2021 Qualfying: Pointless?

 

I may be strange, but when the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship rule book is published for the following year, I tend to sit down with a tasty beverage and a snack, as well as a notebook and pen. I do this because it’s important to notice the changes from year to year, and how they influence the overall product of each championship.

Arguably, the biggest change for 2021 was the points structure. In an effort to discourage sandbagging – teams qualifying with lower speeds to hide their hand and hopefully escape disadvantageous Balance of Performance rulings—the sanctioning body added a points structure to incentivize competitors to put their best foot forward in qualifying. It also was meant to add extra intrigue to the sometimes less meaningful qualifying sessions. We left our simple system and multiplied it by ten, then added a points reward for qualifying. When a win used to get a team 35 points, they now pull in 350 points. For second place, the prize of 32 points jumps to 320, etc. The reward for qualifying remained according to the old points system of 35, 32, 30, 28, 26, 25, etc. Confused yet? Just wait.

The DPi, LMP2, LMP3, and GTLM classes all had a standard qualifying session, where your position at the end of the session determined their starting position and points. But due to the complicated makeup of manufacturers, amateur and gentleman drivers in the GTD class, their format ended up a little different. Qualifying for GTD saw two 15-minute sessions. The first session was for the amateur driver, rated as a Silver or Bronze, to set the starting position for the race. A second qualifying session followed, where the professional driver (or in the case of endurance races, any other driver besides the one who had done the first session) had the opportunity to qualify the team for points. The reasoning behind this second qualifying session with a professional driver is so that the sanctioning body could see the true performance of the car and team with their top driver behind the wheel. If you qualified on pole but dead last in the second session, you would still start on pole. It was, as they say, for the marbles (not all of them, but the ones that pay at the end of the year).

But wait, there’s more!

Again, staying in the GTD category, if you had some sort of infraction of the rules in this second segment, your qualifying position would be erased. If you chose to change starting driver or tires, your points would be erased. In other words, it was complicated.

Ok, now that we’ve established the biggest change to the 2021 rulebook, let’s look at the impact it had on the title contenders of the 2021 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

DPi:

Interestingly only three times since the Merge of the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am in 2014 has the class leader going into the final race NOT finished the season as a champion. The first two examples are from 2015, when in the P class, Michael Valiante and Richard Westbrook entered Petit Le Mans with a six point advantage over Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa. In GTD, Christina Nielsen led over Bill Sweedler and Townsend Bell by a point, but she had to wait another year for her first championship. The third time there’s been a change in championship order in the final race was this year, in DPi, with the battle between the Whelen Engineering Cadillac of Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani and the Konica Minolta Acura starring Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor. How close were they? Well, both teams contested all 10 races, both cars were on the podium seven times, and both stood on the top step of the podium three times. Nasr had the most poles of anyone in the category this year with three, Ricky had two, and considering there were six different polesitters, that’s impressive. But how much of a difference did that qualifying performance make?

The Whelen group scored 317 points in qualifying while the Konica Minolta duo got 306. That’s an eleven-point gap – and the championship was decided by 11 points! Without the qualifying points and taking away the 10x magnification of the points system, both teams scored 309 points. This means the championship would’ve gone to finishing positions! Who had more wins? Tie. Who had more seconds? Ah, this is where the swing takes place, and the car that won the championship actually WOULD HAVE WON if we didn’t count qualifying points anyways! The Cadillac had three runner-up finishes while shockingly the Acura had none!

Countback DPi

Position	10	31	55	01	60	5
1st	3	3	2	1	0	1
2nd	0	3	2	3	1	0
3rd	4	1	2	1	1	1
4th	3	1	1	1	4	2
5th	0	0	2	3	1	1
6th	0	2	0	0	5	2
7th	0	0	0	0	0	3

 

Before we move away from DPi, I just want to take a quick look at the impact of taking zero points for a qualifying session had on this class. Ultimately, each of the other four full-season cars had a race with a goose egg in the points column for one reason or another. The Mazda scored 0 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, while the Chip Ganassi and Mustang Sampling Cadillacs, as well as the MSR Acura, all elected to take zero points at Mid-Ohio. Did any of those cars end up winning the races? Ehh no. None of them got a podium in the race in which they started from the back with no points. In other words, take the points and maybe move up a position in the end-of-season-standings! Because they all had one zero, it didn’t alter the end of season results, but the MSR Acura and the Mustang Sampling Cadillac were separated by 13 points at the end of the season. That’s a lot fewer than the 25 for taking last place in qualifying points for this year.

