Watkins Glen Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

***BMW M Team RLL has provisionally become the fifth different GTP team to have won an IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race out of five races this season, with the German manufacturer also notching its first win for the BMW M Hybrid V8. It means all four LMDh cars have now won races.

***The win remains provisional pending the results of a protest from Porsche Penske Motorsport, which was stripped of the victory due to the No. 6 Porsche 963 of Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet found to have been “less than a millimeter” outside of the legal tolerance of its front skid block.

***Jaminet passed the No. 25 BMW of Connor De Phillippi for the lead of the race with six minutes to go, following a strong second-to-last stint by De Phillippi, who shared driving duties with fellow BMW factory driver Nick Yelloly. The team bounced back from two early race accidents, including an incident with Sebastien Bourdais that required a nose change in the second hour.

***BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos said: “While we would have preferred to win on the track, this success is the result of long, hard work and the well-deserved reward for the fantastic performances of everyone involved in this program. I am particularly delighted that our pace was consistently strong throughout the weekend, and we set the top times. We have been improving from race to race, and we have earned our first victory in the GTP class. I am incredibly proud of our entire crew.”

***De Phillippi confirmed post-race that the No. 25 BMW was on Michelin’s Medium High Temperature tire compound for the finish of the race, while Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle revealed the No. 6 Porsche had opted for the Soft High Temperature compound, which was added as an option post-qualifying for GTP teams.

***Kuratle said they used the No. 7 Porsche, which spent nearly two hours in the garage undergoing a battery, gearbox and rear axle change following hybrid issues, as a guinea pig with the SHT tires once it returned to the track later in the race.

***Michelin North America motorsports director Jason Anzalone told IMSA Radio that the SHT compound tires were trucked in overnight and arrived at Watkins Glen International at 3 a.m. on Sunday, ahead of morning warmup. Teams were allowed to use up to two sets of the softer compound as part of their overall seven-set allocation for qualifying and the race, in reaction to the lower-than-anticipated ambient temperatures.

***Most of the GTP cars exclusively used the MHT tire, including both Acura ARX-06s and the Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R that was promoted to second post-race.

***Alexander Sims was “a bit perplexed” as to why the No. 31 AXR Cadillac dropped behind the No. 25 BMW after each car’s penultimate pit stop. “Jack [Aitken] seemed to have really good pace up front, and the next thing after the stops we had cycled behind the No. 25 by some margin,” Sims told Sportscar365. “We need to understand that.”

**Sims said that although AXR was “disappointed” at missing out on the win after bouncing back from a tough 24 Hours of Le Mans, he was personally pleased with his showing in the No. 31 Cadillac. “I got on top of the car a bit more,” he said. “I struggled in the first few races over here to keep the tire underneath me and understand how to drive it.”

***Meyer Shank Racing’s Colin Braun explained that that track temperatures were high enough for the team to forgo fitting the No. 60 Acura with SHTs: “We were saving it for if it rained and we had any of those crossover damp points, but it didn’t rain and we never used it. We thought about [using] it but it just didn’t seem like it was enough for us.”

***The No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Bourdais and Renger van der Zande salvaged a fifth place finish after suffering two accidents in avoidance of other spinning cars, a pair of mechanical black flags for not meeting IMSA’s tire requirements and a stop-and-hold plus 60-second penalty for taking on too much fuel during an emergency pit stop.

***CGR’s entry and the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport Acura ARX-06 were the only GTP teams impacted by IMSA’s new operational tire requirement that forced teams to “stop and repair” within a four-lap period if their tire pressures did not meet the minimum requirement or if there was a sensor failure with the tire pressure monitoring system.

***Previously, teams were given a warning if they did not meet the operational requirements. In addition to the two GTP entries, more than a half-dozen GTD Pro and GTD teams had to pit during the race to change tires in order to be in compliance.

***A mechanical brake failure took the No. 10 WTR Andretti Acura out of the race with 30 minutes to go in a challenging day that saw Filipe Albuquerque go two laps down in the third hour after losing the left-rear wheel. The car also had a drive-through and stop-and-hold plus 60-second penalties for speeding in the pit lane and failure to adhere to minimum refueling time, respectively.

