DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Through the first quarter of the new century in an ever-evolving domestic sports car landscape, one IMSA class has stayed relatively consistent: the Michelin Pilot Challenge Grand Sport class.
A hotbed for pony cars, home-built specials and, most recently as of 2017 to present day, SRO GT4 homologated thoroughbreds, GS often provides some of IMSA’s best racing on any given weekend.
The March 14 Alan Jay Automotive Network 120 at Sebring Int’l Raceway marks the 250th race since for the class since it came under Grand-Am sanction in 2001. That total covers 249 previous GS and GSI class races through the 2025 Michelin Pilot Challenge season-opening BMW M Endurance Challenge at Daytona Int’l Speedway.
Reflecting on the road to 250 GS races, some of Michelin Pilot Challenge’s most frequent GS winners weighed in on the class and what it’s meant to the North American sports car landscape.
“I’ve always felt for most of my career, GS tends to be better than GT in terms of battles the field has for close racing,” said Billy Johnson, the 2016 GS champion and co-leader in all-time Michelin Pilot Challenge wins with 24 total, 20 in GS.
“It’s the perfect example of human evolution,” added Matt Plumb, a two-time GS champion (2013, 2024) and the man tied with Johnson on 24 Michelin Pilot Challenge wins, although he’s got 21 in GS. “Everything has progressed to be so specialized and technical. It’s light years ahead of where it was even 10 years ago in 2015.”
“The GS format has always had a minimum drive time, and a pit stop. That consistency levels the playing field between pro/am and pro/pro teams,” noted Will Turner, whose Turner Motorsport team is the all-time winningest GS team with 29 victories.
“As a GT4 category, there isn’t another one globally the way GS operates in IMSA. Proper pit stops. Proper strategy. It’s a proper race. It’s old school,” reflected Robin Liddell, a 17-time GS winner and 2015 GS champion.
This quartet of longtime GS stalwarts encapsulate just some of the evolution that’s happened in the class over 25 years and the first 249 races. The consistent theme that’s emerged is the GS of today has shifted from a build-your-own battler to a buy-from-manufacturer model. What hasn’t changed is the competitiveness, depth and door-to-door action.
“When we first started in ‘05, we built new cars for Grand-Am,” said Turner, who like many GS competitors started in World Challenge. “I still remember in the shop building everything from the cages, to where we’d put the fuel cells, even coming up with splitter designs at the front. Then we’d need to run to the Turner parts side of things to find parts for the race car! It was that easy, for us, having the parts store related to the race team.”
KohR Motorsports team principal/driver Dean Martin, an engineer by background, added, “Your job here is to figure out what someone is doing better and then evolve your own attention to detail to beat them. I say a lot that more races are won back in the shop than at the track. If you don’t prep right, you’re going to struggle.”
Many memorable races stand out. For the Plumb brothers, Matt and older brother Hugh, it meant showing up in Daytona with only their helmets and no rides in 2002.
“I essentially thought to myself, ‘I’m either going to quit racing or make this happen,’” Matt Plumb said. “I started doing some coaching and I wandered down to Daytona just to check out the sports car thing and that ultimately led to a pivot into closed top racing.”
Hugh Plumb added, “Showing up two days before the race, hoping to get a ride, those were the days where that could happen. It sounds hysterical now, but the fascination of getting a ride at Daytona seemed like this really cool thing.”
For Johnson, it included winning historic races for the Roush family as part of a dynamic run of form from 2009 to 2013, when he won 10 GS races in a five-year span.
“At Miller Motorsports Park in ’09, I was battling Bill Auberlen the last 10 laps, changing the lead two-three times a lap,” Johnson recalled. “I came out on top there and that gave Jack Roush Jr. his first professional race win.
“Then at Homestead-Miami Speedway in ’10, we won again, and that was Jack’s father’s 400th victory as a team owner across NASCAR, drag racing and sports car racing. They’d made challenge coins with 400 on the back. Other teams tried to achieve that win for Jack Roush Sr., but we got it done. Jack came back through the field after a tech issue and we won the race anyway. Those were good memories.”
For Turner, it was his first win in a GS-only race nearly 20 years ago in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic with Bill Auberlen and Justin Marks.
“Our team was in its infancy; we weren’t all professional race crew. It felt going in like a fun vacation as well as a race,” Turner laughed. “Beyond the win, I remember two things. One, how many fans we had in the Dominican Republic. It was so fan-heavy that when Justin and Bill won, they had to do a ‘human chain’ around them to get them from the car to the podium!
“The second was how good the race was. It was a low-grip, makeshift track and very hot, dry and dusty, but it was so good for the fans to see it from everywhere. To win our first one there was nuts. Justin was a baby back then, and even Bill had hair!”
Liddell’s last laps fourth-to-first charge in the rain at Road America 2019, passing two cars in Canada Corner and then leader Kuno Wittmer just before the start/finish line, stands as a GS all-timer.
“As I came onto the frontstraight I was pretty happy about finishing second but the next thing I saw was the leader slowing and pulling over in front of me. I just kept my foot in it, drove onto the grass and squeezed past just before the line,” Liddell reflected.
The battle between Plumb and Johnson has carried through three decades of GS, even if both drivers haven’t always overlapped in the series. What’s clear is that both have a huge amount of respect for each other, and a desire to beat the other one.
“It’s been awesome throughout our careers,” Johnson said. “Our rivalry has gone back so many years, even as I was out of the series for several years. That one period from ’09 to ’12, it felt like if I didn’t win, Matt won, or vice versa. That speaks to the depth of the field. I think a common denominator is us winning throughout different generations of cars and formats of racing.”
Plumb added, “I think I said it to him at Daytona, but I’m glad that he is the one who I’m competing against for this win (record). Because I do respect the hell out of him. Knowing he’s in front or behind me, he’s got just enough sense to race him where it works out for both of us. No matter when you’re around him, he races you the same. I’m happy to share that record with him, but I’ll still do anything to kick his rear end.”
Winning is hard in GS. Turner, BMW’s longest serving customer team, has made more than 600 starts and estimated it’s made more than 370 of those in GS, running at least two cars most years.
Behind Turner’s 29 wins, among active GS teams, KohR is the second-winningest team with nine GS wins, with its predecessor Rehagen Racing adding five more wins. Rebel Rock Racing has eight, BGB Motorsports six, RS1 and Team TGM five apiece, CarBahn four and Winward Racing three.
Jeff Lapcevich and John Shreiner won the first GS race on February 4, 2001 in a Ford Mustang Cobra R at Daytona. Nearly 24 years later, Michael Cooper and Moisey Uretsky won the 249th GS race in Daytona in their No. 44 Accelerating Performance McLaren Artura GT4, to become the 149th and 150th drivers to win a GS race.
Leave a Reply