We have looked back at three predictions for 2019. Today, we will look at our fourth set of predictions for the year and it is the sports car predictions.
The sports car season has concluded now that the 8 Hours of Bahrain has been completed and the forgotten Gulf 12 Hours. Sports car racing is one season that never seems to end. We will take three weekends off and then the Dubai 24 Hours will be upon us. Not long after that will be the 24 Hours of Daytona. The week after that is the Bathurst 12 Hour. The season never ends and there is always a big event around the corner. It keeps us busy.
My IndyCar, Formula One and NASCAR predictions were not great this year. Let's see how these turned out.
1. IMSA: Japanese manufactures win at least half the races overall (excluding the GT-only races)
Correct! Japanese manufactures won six of ten races overall. Acura won three races, Mid-Ohio, Belle Isle and Laguna Seca. Mazda won three consecutive races from Watkins Glen to Mosport to Road America.
Acura took the manufactures' championship and the #6 Team Penske Acura of Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya won the drivers' title. That felt right but I also feel Acura under-performed slightly. The #7 Acura of Ricky Taylor and Hélio Castroneves did not win a race but had five podium finishes. I would have put Acura down for four victories with either Mazda or Nissan picking up the fifth to turn this prediction into a success but it was more even than I expected.
Mazda had a few poor races but it was not the same old issues with Mazda. Daytona and Sebring did not go Mazda's way but it pushed Acura at Mid-Ohio and then had a summer tear that made everyone smile. If it weren't for those two rough results to start the season and a tough weekend at Belle Isle, Mazda could have been in the title fight.
Nissan did not have a great year switching over to CORE Autosport. The team never got on the podium and CORE Autosport is closing down its DPi program, meaning Nissan will exit the series.
To add more sad news on the back of the Nissan departure is Mazda will be splitting with Team Joest after Sebring in 2020 with no announced plans for if anyone will pick up the program for the rest of the season, although there is hope Dyson Racing could return and run a customer Mazda.
Losing both manufactures would be a sad loss for the DPi class. Let's hope Mazda can find a way to keep at least one car on the grid.
2. The GTLM champion has at least three victories
Correct! The #912 Porsche of Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor won the GTLM championship and the #912 Porsche did it with victories at Long Beach, Mid-Ohio and Mosport.
Porsche dominated GTLM in 2019 in a subtle way. It won six of 11 races, including four consecutive at one point, and took the top two in the championship and locked it all up with a race to go, but it was not a thrashing.
BMW started the season with a surprise victory in the 24 Hours of Daytona, aided because of the rain, Ford won three races in its final season and Ferrari took an unexpected victory at Petit Le Mans. Corvette was shut out.
I do not expect Corvette to be shut out again in 2020 but it would not be crazy to think Porsche successfully defends this title.
3. GTD has its fourth different manufactures' champion in four years
Wrong! Lamborghini successfully defended its title and won by two points over Acura.
The #86 Meyer Shank Racing Acura of Dominik Farnbacher and Trent Hindman won the drivers' championship but Lamborghini had some aid in the manufactures' championship thanks to Grasser Racing Team winning the first two races at Daytona and Sebring, the only two races the team competed in.
With that said, Magnus Racing did a respectable job and Paul Miller Racing won a race, carrying Lamborghini to the title. On top of that, Porsche was third in the championship, three points off Lamborghini and Turner Motorsport was second in the drivers' championship with Bill Auberlen and Robby Foley with two victories but BMW was a distant fourth in the manufacture's championship.
The GT Daytona class was fantastic to follow in 2019.
4. WEC: The #8 Toyota wins the world championship
Correct! Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima took the title, won all three races in the 2019 portion of the season and capped it off with a second consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans victory.
This was never in doubt. The only serious contender was the #7 Toyota and the sister car did put up a fight but something went wrong in each of the final three races. Something broke at Sebring and Spa-Francorchamps and the team screwed up changing a flat tire at Le Mans.
The #8 Toyota took the title because it had speed and made fewer mistakes. Alonso, Buemi and Nakajima deserve all the credit in the world but that should not take away from what Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López did. The title was not lost for the #7 Toyota due to driver error.