***Team co-owner Wayne Taylor said: “We lost a wheel with Filipe, and it appears that the left-rear wheel also came loose which caused the brake failure. Ricky said he spun the car to avoid going into the wall. It is very disappointing because this is something that we never have had – ever. This year just doesn’t get any better.”

***George Kurtz claimed his first WeatherTech Championship LMP2 class victory, continuing a remarkable run of success in June that included LMP2 Pro-Am class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and a sweep of the Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS weekend at Virginia International Raceway.

***Kurtz will be seeking his fifth race win in four weeks in next weekend’s CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, where he’ll team up with Colin Braun, Felipe Fraga and Ian James in a Riley Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo in the Pro-Am class.

***Only six points separate the top three driver pairings in the LMP2 title race, led by Kurtz and co-driver Ben Hanley, who are three points ahead of the No. 11 TDS Racing duo of Mikkel Jensen and Steven Thomas, with PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports’ Ben Keating and Paul-Loup Chatin third in the standings.

***Vasser Sullivan became only the second team to have won both the GTD Pro and GTD classes in the same race, following the feat earned by The Heart of Racing in last year’s weather-impacted race at Watkins Glen. It marked the first GTD class win for the No. 12 Lexus RC F GT3 since Road America 2020 when under the AIM Vasser Sullivan banner.

***A number of high-level executives from Lexus in Japan were on-site to witness the double victory, including Lexus International President Takashi Watanabe.

***Iron Lynx’s hopes of GTD Pro class victory were erased with two hours and 25 minutes to go when the No. 38 Performance Tech Motorsports Ligier JS P320 Nissan of Alex Kirby ran into Andrea Caldarelli’s No. 63 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2, in an incident that also collected the No. 42 NTE Sport Lamborghini of Rob Ferriol and CGR’s van der Zande.

***Caldarelli’s co-driver Jordan Pepper said: “I think the LMP3 guy thought we were invincible or something, a bright green Lamborghini, a bright purple Lamborghini and he tried to drive over the top of us. It’s just unacceptable the level of driving in the LMP3 category as a whole. I think when you look back at IMSA racing over the last three years, there’s just so much crashing involving them. It’s a shame and it’s not to point blame on one or the other. But an incident like that is not acceptable in this level of sport.”

***WeatherTech Championship debutant Kirby, who was handed incident responsibility, will have “additional penalties to come post-race” according to IMSA race control.

***Iron Lynx team principal Andrea Piccini reckoned the Lamborghini team could have won with both cars in GTD and GTD Pro based on their pace. “We were chasing the No. 14 [Lexus] but we had three more laps’ fuel, so we could have passed them later on,” Piccini told Sportscar365.

***Risi Competizione’s drive-through for crossing the pit lane entry line was directly linked to a puncture for its Ferrari 296 GT3, after contact with Inception Racing’s McLaren 720S GT3 Evo. “He gets hit and it knocks the tire off the left-front,” said race engineer Rick Mayer. “He turns to go into the pit lane but has to pass the blend line, but he has to pit. So if somebody knocks your tire off and you decide to pit, you get a penalty for it?”

***The No. 62 Ferrari finished second in GTD Pro after bouncing back from the penalty, a black flag for low tire pressures, and a loss of seven positions at the final restart. “We were P2, but I had to put more fuel in than the others,” Davide Rigon explained.

***Corvette Racing left a tire in its pit box, incurring a drive-through penalty, because a crew member abandoned retrieving it to avoid the No. 23 The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 as it accelerated away.

***Team manager Marc Maurini explained that, during shorter fuel stops, it is standard team procedure to leave the left-front tire out and immediately collect it, due to the short time between the completion of the tire change and the car being launched. The rear-left is retrieved before the car is launched.

***Maurini added: “As [the mechanic] was turning and walking to get the tire, he heard the Aston spool up and get ready to launch. He stepped back, and if he hadn’t stepped back, he would have been hit. There was no intention to leave equipment out there, but the crew guy made the right move to ensure he did not get hit.”

***AO Racing has still yet to decide on how it will handle next weekend’s WeatherTech Championship date clash with the FIA World Endurance Championship between Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Monza according to a team spokesperson. Miguel Ramos and Guilherme De Oliveira were brought into the No. 56 Project 1 – AO Porsche 911 RSR-19 in the first clash of the year at Portimao, leaving Gunnar Jeannette and PJ Hyett to be in Long Beach.

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report

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