Doonan: Road America Enduro to Bring “Excitement” for Fans

Photo: IMSA

IMSA President John Doonan said that making Road America a six-hour Michelin Endurance Cup round will bring “excitement” to fans and series stakeholders alike, in a move that’s aimed to maintain season-long WeatherTech SportsCar Championship budgets.

Announced on Thursday at Sebring International Raceway ahead of the second round of this year’s season, the 2026 WeatherTech Championship calendar’s biggest change comes with Road America gaining Endurance Cup status, replacing Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a six-hour race.

It will mark the first extended-length top-series IMSA race at the four-mile Wisconsin circuit since a four-hour American Le Mans Series race that was held in 2012.

“It’s no secret, I spent a lot of time growing up at Road America,” Doonan told reporters. “My time there, my excitement and passion, the time I spent going through the beautiful forests up there, that’s a personal passion.

“From a business standpoint, we want to create excitement and newness for our fans, primarily for the race teams.

“And what Road America has done as a facility to provide fan experience, no different than any of our other promoters trying to do it.

“Every round of our championship is important. It’s no doubt that every single weekend the teams are trying to reach the podium and the competition level is at the highest of all time.

“In talking with Mike Kertscher, his entire team at Road America, probably for the last, I’d say 18 months or two years of saying at some point, ‘We’d love to bring an endurance round to your facility.’

“[We] had great conversations with Doug Boles and Roger Penske of wanting to maintain an IMSA event.

“What you’re seeing is newness and excitement for the audience, the fans, and tremendous flexibility with the promotor partners to say let’s shuffle it up a little bit.”

With IMSA’s stop at the Brickyard returning to a two-hour and 40-minute race, it maintains the same running hours for competitors while delivering a much-requested element to the WeatherTech Championship calendar.

“We are keenly sensitive and aware of the budgets for the teams,” he said. “Just adding an endurance round or an additional weekend is very difficult.

“I try my hardest, as does our entire staff, to keep our finger on the pulse of the budgets. Just adding another weekend or another few hours to a race is something that we take very seriously.

“You saw that when we transitioned from Canadian Tire Motorsport Park with the full slate of classes. We probably had to give some relief somewhere.

“I don’t like that for fans that don’t see all the classes, but we do our ever best to try to move the Rubik’s cube around to get it all to fit in the weekends and also to be sensitive to budget.

“The idea of flexibility is key here. So we did a two-hour 40-minute [race] at Indianapolis in 2023. We did a six hour in ’24. We’ll do another six hour, go back to a 2:40 at Indianapolis with being sensitive around the budgets.”

IMSA Has Eye on Pacific Northwest for Potential Future Race

Doonan said IMSA has continued to keep an eye on developments for a potential new race in the future but for now has remained committed to all of its current track partners.

“In terms of other markets, I think we keep our eye out and we do get inquiries,” he said. “We do survey the paddock, the partners, the teams about places that they would envision running at some point. We keep our eyes open to that.

“If I were to say what market do you not race in right now that you wish you could, I’d say the Pacific Northwest would be a really exciting place for us.

“[It’s a] high-tech market up there, especially in Seattle with the companies that are there. A huge car culture in that part of the country.

“At the same time I’m super sensitive, as are all of our staff, that when we go to the west coast we’re going to do it all in a west coast swing.

“We cannot ask people to go out there for an event, come back, go out there, come back.

“That’s why you see the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach followed by the visit to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in relatively simultaneous weekends so that people can leave their equipment out there, potentially leave their people out there and make one west coast swing.

“It’s decisions like that that we’re trying to make those things very methodical and with sensitivity to the teams and to the partners that want to activate at these events.”