2020 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar ChampionshipSports Cars 

  • Thread starter Northstar
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Every class is a repeat of last year with an asterisk.

DPi - Same team, partially different lineup
LMP2 - Same team, different lineup
GTLM - Same team, different car
GTD - Same manufacturer, different team

At least Mazda and JDC finished on the podium.

Now onto Bathurst!
 
Honestly the american commentators just grind my gears. Talk about the actual race once in awhile. I don't give a s*** about Tandy's obsession with stock car racing.

Considering the video tells the story of the racing, they have to fill the time with something.

Unless you want Radio Le Mans coverage which is better

I'll have to give it a listen sometime.

The Rutledge Wood segments have been rather cringeworthy as well, not that one would expect differently. Other than that though it's been pretty good and I don't have any serious complaints.

Trackpass has so far been worth every penny.

It's like NBC keeps Rutledge around because he was on Top Gear USA & he works for cheap. I don't like his segments during NASCAR races either. Other than 24 hour coverage, what other benefit did you get out of TP?

Not for me! NBC showing random shows the past hour and a half.

Damn. They screwed you. Possible that your local affiliate didn't think racing was a big draw.
 
BIG M8 with the win

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what other benefit did you get out of TP?

Really the only real advantage it has over imsa.tv when watching live is the ability to pause and rewind, which is nice to have.

Aside from that they also put up replays really quickly. The race was broken up into 3 segments and the first 2 are already available to watch on-demand.
 
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I'm just going to lave my thoughts in a spoiler post, learning from the mistake I just made minutes ago.
Whoo! Cadillac wins the Daytona 24 hours! ....actually I can't get too enthusiastic. I really didn't know what teams to cheer for as I haven't really watched an IMSA race before.
 
Really the only real advantage it has over imsa.tv when watching live is the ability to pause and rewind, which is nice to have.

Aside from that they also put up replays really quickly. The race was broken up into 3 segments and the first 2 are already available to watch on-demand.

With NBC's coverage, IMSA TV wasn't available. I've seen plenty of times that IMSA's social media directed me to IMSA TV. I guess that exclusive coverage was written into the contract when NBC put their bid in.
 
Finally, the curse of the #24 BMW is broken. I can watch the rest of the season knowing that for once the car both had pace and finished without any problems.
 
In previous IMSA season threads, I said RLL shouldn't have the tender for the BMW team. Here they are now as back-to-back class winners in the Rolex 24. They sure as hell made me look damn stupid.
 
In previous IMSA season threads, I said RLL shouldn't have the tender for the BMW team. Here they are now as back-to-back class winners in the Rolex 24. They sure as hell made me look damn stupid.

Last year was a bit of a fluke, from what I remember they were absurdly good in the wet (and generally had no pace at any of the other races except CTMP and Road Atlanta) plus it took them forever to get good back when it was GT2 (when they ran the BMWs then...)

At least they're actually sticking with the program and seem to finally know what they're doing, unlike MTEK...
 
I was impressed by the 1-2 for Lamborghini in the highly competitive GTD class.

I recall hearing one of the announcers saying the 3rd place Audi shared mechanical components with the Lambo. I had no idea! In what ways are the cars the same?
 
I was impressed by the 1-2 for Lamborghini in the highly competitive GTD class.

I recall hearing one of the announcers saying the 3rd place Audi shared mechanical components with the Lambo. I had no idea! In what ways are the cars the same?

Everything mechanical is identical.
 
I was impressed by the 1-2 for Lamborghini in the highly competitive GTD class.

I recall hearing one of the announcers saying the 3rd place Audi shared mechanical components with the Lambo. I had no idea! In what ways are the cars the same?
Have you not watched a car show in the last decade? The Huracan is just an Audi R8 with some Italian style. Ever since VWG bought Lamborghini whenever that was.
 
It was nice to see so much green flag running this year. Hopefully the field size increases a bit for next year, but I still prefer quality over pure quantity.

I watched quite a few different streams on Twitch and Discord to be able to follow the race. Obviously these streams weren’t legal, and many of them were shut down, and I think a number of people got suspended by Twitch. I think IMSA is fighting a losing battle here, and they’re really missing an opportunity. Some common themes I discovered while chatting with people in the streams:

• many where quite young, either late teens or early 20s. As such, they are not from the “TV generations”, and have no interest in standard TV programming and formats (eg add breaks).

