Indianapolis Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

***BMW M Team RLL ended a 455-day winless streak in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition with victory in last weekend’s Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Philipp Eng and Jesse Krohn. The team’s one-and-only prior win in the GTP class came in last year’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, which was inherited after a post-race technical infraction for the No. 6 Penske Porsche 963.

***Eng claimed his first WeatherTech Championship victory since the 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona as part of RLL’s GTLM class-winning effort with the BMW M8 GTE. Krohn’s last series win, meanwhile, came in the same event with the same team and car model in 2019.

***BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos said: “This has been an incredibly successful week for our LMDh program with the first podium in the FIA WEC and the first one-two finish in the IMSA series. Congratulations to BMW M Team RLL, which, despite the difficult season so far, has continued to push together with our BMW M Motorsport engineers, making this great success possible. I am very pleased that we have now managed to convert the potential that our BMW M Hybrid V8 has shown frequently this season into corresponding top results twice in a row.”

***The 1-2 finish for Team RLL came just hours after Team WRT scored a sweep of the top two overall positions in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup race at Monza, which was won by a Bronze Cup-entered BMW M4 GT3 led by Jens Klingmann.

***Nine different GTP entries led over the course of the rain-impacted six-hour race at The Brickyard, with only the No. 5 Proton Competition and No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Porsche 963s not being out front at any stage.

***Felipe Nasr nursed the No. 7 Penske Porsche to the finish without power steering, after the system failed on the Brazilian with less than 90 minutes to go. Nasr initially stopped on the front-straight to perform a systems reset, which triggered the race’s sixth full-course caution, although it did not solve the issue for the GTP championship-leading entry.

***Porsche Penske managing director Jonathan Diuguid said: “I have to compliment Felipe. The way he coaxed the No. 7 over the finish line without power steering was impressive. We need to take a closer look at the fault.”

***Nasr and co-driver Dane Cameron’s ninth place class finish, and podium result for teammates Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche, has closed the championship gap to just 14 points entering next month’s title-deciding Motul Petit Le Mans.

***The third-placed No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande would need to claim pole and win Petit Le Mans, plus have both of the factory 963s fail to roll off the grid for the race in order to steal away the drivers’ title.

***With a 124-point lead over Cadillac, Porsche has all but locked up the GTP manufacturers’ championship, with just one of the four expected 963s entered at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta needing to start the ten-hour enduro to win the title.

***Both of the Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06s showed pace at times during the race but were relegated to fifth and sixth place finishes, with the No. 40 entry of Louis Deletraz losing a likely podium finish due to a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility with the No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Chaz Mostert.

***The two Acuras combined to lead 46 laps. “The first half of the race was about survival and protecting the car to get to the end,” said Ricky Taylor. “Toward the end, we just couldn’t quite put ourselves in a position to win. We’re always just slightly out of reach.”

***JDC-Miller Motorsports recorded a season-best fourth place finish with its privateer Porsche, which overcame a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact with the No. 74 Riley Oreca 07 Gibson of Josh Burdon when Richard Westbrook was at the wheel. Proton Competition’s Porsche, meanwhile, finished seventh, after a drive-through penalty for passing under yellow and spin while battling an electrical issue on the car.

***Phil Hanson, of JDC-Miller, said: “What a rollercoaster of a race. A lucky yellow got us back to the front. Fourth place is a solid result. Our pace was strong. However, we repeatedly had to solve some tricky issues throughout the six-hour race. I imagine it was the same for every team.”

***While Action Express Racing recorded its second retirement of the season, after Pipo Derani’s accident at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, it was the first mechanical-related DNF for the Gary Nelson-led team in recent memory. The team’s Cadillac dropped out when Derani stopped on track with a loss of oil pressure in the third hour.

***Iron Lynx had its strongest-ever race with the Lamborghini SC63, which led for ten laps amid the wet conditions prior to a pit lane penalty and race-ending suspension damage after Andrea Caldarelli collided with the No. 55 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 of Ben Barker.

***Romain Grosjean said: “In the wet, we were flying, the car was amazing, so I managed to take the lead and pull away which was fantastic. Of course, operationally in this championship, there are things that we have to improve but generally it was a really positive weekend. It’s a shame we had to retire but we will analyze and make it stronger, and we will come back for the Petit Le Mans which will be another battle.”

***Porsche Penske’s Nasr and Cameron maintained their lead in the Michelin Endurance Cup standings and head to Road Atlanta with a four-point lead over Bourdais and van der Zande, with Action Express’ Derani, Jack Aitken and Tom Blomqvist one further point behind in third.

