Wayne Taylor Wants DPi, LMP2 Classes Separated In IMSA SportsCar Championship

Wayne Taylor – founder and owner of Wayne Taylor Racing – is one of several team principals pushing for the separation of the DPi (Daytona Prototype International) and LMP2 (Le Mans Prototype 2) classes in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Among the list of concerns had by team principals is that the inclusion of LMP2 cars in the full season has forced harsh Balance-of-Performance restrictions for DPi cars in order to bring the two classes in-line with each other.

Even with such harsh BoP, P2 cars have hardly been competitive in this year’s SportsCar Championship season; DPi cars claimed most or all of the podium spots at each of the first five races in 2018. Only recently has IMSA managed to strike something of a balance between the two Prototype classes, allowing P2 cars to win the most recent two rounds.

“It’s not a happy place anymore,” Wayne Taylor recently told Sportscar365. “How do you BoP a DPi, which has got the best teams with best drivers against a P2 car, which has one pro and one amateur? How do you do that?”

Taylor went on to say that the DPi class “must go back to what the rules were when it first started. My view is that unless they do that, they may have a problem. I can’t see how to motivate a sponsor to come. We qualified eighth [at Watkins Glen]. How does that look to your sponsor when you’ve built the best car, the best drivers and you get it all taken away?”

Wayne Taylor Racing and other teams running the Cadillac DPi-V.R have seen the Prototype car’s output drop by nearly 100 horsepower since its introduction last year, according to Sportscar365, although Cadillac still leads among manufacturers in the Prototype class, and the top three teams in the Championship standings are all running Cadillacs. Still, the team that so thoroughly dominated the Prototype class last season, winning each of the first five races in 2017, has yet to clinch victory in 2018.