Sportscar365’s Race of the Year

Sportscar365 is recognizing the top performers and moments from the 2025 sports car racing seasons. Next up is the Race of the Year, as selected by website staff.

Race of the Year – CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa

For many fans, 2025 will be remembered as the year in which three of the world’s four most prestigious 24-hour races (Le Mans, Nürburgring and Spa) were held on three consecutive weekends in June, something we will likely never see again. But after Ferrari triumphed at Le Mans and BMW beat Porsche to victory at the Nordschleife, little did we know that the best was still to come.

The CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa has produced its fair share of drama in recent years. Alessandro Pier Guidi’s late-race pass on Dries Vanthoor in 2021 springs to mind, or Aston Martin’s dramatic 2024 victory after Pier Guidi encountered a pit lane blockage. This year’s edition was no different.

For Lamborghini, the Belgian endurance classic had always been something of an elusive target. It was the race that the Italian manufacturer wanted to win more than any other, but it was also the race that had been a thorn in its side for many years. That finally changed in 2025, as Jordan Pepper, Luca Engstler and Mirko Bortolotti drove their GRT Grasser Racing Team-entered Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 to the most well-earned of breakthrough wins.

As has been the case with the 24H Spa in recent years, the race that led up to that win was nothing short of a high-stakes brawl with top manufacturers and drivers giving it their all. Attrition claimed more than a few contenders, including GetSpeed Performance and defending winners Comtoyou Racing.

Even as the No. 63 Lamborghini emerged as a serious victory contender on Sunday, the drama remained. The pendulum swung back and forth between Grasser and Rutronik Racing, including a final pitstop in which Bortolotti’s car briefly failed to fire into life. Less than nine seconds eventually separated the two cars at the flag.

Bortolotti (without a drink bottle in his car in roasting summer heat) give it all to secure the most sought-after of victories and had to be taken to the on-site medical center afterwards – a sign of just how hard he had pushed.

Honorable Mentions:

***The FIA World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Fuji was the 100th race in series history, and it arguably delivered the best showing of the Hypercar era outside of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Through an up-and-down contest with multiple safety cars, early dominance by Cadillac morphed into a three-way battle for victory between Alpine, Peugeot and Porsche, with the former coming out on top for a landmark result helped by a call to only take two tires at the final pitstop. There was drama in the LMGT3 class too, as an energy miscalculation from Vista AF Corse opened the door for TF Sport to take a last-lap win.

***A newly resurfaced track was one of the factors that made SUPER GT’s Sugo 300km a truly memorable occasion, robbing the usually dominant Bridgestone tire users of their edge. That, plus a multi-car collision that caused a red flag (in which luckily nobody was hurt), helped set up a finale that will live long in the memory, as Nissan driver Teppei Natori took advantage of his Yokohama tires’ superior grip to pass Sacha Fenestraz’s Toyota around the outside at Horseback corner with literally seconds remaining in what had become a timed race, giving Kondo Racing its first GT500 win in nine years.

***Few championship deciders have played out in as dramatic a fashion as DTM’s Sunday race at the Hockenheimring, in which Ayhancan Guven became the first Turkish driver to win the crown. The Manthey EMA racer did it in style, with a final-lap pass on Marco Wittmann that was needed to capture the title, as a Wittmann victory would have seen Lucas Auer crowned champion. It was a fitting end to an extraordinarily competitive season for the series, in which no fewer than seven drivers entered the final race still in strong contention for the championship.