Roger Bailey Likes the Look, Sound and Competitiveness of the 2023 GTP Cars
By John Oreovicz
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Few have seen and done more in the racing world than Roger Bailey.
He got his break in his homeland of England preparing Formula 3 cars for Ken Tyrrell’s young driver, Jackie Stewart. He was part of Shelby American’s famous Le Mans effort that achieved victory for Ford in 1966, and he worked alongside Karl Kainhofer in the early days of Penske Racing. Bailey was then asked to join Ferrari as Chris Amon’s personal mechanic, the first Englishman employed by Ferrari in that capacity.
Bailey (at right in photo above, alongside IMSA CEO Ed Bennett) returned to America with BRM for the 1970 Can-Am series, and he stayed for good. A six-year stint as engine builder for the McLaren Indy car team netted two Indianapolis 500 victories, and when McLaren ventured into IMSA sports cars in 1977, Bailey was tabbed to run a BMW 320i Turbo for David Hobbs.
McLaren withdrew from American racing at the end of 1979, but Bailey was recruited by IMSA co-founder John Bishop to become the organization’s technical director. It was Bailey who was tasked with writing the rulebook for a new class called GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) in which Bishop hoped to incorporate traditional American elements into international-style endurance racing.
During Bailey’s tenure as IMSA technical director from 1980-85, the GTP class was an enormous success. As Bishop hoped, Lola and March developed prototypes powered by 350-cubic-inch Chevrolet “stock block” engines that were competitive with the Porsche 962, the gold standard of international sports car racing. GTP’s appeal continued into the 1990s, with memorable prototypes from Jaguar, Nissan and Toyota, long after Bailey departed IMSA to become the longtime managing director of the Indy Lights series. Bailey returned to the IMSA organization in 2012 as one of two chief appellate officers.
With GTP nomenclature brought back for the top prototype class this year in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, there has naturally been much comparison and contrast with the original GTP era. Bailey, who helped create the original GTP formula in 1981, is impressed with what he has seen so far from GTP 2.0 in 2023.
“I thought the competition at Daytona was very, very good, especially for the first few hours,” said Bailey, who shuffles between his longtime home in Michigan and a residence in Speedway, Indiana. “We had nine cars running under a blanket. They’re all competitive. You don’t find that very often.
“The appearance and the liveries on some of these new cars is incredible,” he continued. “Beautiful looking cars – all of them. They’re the kind of cars you can put on posters that make people say, ‘Look at that!’ They’re all well-presented, well-turned out. I think IMSA is in for a great season, I really do.”
It’s difficult for Bailey to make direct comparisons between the cars his rulebook helped inspire and the current cars, which are far more complicated despite a much more restricted set of regulations.
The concept of Balance of Performance was decades away in the 1980s, when Bailey was tasked by Bishop to use the output and potential of a Chevy stock block as the loose performance target for GTP. Modern homologation is much more scientific, ultimately based upon a hypothetical 3-minute, 30-second lap of Circuit de la Sarthe, the track on which the 24 Hours of Le Mans is contested.
“John’s yardstick for the whole program was a 350-cubic-inch Chevrolet V-8,” Bailey said. “That was the target horsepower, the box that other engines had to fit. It was also very important to John that it remained a two-seat car. I looked inside the (new) Porsche 963, and there’s not enough room on the passenger side to put a squirrel, let alone a human being! … It’s very hard for me to compare them with a Lola T-600 or a March 84G.
“I like the way the manufacturers are able to develop their own strategy for energy management,” he continued. “That’s what racing is about. That’s where I think we’re in good shape with GTP. When you have a lot of people looking at a specific problem, you get a tremendous amount of input. Right now, we’ve got people from BMW, Porsche, General Motors, Honda – all their collective thoughts – and we had a great race at Daytona.”
One major difference between eras that Bailey identified was the sheer manpower required to prepare and maintain the new GTP cars.
“Tell you what, there’s a whole lot more mechanics than we had back then!” he exclaimed. “In the old days, if we had three mechanics on a car, we thought we were looking good. Now there are probably a dozen.”
Bailey believes that after a successful debut for GTP at Daytona, the key for IMSA is to maintain the momentum as the season unfolds with a series of competitive races.
“I’d like to see a couple more makes come in, and I understand that’s a possibility,” he said. “Lamborghini is definitely coming next year. I’d like to see us ultimately get up to 15-16 GTP cars. I think Simon Hodgson (IMSA vice president of competition) and Matt Kurdock (IMSA senior technical director) have done a very good job with the technical department controlling where we’re at with all these vehicles, and not just the GTPs.”
The other key similarity Bailey observes when comparing GTP eras is strong leadership at IMSA. That stemmed originally from co-founders Bishop and Bill France, and the France family legacy continues now through Jim France, along with IMSA President John Doonan.
“John Doonan is out and about more than anyone I’ve seen in a long time,” Bailey said. “That’s important. That’s the way John Bishop was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. There wasn’t anybody who couldn’t walk up to John Bishop and ask him a question.
“I think you’ve got the same thing with John Doonan.”