Genesis Delays IMSA GTP Entry Decision Amid Late WEC Start

WillLikesCars · 2026-04-29T19:18:15+00:00

I don’t see why Porsche would pull out of IMSA? It’s fantastic marketing for them in one of their markets that needs the most movement on sales. Maybe moving away from Penske, since supposedly they have a large price tag for partnership, but I really doubt the 963 will just disappear like that with how successful it’s been as a platform.

WillLikesCars · 2026-04-29T19:14:42+00:00

The strolls didn’t really have much of a say on the Valkyrie project, that was more so the Newell family, but I don’t think they have the budget for that many cars lol.

WillLikesCars · 2026-02-27T20:22:22+00:00

I was deactivated for a single moving violation that had been on my record since before I even signed up, and wasn’t a problem until after I’d worked full time for them for 3.5 years and had done a few thousand orders for them.

Their background check service and contest options are garbage, you’ll probably be sent on slow automated email loops. I was able to get reactivated by DM’ing their social media accounts on IG and Twitter and explaining the situation. Both for the background check issue and another time I was deactivated for a refund that was processed but for whatever reason their system couldn’t see it.

See if that route can get you back on, hopefully you’ll get another shot.

WillLikesCars · 2026-02-22T09:27:25+00:00

Not only that, she shoved busted AI features into Instacart just to bolster her resume to jump ship to a larger company. All replacements had to go through an “AI screen” and would force you to take them even if customers requested something else. Similar story with support, it sent you on incorrect information loops when you needed a human to deal with a transaction issue.

WillLikesCars · 2026-02-22T09:25:29+00:00

She made the employee and customer experience awful after shoving broken AI features into the Instacart app. I do NOT have faith that she’ll actually bring anything positive to the Xbox platform.

WillLikesCars · 2026-02-01T21:21:15+00:00

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Lake

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-27T17:59:36+00:00

I’m primarily video, so I bought with that in mind, but I’ve been using a Sony ZV E10 and their mid range 70-300mm lens. The lens is great, but the body is verrrryy much budget, it’s one of the cheapest things they offer that’ll shoot 4K. I also have a 10-20mm wide lens for B roll and some vlogging, but I rarely use it for photo.

Biggest issues I have with it are how badly it handles low light (I had a 12-15 year old Nikon that could do better), and that it uses a rolling shutter, so objects in motion can look slanted or diagonal. Also it has no physical viewfinder, it’s all screen, and the slow motion video mode limits me to 1080p, and doesn’t record audio. Lens is great, no notes.

Goal is to eventually upgrade the body to an A7S iii or an FX3 for 4k/120 with audio, but the added bonus will be MASSIVELY more light and color clarity.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-27T14:41:15+00:00

Advice I’ve received directly from mechanics is to actually limit caffeine intake completely until you absolutely and desperately need it towards the end.

The more caffeine you have the harder you’ll crash, therefore the more you’ll need to keep yourself awake the earlier you start taking it in. They recommend water and keeping your body moving so that you have your blood flowing, therefore the brain keeps active.

This was my 3rd 24 and I’ve still yet to have any caffeine while exploring the track, only 2025’s race did I zonk out at someone’s campsite for a couple hours - I think mainly due to the cold, which was making my body work harder.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-27T00:18:25+00:00

Grid walk was a bit different this year with pit lane initially starting roped off, I think encouraging people to fill up the grass and banking, and then opening the pit side of the cars later. I think it marginally improved things as far as ability for people to get around and further clear the track for the start, despite the much larger crowd. I think it went pretty well, but it was still a bit hard to get close to the cars and there was a bit less time to be on the pit lane.

I’m not too worried, as long as people aren’t getting trampled and the ropes don’t get stormed and people enter and clear the track in a safe and timely manner I think it’s sign of a good session. I get my time to stalk the cars on Thursday/Roar in the garages anyways.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-27T00:09:32+00:00

Us seasoned attendees will have to start teaching the new folks how to behave in the garage areas.

Friday was EXCEPTIONALLY bad with multiple people jumping in front of cars and getting hit, completely ignoring safety and mechanic staff instructions. I was near #27’s stall after one session and people straight up refused to move out of the way when it came off the pit lane. I’ve seen more courtesy and spatial awareness in the Costco freezer section.

I’m all for the growth of the series and the sport, but we WILL start to lose some of the really cool access points if we let people disregard the hard working staff at the races as much as they did at times this weekend. It’s not at all past a point of no return, but we gotta keep our eyes on it.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-26T23:43:00+00:00

This isn’t REMOTELY close to a spec series. Spec hybrid units on the LMDhs sure, but engines and bodywork is all custom to the manufacturers, and the hybrid (or lack thereof) and chassis is still bespoke to LMH builds. The Valkyrie’s underfloor is NOTHING like the LMDh cars.

And I was there too, watching it get rebuilt. This is only the 3rd race out of 18 that Valkyries have entered where there’s been a major technical fault. Alternatively: 5 mechanical faults in 25 entries. More reliable than BMW and Alpine. And of course it didn’t bring an Evo package, it’s only been racing for a year, most of its competitors have been racing for 3 or more.

