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IMSA President John Doonan Reflects on First Quarter, Previews What’s to Come
May 22, 2025
By Tony DiZinno IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Heading into one of the busiest weekends in motorsports from Monaco to Indianapolis to Charlotte, it’s in Daytona Beach on an off weekend before a busy summer stretch of action that IMSA has time to take in viewing of those three racing venues and reflect on the momentum it’s gathered on its own so far in 2025.
With that in mind, IMSA President John Doonan engaged in a wide-ranging conversation with media members to discuss IMSA’s season to date, upcoming competition adjustments, some of the milestones IMSA has achieved, and what may be to come starting at Detroit and looking ahead to the summer stretch.
Competition Notes
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s first four races, the Rolex 24 At Daytona, Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship, have offered a bevy of both variety and volume of action thus far. From the end of May through mid-August, however, comes a stretch of five races that set the stage for a dramatic conclusion to the championship battles.
“Streaks” has been one of the most common words of the year across multiple IMSA series. Within the WeatherTech Championship, Porsche has opened the year with four straight Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) wins courtesy of Porsche Penske Motorsport and three straight class wins across both Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) GT classes and both “Rexy” and “Roxy” liveries with AO Racing. BMW M Team RLL’s Dries Vanthoor has showcased his speed and star potential with four straight GTP Motul Pole Awards to start the season.
Against the backdrop of “streaks,” but knowing the competition is still fierce across the classes, IMSA has made several Balance of Performance (BoP) adjustments starting with the WeatherTech Championship’s Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic next weekend on the streets of Detroit which were formally released Thursday afternoon.
While the potential exists for the streaks to roll on, the intention of the changes comes following the Monterey race, which ran caution-free for the full two hours, 40 minutes. Changes come following a transparent process that take in all performance factors. It should enliven the field and potentially increase the variety of winners – not only podium finishers – for subsequent races, as Doonan explained.
“When the tables come out, you’ll see some adjustments in GTP to the Acura and the Cadillac, with both of them gaining power and losing weight. And you’ll see it be the opposite when it comes to the Porsche and the BMW,” Doonan said. “All of these changes are based on a data-driven process. We’ve realized that the rolling process hasn’t reacted fast enough in equal and fair competition.
“You want to do the right thing and make adjustments that are based on a process, but also when things are somewhat diverging in terms of competition, when you have got a couple of cars outside the performance base band and a couple of cars below it on the low side, you want to bring everybody together, and I think anybody that wants to see exciting competition would want what we’re trying to do here both in GTP and in GTD PRO as we head into Detroit.”
On-Track and Weekend Attendance Milestones
While the streak stories have taken on a life of their own, the competition has still been fierce as ever among IMSA’s 18 automotive manufacturers. And the attendance seeing those cars, drivers and teams on track has been profound.
Some of the on-track and weekend milestones in the first quarter of the season include:
Eight of 17 manufacturers (Porsche, Mercedes-AMG, BMW, Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai, McLaren, Toyota) have won so far in IMSA-sanctioned events with multiple manufacturers competing. The number grows to 11 of 18 when factoring in single-make championships (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mazda)
Three of the first four events have reported all-time attendance records for IMSA events.
“To kick off 2025, we’ve had three of four events reported by the promoter as all-time record attendance for IMSA at those venues,” Doonan said.
“Of course, Daytona had a crazy (cold and rainy) weather week, which I think we all know impacted the final attendance, so we didn’t achieve a record there. But we were very close to the Rolex 24 record number.
“I think one spoke in the wheel is our audience performance. People come and see the races on-site. They camp; they come as a family. What we saw at WeatherTech Raceway just a few days ago was incredible. And the new Friends of Laguna Seca’s leadership there, I think, is going to continue to grow with Laurie Eberhart (CEO, Friends of Laguna Seca), Mel Harder (General Manager, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca) and the entire team out there leading the way.”
Digital, Social Media Growth
Doonan noted IMSA’s continued digital growth, beginning with the “flyer” taken by IMSA’s YouTube stream of the 2024 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring to an international audience. Updated numbers reveal the different ways IMSA fans are consuming IMSA content.
Digital offerings have expanded to now 2.7 million total social media followers (361,000 of which are new in 2025)
220 million video views already, up from roughly 180 million in 2024
“I think we all felt like we were on a great trend, but to have nearly three million, so 2.7 million exact followers across all of our channels and over 360,000 new followers this year alone – essentially doubling or over-doubling our following on social media channels – is just incredible,” Doonan said. “We’ve got a very loyal audience that look at us, but a ton of new followers that have liked what they saw at the outset and have stayed with us.
“That we have the followers is one thing, but their level of engagement with us; I think 11 million engagements year-to-date is just incredible because that’s more than half of what we saw in all of 2024. Just in the first five months of this year in terms of engagements. So clearly, the short-form snackable video content elements are really what I think has sunk in with the folks or attracted them.”
Corporate Partner Enhancements
It takes a village of corporate partners to run a sanctioning body organization that oversees multiple race series, and IMSA is no different.
Thanks to the bevy of competition, at-track and digital audience, multiple IMSA corporate partners have enhanced their roles in 2025.
Seven corporate partners have joined or expanded their IMSA programs (Rolex, Hagerty, Brembo, Piloti, AMD, Lenovo, Gainbridge)
Three of the first six IMSA STEM program events have occurred thus far, thanks to Gainbridge and Konica Minolta
Michelin and WeatherTech are both doing sweepstakes programs, which will be further incorporated into both NASCAR and IMSA upcoming broadcasts
Doonan referenced these highlights that have been peppered throughout the year, as well as the infrastructure and staff at the new NASCAR Productions facility in Concord which is an integral part of the overall production.
Overall, though, there’s a lot to like as IMSA heads into the summer stretch of race weekends from the end of May onwards to fall, culminating in the season finale Motul Petit Le Mans in October.
“We’re really proud of all that for the sport, because I think people have proven that they are sophisticated when they come to being an IMSA fan, and they take in our content in a lot of different ways,” Doonan explained. “Whether it’s on-site, whether it’s socially, whether it’s on YouTube or whether it’s on the NBC platform.
“There’s a lot to be proud of, we’re not satisfied. We’re going to continue to try to grow those spaces, but it’s really something to hang our hat on as a community, no matter what your membership is in it.”
