The 2022 IMSA season is long over; it’s already a little more than halfway through the offseason as of this writing. Teams tested new 2023 equipment at Daytona International Speedway ahead of January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona earlier this week.
Unlike NASCAR, IMSA doesn’t really waste time handing out its year-end awards. The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship banquet was way back on Oct. 2, the night after the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans. IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge teams had their banquet just hours after their final race of the year.
Despite that fact, there’s no reason why we can’t hand out some imaginary awards based on actual on-track events.
The Farewell Award
In 2022, the DPi class as a whole was in a lame duck situation. It was the final year of the class where manufacturers could create their own bodywork on key parts of LMP2 chassis and run their own powerplants.
It is a formula that more or less was created after INDYCAR introduced manufacturer-specific body kits starting in 2015. Unlike INDYCAR, whose manufacturer body kit debut at St. Petersburg was dominated by debris cautions and a flying piece of carbon fiber hitting a fan during the race, IMSA had no such problems with the roll out of the DPis.
The DPis were created to create a more unified top class. Previously, the Prototype class was a mix of previous-generation LMP2 cars with boosted horsepower and the third generation of Daytona Prototypes that had come in from Grand-Am.
Originally, the DPis were grouped together with LMP2 cars as one Prototype class. There were three manufacturers on the grid in Daytona for the first race in 2017, those being Cadillac, Mazda and Nissan. Acura joined up in 2018. In addition, there were teams running ORECA 07, Ligier JS P217 and Multimatic-Riley Mk. 30 LMP2s in the race.
Car count in the class varied over the years. At the start in 2017, there were 12 cars in the combined Prototype class, seven of which were DPis (three Cadillacs, two Nissans and two Mazdas). There were 20 teams in the Prototype class for the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 2018, including 10 DPis.
2019 saw the DPis split off from the LMP2 cars, which continued on as their own class in a Pro-Am fashion. The number of DPi cars peaked during the 2019 Rolex 24 at Daytona when 11 of them were on the grid. Since then, the numbers have dropped off.
Nissan never truly supported the Nissan DPi. After Extreme Speed Motorsports dropped out at the end of 2018, CORE autosport…
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