This weekend’s ACURA Sports Car Challenge marks the fourth round of the 2019 IMSA season. All of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, IMSA MICHELIN Pilot Challenge and IMSA Prototype Challenge series are in action at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

MID-OHIO EVENT CARD

The Michelin Mid-Ohio Event Card for the race is linked here.

Highlighted in the Mid-Ohio Event Card are:

• Info for Michelin’s 50 for 50 Sweepstakes
• Info about Michelin’s Race Tire Experience at Mid-Ohio
• Technical note from Ken Payne, technical director, motorsport, Michelin North America
• Tire allocations, qualifying/race schedule, TV, radio and The Torque Show details
• “Happy Helio Returns”
• A look at the Ohio native driver and teams in the field

TUNE-IN INFO 

The ACURA Sports Car Challenge airs live Sunday, May 5, at 1:30 p.m. EDT on NBCSN.

IMSA’s MICHELIN Pilot Challenge series races Saturday, May 4 at 1:45 p.m. EDT. The IMSA Prototype Challenge series races Sunday, May 5 at 8:50 a.m. EDT. These two races stream live on IMSA.TV with IMSA Radio commentary.

IMSA Radio is live trackside for all sessions with flag-to-flag commercial free commentary.

The race weekend’s official hashtag is #IMSAatMO.

Tire Info

• Mid-Ohio’s track surface presents some challenges. “Mid-Ohio is a classic, natural terrain road course but with an interesting variety of pavement patches, and that makes some spots tricky for grip,” says Ken Payne, technical director, motorsport, Michelin North America.
• The DPi, LMP2 (IMSA Medium) and GTLM (GTLM Range) have 10 sets of tires for the weekend.
• In GTD and the Challenge classes, the numbers are single digits. It’s seven sets for GTD, five for GS, four for TCR and five for LMP3.
• There are 97 cars entered racing with Michelin across the three series. That’s 36 cars in the WeatherTech Championship, 37 in MICHELIN Pilot Challenge and 24 in Prototype Challenge.

Other Quick Event Notes

• After Long Beach, the top four DPi teams (Nos. 31, 7, 5, 10) are separated by just four points headed to Mid-Ohio. Cadillac has won the first three races of 2019.
• Porsche’s GTLM team has opened 2019 with three poles, two wins, the driver’s and manufacturer’s championship lead. Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor won at Long Beach, and also won at Mid-Ohio last year. 
• The GRT Grasser Lamborghini team that won in GTD at Daytona and Sebring will not race at Mid-Ohio. This car has a 16-point lead over second-place in the championship (70-54). That same gap, 16 points, covers the next nine GTD pairings (54-38), so expect some significant GTD championship standings movement based on the Mid-Ohio result.
• This marks the North American race debut of Compass Racing’s new McLaren 720S GT3 in the GT Daytona class. Paul Holton and Matt Plumb are set to drive.
• The new WeatherTech Sprint Cup debuts for GTD competitors. This covers seven GTD sprint races between Mid-Ohio and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in September.
• This is the first standard length two-hour, 40-minute WeatherTech Championship race of 2019.
• It’s also the last GT Le Mans race before Watkins Glen, to allow for most of these teams to race the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
• The MIA Racing McLaren and Bimmerworld BMW share the IMSA MICHELIN Pilot Challenge GS championship lead with 60 points. Meanwhile L.A. Honda World seeks its third straight win to start 2019 in TCR with Shelby Blackstock and Tom O’Gorman in their Honda Civic Type R.
• IMSA Prototype Challenge hits the halfway point of its season this weekend, with a pair of young lineups at the head of the field.