***The results of Sunday’s race are pending extensive post-race technical inspection for seven of the 11 GTP cars that’s set to take place at IMS on Monday and Tuesday. IMSA announced the impound of machinery five minutes after the checkered flag of the race, which is understood to have caught several competitors by surprise.

***With their LMP2 class win, TDS Racing’s Mikkel Jensen, Hunter McElrea and Steven Thomas are now tied for the Endurance Cup lead with the Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports trio of Tom Dillmann, Kuba Smiechowski and Nick Boulle.

***It marked back-to-back class wins at the Brickyard for Jensen and Thomas after an up-and-down day for the French squad that was one of nine LMP2 cars to have been assessed with a drive-through penalty early on for an unauthorized wave-by while under the race’s third caution.

***McElrea said: “My engineer is French, and he’s really hard to understand on a good day. Some weird stuff sometimes happens on like the long yellows, full course yellows, and the pass around was not happening. And I was getting passed by cars, and I was super confused. I was kind of whining about that, like what’s going on, and then I got the drive through and then [got] spun by a GT [car], and I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m probably a lap down at least.’ And then next thing you know, at the end of the stint I’m leading by ten seconds. It sums up IMSA. You’re never out of the fight.”

***Boulle, meanwhile, extended his lead in the Jim Trueman Award standings to 70 points over Riley’s Gar Robinson, with Orey Fidani now 120 points ahead of Brendan Iribe in the Bob Akin Bronze Cup championship. Both titles will award automatic invites to next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans in LMP2 and LMGT3, respectively.

***AO Racing’s third GTD Pro class win of the season put the team’s No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R and Laurin Heinrich with a 99-point lead over the No. 23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Ross Gunn heading into October’s season finale, meaning Heinrich, who will be joined in the car by Michael Christensen and Julien Andlauer, can claim the title with a podium finish, no matter where the No. 23 Aston finishes.

***Christensen had a run-in with the Alex Riberas-driven Aston early in the race. The Dane said: “There was a lot of contact, I’m not sure with who, but at least we have a pair of endurance lights in our bumper from an Aston Martin; it was that hard we got hit. And in Turn 8 we got pushed off — I think it was [the] 23, but he was hitting me that hard, he went off himself too. So that was a bit weird. But we kept the car in one piece and ultimately passed them and moved on from there.”

***Sunday’s win was Christensen’s first in WeatherTech Championship competition since the 2017 Rolex 24 when he was part of Alegra Motorsport’s GTD class-winning effort in the race.

***The No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Jack Hawksworth led GTD Pro early when the rain arrived in the opening hour after the team elected to keep the Englishman out on slick tires. “It started off dry, then it rained, and the guys made a good call by staying out on slicks,” he explained. “We took the lead at one point, which was good and then the rain came again. We ended up cycling to the back because we stayed out earlier, but with good speed on the wet tires, we were able to come through and get into a good position again.”

***Despite recording an eighth place class finish, the Paul Miller Racing trio of Bryan Sellers, Madison Snow and Neil Verhagen continue to lead the Endurance Cup standings in GTD Pro, with Winward Racing’s Russell Ward, Philip Ellis and Indy Dontje, who lost their first Endurance Cup race of the season, now only with a single-point lead over Inception Racing’s Iribe, Frederik Schandorff and Ollie Millroy in the GTD standings.

***With a 222-point lead in the season-long points race, Ward and Ellis will need an 18th place class finish or higher at Petit Le Mans, not counting a possible swing in points from qualifying, to claim the drivers’ championship. The Turner Motorsport duo of Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher currently sit second in the standings.

***Mercedes-AMG has already locked up the GTD manufacturers’ title by its customer cars having rolled off the grid on Sunday.

***Iron Lynx’s No. 19 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2, featuring DTM drivers Maximian Paul and Luca Engstler, was the race’s first retirement after Paul clobbered the No. 65 Multimatic Ford Mustang GT3 of Dirk Mueller in the opening laps. Paul was handed incident responsibility.

***Mueller’s Ford rejoined after a lengthy visit to the garage at the end of the opening hour only to go back behind the wall in Hour 2. A shifter actuator, meanwhile, broke on the car late in the four hour, leading to even further delays.

***A total of seven cars failed to make it to the finish of the six hours, including the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus (accident) and No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 (suspension damage). Numerous LMP2 and GTD cars in particular were involved in spins and incidents over the course of the action-packed race.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John