TL;DR: I’m new to IMSA/Weather Tech series and still trying to figure out how it works as compared to other racing circuits

I’ve been a casual fan of F1 and IndyCar for years...this year I’m really getting into both of them more, in addition to NASCAR. Those are pretty easy for me to understand - the first car to cross the finish line on the last lap wins.

On the recommendation of a friend I checked out an IMSA race. I get the idea that there are multiple classes of cars in the same race - but is there one overall winner, one per class, etc.? I don’t get how the races work.

For me it’s like I’m someone who watches baseball for years and then watching cricket. Similar, but a lot different too.

I was flipping through the TV channels this morning and caught an episode of The Greatest American Hero... this particular episode featured a pro football player being blackmailed into throwing a game in order to free his wife, who is being held hostage. The plot was pretty meh, but what got me hooked was the name of said football player character... Price Cobb.

For the youngins out there, Price Cobb was a former driver in the IMSA GTP days (Dyson/Jaguar/Mazda), and was part of the Jaguar team that won Le Mans in 1990. He also had a short-lived stint as an IRL car owner.

Either this was an amazing coincidence, or one of the show writers knew his name from Atlantics/Super Vee (which is what he was running at the time) and slipped it in there.

If this is too OT, mods, please delete.

Since we are already well into the offseason, instead of going through one full season of one of the old series, we are going to pick and choose races from ALMS and Grand-Am from any year to watch until we get to the 2020 start of IMSA. If this is popular, next year we'll choose a season to go through.

How This Works:

After a thread is posted, you have until the following Monday morning to watch the race and post comments about it and converse with people in here about it. Have fun with it - this is about reliving some of the glorious moments from the ALMS and Grand-Am years and to make the offseason more fun. In the current week's thread, you can also throw out ideas for the next race to watch, be it either from the American Le Mans Series or Grand-Am. I would like to alternate between each series as much as possible.

WEEK 1: American Le Mans Series - 2002 - Streets of Washington DC

Through the RFK Stadium street circuit, we have a four class battle between LMP900, LMP675, GTS and GT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXgoWIh2a6Q&feature=youtu.be