Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti’s Jordan Taylor told MotorsportWeek.com that he’s enjoying being back in the prototype class, explaining the differences to both his old Corvette GT cars and the DPis, the previous top class prototype class in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship.
“The team [WTRAndretti] was able to get a second car and there was a seat available,” said the American. He will race the #40 WTRAndretti Acura ARX-06 alongside Louis Deletraz this year, with Andretti Indycar driver Colton Herta joining for the endurance races and 2009 Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button additionally joining the team for Daytona.
“So yeah I jumped at that chance and it’s been great so far. I’m enjoying driving the cars, they’re way different from obviously GT and even way different from the old DPi class. So it’s been a fun challenge.”
Before moving to Corvette full-time in 2020, Taylor had driven for Wayne Taylor Racing when the team competed in the old Daytona Prototype International class, in the Cadillac DPi-V.R. However, he said there are big differences between the new class and the old.
“Less downforce, more power and just understanding all the systems and the steering wheel is just… it almost makes the DPI seem historic.
“This thing is like a little spaceship — you’re trying to understand what you’re doing with the steering wheel and changing things.”
As you’d expect there are also differences to the GT cars that Taylor has driven in IMSA for the past few seasons, with Taylor elaborating on the off-track changes.
“The cool thing is that you can get out of one session, give your feedback and say, I want this change on the car and you’ll get in two hours later, and there’s going to be a new development on the car.
“So, that’s what I kind of missed from GTLM. GT3 is all very homologated. So, If you want a big change in the car, it’s homologated. So you can’t do anything. So the cool thing about this class is it’s pretty open in some areas — that you can keep developing the cars, to kind of better suit you.”
He’s also had an entirely new part of racing to learn — hybrid.
“It’s been relatively okay. I think Daytona’s a nice one to start off my career in this class, just because you have so much time in the car to, not just drive around, but you’re gonna have a lot of lap to kind of play with the tools.
“I think I’ll get a better understanding in the race, over a long stint, of adjusting tools and seeing what does what. And what kind of knob is affecting, what phase of the corner and everything.
“So yeah it’s been a fun challenge. I’ve studied a lot of driver manuals, way more than I’ve ever had to do in the past, but it’s a fun challenge.”
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