By alley - Jun 30, 2016, 4:34 PM ET

IMSA: Watkins Glen Resource Guide and Preview

The WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race weekend at New York's Watkins Glen International gets underway on Friday.

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WEATHERTECH CHAMPIONSHIP EVENT SCHEDULE

Friday, July 1 (all times Eastern)
11:25 a.m. - 12:25 p.m., Free Practice 1
3:20 - 4:20 p.m., Free Practice 2

Saturday, July 2
10:15 - 11:15 a.m., Free Practice 3
3:40 - 5:10 p.m., Qualifying

Sunday, July 3
8:00 - 8:20 a.m., Warm-up
10:10 a.m. - 4:10 p.m., Race – Sahlen's Six Hours of the Glen for the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship

TV TUNE-IN INFO

POINTS OF INTEREST

WELCOME HOME AGAIN

The second and final long break of the season is behind us as an unforgettable 24 Hours of Le Mans fades from daily discussions and IMSA’s triumphant teams – along with those who left France without podium visits – descend on Watkins Glen.

Ford Chip Ganassi Racing and Risi Competizione locked out the GTE-Pro top three at Le Mans and are expected to resume their slugfest during the six-hour race on Sunday. Michael Shank Racing survived its first Le Mans visit and recorded a quality result in LMP2; WeatherTech Racing was treated with minimal respect by the event’s sanctioning body, but should find more respect – and a better chance at earning a quality finish – in its full-time home.

Scuderia Corsa won GTE-Am with most of its 2015 drivers, and will resume its GT Daytona campaign with Jeff Segal, who bridges 2015, the Le Mans win and Watkins Glen as teammate to Le Mans returnee Christina Nielsen and Alessandro Balzan.

After the deletion of the second Change Racing Lamborghini from the entry list, 41 cars are expected to fill the grid for the third round of the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup, including the team whose name is shared with the four-round championship-within-a-championship. Altogether, Watkins Glen should be a celebration of all that’s good about long-haul sports car racing.

PAVED GLORY

Track records in all four WeatherTech SportsCar Championship classes will be shattered if dry weather holds during qualifying. The

recent repaving

at Watkins glen has drawn rave reviews and cartoonish cornering speeds as sports cars, Indy cars, and stock cars have dipped many seconds below the best laps turned in 2015.

THREE-PEAT

French alcohol advertising laws turn the Ed Brown- and Scott Sharp-owned Tequila Patron ESM team into Extreme Speed Motorsports for the 24 Hour, and with the team back on American soil, and using the same Ligier JS P2 chassis that propelled the team to big wins at Daytona and Sebring, the program is looking for its third consecutive TPNAEC win this year.

With the grippy new track surface and the ability to use more lines to avoid delays behind slower cars, Watkins Glen could be a P2 party, and ESM would love nothing more than to celebrate with its product in Victory Lane.

NOT SO FAST

ESM will have Shank’s team to contend with and, as the field saw at the last natural terrain road course in Monterey, the pair of Mazda Prototypes to deal with over six hours. Can the Mazdas,

dressed in their splendid throwback and throwforward liveries

, make it to the finish line without interruption? If so, the rest of the Prototype class could be fighting over the last position on the podium. Shank, the master strategist, and Mazda, with its super fast cars, will keep ESM and the strong field of Corvette DPs honest. Those Corvettes have claimed the last three overall wins at Watkins Glen, and they should never be discounted among the fragile P2s.

When it comes to the overall win, Sunday will likely prove to be a contest of speed and survival, and in the other three classes, GT Le Mans and GT Daytona should produce its usual insanity. Count on GTLM and GTD to vie for the best race from start to finish; IMSA’s GT classes are the envy of every endurance series, and PC, despite having the lowest car count in the event, has generated some high-quality racing at most rounds. That’s the story of IMSA 2016: Pick a class – any class – to follow and you won’t be disappointed.

MORE CLASS

The Florida-based IMSA organization has its first chance to honor and support the 49 people who were murdered at an Orlando night club on June 12 between the Detroit and Watkins Glen rounds.

IMSA launched a new initiative on Thursday because the killings “occurred just 50 miles from IMSA’s headquarters in Daytona Beach. As a show of support for the victims and those affected by the tragedy, IMSA has commissioned #OrlandoUnited decals that are available to all teams participating at Watkins Glen to carry on their race cars.”

IMSA CEO Ed Bennett said, “As Central Floridians, this horrible tragedy hit very close to home. This weekend, we felt it would be appropriate to pay tribute to the victims and show our support to the survivors in our own way by making these decals available to our race teams. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with everybody affected.”

You can join IMSA in donating to the www.oneorlando.org fund to help the victims of the massacre.