If you had waited until the last minute to scoop up your tickets to Petit Le Mans, the 10-hour finale for IMSA’s 2024 season, you would have been disappointed: Tickets were sold out. Georgia police told the series and the track that it legally couldn’t sell any more parking passes. The campgrounds were full.

That’s because American sports car racing is in the throes of a Renaissance. The GTP Hypercar regulations have both spurred manufacturer interest and increased the level of competition, while a packed GT field has created competition up and down the field. The result? There’s never been a better time to be a sports car fan in America.

Petit Le Mans: An end to an exceptional IMSA season

The 2024 IMSA season is the second with the revival of Grand Touring Prototype, or GTP, regulations. Also known as ‘hypercars,’ these machines represent the pinnacle of automotive technology and encourage manufacturers like Porsche, Acura, BMW, Cadillac, and Lamborghini with a platform upon which to push the boundaries of hybrid machinery.

When it debuted in 2023, the GTP platform was touted as being one of the most sustainable racing platforms in North America, with every car utilizing a hybrid powertrain designed in conjunction with IMSA and the Automobile club de l’Ouest (ACO), which sanctions the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The result was a technical package that is as affordable as it is valuable for the manufacturers taking part. Because the ACO and IMSA agree on the regulations, companies like Cadillac can get more bang for their buck by designing one car that can compete in both IMSA and at Le Mans — and they don’t have to break the bank to do it thanks to the homologation that restricts car development for several years.

While the regulations keep things competitive, each manufacturer responded to the call with creativity and ingenuity. Cadillac, for example, hired sound engineers to preserve the throaty V8 growl of its production cars when its electric motor bump-starts the combustion engine.

To remain true to its heritage, Acura designed its GTP to feature a V6 combustion engine rather than the V8s that power the rest of the field. Porsche emerged strong from the gate in 2023, using and selling its data to customer teams to improve in 2024.

BMW started off 2023 on the back foot but quickly pooled its resources in IMSA and WEC to improve in 2024, while newcomer Lamborghini impressed in its first year of competition.

Further, in the GT category, IMSA and WEC collaborated on introducing international GT3 regulations to dictate both series, and with great results: 11 different automotive manufacturers and 32 teams took part in the GT classes for 2024.

More from sports car racing:

👉 Why Cadillac’s Le Mans experience proves it’s absolutely ready for F1

👉 What Cadillac’s new endurance racing partnership could mean for its Formula 1 program

While 2023 was a stunning year for IMSA, 2024 refined an already exceptional product. In the nine races contested by the GTP machines, six different teams won: The Nos. 6 and 7 from Porsche, the No. 01 from Cadillac, the No. 24 of BMW, and the Nos. 10 and 40 of Acura. While it was Penske that ultimately took the championship, the year was studded with contentious battles.

Great racing, though, is only one part of the very complex puzzle that defines a racing series’ success. To truly be deemed great, fans need to be turning up, too.

Thankfully, IMSA’s 2024 season brought with it record or near-record crowds at almost every event. The season kicked off in January with record attendance at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, where IMSA reported the event has seen a doubling of attendance since 2018.

Next on the calendar was the 12 Hours of Sebring, which saw an all-time IMSA attendance record. IMSA/IndyCar doubleheader weekends at Long Beach and Detroit increased crowd sizes. Further, Road America, Laguna Seca, and Watkins Glen joined the record-breaking party. Only Indianapolis failed to make bigger year-over-year waves.

“I’ve been coming to [Road Atlanta] for years,” a fan named Rich told me as I explored the track during Petit Le Mans. “I ain’t never seen it like this.”

By ‘like this,’ Rich meant ‘packed.’ I tried to join fans for the pre-race grid walk, where everyone with a ticket has access to get up close and personal with the cars about to hit the circuit, only to find myself in a logjam before I could reach the prototypes. It had been the same at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. In both cases, I excused myself to watch from afar.

As I did, I chatted with another fan named Jackson, a second-generation race fan who shared his plans to bring his own daughter out to IMSA races as soon as she was old enough to stand on her own two feet.

“Sports car racing was just the coolest thing to me when I was a kid,” he said. “But there was this kind of lull for a few years. I couldn’t ever convince my buddies to go out to the track with me; they were always going on about how boring this racing thing is.

“But then this year, four of us did Sebring for the first time. They’d heard about the legendary parties and thought, hey, at least we can have fun.”

He waved his phone at me, showing a notification for a text message that had popped up during our conversation. Smiling, he said, “Now guess what? We’ve got a group chat going, and they’re losing their mind that I’m here and they’re not.”

“What got them hooked?” I asked.

Jackson thought for a moment before he answered, saying, “That’s the thing. We’re all a bunch of car guys, but they never really ‘got’ racing. They were like, what’s the point, you’re just watching cars go in circles, and you keep telling me you already know who’s gonna win.

“But you watch a race like [Petit Le Mans], and it’s like, non-stop action. This year has just been crazy with the amount of GTPs that have won, you know? It’s cool. And then you can turn on WEC, and watch the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and it’s like, I know those cars. I know those drivers. I still don’t know who the hell’s gonna win.

“It’s just cool to be part of something like that. It feels really special.”

As for the race itself, well — Petit Le Mans provided excitement until the very final moment. With under 10 minutes remaining in the 10-hour race, the leading No. 01 Cadillac piloted by Renger van der Zande that had lost one of its headlights earlier in the race went on to lose its second. For half a lap, the racer piloted his Caddy in complete darkness before the lights flickered on again.

Then went out again. Then one light would return, flickering. Whether they were rooting for Cadillac or not, fans were on the edge of their seats as the seconds ticked away and van der Zande battled the faulty lighting, knowing all the while that if his lights were to permanently shut off, IMSA would have no choice but to black-flag him — for the second time during the race.

With the competition just a few seconds behind, it was critical that van der Zande keep his car on the track and make it to the checkered flag with at least one light intact.

It wasn’t enough for Cadillac to snatch the championship away from Porsche, but it was a more than fitting ending for one of the most compelling IMSA seasons yet. And in January, the Renaissance will begin again with another running of the Rolex 24.

Read next: Cadillac’s European push could make sense of its F1 hopes without Andretti