IMSA TUDOR Championship race should be among the season's most competitive

The IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Series takes to the street course of Belle Isle in Detroit Saturday for the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic, and it should be a compelling matchup.

Since the season opener in January, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, IMSA has been hard at work balancing the performance of the Daytona Prototype cars from the Grand-Am series, and the LMP2 cars from the American Le Mans Series. Though they look similar, they are quite different, each with its own set of advantages.

This weekend, on the tight Belle Isle course, it should be a straight-up fight between the two cars.

“I think the parity between the two cars is actually quite good,” Ricky Taylor, co-driver of the Wayne Taylor Racing Chevrolet Corvette DP, told Motorsport.com. After the second practice on Friday, the top time was by a DP car – Scott Pruett, in his Ford EcoBoost car (in photo) ran a lap of 1 minute, 26.582 seconds. Not far behind in third was the P2 Extreme Speed Honda, where Ryan Dalziel cranked out a lap of 1 minute, 27.027 seconds, less than a half-second behind.

Qualifying was even closer, with Richard Westbrook setting fast time in the Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP at 1 minute, 25.011 seconds, with the Extreme Speed P2 car of Dalziel just 0.018 seconds behind.

On a circuit where track position is critical, the 100-minute race could indeed be won – or lost – in the pits, or in trying to negotiate lapped traffic.

Given the shortness of the course, this race features the Prototypes and the GT-Daytona classes, and with a field of 32 cars, there should be action everywhere. After the second practice, Flying Lizard's Spencer Pumpelly had the fastest GT times with a 1 minute, 33.756-second lap in an Audi R8, with Leh Keen, in the Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT, a close second at 1 minute, 34.280 seconds. In qualifying, Pumpelly remained the fastest GT car.

If you can’t attend in person, the race goes green at 1:30 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1. IMSA has also enhanced its digital content: This weekend Race Central will stream TOTAL Pole Award qualifying today at 5:25 p.m. ET. The live stream will feature FOX Sports broadcast cameras and live commentary from broadcaster Greg Creamer.

And tomorrow, racer Justin Bell will help kick off the day with an IMSA.com pre-race show Saturday at 11:30 a.m. ET in advance of the race. Once the green flag flies, Race Central will include live in-car camera feeds during the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic, a live Motor Racing Network radio feed, live timing and scoring, and up-to-the-minute Twitter updates. Fans in Europe, Asia and Africa also will receive a live stream of the race telecast. “IMSA.com was designed with our fans first, so we are excited that they continue to seek out the website as the place to find fresh, exciting IMSA content,” said IMSA Vice President, Marketing David Pettit. “We will continue to listen to our fans in order to build our digital platform for the future.”

Also, the Motor Racing Network will carry live radio coverage of the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic beginning at 12 p.m. ET on Saturday. The broadcast will be available on Sirius Channel 117, IMSA.com and MRN.com

Plus, of course, we’ll have the latest here at Motorsport.com.