A rating of platinum, the highest for accomplished pros, or gold designates a driver as a professional.IMSA’s LMP2, LMP3 and GTD classes limit the number of platinum or gold drivers, i.e., professionals.
“A lot of people want to get rid of them, but I don’t think they see what the outcome would be,” said Bill Riley, whose Riley Motorsports team is helping to field two cars in the Rolex 24 at Daytona for paying drivers. One is an LMP3 car entered for silver driver Gar Robinson and the other aPorsche 911 GT3 R entered with Kellymoss for bronze driver Alan Metni. “A lot of these drivers who are racing sports cars are paying the bills. And they want to be racing against their peers.
“I haven’t raced in five years,” continued O’Connell, the overall Rolex 24 winner in 2001 with Corvette Racing who could not find rides once his GM contract ended—but his platinum rating continued. “I would like to think I would have been racing if I was a bronze. It’s a crazy competitive environment now and I have empathy for any young driver coming up and trying to make a career in sports cars right now.
Steven McAleer in effect lost his ride this year for the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona when his driver classification was upgraded.Driver Stevan McAleer was in the running for a GTD championship in the WeatherTech Championship last year in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Team Korthoff as a silver-rated driver and ended up third in the points. His opportunity to continue with Korthoff ended this year after he was upgraded to gold.
“If you’re going to have a pro-am class,” said Keating, “you’ve gotta have a way to identify who are the pros and who are the ams? There is no perfect system. I think the FIA, any series, gets a ton of heat over the driver ratings systems. Everybody talks about if the rules are like this or that, I don’t believe that. I believe the one they have right now is pretty doggone good. The reason I say that, there is no perfect system.