John Church and John Miller have become an unexpected success story within IMSA’s new team ownership base. The surprise hasn’t come from the competitive side, where the championship-winning Mazda Road To Indy entrants have quickly risen to the challenge of fighting factory Daytona Prototype international teams.

With the team holding third in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship standings – splitting the Action Express Racing Cadillacs – entering this weekend’s Road America event, the scrappy squad from Minnesota has grown comfortable taking the fight to its bigger rivals. If anything, that part was expected.

Where Church and Miller have distinguished their team is on the business development side. They recently announced the purchase of a second WEC-spec ORECA 07 LMP2 chassis to expand to two cars in 2018, and with the growth of their business, a journey that started earlier in the decade has reached an impressive height.

From its initial foray into IMSA Lites in 2011 to its step up to the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s PC class in 2014, the JDC-Miller outfit made an immediate impact in both categories, and with its move to Prototype this year, the streak has continued. In leading all privateers in the blended DPi/WEC P2 class, and doubling down with the purchase of a second ORECA 07 to meet newfound demand by paying customers, IMSA has an amazing story on its hands.

Like the Mazda Road To Indy, IMSA’s informal ladder system for prototype owners has a shining example with all JDC-Miller has achieved.

“From my position, the opportunity to run two cars in the Prototype class was always a goal, but I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly,” Church told RACER. “Obviously, ORECA was the right choice; its chassis seems to be the best, and we’ve had a lot of people wanting to come and run with us next year. This year, we’ve had to turn away a lot of people that wanted to run.”

Mid-season adjustments to IMSA’s Balance of Performance tables for the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Prototype class made a big difference in bringing the WEC P2s to the fore. Once JDC-Miller’s ORECA 07 could routinely race among the DPis, interest began to grow.

“It got to the point that ORECA made us a deal to order another car, and John Miller has always been supportive of our expansion,” Church added. “I’d rather run two prototypes and maybe less of the other stuff we do and I think he’d like that too. When we got this offer at Mosport, I forwarded it on to him while he was in Europe, then his son Chris came down to the shop, said ‘let’s talk about the second car,’ and it got to be a no-brainer. It’s a good thing to be happening at this point; I didn’t think we’d be at this decision so early, or for us to be as competitive as we are right now.”

Church believes aligning his team with ORECA has played a part in the attention JDC-Miller has drawn, and IMSA’s creation of the “36 Hours of Florida” promotion to attract drivers and teams to compete at the Rolex 24 at Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring has helped the increase in demand.

“Obviously, we were fortunate to choose the right chassis; I don’t think anyone would have argued that,” he said. “We have a number of people interested. Whether we can put together a full-season deal for the second car is still to be determined, but we’re a long way away from next season. We’ve already got a number of European drivers interested in the 36 Hours of Florida, and we’ve got a bunch of Stateside interest in the four long races. It looking promising.”

With the top WEC LMP2 Prototype team set to be awarded an invitation to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2018, Church also likes the idea of having a second car to use for that project.

“We want to go to Le Mans next year if we win the award, and then we’d have a second car that we could use for that instead of leasing one, so there’s a lot of reasons to get going with a second chassis,” he said. “I kept telling myself, John and Chris that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to be long with ORECA. I know we could turn it around and sell it if needed, we could run it in the ELMS or WEC, and we’d have a competitive package, so we talked ourselves into it.”

Another positive for IMSA comes in the form of the JDC-Miller team needing to hire more crew members to run a second car. Although Church expects to pull some of his junior open-wheel staff over to the new ORECA 07, new employment opportunities will be created.

“I think it would be a combination of both; bring in some new people and utilize existing ones,” he said. “That equation will play out once we see how things get going when the car arrives in October. Most of the guys in the shop are enjoying doing the Prototype racing, so it’s not hard to convince them to do more. We’d like to do a fair amount of testing from October-December, and get ready for next season.”

Coming off a pair of second-place finishes at Watkins Glen and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Church and the team behind the No. 85 “Banana Boat” appear to be enjoying their rookie season in Prototype. If his wish is granted, other WEC P2 entrants will expand or join in next season.

“Hopefully there will be more privateers like us,” he said. “We’re having a ton of fun. They’ve gotten BoP to a really good place. And I’m tired of hearing they should be splitting the class. The bigger BoP problem is now between the three DPi manufacturers. We want to race for overall wins, not podiums in our little class. And we feel like we can go and beat all the teams and prove that we can do it. I like the class just the way it is, and don’t want it to change.”