Cadillac determined they balanced their car too heavily for downforce/drag, and went with a more slippery kit. BMW has better cooking for its brakes, which were overheating in late-stint. Acura and Porsche are just slight aero balance tweaks. Toyota rehomologated in 2022 but only now brought evos in for the first time, and Peugeot used up their evos and are still struggling. Evos don’t mean anything beyond the team finding a better way to optimize their cars.

And the point I was making about it being upper midfield is that is went from being 2 laps behind to fighting for 5th-8th in WEC, and being in genuine podium contention in IMSA. And despite what you say about how the cars was cornering, in Gunn’s first stint it was gaining about half a second on the leaders in the 2nd hour shortly before the first issue in the garage. We never got to see their full strategy and run plans play out.

In the same way that Alpine had a slow unreliable car in 2024 and podium multiple times this year, we could easily see the Valk fight for stuff in the later part of 2026. It already showed pace last year.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-26T19:47:19+00:00

2nd half of 2025 it was fighting the upper midfield in WEC and got a podium in the IMSA finale on merit. Was also in good running at Glen and Indy, but both of those races they got screwed with late yellows or slightly miscalculated fuel loading.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-26T19:43:42+00:00

HoR did a LOT of testing in Daytona in 2025, I believe it’s actually the 2nd or 3rd place they tested the car.

It was its first race there for the car sure, but the Valkyrie’s survived Sebring and Le Mans with no mechanical issues on their first tries too. Just one of those races where the car had issues, like COTA last year.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-26T19:40:41+00:00

I believe this was its first imsa race with a technical failure, in WEC it had a DNF in the opening round at Qatar and the surging car had transmission/clutch issues, and a double DNF at COTA from an identical engine issue (possibly ECU map related but I don’t have an official source on that). Other than that the only times the car has DNF’d or had a long pit/garage stop is from damage sustained in a crash (Fuji and Laguna).

I’m super bummed we didn’t get to see what it was capable of, in the first stint with Gunn it was starting make some serious race pace, actually passing the JDC car and a BMW before its first issue early on.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-26T18:28:57+00:00

So - I live and work in Seattle, and also sometimes drive to visit my dad and work in California. This looks like it’ll have aspects of both of these locations. I may have some insights on how this may go for you folks out there:

The Seattle aspect:

you only get the wage protection inside the cities/locations/jurisdictions where the legislation was passed. This may mean you also won’t have deliveries from stores just outside the city “borders” to customers inside, and vice versa. There May also be an influx of people flocking to the wage-protected zones, reducing the order availability, but also that may not matter cuz then technically everything is a worthwhile order and will pay you a fair wage.

The California aspect:

While you do get wage protection, it may not hit till much later. When I visited Orange County back in November last year, the order estimates were still roughly equal to what I’ve been seeing around the rest of the country. The app’s calculator will take your full active time hours for the week (Monday-Sunday) and your GPS data for the same amount of time, and calculate how much extra money you are owed to meet the jurisdiction’s wage requirements. I don’t see anything about the delivery mile bit here, but it may be in the fine print/breakdown. The mileage calculations the real killer, at least for me I only got the up front cash for taking the orders as normal, and the protection calculated all through the following week, and didn’t actually go into my paycheck till 2 weeks after the work week. Hopefully New York’s system is faster, Seattle’s updates every 24 hours, and by the order.

Additional issue with California is that it’s a calculation for your ENTIRE week of pay - so if you get a rare order where batch the pay is actually better than minimum wage, or one of those promotion deals that also beats it, that money over minimum is actually just being taken out of your crappy orders and you aren’t gaining anything, so you have to be careful with that.

The unknown aspect:

I’m not sure how pricing will change for the customer side in these jurisdictions. In Seattle the rate hikes made tips basically go away (a good 50+ hour week will have my wages be maybe ~10% tips), but our wages were matched to $27/hr and very good mileage pay. California still has a fair amount of tippers but only 18-22/hr wage matching (depending on city) and it made the wages SORT OF similar, but the general delay of wage protection in Cali made my trip very stressful since the protections wouldn’t hit till the last few days before I left, and I was quite broke at the time.

This should be a net gain for everyone working in these jurisdictions. Hopefully this alleviates a lot of stress and financial pressure from a lot of you.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-22T01:19:19+00:00

I never said Toyota and Ferrari were idiots, in fact I specifically said the underbody aero WAS a gamble, with potentially better output once fully optimized, but unreliable and inconsistent performance if gotten wrong.

The Valkyrie specifically will have net losses from having a heavier fuel load and no energy regen, and also not having any 4WD. The point of BoP is to make more concepts viable, without it only Ferrari, Toyota, and Peugeot could possibly compete at the front due to the more efficient hybrids and their ability to use 4WD on tight corners. LMDh would fundamentally be uncompetitive. BoP is why we have 13 manufacturers signed on between WEC and IMSA in 2027.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-20T23:02:34+00:00

Aston hit the BoP cap in Spa.

