Road Atlanta Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Gruppe C Photography/Porsche

***Porsche claimed its second overall Motul Petit Le Mans victory and first with a prototype, after Nick Tandy and Patrick Pilet’s triumph in a GTLM class factory Porsche 911 RSR in the famous rain-shortened 2015 event.

***The win for Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Matt Campbell also marked Team Penske’s first outright win in the ten-hour enduro at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta after three previous LMP2 class victories with the Porsche RS Spyder from 2006-08.

***It was all three drivers’ first overall Petit Le Mans victories, and remarkably, Estre’s first career IMSA win in his 38th start. Porsche Penske, meanwhile, completed a sweep of overall wins in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans, all in the same season, but split between its two factory GTP entries.

***Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle said: “What Laurens Vanthoor delivered in the final stages was simply impressive. On top of that, he also had to drive conservatively to make sure the fuel would last until the end. It’s a nice way to wrap up a season that wasn’t always easy.”

***Estre paid tribute to Campbell, in his final outing as a Porsche factory driver, for his “super precise” run. “He saved fuel, saved tires. Tire whisperer as the engineers are saying!” said the Frenchman. “I’m really glad to clinch the victory with these two guys in our final race together probably. We are parting ways a bit next year.”

***Campbell, meanwhile, downplayed his role in the race. “I just did the awkward middle part of race, the red flag, trying to save energy as much as possible,” he said. “These two guys did the work. I was in the middle doing the awkward stuff.”

***The No. 24 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Sheldon van der Linde settled for second this time, with the South African unable to replicate his late-race heroics from last month’s Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that netted BMW its first GTP win of the season.

***Van der Linde said: “I came really close into turn one once about 20 minutes to go. I was very far back. Obviously Laurens didn’t see me coming because I was two seconds behind. He got stuck in GT traffic in the last corner. I thought I got lucky there. He saw me coming at the very last minute, closed the door. That’s probably the best shot we had in the last half an hour.”

***It marked van der Linde and Robin Frijns’ second runner-up finish in the two ‘Le Mans’ races this year. “We finished second in [the 24 Hours of] Le Mans this year by ten seconds, now second in Petit Le Mans with three seconds or two seconds, whatever it is. It’s bittersweet, to be honest. I feel like we’ve come really close to some really good highlights this year and dreams of mine that I’ve had since I was a kid.”

***While retiring late in the race following a massive airborne crash for Felipe Nasr, the No. 7 Porsche Penske crew still won the Michelin Endurance Cup championship in GTP. Nasr shared the title with Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich, who ironically ended up on equal points to Nasr and Andlauer despite being in JDC-Miller Motorsports’ Porsche for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America.

***Unlike GTP, the three season-long championship teams: CrowdStrike Racing by APR (LMP2), Paul Miller Racing (GTD Pro) and Winward Racing (GTD) also took Endurance Cup titles.

***The race featured a record-breaking 16 full course cautions, plus a 30-minute red flag period due to lightning in the area, which totaled nearly 50 percent of the race either behind the safety car or in the pit lane due to the weather-related stoppage. The previous event record was 14 cautions in the 2017 edition.

***All but two of the yellows were for accidents or cars stuck in the gravel trap, with GTP cars the cause of six of the cautions and five further coming from incidents from LMP2 cars. Five of the 11 GTP cars crashed out of the race.

***Fourth-place overall finisher Filipe Albuquerque said it seemed like an “Armageddon race” while Wayne Taylor Racing team co-owner Wayne Taylor said it was “one of the wildest races” he ever experienced. He added: “The amount of cautions and accidents that happened was just unbelievable.”

***Laurens Vanthoor, however, defended the incident-filled race. “Honestly, I think it was a bit overdramatized by people,” he said. “Go and try to drive the last two hours in the dark at Atlanta with so many cars and such a short track with championships and big victories on the line, the pressure of winning races, speed differences between professional drivers, amateur drivers, change of conditions, smoke, rain, whatever. Yes, there’s hard racing. Sometimes it goes over the line. But that’s what we’re here for, to win these races, everybody going all out.”

***While the No. 93 Acura ARX-06 crashed out in the hands of Nick Yelloly, the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing entry came two laps away of finishing on the podium in the manufacturer and team’s last WeatherTech Championship race but Tom Blomqvist was forced into the pits for an energy top-up, relegating he, Colin Braun and Scott Dixon, in the Kiwi’s final race with Honda/Acura power, to a sixth place result.

***Team co-owner Mike Shank reflected: “The first half of the race, we dominated. But then everything kind of spiraled, unfortunately. Then we had to do a bunch of things to try and get Tom positioned back in contention, and we almost did it. We needed a miracle, and we got two-thirds of a miracle. But I’m really proud of how everyone called strategy, actually. It was a really difficult call to do what we did there to try and get track position. We were one lap away from the podium. Love everybody here on this team. And I thank everybody that’s followed us here in IMSA. And onward we go.”

***Honda Racing Corporation USA President Kelvin Fu added: “I want to thank everyone who contributed to this program, especially the people at MSR, WTR, and HRC. Their commitment, professionalism, and passion were the foundation of this program’s success. While this chapter of Acura racing comes to a close, the people, technology, and relationships developed will be an important part of our racing future.”

***Honda factory driver and current Super Formula points leader Kaku Ohta, who made a total of five starts with Acura MSR over the last two seasons, was on-site over the weekend in support of the Japanese manufacturer’s send-off, as well as searching for a potential WeatherTech Championship ride for next year.