Car	2021 Final	2021 Q	Adjusted	Old Money
31	3407	317	3090	309
10	3396	306	3090	309
55	3264	264	3000	300
01	3163	263	2900	290
60	2946	256	2690	269
5	2933	243	2690	269

 

LMP2

This category is a bit tricky since we only had three cars contest every round of the championship, but I’ll still do my best to keep it even. Ben Keating and Mikkel Jensen had a barnstormer of a year, scoring six podiums in seven races, three wins, and for Ben, four pole positions. Only two drivers took pole this year in the category, and we were all surprised and thrilled when Steven Thomas stepped up to the category and pipped Ben twice!

Because the LMP2 class (and the LMP3 class for that matter) didn’t score points at Daytona, I’ll focus on Sebring, Watkins Six Hour and Watkins 2.0, Road America, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, and Petit Le Mans.  For the LMP2 class, a Bronze driver must qualify the car. This left us Keating vs. Thomas vs Farano. Keating took max points in the last 4 races, with second place points at Sebring. The discrepancy in his results is at the Six Hours of the Glen, where he scored none! This meant that Thomas, who scored at every round, gained more points for his team, 196 to Keating’s 172. Take nothing away from Ben’s accomplishment, however, as also scoring in every round except one, Farano had 30 points fewer than Keating! Here the points for pole made a huge difference!

That said, Keating and Jensen were a powerhouse team this year. If we take away the qualifying points and convert the season total to old money, they still accrued 199. Second place in the championship would’ve gone to Farano and Aubry however, with that duo on 187 to the 183 of Nunez and Thomas! So here, qualifying points DID play a role in season finals!

Car	2021 Final	2021 Q	Adjusted	Old Money
52	2162	172	1990	199
11	2026	196	1830	183
8	2012	142	1870	187

 

LMP3

A new championship for IMSA but some very familiar faces found respite in LMP3. Gar Robinson ultimately claimed the big prize after 5 wins, every round a podium, and one pole. The only non-Gar wins came at the hands of Jon Bennett and Colin Braun, a very familiar superhuman duo to the series.

The qualifying points here are interesting because none of the top three in the championship scored anywhere close to the most points in class! Gar came away with 176 points from qualifying, scoring in every round. CORE, taking no points for qualifying at Petit Le Mans, got only 150, a 26-point gap. This would not have been anywhere near enough to swing the 2000-1840 points we saw at the end of the season, but both of the top teams in the championship fought hard for their points and kept what they could get. Third place in the full season standings was the other Riley car, the one for Jim Cox and Dylan Murray. This car scored abysmally, taking only 102 points and no points from two of the six rounds possible. If we revert the scores to old money, Gar ends up with 200, CORE has 184, and disregarding qualifying this second Riley would’ve had 182! That’s one position different in the final race to force a tie!

It was Performance Tech, however, who amassed the most points from this system, hauling in 190 with their drivers taking poles at Sebring, Watkins Glen 2.0, and Road America. We had no repeat polesitter in LMP3 this year, but 23 different drivers in the class took home a podium trophy.

Car	2021 Final	2021 Q	Adjusted	Old Money
Gar	2176	176	2000	200
54	1990	150	1840	184
91	1922	102	1820	182
Lindh	1790	190	1600	160
Askew	1744	184	1560	156

 

GTLM

Much like the championship itself, GTLM wasn’t really close. The class, which featured only three full-season cars, still saw 19 drivers and six cars get to the podium. Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia came away with the most podium visits (Nine), and Jordan clinched five pole positions to further cement his name in the record books.