5. Porsche does not win majority of the remaining races in GTE-Am
Wrong! Porsche swept the remaining GTE-Am races. Ferrari was shut out for the season. Aston Martin was shut out from the season opener onward. It was complete domination for Porsche in the class.
Dempsey-Proton Racing rebounded to win two of the final three races after it had its championship score was erased following the Fuji round after a data breach was found allowing the team to manipulate refueling times. Team Project 1 won the finale at Le Mans and clinched the class championship for Jörg Bergmeister, Patrick Lindsey and Egidio Perfetti.
However, the start of the 2019-20 season has seen Ferrari and Aston Martin take the first three races. Porsche did get back on the board with Team Project 1 and the line-up of Ben Keating, Jeroen Bleekemolen and Larry ten Voorde at Bahrain but how quickly things change.
6. At least one new team wins in LMP2
Correct! DragonSpeed won the penultimate round of the 2018-19 season at Spa-Francorchamps with Anthony Davidson, Roberto González and Pastor Maldonado.
In fact, the first three races of the 2019-20 season have seen three winners in LMP2 that did not win in the class last season with Cool Racing winning the season opener, Racing Team Nederland winning at Fuji, Jota Sport taking victory at Shanghai and United Autosport won at Bahrain. Once again, how quickly things change.
7. ELMS: Drivers with Formula One starts win fewer races overall in 2019
Correct! Only one of the European Le Mans Series races in 2019 had an overall winner that had start a Formula One race.
It was Jean-Éric Vergne again with G-Drive Racing but for a class that saw Paul di Resta (albeit it for one race), Will Stevens and Bruno Senna, Vergne was the only Formula One-experienced driver to take a victory.
8. At least one of the top three championship finishers in LMP3 improve by at least three spots in the championship
Correct! The #11 Eurointernational Ligier-Nissan won the championship after finishing seventh the year before and the #17 Ultimate Norma M30-Nissan jumped up from eighth to third in the championship.
For the second consecutive season, the #13 Inter EuroPol Competition Ligier-Nissan was vice-champion in the LMP3 championship. This year was a little more painful for Inter EuroPol Competition, as Inter EuroPol Competition crossed the finish line as champions but lost it due to a penalty for a drive-time infringement.
9. At least one race has a manufacture sweep the podium in GTE
Correct! Ferrari swept the podium at Barcelona; in fact the manufacture took the top four spots. That was the only manufacture sweep of the season in the GTE class.
10. World Challenge America: American drivers win more races overall in 2019 than 2018
Correct! Only one race had an American winner in 2018. Two races had an American winner in 2019.
The first race to have an American winner was the second Sonoma race with Patrick Long and Canadian Scott Hargrove. The second race was the second Road America race with Dane Cameron and Mike Hedlund taking the overall victory as a Pro-Am combination.
11. One of the regional GT4 series averages fewer than ten entries
Correct! The GT4 West championship averaged 8.8 entries over its five rounds and only broke double-figures twice, having ten entries at Laguna Seca and Portland.
The GT4 East championship did average 11 entries per five rounds with 15 cars showing up for the first round at Austin and every round having at least nine entries.
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
Wrong! I got the series each time but I think we need to talk about Blancpain GT World Challenge America for a moment.
The series is changing. It is going to be a Pro-Am series in 2020. The series went back-and-forth on whether or not the season would open in Austin at the start of March and it finally decided it would. It does not have the same grab that Pirelli World Challenge had a few years ago and that stinks but the series is also trying to survive.
It doesn't run as many companion weekends with IndyCar as it once did but it has to do what is best for the series itself. It has a few notable names in it but the level of manufacture participation is down a tad. Bentley and Ferrari dominated in 2019. Porsche and Acura each won a race and Mercedes was out there but it wasn't long ago you had Cadillac, Audi, McLaren and Lamborghini winning in this series alongside the four manufactures that won in 2019.
I hate to say it but it is not appointment viewing like it once was. A few years ago, if I could not catch PWC live I would go back and catch the replay. I will be honest; I may have watched one or two races this year. Part of it is time, you cannot watch everything, but another part of it is this series does not have the same pizzazz it had not long ago.
I hope that changes but I do not envision it. It needs something to draw me in and a Pro-Am series could be good but there could be something that is constantly lacking. Hopefully I am wrong.
Eight out of 12, now that is more like it.
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