A new IMSA era roars into Road America. Hear what one veteran driver had to say about it.

He has family ties to Wisconsin and a handful of victories at Road America, including one in which those were tied particularly closely.

Colin Braun, in his first season in a factory ride in IMSA’s top class, has been part of a new era for the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and also has two victories in the six races, albeit one of those wins tainted.

Next on the schedule, Braun and codriver Tom Blomqvist will race their Meyer Shank Acura at Road America SportsCar Weekend on the 4-mile course outside Elkhart Lake, where IMSA’s new GTP cars will become the most technologically advanced modern cars to compete.

As much as ever, the cars are the stars this season with the advent of the Le Mans Daytona h (LMDh) prototypes and the rebranding of IMSA’s top class as GTP, a name that harkens to the road racing heyday. There is a new emphasis on sustainability, including the use of a universal hybrid powertrain system, around which Acura, BMW, Cadillac and Porsche have designed their distinct cars.

GTP and the other four divisions of the WeatherTech Championship take to the track Friday ahead of a race Sunday, a timed event of 2 hours, 40 minutes scheduled to start at 10:10 a.m. (TV coverage begins at 10 a.m. on the USA cable network.)

In an interview ahead of the weekend, Braun, 34, spoke about his path to IMSA’s top division, the new era, a victory in the Rolex 24 and the ensuing penalty, and one of his favorite victories, when his engineer was his father, Jeff, whose racing career started as a crewman for Wisconsin NASCAR champion Alan Kulwicki decades ago.

The story this year is the GTP era. What are these cars like?

Aw, man, they’re sophisticated and from a driver and engineer standpoint, certainly really exciting new technology that we’re sorting out. We’re working to understand how we make speed, make them faster, what different tools we have from a brake standpoint and a hybrid standpoint, to be able to change the balance of the car and how they drive.

It’s been really exciting to see that development, and watching what HPD and Acura are able to achieve has been pretty darn cool.

How do they feel, how do they sound, how do they race that’s different from what we’ve seen?

Certainly they sound pretty mean and all the makes sound very different. You can definitely tell what’s what just by the sound of them.

Big straight-line speed, a lot of power with these GTP cars, and as far as the racing side, I think they race together better than anything in the top class in the last little bit has. You’ve got a little less downforce with these cars so they’re not so specific in having to have clean air. You can run a little bit more nose-to-tail and still have some good downforce and still race. The racing is probably better than it’s been, with these still-fast cars.

I know you haven’t been in the “top” class a lot in your career … but how does the championship feel with a larger field (10 GTP cars vs. six Dpi cars in 2022)?

It’s been certainly good having the grids that we’ve had. Most of the events we’ve been to have been nearly at the maximum we can fit in terms of pit lanes and grid capacity. That’s been really cool. It’s been neat to be a part of that, to be a part of the top class. And I think the racing has been, man, pretty darn exciting.

Fighting for the overall win regularly (after mostly racing for class wins), does that matter to your psyche?

I don’t know if it matters to my psyche, per se, but, man, I certainly enjoy being in the top class and being with this top technology and all the hard-working men and women trying to make these cars fast and these programs good. It’s certainly good to be a part of that.

Contending for overall wins, it’s a blast. We’re in super cool cars and trying to win the overall race is exciting for sure.

Does this being your first really true factory ride automatically make you the most fulfilled you’ve been professionally?

I think for me it’s more about having chances to win races and the environment that you’re in.

This Meyer Shank team has been awesome. I’ve really enjoyed being with this team, and seeing the way they go about racing is awesome. They’re top-notch.

I’d have to say when I was at CORE (Autosport), it was very similar. The environment you’re in is so important. To drive for two top teams back-to-back sort of like that has been awesome, it’s been epic.

Tell me about the relationship with (owner/co-driver) Jon Bennett and CORE. From the outside, it seems like he was a huge supporter of your career for the better part of a decade.

He was a big supporter of mine and was someone we obviously got along with really well professionally from a driving standpoint and then obviously personally, too. I’ve had dinner with him a handful of times a month and I had coffee with him (last week). Personally we’re just very good friends. It’s always good for the relationship on the professional level when you can get along as well as you can.

Maybe you didn’t always know that, and then he retired and unretired, but was there a certain amount of security to being with CORE?

Certainly having a good relationship and being there for so many years with one team gave you a lot of confidence and insight into what was going on and what decisions were being looked at. Jon and I were such good friends that that makes the whole thing … from a job security perspective, you feel like you have good insight and know what’s coming and there were never too many big surprises there for me.

This year you come out and win not just the first race of the season but the first race of a new era. What was that like?

Getting the win in Daytona (with Blomqvist, Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud) was huge. With the unknown of all of these different cars, and even the reliability piece and how they were going to race side-by-side, there were so many unknowns. To be able to go in and win that first race, man, it was huge. It was such a big deal, such great big win for obviously everyone at our Meyer Shank team but Acura, HPD, ORECA. So many people put so much effort in, months and months to prepare for that, it was definitely rewarding to get that win.

Then you were hit with the penalty (for the team manipulating tire pressure data) that makes the difference between leading and being sixth in the standings. How has the team looked at the championship since then?

When you look at it, we went to Sebring and were fighting for a podium and unfortunately had a wheel nut issue and the wheel came off and that was that race. Then we went to Long Beach and Tom qualified second and unfortunately he got hit in the first corner, so that was that race. We had a bit of bad luck in those next two races, but, man, we were fast.

Then we went to Laguna (Seca), Watkins (Glen) and Mosport (Canadian Tire Motorsports Park) and got another win (at CTMP), another podium, another pole and we’ve been fast. For us, we’re just trying to put together as good of results as we can and just keep our heads down and keep working.

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The 2018 win (in a LMP2 car over the premier DPi class cars) … close to where your dad grew up, with him, in a race where that came down a lot to him (coaching you to save fuel), what does that one in particular mean?

Yeah, it was a big win. Obviously that being kind of a home race for my dad and even a little bit for me – I had a lot of family and friends out there at Road America – big, big to get that in 2018, and a cool way to do it with a bit of fuel save and really tight to the end of the race. We were all working what we do.

Back to Road America, you have new cars and a new surface. What do you expect?

I don’t know. A bit of an unknown. We haven’t tested up there, so we’re anticipating big grip, faster lap times, that sort of thing. But hard to say exactly what it’s going to be like. We can’t wait to get a feel for it, but definitely a bit of an unknown.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Colin Braun on IMSA GTP at Elkhart Lake's Road America this weekend