Doonan Explains IMSA Entry Selection Process

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

IMSA President John Doonan has explained the entry selection process in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

Established last year, the revised procedure entails a job interview-like meeting with the IMSA-led selection committee, which includes senior-level management as well as leadership from the competition, member services, marketing and public relations departments, which all evaluate a team’s proposal to compete in the series.

The meeting, which typically occurs during an event weekend, then provides IMSA with sufficient information on whether to approve or reject a particular entry request.

“We have an entry selection committee that’s been going for two years now,” Doonan told Sportscar365. “We get together on a weekly basis.

“When a team expresses interest, we have an entry insight meeting: ‘Team principal, We understand you want to start a team and your two drivers are going to be ‘Driver A’ and ‘Driver B’  and your’e going to race ‘X’ manufacturer and we hear you’re bringing ‘Company A’ as a sponsor.’

“‘Now we see the framework of your program.’

“We do that with every team; GTP, factory, independent, in the WeatherTech Championship.”

Once approved, IMSA then works with the team on a schedule to announce the specific entry, complete with its full season driver lineup.

So far, Car Blanche, Winward Racing and Ford Racing have been confirmed by the sanctioning body as 2027 full season entries, with Bartone Bros. Racing with GetSpeed announced as a Michelin Endurance Cup effort.

Doonan said they’ve received positive feedback from the process, which he believes helps both the sanctioning body and the individual team.

“We’ve got a lot of feedback from the teams that’s a really exciting opportunity for them to present their package,” he said. “They feel like it’s IMSA paying a significant amount of attention to what they’re trying to put together.

“For us, it starts to have the stars aligning, where if we have a corporate partner that we know would like to be on a team that we could align that with a team if the program matched up.

“That’s one of our significant goals going forward, to try and align corporate partners and teams as much as we possibly can.”

One change for this year is that IMSA will not release the full season entry list at this weekend’s Motul Petit Le Mans, as it has previously done.

The decision for this, which was communicated back in March during the 2027 schedule release, is aimed to give teams more time to finalize their programs.

Full season, Michelin Endurance Cup and Rolex 24-only entries will be accepted through Nov. 10, with driver deadlines set for Nov. 24.

The entry list release for the 2027 Rolex 24, meanwhile, will be released on Dec. 9, with teams informed of entry approvals or rejections nine days earlier.

“We tried to give in the registration process, the teams a bit more time to put all of their deals together,” said Doonan.

Doonan said they have “somewhere between 75 and 80” teams that have expressed interest in contesting January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, although he did not disclose an exact number of full season entry requests to date.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John