• majority of people seemed to be from the Sim Racing community, from various platforms and games. Many of these people were rather new to watching endurance racing, and discovered endurance racing through playing these various games. Due to this, they are used to and expecting a completely different experience and set of options while watching a race. Many of these people had watched countless hours of sim racing, both live and replays, so were expecting the kind of freedom one gets with camera options and whatnot. They were disappointed and annoyed that a) they couldn’t control the camera, b) that the feed seemed to show unimportant cars while other action was happening (again, not knowing that the director caters to the NBC broadcast).

• many of these viewers claimed they were willing to pay to watch the race, as long as it wasn’t cable, and had never heard of things like “Discover Velocity”. Many were avid Twitch and YouTube watchers, but had no interest in signing up for and downloading another app to watch one race. You could look at that as being lazy, but when people already have money invested in things like Twitch subscriptions, I understand where they’re coming from.

• one of the main criticisms of any of the current official ways to watch the race, is a lack of a live chat, and I would have to agree. Being able to chat with randoms from all over the world while watching the race was really cool, it really enhanced the experience. Many of the internationals I met said they were watching on Twitch instead of IMSA.tv for that exact reason.

I want to see IMSA turn profits from their product, as I like the product and want to see it do well. I think there is significant opportunity for them to tap into the Twitch/YouTube streaming arena, with some crossover into the sim racing world to attract new fans, while still being able to make money off the product.
 
many of these viewers claimed they were willing to pay to watch the race, as long as it wasn’t cable

That is exactly what NBC TrackPass is. Yes, it's outside of YouTube and Twitch, but it's not exactly difficult to sign up either.

one of the main criticisms of any of the current official ways to watch the race, is a lack of a live chat, and I would have to agree. Being able to chat with randoms from all over the world while watching the race was really cool, it really enhanced the experience. Many of the internationals I met said they were watching on Twitch instead of IMSA.tv for that exact reason.

I'm of two minds on this one. On the one side it can be fun chatting with people during a race as long as everyone is decent. However once you get above a certain number of people the chat usually moves so fast it's hard to follow conversations and even harder for mods to police trolls and inappropriate content so it sort of defeats the whole point of its existence.
 
That is exactly what NBC TrackPass is. Yes, it's outside of YouTube and Twitch, but it's not exactly difficult to sign up either.
Isn’t that just in the US though? I met people from South America who couldn’t watched the IMSA stream, and it doesn’t work here in Canada either.

Like I said, it can be seen as laziness....but I also sympathize with people who are tired of having to sign up for so many different apps and services to watch things, especially when there are apps like Twitch and YouTube which have so much content under one umbrella.

I'm of two minds on this one. On the one side it can be fun chatting with people during a race as long as everyone is decent. However once you get above a certain number of people the chat usually moves so fast it's hard to follow conversations and even harder for mods to police trolls and inappropriate content so it sort of defeats the whole point of its existence.
Totally agree, it’s a valid point. Certainly the more enjoyable chat session I had during the race were in streams of 50-300 viewers. More than 1000, things got hectic and silly.

The best suggestion I saw made was for IMSA to offer both public and private streams. I could totally see the private ones being used by various online groups and clubs (ie GTP could pay for a private stream, and then make it available to premium members, or something along those lines). Several of the streams that I watched, especially some of the smaller ones, were online race teams/clubs/leagues who just wanted to watch the race together. There was one group of Euros who could easily have watched it on IMSA.tv, but were watching it on Twitch so they could chat, and because they watch various sim racing streams on Twitch together.

The public streams, you could have multiple streams and limit the number of people in each one maybe? Or make chat available to subscribers only?
 
I was impressed by the 1-2 for Lamborghini in the highly competitive GTD class.

I recall hearing one of the announcers saying the 3rd place Audi shared mechanical components with the Lambo. I had no idea! In what ways are the cars the same?
Well, they share the exact same engine.

Also, it just so happens that 2 of the 4 class winners have an Australian driver in their line-up. Briscoe and Mostert weren't the only ones though; Van Gisbergen and Matt Campbell were in the race as well. But Van Gisbergen was neither here nor there. At least Campbell was in the GTLM battle.
 
Did anyone else have trouble viewing the #3 Corvette on-board footage through the IMSA site? After about the first hour or so it went to a "please wait" screen and never came back for the rest of the race (at least not at the many points I checked along the way). All the other feeds worked fine for me.

I'm pretty bummed on this point, because I was looking forward to streaming Radio Le Mans alongside the Corvette on-board after the TV broadcast signed off over night.
 
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