Performance Tech to Step Back from Top-Level IMSA Racing

Performance Tech Motorsports will sit out an IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season for the first time next year following the removal of the LMP3 class.

Team principal Brent O’Neill confirmed to Sportscar365 that he has not submitted an entry request for the 2024 season but will instead focus on running LMP3s in the VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, which supports selected WeatherTech Championship races.

Performance Tech has been a mainstay in IMSA’s headline series for ten years, only missing a handful of races since the inaugural 2014 season following the merger between Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series.

It started out with an Oreca FLM09 in Prototype Challenge, carrying over from its ALMS effort, and won the category’s final title in 2017 with Pato O’Ward and James French before stepping up to the top prototype class with an Oreca 07 Gibson.

The team spent three seasons in LMP2, twice finishing second in the teams’ standings after it became a standalone class. It then sold the Oreca and joined the new LMP3 class in 2021 with a Ligier JS P320 Nissan.

“I’m going to take a year off from WeatherTech,” O’Neill said in the build-up to this weekend’s Motul Petit Le Mans season finale.

“We had an opportunity to do a GT car, but the paddock is overrun right now. Unless you have the right manufacturer and the right BoP, you’re spending $4.5 or 5 million [U.S.] to be a backmarker.

“[Former LMP3 team] Andretti shows up and they’ve got the Aston Martin which should be a good car. It’s just a different level.

“My shop is actually pretty big, so we have a lot of other things going on with some of our club day customers. We have a client that is doing a lot of LMP3 testing and ultimately wants to be in an LMP2 car. Just before COVID, we ran a P2 car.”

O’Neill indicated that he had potential avenues to remain on the WeatherTech Championship grid in other categories but elected to stick with the LMP3 platform.

Performance Tech has six LMP3s in its workshop, five of which are owned by customers. O’Neill envisions running two or three of them in VP Challenge.

“We knew from Sebring on that the writing was on the wall: there’s no room for the P3 car,” he said.

“I had an opportunity to do a GTD car, but I don’t think it’s the right time for us.

“It might be for somebody else, but I think that your infrastructure has to be able to support it. It’s a big change going from this car to a Corvette GT3 car.

“I’m good friends with [Sean] Creech. Ligier said, ‘Brent, if you want to go LMP2 racing, we’ll help you.’ But it’s not what I want to do.

“If I’m going to do it, I want to do it with an ORECA. I know the car.”

Despite ending a long run of consecutive seasons in the WeatherTech Championship, O’Neill is comfortable with taking a step back and surveying the landscape next year before deciding on whether Performance Tech applies to return.

“I still enjoy IMSA,” he said. “I like all the people and I’ve been here for a long time. From the business side, it makes more sense [to take a year out].

“Shank is doing the same thing. Mike isn’t quitting IMSA. He just doesn’t have the right deal, so it makes sense to take a break.

“We’ve got a couple of customers that want to do a lot of testing.

“If you’re doing a lot of racing and trying to test the race cars as well… it’s just a better move for us as a company.”

Current LMP3 teams have taken different approaches to the end of the class in the WeatherTech Championship.

Sean Creech Motorsport and Riley Motorsports is stepping up to LMP2 with Ligier and ORECA respectively, while Jr III Racing has partnered with United Autosports.

Other teams have opted for GTD, such as AWA which is switching to the new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, and Andretti Autosports which started running an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 this year.

JDC-Miller Motorsports, meanwhile, is racing in the GTP class with a Porsche 963.