Cooper MacNeil and WeatherTech Racing are leaning towards GTD as opposed to GTD Pro for next year’s IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship season. The current GT Le Mans competitor explained to RACER that the lack of a difference in Balance of Performance between GTD and GTD Pro is influencing his thought process.

“We’re looking at it, nothing has been decided yet. I will say that if the BOP was different between Pro and Am, I would more strongly consider Pro but it’s not, so we’re looking at Am. But, nothing has been decided yet.”

The No. 79 WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR has two wins this season, including a triumph at the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. MacNeil has also been racing in the European Le Mans Series with Proton Competition, the same outfit that is running the No. 79 Porsche in IMSA.

“There’s a lot of racing left to do [this season],” MacNeil said. “But, I can say what we have accomplished so far has been quite strong, in my opinion, you know, anytime you move up to a class like this, which happens to be the highest level of GT racing in this country… as a privateer race team, you have an uphill battle ahead of you, but we’ve had a lot of help from Proton and Porsche as well to kind of bridge that gap.”

With only three full-time cars in the GTLM class, all teams are guaranteed a spot on the podium and a trophy.

MacNeil agreed that while those third-place trophies might not be the most meaningful ones on the mantle, they do symbolize the fact that WeatherTech Racing put together the program and continues to compete with the highly experienced full-factory lineups of Corvette Racing when no one else is.

“You know, I don’t control the car count. If it were my choice, I would absolutely have more cars in the class,” MacNeil said. “We show up to the racetrack to finish on the top step of the podium and if we happen to finish third out of a class that has three cars in it, we go back to the drawing board and figure out what we can do better and work harder and try and move up just as we did at Sebring and Road America.”