***GM doubled up by winning both the GTP (Cadillac) and GTD Pro (Corvette) manufacturers’ championships. Cadillac’s fifth title in the modern IMSA era is the most of all OEMs in the top prototype class, since 2014. Action Express Racing, meanwhile, won its seventh class teams’ title, putting them tied for third most all-time with Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing.

***GM’s VP of global motorsports competition Eric Warren said: “We had two really great teams this year. We worked on this ‘Team Cadillac’ approach. Really the consistency the Cadillac team has shown has been incredible. The performance at every track starting at Indy last year, we were talking about Cadillac, I think we’ve been on the podium ten races in a row there… Same thing with Corvette. What a battle that’s been, [but] a little bit rougher than I’d like to see probably.”

***George Kurtz became the first two-time Jim Trueman Award winner in the modern LMP2 class that was introduced in 2019 after first winning the award in 2023 when it was not directly tied to the season-long points standings. While Kurtz and the Stewart and Samantha Cox-led Algarve Pro Racing team both notched their first WeatherTech Championship full season titles, it also ensured Kurtz will defend his LMP2 Pro-Am class victory in next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.

***Orey Fidani, meanwhile, earned his third consecutive Bob Akin Award, which will take 13 Autosport back to Circuit de la Sarthe again next year as well. It’s understood Fidani will again be joined by Matt Bell and Lars Kern in the team’s LMGT3 entry for the French endurance classic.

***Marco Sorensen admitted Car Blanche’s maiden GTD Pro class victory was ‘obviously completely unexpected’ which came in only the team’s fourth outing in the class. “I think we did everything that we could today,” he added. “Obviously you can never make a perfect strategy here in this IMSA championship with all the yellows out there. I think with what we did today, we can be happy. Suddenly we found ourselves in the good position in the last two hours.”

***GTD Pro class champion Connor De Phillippi revealed that he had his calculator out “trying to figure out” the points situation in the final 20 minutes of the race while Neil Verhagen was tasked with taking the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO to the finish. “That was probably the most anxious I was,” he said. “I was triple checking my math.”

***While De Phillippi scored his long-awaited first IMSA championship, it came nearly a decade the day that he and Chris Mies claimed the ADAC GT Masters title in a Land Motorsport Audi R8 LMS. “I was telling these guys earlier, I woke up this morning to a memory [on Facebook]. It was almost ten years to the exact day when I won the GT Masters championship with Land back in 2016. It seemed very fitting. When I saw it this morning, I was like, Maybe that’s a good omen.'”

***De Phillippi claimed back-to-back GT3 championships in North America, having won the GT World Challenge America Pro class title with Kenton Koch in a Random Vandals Racing BMW last year.

***Dan Harper took responsibility for contact with the No. 59 Team RLL McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Nikita Johnson in Turn 2 in the fifth hour, which resulted in a drive-through penalty. “To be fair, I done my best to mess it up early on in my first stint,” he said. “I’ll apologize first to these boys for probably giving them a heart attack.”

***The No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Jack Hawksworth, Ben Barnicoat and Kyle Kirkwood, who combined to lead a race-high 126 laps in GTD Pro, were forced to settle for a tenth place class result after Barnicoat dropped from first to third on the final restart before having to make a late-race energy top-up. It came in an ironman day for the trio, who were forced into single stints due to an issue with the car’s cool suit system. All three drivers appeared physically drained when climbing from the car during the stints.

***Barnicoat said: “That was one heck of a day. We were first, we were last, and we were first again. The cool suits failed two hours into the race, and we all had to dig as deep as we could, and we were there until almost the very end. We had to roll the dice a few times and were right on the edge of putting everything on No. 14 at the casino. We were so close, but we lost it at the end.”

***A message from race control displayed six minutes after the checkered flag stating that “energy usage at end of race under review” led to initial confusion as to what class and/or car was being investigated. Sportscar365 understands the third place GTD class-finishing No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette was the car specifically in question but was cleared of any wrong doing.

***While Winward became the first team since Scuderia Corsa (2015-17) to win three consecutive GTD championships, it was only the second time in the IMSA modern era that a manufacturer, Mercedes-AMG, won a championship in a single class in three consecutive seasons following Chevrolet’s triumph from 2014-2016 with the Corvette DP.

***Head of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Simon Wilbers said: “No manufacturer has ever before won three consecutive GTD titles in IMSA. This is a significant achievement for Mercedes-AMG Motorsport and underlines the strength of our commitment to an extremely important market.”

***Russell Ward hinted to a potential GTD Pro program for Winward next year, although the FIA Silver-rated driver and Philip Ellis have already been confirmed to be returning to the GTD class. “GTD Pro would be something pretty exciting to do, as well,” he said. “I don’t know what can happen. I’d love to be involved in that group, but we’re a privateer team. I’m not sure we could afford the crash damage you would accumulate by going to GTD Pro. It’s a lot of bodywork. I don’t know that AMG has that available. If Mercedes-AMG decided to back us, I think we’d do it.”

***IMSA’s YouTube channel reached 2 million subscribers shortly before the start of the race. IMSA President John Doonan said during Thursday’s ‘State of the Sport’ address that its YouTube channel swaps with NASCAR in being the third or fourth most-subscribed motorsport series channel worldwide, behind Formula 1 and MotoGP.

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