IMSA iRacing Pro Series Returns in April for Three-Race Season

The IMSA iRacing Pro Series presented by SimCraft will return next month for a three-race online championship featuring professional drivers.

The hour-long events will stream live on iRacing’s YouTube and Facebook channels on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. ET and feature stars of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge and IMSA Prototype Challenge, as well as drivers from other popular racing series.

GT Le Mans and LMP2 cars will be eligible, including BMW M8 GTEs, Chevrolet Corvette C8.Rs, Ferrari 488 GTE Evos, Ford GTs and Porsche 911 RSRs along with the Dallara P217 Gibson.

A maximum of 50 cars will be eligible for the races at virtual Sebring International Raceway (April 8), WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca (April 22) and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta (May 6).

Many of this year’s competitors got a taste of online action at Sebring last weekend.

SimCraft, the presenting sponsor of this year’s IMSA iRacing Pro Series, set up a state-of-the-art APEX6 PRO full-motion simulator in the paddock to give drivers a chance to experience their products in advance of the competition.

“We are absolutely thrilled to partner with IMSA for the iRacing Pro Series,” said Sean Patrick McDonald, SimCraft co-founder and Chief Technologist.

“For SimCraft, this is 15 years in the making as we attended our very first endurance race at Petit Le Mans in 2007 with a very early SimCraft prototype. We then launched our APEX product line showcasing the newly launched iRacing software at CES in 2009.

“To see how far virtual racing has come, and to have been a major contributor to all those years of progress, makes this new partnership a win-win-win for us.”

IMSA competitors and fans alike are no strangers to sim racing.

The IMSA iRacing Pro Series presented by SimCraft is just the latest installment in IMSA’s long-standing embrace of sim racing, including the 2020 IMSA iRacing Pro Series which was captured by Bruno Spengler, co-driver of the real-world No. 25 BMW Team RLL BMW M8 GTE, and the recent IMSA iRacing Preseason Invitational, won by No. 74 Riley Motorsports LMP3 driver Scott Andrews.

“IMSA was one of the world’s first motorsports sanctioning bodies to recognize the appeal and relevance of sim racing,” IMSA President John Doonan said.

“For well over a decade, our fans and many of our top drivers have enjoyed competing with one another in IMSA-sanctioned iRacing series.

“It’s been fun to watch sim racing’s remarkable technical development as well as its explosive growth in popularity during that time.

“We’re pleased to partner with SimCraft for this year’s IMSA online series, and we can’t wait to see what the future has in store for this exciting dimension of the sport.”