Porsche Penske “Rolled the Dice” By Double Stinting Tires

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Porsche Penske Motorsport “rolled the dice” by double stinting its Michelin tires that ended up being a key factor for victory in Saturday’s Acura Grand Prix at Long Beach according to Nick Tandy.

Tandy and co-driver Mathieu Jaminet gave the Porsche 963 its first win in global competition in the third round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season following a strategic call to run the entire 100-minute race on the same set of rubber.

It came after a controlling early race run by the pole-sitting No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport Acura of Filipe Albuquerque, which took tires during its stop but lost ten seconds in the pits after encountering an issue with the driver change to Ricky Taylor.

“We kinda knew from practice and qualifying that our pace was probably not going to win us the race,” said Tandy, who qualified the No. 6 car in sixth.

“We came up with lots of options on how we could work strategy.

“This is the beauty of IMSA and beauty of these sprint races when there’s only one pit stop, there’s a lot of options you can play.

“One of them was to try and [capitalize on] the tire warmup issue that many of the teams have had in GTP this year and obviously go with no tires.

“What we didn’t know was how it was going to end up for the last 40 minutes because we hadn’t run the tire this long at any point in practice, nobody had.

“It was just guesswork but track position was often the key.

“We had decent track position before we pitted. We rolled the dice and saw what the 10 did when they came in the lap before us and said to do everything we could to go for the victory.

“Then it was up to my buddy [Mathieu] and what hell of a job he did, as well as Matt Campbell, driving the way he did, to try and keep his second place but also to hold those guys off behind us, what a fantastic drive from Matt.

“The team result is amazing.”

Jaminet, who had a clear lead after Campbell first came under attack from the No. 25 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 of Connor De Phillippi and then Taylor, saw his lead dwindle when Taylor got around the Australian with a bold move in Turn 8 with nine minutes to go.

“I kind of saw it coming,” Jaminet said. “He had fresher tires and I got held up in traffic the lap before.

“It was two to go and he went for us. I braked very late and I just saw he was going and if he could make it stop I’d be impressed.

“I saw him locked up and went straight into the fence. At that point I just tried to stop as much as I can and go for the inside.

“At the end we were really lucky here, especially after Sebring when it was a tough end of the race for the team.

“It’s nice to end that way and bring home the win.”

The Frenchman admitted it was a bit of a deja-vu moment after battling with the No. 10 WTR Andretti Acura for the win in last month’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, which ended in the top three cars all crashing out.

This time around, only Taylor’s Acura ended up in the barriers.

“Yeah it was like, ‘Here we go again.'” Jaminet said. “I knew it was another driver in the car, so maybe it would end up better!”

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