Milner Defends GT Driving Standards from Road America

Photo: Brandon Badraoui/IMSA

Tommy Milner said he’s not expecting a major crackdown by race control on the driving standards for this weekend’s Michelin GT Challenge at Virginia International Raceway in the wake of the recent six-hour Road America race, which he and fellow GT competitors feel most of the blame went to the GTP and LMP2 drivers.

Sunday’s one-and-only GT headline round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has typically produced largely green flag runs, with only two cautions slowing last year’s two-hour and 40-minute race, which came after the 2025 Road America contest that saw multiple incidents in the production-based ranks.

When asked how he thinks this weekend’s race will be run, Milner said he expects it to be officiated similarly to last year.

“I think the difference here is at Road America last year, it was the GT cars that were exhibiting the poor driving standards,” he said. “And I felt like for us, our class was pretty good at Road America this year.

“But obviously the final product on TV wasn’t fantastic. I watched a good part of it after the fact. All the yellows at the end of their end of the race spoiled what could have been a little bit of a better show. So I am imagining some discussion about driving standards again for VIR.

“In reality for us in GTD Pro, I thought the standards were pretty good. Not that we don’t need to listen to what Beaux has to say, but I think there’s going to be a little bit of a crackdown.

“We had a good race last year at VIR with not many cautions. So I predict something similar.

“The racing’s been, by and large, quite good for us in GTD Pro. I think there’s going to be some discussion about it and sort of another reminder.

“Even so, we had a reminder at Road America that obviously fell on some deaf ears on some drivers. Hopefully we have nothing important just before and just after the drivers’ meeting because I think it’s gonna be a long one.

“I do think at VIR that you can certainly get yourself in situations there where the racing can be rough – no question about it. I’ve been part of some of that rough racing in the past; I watched Nick [Tandy] exhibit some of that in 2021 there, which was fun to watch.

“It’s been good this year and I think we’ll have a good race at VIR.”

Wayne Taylor Racing driver Danny Formal agreed with Milner, suggesting the battles in GTD at Road America was “quite nice.”

“I was around a lot of drivers, a lot of people in GT, and the racing was quite clean,” he said. “There were no double moves, no one’s dooring people into the grass, stuff like that. It looked really good.

“I think the big boys were a little more aggressive [that] weekend. And obviously, I think the penalties and all the yellow flags were coming from the faster cars.

“I think the driving standards were quite aggressive. I saw some of the incidents. Some to me looked like hard racing; IMSA has very hard racing, and IMSA does a great job for that to keep all those prototypes [at] similar speeds. So the racing is really tough and I saw a lot of hard racing.”

Robby Foley, who with co-driver Patrick Gallagher are in the midst of a tight battle for the GTD championship, believes IMSA has found the “right middle ground” in policing the GT classes.

“I think it goes up and down for us as we’ve seen, kind of through the season,” said Foley. “I think last year, IMSA had to crack down a little bit harder and officiate more. I personally was a fan of that, because you knew where you stood, you knew where the lines were.

“In general, we do have good racing. I’m a fan of good hard racing; a little touching here and there is okay.

“But I think now with how close the cars are, there’s an extra level of aggression that we all have to deal with.

“From my side, Road America was pretty good. There were one or two things which ultimately yielded drive throughs for different drivers, but I think we’re close to finding the right middle ground at least in the GT classes, between good, hard racing but not silly racing.

“For me, that’s been a fine line in the past year and a half or so.”

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