We Asked Drivers Where the Toughest Corners Are – Can You Guess No. 1?
By Godwin Kelly
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competes on a variety of road and street courses of various shapes and sizes, from the signature high banks of Daytona International Speedway to traditional road courses like Watkins Glen International to temporary street circuits like Long Beach.
Each track layout has its own traits and nuances, which test a driver’s skills and mettle. Drivers will tell you there are some turns out there that will speed up their heartrates and raise their blood pressure.
After an informal poll of IMSA drivers, there was one turn that was the clear favorite (or not-so-favorite, as it were) and two tracks had multiple turns mentioned. Read in the drivers’ own words what makes these corners particularly difficult. Does this give them bragging rights as the toughest tracks on the IMSA circuit? We’ll let you decide.
6. Sebring International Raceway | Sunset Bend – Turn 17
Katherine Legge, driver of the No. 66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 (GTD class): “Sebring’s Turn 17 – the bumps! There are two key bumps to manage through Turn 17: one under the bridge and another on exit. Depending on the car and the balance, they can be quite ‘disruptive.’ But that’s not all. With such a wide sea of concrete, there are 100 different lines you can take, so finding that perfect one can be a feat in itself.”
5. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park | Moss Corner – Turn 5A/5B
Antonio Garcia, driver of the No. 3 Corvette Racing Corvette C8.R GTD (GTD PRO class): “They aren’t super risky, but it’s so difficult to hit them right. You need to hit them both together, but it’s very difficult to have a clean run through there. … It’s not difficult in the sense that it’s dangerous, but it’s just difficult.”
4. Watkins Glen International | Turn 11
Jan Heylen, driver of the No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) (GTD class): “My toughest corner is Turn 11 at Watkins Glen. You’re coming off one of the fastest corners of the series and the car pushes out wide to the right which compromises the entry of Turn 11, then very little braking and rolling lots of speed as you’re going toward the wall on the exit of Turn 11.”
3. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park | Turn 2
Tommy Milner, endurance driver of the No. 3 Corvette Racing Corvette C8.R GTD: “What captures difficulty and sort of bravery from a driver, difficulty of a corner – whether it’s by yourself or in traffic – is Turn 2 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. It’s a blind, up over a hill, just a little bit of brakes sometimes, full commitment kind of corner. If you get it a little bit wrong on entry, you are in big trouble mid-corner and off. It’s also a place where you can lose a lot of time as well. You can’t really pass there even though sometimes the prototype cars want to pass. Even in your own class there are opportunities at times where you feel like you can make a pass, but realistically, it’s not going to happen there. For me that hits all the requirements for a difficult corner and it’s one that is very rewarding when you get it right.
“It’s a fine dance of getting the right entry speed, placing the car properly. So in practice one time, I went over the crest of the hill and realized very quickly that if I wasn’t in complete recovery mode I was going to go off into the grass all the way to the tire wall because it’s all downhill. It was everything I could do to get the car collected. The corner is so fast and the commitment level is so high, and there isn’t a lot of margin for error there. I’ve never had a big wreck there – thankfully. But I did have that big moment there.”
Joao Barbosa, driver of the No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P320 (LMP3 class): “There’s a turn at Mosport where you’re turning and completely blind to see what is ahead of you. Turn 2 at Mosport is a super-quick corner. You go up a hump and down a hill, and it’s just a small lift and tap the brakes, but you have to start turning into the apex before you see it. It’s super-fast. You come into it in fifth gear, then turn the car to go down the hill. To me, that is one of the spookiest corners on the whole tour.”
2. Long Beach Street Circuit | Turn 1
Colin Braun, driver of the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-06: “You come down that straightaway so fast, then it’s a tight corner. It really is open on the entry and tightens on the exit. It can suck you into carrying too much speed and ending up in the tires of the right-hand side of the exit. You have to brake really hard, then you downshift three or four gears depending on what car it is. But you are so fast down the long straightaway, which is bumpy and so you are trying to sight in your brake marker. It’s a tight, left-hand corner and it’s easy to out-brake yourself and think you can make it and end up in the tires or realize you can’t make it and go down the runoff, then come back. It makes it a pretty challenging corner for me.”
Nick Tandy, driver of the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 (GTP class): “I’d say Turn 1 at Long Beach because it looks like a nothing corner, it’s like a 90-degree left, but there’s so much opportunity for stuff to go wrong there. You have the pit exit, that obviously comes on the racetrack, and you have the wall at the exit of the turn, so there’s no room for error. …The entry to Turn 1 at Long Beach is fast. In these cars we might be doing 160 mph. Once you commit to the corner and something happens, then you’re straight into the wall. It’s normally a race-ending mistake. … It’s a tough place, but that makes it a good race.”
1. Sebring International Raceway | Turn 1
Ryan Dalziel, driver of the No. 18 Era Motorsport ORECA LMP2 07 (LMP2 class): “It’s terrifying. It’s fast. There’s no room for error. If you make a mistake, it usually results in a dead car. It’s a downshift, but it’s one of the fastest corners for the LMP2 cars. If you don’t go through there right, it sets the tone for the whole lap. When you’re going for a big (brave) lap, that’s where you have to get it done, in Turn 1, then hold it for the rest of the lap. At night, you have to watch out for the inside wall. It can get pretty dark there and you get pretty close to it.”
Ricky Taylor, driver of the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 (GTP class): “It’s exposed to the wind. Conditions change at all times. It’s fast, it’s bumpy and there’s a big risk on exit with a big bump. There are no track limits on exit so it’s straight into the dirt and there’s walls on either side. It’s a big risk but there’s a lot of lap time right there, so drivers tend to take the risk. A lot of corners, the risk doesn’t reward you with lap times, but that corner does. During the day, Sebring Turn 1 becomes very slippery. At night, the exit of Turn 1 becomes super dark, but you have more grip (because it is cooler), but you struggle with the dark.
“Anytime you hit that bump on exit, if you hit it the wrong way (it’s dangerous). We tried a setup change and the car bottomed over that bump and the car went dead sideways at 130 mph. There was not a lot I could do to save the car. I think I was very lucky because just the car going sideways helped correct itself.”
Ben Keating, endurance driver of the No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07 (LMP2 class): “Sebring Turn 1 with Sebring Turn 17 a very close second. I came up driving in GT cars and now I’m in a LMP2 car and it takes a little bit to get used to the aero. My co-drivers at Sebring are willing to do things with the car that I’m not willing to do. They are waiting to get past the bridge, then braking and turning at the same time with a lot of force. Everything I learned growing up in racing is that you brake in a straight line and get that done before you make your hard turn. What my co-drivers do there seem to defy the laws of physics. The reason they can get away with it is because there is so much aerodynamic downforce. I haven’t been willing to do it because if you get it wrong, the penalty is really, really big. You ruin your day if you have a mistake there.”