IMSA Announces Class ID Standards, Leader Lights

IMSA announced Friday the design and class identification standards for cars competing in next year’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship.

Released in a bulletin issued to teams, the sanctioning body has laid out specifications for a new, more simplified identification format that will group competitors into a two-color system.

Cars competing in the Prototype and GT Le Mans classes will carry red-colored number plates, rear wing end plates, mirrors and windscreen banner edges, while the Pro-Am-enforced Prototype Challenge and GT Daytona categories will be identified by the color blue.

Additionally, a new-for-2014 leader light system has been introduced, which will display the current position of each car numerically instead of the previous three dots used in the ALMS. All cars will be mandated to run the new system, colored according to their class and will be strategically placed on the cars for maximum exposure for fans at the track or watching on TV.

According to David Pettit, IMSA’s VP of Marketing, who spoke with Sportscar365, the two-color system will also help casual and new fans to the series identify the different categories, particularly by branding the series as featuring two primary classes: Prototype and GT.

“It will make our story a lot easier to communicate,” he said. “Now that we’re going to a more general sports property with [FOX Sports 1 & 2], we’re going to try and intercept more people coming out of Major League Baseball, UFC and other events. You only have a short window of opportunity to [hook] people as the attention span is not real long.

“The same [is the case] for the casual fan at the track as well. It really layers into the value we’re trying to do to make us a different, more fan-friendly and easier to understand [series].”

Technical specifications and placement for series logos and sponsors, for the race cars and team transporters, were also defined in Friday’s bulletin.

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