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Detroit Grand Prix: Motown automakers integrate racing and production
Posted by Talbot Payne on May 30, 2025
Detroit — The 2025 Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix will take place Friday to Sunday on a 1.7-mile street track circling General Motors Co.’s Renaissance Center headquarters in downtown Detroit.
Lauren Heinrich driving the Porsche 911GT3 R (992) along side the Detroit River, goes on to win the IMSA WeatherTech Sportswear Championship at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix weekend in downtown Detroit, Michigan on June 1, 2024. Daniel Mears, The Detroit News
Chevrolet isn’t the only Detroit-based manufacturer featured in this year’s race.
Motorsports has become a key marketing, engineering, and sales tool for the auto industry today and Motown brands in particular have accelerated their involvement in recent years from international Formula One and GT3 Racing to the IndyCar and IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Championship Series on display in Detroit this weekend.
Forty percent of the 27 IndyCar racers will be powered by Chevrolet engines while 40% of IMSA Weathertech’s 22 entries will be represented by home brands (if you include Bloomfield Hills-based Team Penske, which runs the Porsche GTP team). In addition to Penske’s two Porsche entries, Detroit car brands include three Cadillac GTP racers, a pair of Corvettes, and two Ford Mustangs.
IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Series Corvette GT3 racers will be at Detroit GP (here shown at Long Beach).Chevrolet, Chevrolet
“Since we got into GT racing in 1999, we believed in the continuity and the messaging to expand our customer base and embrace technology – and the IMSA series is really representative of that,” said Corvette Racing Brand Ambassador Doug Fehan, who, as Corvette Racing program manager, established Chevy’s presence in international motorsports three decades ago. “When you look at the things we try and accomplish in racing — whether it be materials or fuel mileage or aerodynamics or light-weighting — all those things were always important in racing and now have become extraordinarily important in production. Corvette set the bar for technology transfer.”
The Detroit brands are joined by a who’s who of international brand,s including Honda (which will power the other 16 IndyCars on the Detroit GP grid), Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, BMW, Acura, Lexus and Mazda (whose engines power the weekend’s third competition, Indy NXT, IndyCar’s feeder series).
That’s an elite club.
Will Power takes turn 3 during NTT Indycar series qualifying at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix weekend in downtown Detroit on June 1, 2024. Daniel Mears, The Detroit News
Like Porsche, Ferrari, and Honda, which built their brands on motorsports success in the mid-20th century, Team Penske founder Roger Penske made competitive success the foundation of a business brand that covers rental trucks and auto dealerships. That model increasingly speaks to other brands.
“Racing is more than a checkered flag and a trophy. Racing can be internalized,” said Fehan. “Racing can be used to attract young, bright personnel with the excitement that racing — and the level of technology — generates. People want to be part of something they can be proud of.”
Whether the hybrid technology in IndyCar and IMSA GTP powertrains, or the chassis that are the backbone of GT race cars, racing informs production technology by testing at extreme track conditions.
“On the (mid-engine Corvette) C8, we had a clay model in the design studio of the street car, and — for the first time in history — right next to it, we had a clay model of the race car,” said Fehan. “And we’re transferring stuff back and forth. Those production engineers were wearing Corvette Racing hats. On the walls were Corvette Racing posters. They were embracing the fact that they were part of racing as well as part of production.”
IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Series Cadillac GTP racers will be at the Detroit GP (here shown in Long Beach). Cadillac, Cadillac
Manufacturers in the GT race class now include Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Ferrari, Ford, Lamborghini, Lexus, McLaren, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche. In the top GTP prototype class, there will be nine brands represented by 2027 including: BMW, Cadillac, Acura, Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, McLaren, Ford and Genesis.
“That’s a lot of manufacturers across the board,” said Fehan, who has been part of Corvette’s nine victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s most prestigious endurance race, from 2001-2023. “They’re now involved in IMSA, which is like twice what it ever was in the history of the sport.”
The benefits of racing translate beyond the workplace and into the showroom. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
“It’s undeniable the effectiveness of a marketing program that takes place on a racetrack,” said Fehan. “Watch what we’ve done from a sales perspective. Almost 50% of Corvette C8 sales are to people who have never owned a Chevrolet product.”
Team Penske’s Felipe Nasr, Nick Tandy and Laurens Vanthoor celebrate in victory lane after winning the GTP class at the 24 Hours of Daytona in the #7 Porsche Penske Motorsports Porsche 963 in January 2025.Brandon Badraoui, Courtesy Of IMSA
Fehan expects the interest in motorsports to grow as a new generation of buyers raised on Netflix series like “Drive to Survive” and online gaming gain disposable income to buy cars.
“Just look at the Netflix series with Formula One. America is awakening to the high-tech side of what we’re doing in racing,” continued Fehan. “That has opened the door to the gaming side of it, and that’s a whole different perspective of how you market and sell cars. Racing is becoming more imperative if you want to sell vehicles.”
IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Series fans enjoy some Cadillac swag (here shown at Long Beach). Cadillac, Cadillac
In addition to its success in sportscar racing, Cadillac (IMSA manufacturer titles in 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023) is now pursuing Netflix and international markets by entering Formula One in 2026. Brad Pitt’s “F1” movie opens June 27 and hopes to replicates the success of Oscar winner “Ford v Ferrari” in 2019.
Sensing the moment, Fox Sports became the sole broadcaster of IndyCar for 2025. It will televise the NTT IndyCar race at 12:30 p.m. Sunday. Peacock will carry the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar race at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.