No one dared to take 0 points from a qualifying session. They were far too important. Maximum points went the way of the No. 3 Corvette seven times this year, with second place coming at VIR and Daytona, and third at Petit Le Mans. They never scored less than 30 points for qualifying! Their total was 339. Their sister car lost 21 points here, gathering only 318. Did this make a difference? No, it didn’t. Even converting it to old money, the No. 3 Corvette still scored 321 points to the 313 of the No. 4 car, and 306 of Cooper MacNeil. Although Cooper added eight podiums to his total this year, doubling his season-best record, he was never aiming to pick up the championship from qualifying points. Instead he took the wins at Sebring and Petit!

Car	2021 Final	2021 Q	Adjusted	Old Money
3	3549	339	3210	321
4	2448	318	3130	313
MacNeil	3356	296	3060	306

  

GTD

Settle back. Now’s when things get good. We’ve got a lot to explore.

In GTD, we had two championships within the championship, the Endurance Cup and the Sprint Cup. I’m going to focus on the Sprint Cup, because it added a bit of extra spice and pizazz. At the end of the year in the sprint points battle, the No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin had 2539, ahead of the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini with 2520. These two teams scored 209 and 210 points in qualifying respectively, so no huge advantage there. In Sprint, qualifying changed nothing and the team that should’ve won based on results did! The team who scored the most points in Sprint qualifying, though, was the No. 96 Turner BMW! They outscored first and second in the championship, to gain 226 points to the year-end total. This gap didn’t move them up or down in the standings, but it was impressive!

Car	2021 Final	2021 Q	Adjusted	Old Money
23	2539	209	2330	233
1	2520	210	2310	231
14	2407	207	2200	220
96	2196	226	1970	197
Montecalvo	2130	200	1930	193
39	2092	182	1910	191
9	2069	169	1900	190
66	1956	166	1790	179
Farnbacher	1858	208	1650	165

Now on to the big kahuna. Thirty-three drivers stood on the GTD podium this year, representing 11 cars, but one duo stood above the rest. Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers picked up seven trophies out of a possible 12 races. Only once this year when they were still running and on the lead lap did they fail to bring home the hardware. Take a second and let that sink in. The Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin completed every racing mile this year, winning three races and becoming the Sprint Champs, but they only finished on the podium half the time.

In qualifying, Snow earned the post pole positions of any driver with three. Lamborghini had four, and we saw eight different drivers claim pole over the year. This now brings us back to the two separate qualifying sessions: one for race starting position, and one for points. The team to score the most points in qualifying was again the Turner BMW, getting 290 to Pfaff’s 284, both super impressive numbers! Turner finished fifth and Pfaff won, to put that into perspective.  The second-place car in the championship, the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini, brought home 253 points, scoring badly at Daytona, Mid-Ohio, the Watkins Glen Six Hour, Sebring, and Lime Rock. Did this make a difference in the year-end fight? Yes. Would it have made a bigger difference if they had been more fortunate at Petit Le Mans? Again, yes. Did the qualifying points change the championship? No. Take for example the Heart of Racing Aston Martin. They scored no points in qualifying at Petit Le Mans. If they’d taken the points allotted, they still would’ve finished behind Paul Miller in the season-long championship. Turner had the most with 290 and, out of the full season competitors, Magnus had the least with 168. That’s a 122-point swing that, if awarded to Magnus, still puts them at 2350 points, or exactly in the championship where they finished.

 

Car	2021 Final	2021 Q	Adjusted	Old Money
9	3284	284	3000	300
1	3163	253	2910	291
23	3111	221	2890	289
16	2943	253	2690	269
96	2880	290	2590	259
14	2640	270	2370	237
12	2538	258	2280	228
88	2400	210	2190	219
44	2228	168	2060	206

 

 So what does all this mean? While only one championship was altered by qualifying points this year – the battle for second in LMP2 - that’s not to say it won’t be the case for race seasons to come. This season, the new points structure played out fairly mild, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be spicier next year.

There are changes afoot for the format for 2022, and I’m sure lots of the brilliant minds on the pit boxes have also already looked into the effect of taking vs. not taking the points from 2021. The biggest thing we learned this year: qualifying didn’t ultimately shape the championship, but it isn’t pointless!

Ba dum tish.

 I’ll show myself out now.

*special thanks to KBru for editing assistence*