IMSA’s Logistics Team Takes Painstaking Planning Process to Make It All Fit and Run Smoothly
By David Phillips
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – It’s only human to take some things for granted, like the sun rising in the east, water running downhill or arriving at an IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship event to find team, manufacturer, supplier and IMSA trailers neatly arrayed and up and running in the paddock.
But those tidy paddocks don’t just magically happen. It takes a huge effort to get all that equipment from race to race, let alone setting it up in an orderly and efficient manner a dozen or so times a season.
Meet the men and women behind the IMSA curtain, the ones who ensure the equipment needed to stage a world-class event is not only on hand but operating at peak efficiency, as well as herding the IMSA cats (otherwise known as competitors) into more than just a semblance of order in the paddock, be it the wide-open spaces of Road America or claustrophobic confines of Long Beach.
Let’s start with the equipment needed to stage the myriad of IMSA-sanctioned series including (deep breath) the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America, Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup Presented by BFGoodrich, Porsche Deluxe Carrera Cup North America and Ferrari Challenge North America. That’s all contained in nine IMSA tractor-trailers based at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, most of which travel to every event on the schedule whether it’s a full IMSA slate at Watkins Glen (where five series are racing) or one Michelin Pilot Challenge class at Detroit.
“A lot of people come to the race and they see our trucks and transporters and they probably assume they’ll be home in no time,” says Cory Posocco, Senior Director, IMSA Event Operations and Logistics. “But when these guys go out on the road it’s a week or longer. Typically, the trucks arrive at a track on the Saturday or Sunday (a week) before the race. They park and then on Monday we start the setup process. They typically depart on the Monday or Tuesday after the race, depending on whether the race is Saturday or Sunday. Let’s say it’s a Sunday race; Monday is pack-up day and then they head for home on Tuesday.”
But not always. Given that this year’s schedule sees this week’s Motul Course de Monterey Powered by Hyundai N at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca follow April’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, IMSA’s rigs stayed in California – parked at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana – before heading up the coast last weekend.
What’s in these nine trailers? Plenty.
There are two tech trailers that host the technical/scrutineering operations for the WeatherTech Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge. Then there’s the car hauler that transports the IMSA safety team equipment and its two Porsche Cayennes and two Chevrolet Silverados (a/k/a Chase 1, 2, 3 and 4), along with the Konica Minolta Business Center that contains office/entertainment space, not just for IMSA but for competitors and suppliers who can book meetings in two conference rooms (at some events there’s a second trailer offering additional office space and meeting rooms).
The engineering trailer is where IMSA Vice President of Competition Simon Hodgson and IMSA Technical Director Matt Kurdock are based, along with IMSA and Bosch engineers crunching numbers and providing data to the competitors. A freight trailer carries the heavy equipment and, as you might imagine, is the first trailer unloaded at the track since it contains most of what’s needed to set up the rest of the show.
“There’s also an operations trailer, where my colleagues and I are based, along with pit lane officials,” says Posocco. “It’s the primary base for our radio systems as well for those of the teams, so if you see the IMSA trailer with a huge antenna up in the air, that’s the ops trailer.
“Last but not least is our tech ops trailer, arguably the most important trailer. It’s usually found in the broadcast compound tethered into our broadcast partners’ TV truck, so all the (video) feeds come in from the TV cameras and also we put out some cameras of our own. It all gets back to that trailer and then we distribute it to the paddock, to the racetrack and our other trailers. It’s the TV feed but also IMSA Radio originates out of there, as does the IMSA direct internet that we offer the teams (at the track). Timing and scoring equipment is also based there and our partner Al Kamel shares that trailer as well.”
If that sounds like a lot, consider those eight or nine trailers are just the start. Depending on the venue and the number of IMSA-sanctioned races on the weekend’s schedule, Posocco and his colleagues also have to figure out how to accommodate as many as 120 teams in paddocks from Daytona International Speedway to Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
“Certainly, every paddock area is different,” says Posocco. “You’ve got super-tight constraints at a Long Beach, where I think we had 11 more trailers than we did last year, so you’ve got to get creative on those. Then we’re coming up on WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, which I think of as kind of a mixed-use space. There’s a traditional parking area (for transporters) but you also have some garages.”
The planning process begins several weeks before any given event, when teams submit their paddock layouts (number of transporters, footprints with awnings, etc.) via an internal IMSA system. Although there is some flexibility, other aspects are regulated. For example, two-car Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) teams are permitted three trailers, one-car GTP are limited to two trailers. Every team – no matter the class or series – is restricted to a maximum footprint.
“We start with a draft,” says Posocco. “Then my colleague Jamie Eversley, who designs and develops the paddock layouts, kick it around. There’s usually eight to 12 versions of a paddock layout before we settle on a layout that we think is close to final. Then we meet with a larger group within the company and go through our philosophy on how and why it was laid out. Where all of our suppliers would be located is also key, so VP Fuels, Michelin, AirGas and everyone has line of sight on the plan. We take their feedback and come up with a final draft, and we do load-ins from that layout.
“Once everything is put into place, things happen. Maybe a team withdraws for whatever reason, so things are adjusted, and then the day we park, we put out a final version of the paddock. Everyone in the company and at the track has access to that.
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
That’s quite some nutshell. And one to keep in mind the next time you arrive at an IMSA race and are tempted to take for granted the fact that the paddock is up and running smoothly.