With the IMSA Classic 500 debuting on iRacing, the lead-up to it was dominated by discord over Laguna Seca replacing Road America. Luca took part in the event and believes the idea of Laguna Seca not being a good track choice is complete nonsense.
After electing not to run it last year, I got the Nissan GTP ZX-T on iRacing in anticipation of running the Road America 500 and was looking forward to it. Then as soon as the current season got underway, in the server of a community I joined for Nissan setups pointed to the Special Events schedule changing the event name to the IMSA Classic 500 and moving it to Laguna Seca.
I, for one, was delighted by this move as I felt that Laguna Seca was a track that was deserving of a Special Event. Having run the race in the top split of the 4pm UTC timeslot, I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I got rear-ended and had to spend a bit of time in the pits. It was broadcast by the Global Sim Racing Channel and I featured multiple times, even getting interviewed by my friend Nicolas Hillebrand.
Though I seemed to be in the minority of those who enjoyed the combination.
Laguna Seca: Not Suited to Multiclass?
Immediately upon the announcement of the switch, I could see the discontent in real time as the playerbase were clearly not happy. On one hand, I know fine well that Road America is one of the most popular tracks on iRacing so it was bound to rub some people the wrong way, especially those who perhaps would have picked up the track only to find out it had been swapped out. Made double-worse if they were not a member before Laguna Seca was moved away from the base package.
As a result of the track move - and perhaps also the decreasing of the distance from 500 miles to 500 kilometres - participation did drop. Whilst the average signup count of all renditions of the Road America 500 since its introduction in 2023 reached over 1,500 participants, the IMSA Classic 500 only just got over 1,000. (Source: iracingstats.net)
The main argument I saw against Laguna Seca hosting the race was that "it isn't suited to multiclass" which genuinely perplexed me. Of course, when we think of multiple car classes sharing a track, we picture the hypercars at Le Mans breezing past the GT3s with relative ease, with the long straights and sweeping Porsche Esses providing the prototypes with the opportunities to go past in such an effortless manner like a hot knife through butter.
That being said, perhaps the optimistic sim racers going for overzealous divebombs have ruined the multiclass experience for the majority of us across the board.
Going back to the point, it is this idea that some tracks are suited to multiclass racing and some are not. If the argument was if certain tracks were not suited to specific car classes then I wholeheartedly agree on that, many iRacers will never forget back in 2022 Season 1 when the brand-new Knockhill track was put on the schedule for both GT and IMSA..
Laguna Seca has hosted both the Intercontinental GT Challenge and the IMSA SportsCar Championship (previously the American Le Mans Series), so it has a recent precedent of hosting multiclass action at that level. Of course we cannot use the argument that F1 because it raced at the Nordschleife in the 70s means it should be able to host F1 now. But if it has happened in real life relatively recently, then I reckon that it is fair game.
When competing in this race, part of the challenge that I relished was passing the slew of Audi 90 GTO cars. Yes I was compromised sometimes but that is just part of the challenge, and is that not what this is about? In multiclass racing, I sense many people have stopped thinking of the other classes of car as drivers but as mobile chicanes.
The argument that I am seeing from many people in favour of Road America as the host circuit is that it has plenty of long straights, flowing corners and a decent amount of run-off. What I fail to understand is how the suitability of the track should factor in the difficulty of lapping slower cars and being lapped by faster ones. Surely if a track is tighter, not got a lot of long straights and there is no wiggle room for making a mistake, that should make it more challenging and thus more enjoyable.
Do not get me wrong, I like Road America as well, and everyone is entitled to their preference of Road America to Laguna Seca. But in my opinion, the argument that it is not suited to multiclass racing has a few flaws. Just because it is not easier for faster cars to get past is not a count against a track at all. If we applied that logic, is Monza a superior multiclass track to Nordschleife because it is easier to pass lapped traffic?
I know that example is a bit extreme, especially since you spend way longer between traffic on the Nordschleife on account of it being so long. Speaking of which, track length does also play a part, and Laguna Seca is quite short, so the other classes appear a lot more frequently and can subsequently result in less time to navigate between cars. But that does not count against Road Atlanta which is short, though I concede it does have a considerable amount of straights.
Ultimately, providing these cars are suitable for a track, I see no reason why a multiclass race cannot happen there. The whole challenge that comes with multiclass racing is navigating either lapping others, being lapped yourself or both, there are two or more races going on at the same time and that is - in my view - part of the appeal.
Do you believe that multiclass racing could race any track or are some tracks not suited? Let us know in the comments below and join the discussion in our forums!