams use the Oreca chassis, which has dominated the LMP2 category since the regulation changes. The only Oreca teams without a victory is DragonSpeed and TDS Racing.
The safe bet is to put some money on DragonSpeed. It has a great driver lineup with Anthony Davidson, Roberto González and Pastor Maldonado although the TDS Racing lineup is just as respectable with Loïc Duval, François Perrodo and Matthieu Vaxivière.
The two non-Oreca cars are the Dallara of Racing Team Nederland and the Ligier of Larbre Compétition. Neither team has finished better than fifth this season. I would not put money on either getting a victory in the final three races.
7. ELMS: Drivers with Formula One starts win fewer races overall in 2019
The 2018 season had half of the races won overall with a team that had at least one driver with Formula One starts. All those victories were at the hands of Jean-Éric Vergne but still half the races had a Formula One-experienced driver as an overall winner.
The previous three European Le Mans Series races with a Formula One-experienced driver among the overall winning team were with Giedo van der Garde, who won the bookends of the 2016 season with Jota Sport at Silverstone and Estoril, and Christian Klien won the penultimate round of the 2014 season at Circuit Paul Ricard.
Vergne alone doubled the number of ELMS victories for Formula One-experienced drivers since the series' resurgence in 2013. The crazy thing is Vergne wasn't the only with Formula One experience on the grid. Bruno Senna did a round, Felipe Nasr did all but one round and Will Stevens did a full season.
The 2019 grid is far from being announced but in likelihood the likes of Vergne and Stevens will stick around and you never know who could fill a professional seat in a Pro-Am team. However, there are plenty of talented drivers in the European Le Mans Series that never made Formula One, including Filipe Albuquerque, who won the final two races of 2018 with Phil Hanson at United Autosports and he will return next season.
Numbers will not be in the favor of the likes of Vergne and give me the field in that case.
8. At least one of the top three championship finishers in LMP3 improve by at least three spots in the championship
Inter Europol Competition went from fifth in LMP3 in 2017 to second in 2018. In 2017, M.Racing - YMR finished second in the championship after the team finished sixth in the 2016 season. In 2016, Graff was the runner-up in the championship after finishing sixth in the 2015 season, albeit Graff only ran the finale that year.
There has always been one team to make a jump up in the championship and with the natural of a Pro-Am category that is not at all surprising. We have seen drivers and teams start in LMP3, run a year or two and then move up to LMP2 or a driver starts as a silver in LMP3, does well and then gets re-categorized to gold and has to leave the class or find an amateur to keep going in that class.
What are three teams to keep an eye on to fulfill this prediction? The #2 United Autosports Ligier finished sixth in the championship after winning the LMP3 championship the prior two seasons. There is no guarantee United Autosports continues with that entry but if it does I would think it would not be crazy if that entry ended up in the top three.
The #7 Ecurie Ecosse/Nielsen Ligier was fourth in the championship and had three runner-up finishes and this car missed out on the top three by a half-point.
One final team is the #11 Eurointernational Ligier, which has won a race the last two season and finished second in a race in 2016 but the team has never finished better than seventh in the championship.
9. At least one race has a manufacture sweep the podium in GTE
The GTE class in ELMS is a bit disappointing when compared to the behemoths of LMP2 and LMP3. When you have two classes that regularly field 10-12 entries and then have a class that is only hitting six entries, especially a GT class that produces top competition in the WEC and IMSA, it is a bit of a downer.
The GTE class had three Porsches and three Ferraris run full-time in 2018 and that was it. No Aston Martins, no Fords, no Corvettes, no BMWs.
Despite this split, there was not a manufacture sweep in 2018 and ironically there was not even a 1-2 for a manufacture! Each manufacture had three victories but Porsche had two cars on the podium in five of six races.
If there are only three Porsches and three Ferraris again in 2019, I think one manufacture has a grand day or in an even worse case, there end up only being three Porsches and two Ferraris or vice versa and that increases the chance of a sweep even more.
10. World Challenge America: American drivers win more races overall in 2019 than 2018
Out of 19 races, only one had an American driver win overall and that was when the all-American lineup of Mike Skeen and Scott Heckert in the #80 Mercedes-AMG for Lone Star Racing.
That was it.
There will be only 14 races in this new Blancpain GT World Challenge America season but I think we still more American influence on the grid. Paul Miller Racing said it was moving to this series and bringing Bryan Sellers along with them but with the team confirming a full-time entry for GTD in 2019 it is not clear if the team will have a foot in each camp. If it does, I think Sellers will win two races on his own.
If Sellers does race but only gets one victory or if he doesn't win or doesn't compete, I think someone like Michael Cooper will have a ride and Cooper is capable of winning. If it isn't Cooper then it could be a Spencer Pumpelly or it could be Skeen and/or Heckert winning multiple times in a season.
11. One of the regional GT4 series averages fewer than ten entries
The upcoming season is a major shift for the series formerly known as Pirelli World Challenge and not only is the GT3 division being rebranded and going to be solely co-driver doubleheaders on race weekends but the GTS division has been rebranded as GT4 America and there will be regional GT4 series as well.
I am not sure there is that much demand for a national GT4 series along with two regional series. I feel like if you are putting a program together you are going to run the national series. Even at that, the western series still requires a lot of travel and I do not think there are enough teams located on the west coast that would run this series.
12. There will be at least one occasion I forget about this series and do not put it in the "Coming Up This Weekend" section of a Musings From the Weekend
I am scared for this series. A few years ago, Pirelli World Challenge was the best-kept secret in motorsports. It embraced GT3 specs before other series. It survived the recession, it survived the loss of Speed title sponsorship and it found a way to grow through streaming live races. It partnered with IndyCar and filled the bill at many events.
Flash forward to 2019 and the series has cut all ties from IndyCar, has dropped the series' signature single-driver, 50-minute race format and it has been absorbed into this growing SRO bubble and gone is the characteristics of this series.
I feel like the series is making some wrong choices and I fear that this series is going to get lost. And in turn, I fear that a weekend will come and when going through what the schedule will be it will be forgotten because IndyCar will be somewhere and then there will be NASCAR and maybe IMSA and unlike days when it was with IndyCar and was something else to look forward to it will be at another racetrack halfway across the country and with a minuscule percentage of the crowd compared to if it was running with IndyCar.
Right now there is no race weekend from June 9th to August 30th and the "grand finale" is still to be announced for October 18-20th. I am not sure the grand finale will get filled. This culture shift for what was Pirelli World Challenge does not appear to be the correction solution and I hope changes are made for 2020.
Not the best note to end up but there are three other sets of predictions to check out from NASCAR to Formula One to a dozen other series. Tomorrow is the final set of predictions and it will be IndyCar's turn in the spotlight.
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