IMSA: Championship primer

All four Drivers' championships are up for grabs during Saturday's season finale for IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at Road Atlanta. The 10-hour Petit Le Mans closer will decide the Prototype, PC, GT Le Mans and GT Daytona titles, and with a mountain of other championships to settle – Manufacturers', Teams' and the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup – the hardware will be overflowing in Georgia.

Thanks to IMSA's restrictive points payout system, many of Saturday night's outcomes could prove to be academic. In basic terms, for any class or championship race this weekend where the leader holds a decent advantage over the second-place contestant, it would take a big swing in fortunes for those leaders to lose.

Take the recent Prototype outcome at Circuit of The Americas, for example. Wayne Taylor Racing's Ricky and Jordan Taylor started from pole, led the most laps and won the race in dominating fashion. Entering COTA, championship leaders Joao Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi held 253 points for Action Express Racing, the sister AXR duo of Dane Cameron and Eric Curran were second with 252, and the WTR boys were third with 242, 11 points back from Barbosa and Fittipaldi.

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With the Taylors capturing everything possible on the road to their COTA win, Cameron/Curran coming home second and Barbosa/Fittipaldi taking third, the Taylors head into Petit Le Mans ... third in points. Granted, their championship deficit has been cut from 11 points to seven, but it illustrates how little a single race win can influence the championship when the other title contenders are close.

IMSA offers no incentive for pole, leading a lap or leading the most laps, and as a result, a Taylor-style smackdown starting in qualifying won't do much to move the needle in Road Atlanta. Considering the lack of value attached to pole/fastest lap/leading the most laps, all four championships will come down to what happens in the race.

Looking at what's available on Saturday, a maximum of 36 points can be earned in each class. IMSA's practice is to award one "starting" point for each driver who achieves the minimum drive time requirement (and is nominated to earn championship points). It then adds 35 "finishing" points to win, 32 for a second, 30 for third, 28 for fourth, 26 for fifth, and decreases in increments of one (25 for sixth, 24 for seventh, etc.) for the remaining positions.

There are a number of situations that could fiddle with the final standings; a crash by a PC or GTD contender that requires lengthy repairs could mean one or more drivers falls shy of the minimum drive time and would fail to score finishing points, for example, and rather than explore every batty outcome, we'll focus on the most likely situations with the Drivers' titles assuming starting and finishing points are earned.

In Prototype, it's looking like Action Express Racing will score its third consecutive championship, but we won't know whether to congratulate Cameron and Curran in the No. 31 Corvette DP on their first title or Barbosa and Fittipaldi in the No. 5 Corvette DP on their third. The tiny 285-284 lead held by the No. 31 drivers makes Prototype the only class that's truly up for grabs. And with the Taylors' No. 10 WTR Corvette DP in third at 278 points, there is also a third possibility to consider.

For the No. 31 to win, they'll need to finish ahead of the No. 5, and in the most obvious statement of the year, the No. 5 will need to finish ahead of the No. 31 to win. That part is simple.

For the No. 10 to take the title, a win is clearly a must, and the No. 31 would need to finish fifth or lower in a class with only nine cars. A similar separation at the finish would be needed if the No. 10 wins and the No. 5 finishes ahead of the No. 31. There are a bunch of funky alternatives where ties could happen and one of the three could win on a countback of some sorts, and those will surely be explained during the broadcast if the race ventures down that path.

Returning to the more realistic possibilities, in every scenario, and owing to the tank-ish nature of the Corvette DPs used by all three, AXR would have to record a dual collapse for WTR to celebrate a championship, and IMSA fans will have 10 hours to follow whatever drama may ensue.

The PC standings favor the COTA-winning No. 8 Starworks Motorsport entry driven by Renger van der Zande and Alex Popow. 10 points clear of the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports car driven by Tom Kimber-Smith and Robert Alon (329-319), van der Zande and Popow have some breathing room, but not enough to lose focus during 10 hours of hardcore racing.

With seven entries listed for PC, the No. 52 would need to win and have the No. 8 finish seventh – last in class – to come away with a one-point championship victory. Finishing second won't get the job done for PR1/Mathiasen.

The combination of endurance racing and PCs have produced a lot of broken componentry and damaged barriers since the WeatherTech Championship was formed, and while the Starworks drivers would need to have the cartoon anvil drop – and drop hard – early in the race, this is the one class where history suggests it could happen.

Determining the GTLM championship was also made easier at COTA when the second-place No. 67 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing GT suffered steering damage while battling with its title rivals at Corvette Racing. Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner have 11 points in hand with the No. 4 Corvette C7.R over the No. 67 shared by Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook (314-303), and in a class where 10 cars are entered at Petit Le Mans, the Blue Oval representatives would need to win and have the Corvette drivers trail home in eighth or lower.

The No. 67 drivers could finish second and have the No. 4 place 10th (and last) to create a tie, but the tiebreaker would be decided by wins and the No. 4 has four to the No. 67's three – advantage Bowtie.

It's sheer coincidence, but IMSA's WeatherTech Championship leads widen from the top down. Prototype (one point), PC (10 points), and GTLM (11 points) looks like razor-thin contests compared to GTD (32 points), where something Biblical would be required to keep Scuderia Corsa's Alessandro Balzan and Christina Nielsen from becoming champions.

The drivers of the No. 63 Ferrari 488 have a staggering lead over Ben Keating and Jeroen Bleekemolen in the No. 33 Riley Motorsports Dodge Viper, and the massive margin came courtesy of a shredded accessory belt at COTA that left the Viper 13th at the finish line.

If the No. 63 drivers log the minimum drive time – three of the 10 hours at Petit Le Mans – Scuderia Corsa will take back-to-back GTD championships.

Altogether, it's a long race and Lord knows we're accustomed to seeing plenty of carnage and mechanical failures turn the event upside down, but if the PC, GTLM, and GTD points leaders can finish near the front, Petit Le Mans won't be filled with title surprises.

That Prototype championship, though ... it's going to be downright nasty.

Watch it unfold Saturday at the times and locations below: