Today, IMSA's top series appear to be thriving at the moment.  Car count in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is at a level not seen since 2014, the first season after the Grand-Am/American Le Mans Series merger.  IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge appears to be chugging along just fine as well.

Then, you have Prototype Challenge.  It is a series that has struggled to find its place in the hierarchy over the past few years.  This series used to be known as IMSA Prototype Lites, where open-cockpit light racers competed.  In 2014, the Prototype Lites cars actually ran alongside the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship's PC class at both Kansas Speedway and VIRginia International Raceway in separately scored events.  

The Kansas race was an addition to the schedule due to them having a multi-year contract with Grand-Am that started in 2013.  Unfortunately, the race was added after the budgets for TV and radio were already complete.  As a result, the weekend had no TV or radio coverage.  There were a lot of unhappy people, both in the PC class and the then-Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge that weekend. 

In 2017, the LMP3 formula was introduced.

IMSA was rather unsure as to what to do with the LMP3 cars when they first showed up, resulting in the class introduction being behind Europe by more than a year (for example, LMP3 first showed up in the European Le Mans Series in 2015).  At the time, IMSA considered adding it as a class in Michelin Pilot Challenge, or into the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.  Eventually, they decided to run the LMP3 cars as the new top class in IMSA Prototype Challenge, with the previous lites cars running in a subclass.

The lites are long gone now and the first generation LMP3 cars bowed out at the end of last year after running the 2021 season as a subclass.  Now, it is a series of LMP3 cars when the LMP3 class has also been added to the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship using the same rules.  This makes it possible for Prototype Challenge teams to move up to WeatherTech with little issue.  MLT Motorsports, which won the championship last year, effectively has done that.  Andretti Autosport moved up mid-season last year.

For this season, the number of races was dropped from six to five, while the three-hour enduro at Daytona during the ROAR Before the 24 was reintroduced after being shortened to 105 minutes last year. 

Back on Tuesday, SportsCar365.com reported that IMSA has pitched replacing the current Prototype Challenge with a multi-class series featuring LMP3 and GT4 cars racing against each other.  In the United States, this has only previously happened at the Michelin Encore, which used to be held in November at Sebring International Raceway.

Such a series could continue to have 105-minute races with pit stops, or change to a sprint formula with two races per weekend, similar to what Prototype Lites once was.  

If this were to come to pass, it is unclear what the series would be called going forward.  Any changes would be announced during IMSA's annual State of the Series address at Road America on Aug. 5.

I knew that this series was on shaky ground when they announced the cut from six races to five last summer.  IMSA considers it big enough to put their live broadcasts exclusively on Peacock like Michelin Pilot Challenge, but don't really promote it much.

Aside from the fact that there are two chassis in use (the Ligier JS P320 and the Duqueine M30-D08), this is effectively a spec series that is focused substantially towards amateur racers.  There really isn't that much to write about here.  There are two additional chassis (the Ginetta G61-LT-P3 and the ADESS-03 Evo) that are eligible for the series, but no one has raced either of them to this point.

Something substantial was going to have to happen with the series sometime this year.  We're getting there now.  The proposed LMP3/GT4 series would be unique in the United States.  Could it bring more teams into the series?  That's unclear.  Could it cannibalize IMSA's existing series?  Quite possibly.

Regardless, something has to be done as the status quo really isn't going to work much longer for the series.  Something has to change so that the series could make a bigger splash.  The Road America weekend will be big for the future of IMSA Prototype Challenge.  I'm looking forward to what comes out of it.

Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com.  Photo is courtesy of our own Phil Allaway.