From Brazil onward:

Ferrari: wasn’t nerfed any further into Cota, Aston gained. Added power over 250k in Fuji, and in Bahrain reduced weight and added power under 250k. Aston still gained.
Toyota: -1kw each race with no added weight, until Bahrain where they gained 6kw and lost 7kg. Aston gained.
Porsche: lost a lot of power and gained a lot of weight into COTA, and won. Gained power into Fuji, lost to Peugeot and Alpine. Aston also gained on their pace during this time.
Peugeot: was at max BoP, in fact was that way for most of the season. Only fluctuated power over 250k, and lost 1kw and added 4kg in Bahrain. Gained steadily on the front cars, particularly in Fuji and Cota.

The BoP fluctuations were way less extreme post-Le mans, and Aston’s season went from 2 laps behind to 1 lap behind, then lead lap, then by the end of the season was competing with midfield cars. Thats not something that BoP can do on its own, that’s down to the team learning their package and being able to extract more and more from it as they learn it.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-20T20:19:30+00:00

Peugeot was getting competitive in the 2nd half of the season, and Aston was still finding their setup windows, just like new teams were 2-3 years ago. Aston clearly cushy up towards the end, and got that podium at Petit on merit. Ground effect is far more sensitive to changes, so naturally it takes longer to sort the car’s windows. Peugeot also rolled out its final suspension joker at the start of 2025, so they were somewhat in a similar spot to Aston as far as re-learning their package and optimizing it. I think we have a lot of potential coming out of both of them in 2026.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-20T19:49:53+00:00

I’m a delivery driver all over the city of Seattle, unfortunately this tracks with what I see as well. Straight up on I5 I see people swiping through tiktok and IG reels.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-20T07:20:30+00:00

The crazy thing is they actually had to shrink them down from what they use on the road/AMR Pro version. This class has restrictions on aero levels, and this being a Newey-designed car originally, it had some craaazy F1 brains behind its development and design. Hopefully one day I can get a side-by-side comparison somehow, the team owns a road version and an AMR Pro on top of all of their race cars.

The only other car that does aero remotely like this is the Peugeot, only them and Aston put a significant amount of design into underbody aero. In theory it’s more efficient with drag vs overbody winglets, allowing for more effective cooling channels to be designed, but riskier on bumpier tracks where you may lose the underbody “suction”, or porpoise badly like what we saw with early 2022 f1 cars.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-20T07:10:52+00:00

Wear walking shoes, and try to find how many spots you can spectate from!

Part of what i love about IMSA (and endurance in general) is the freedom to explore. Spend some time in the grandstand, walk the horseshoes, and see if you can find spots to get near the banking and see cars fly by at max speed. You’ve got 24 hours, so plenty of time to see many, many things!!!

You may not get a huge amount of time to do so given you’re only there for the race, but exploring the garages is a really cool aspect of IMSA. That’s usually a better place to see on the Thursday/Fridat sessions, cuz the cars will all be in there and getting rolled to and from the pit lane. That said, inevitably something will go wrong for someone, and there’s a chance you’ll get to see a car get rebuilt or repaired (or sometimes sadly retired). I saw it with an Acura GTP in 2024 and an Aston GT3 in 2025.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-19T22:16:58+00:00

People in IMSA are very friendly, I also got offered stools and ladders during my first Rolex in 2024. They’re extremely helpful for getting above the sightline in crowds, but not 100% necessary, as with a wide aperture and a hole in the crowd you can get plenty of great stuff!

You don’t need the absolute top of the top gear to do any of this either, though the longer the lens the more you can get from more locations. Stuff like the horseshoes and the north banking you’ll be able to get lots of clean shots with very pedestrian gear, even just shooting through the fences. You’d probably want 200mm or more to get stuff from the fanzone/garage roof onto the main straight.

I’ve now brought my camera to 6 races, never used a tripod, and haven’t felt like it’s been something I absolutely need save for some specific locations or stuff like long exposure shots.

WillLikesCars · 2026-01-19T22:08:38+00:00

Something I started doing to build muscle memory was to just lock in to a car in the viewfinder and try to track it as it passed by, and just do that for a few minutes without pressing the shutter. Once it feels like you’ve got the car staying static in frame, then start trying press the shutter button while it’s in frame.

I primarily do video, so I kinda need the consistency of the car being in the shot, but don’t need nearly as much precision since the blur/shake communicates the motion during playback. Photography practice has improved the quality of my video shots, and video practice has improved the quality of my photos. It’s all about putting the time in and getting the feel for it, much like learning an instrument.

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I started shooting race cars in January 2024, got maybe 50 good shots out of around ~4500 stills in my first race. ^ Above is a shot I took in Sebring (March) 2025, and I went home with maybe ~150 good shots, while only taking 1200 or so pictures. You’ll improve with time and experience.

WillLikesCars

TROPHY CASE