While More IMSA Teams Are Using Vinyl Wraps to Display Car Designs, Traditional Painted Liveries Still Exist … and Win
By David Phillips - April 15, 2022
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Perhaps the most endangered species in motorsports in recent years has been the bodywork painter of race cars. For as their cost and weight have come down, vinyl body wraps – essentially car-sized decals covering the entire bodywork – have increasingly become in vogue throughout the IMSA paddocks.
And why not? In an age when primary, secondary and associate sponsorships can shift race to race, market to market, it makes sense to be able to change a race car’s livery almost as quickly as mechanics can change a windshield tearaway during a pit stop.
“There are so many what are called ‘repurposed paint job’ races – the reliance on individual partners to be featured at individual races,” says Mike Hull, Chip Ganassi Racing’s managing director. “You’ll have an event at say Sebring and then the very next weekend they’re racing with a totally different livery or partner, and you can change the wrap in the field, so to speak.”
Speaking of in the field, when bodywork has been bent, folded and/or mutilated during an incident in practice or qualifying, wraps enable teams to present their cars with a pristine appearance on race day that same weekend.
“If your bodywork gets roughed up, you just basically pull off the wrap and put another one straight on, whereas with painting you have to go through a whole range of steps if you want to refresh it,” says Bryan Herta Autosport team manager Phil Howard. “A wrap is definitely less time-consuming and somewhat more cost-effective.”
More:
https://www.imsa.com/news/2022/04/15/thats-a-wrap-or-is-it/