Watkins Glen Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

***Action Express Racing scored its fifth Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen victory, the most of any IMSA team in the event’s history, although it was all Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and Fred Vesti’s first overall wins in the Michelin Endurance Cup round at Watkins Glen International.

***The No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R led for 142 of the 182-lap race, which was a remarkable 78 percent of the race, in one of the most dominant showings in recent WeatherTech SportsCar Championship history.

***The team’s eight consecutive podium finishes, four of them being wins, dated back to last year’s Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

***The only noteworthy incident for the car came with 90 minutes to go when Bamber made slight contact with the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Simon Mann, which ended up hard into the wall at the Esses to bring out the race’s eighth full course caution. The Cadillac did not receive a penalty for the incident.

***Bamber said: “The Tower car caught us up when I was inside of the Ferrari. I got a little bit of aero wash and then he touched in the tail. It was just a very slight touch and I think it was the combination of the marbles, where he was, he was positioned way over the dirty stuff, and then turning into us.”

***The top three finishing GTP cars were all three-driver lineups, and the only ones in the 11-car class. Vesti, who made his first start in the No. 31 Cadillac since Long Beach when subbing for the FIA World Endurance Championship-bound Bamber, indicated their approach could have actually been a slight advantage.

***Vesti said: “Obviously not all teams are using three drivers, so it just means we have a little bit less time in practice. But in the race, we think we can share the drive time a bit better, keep Jack in this case fresh for the end, which is an advantage.”

***Aitken extended his championship lead to 203 points over Laurin Heinrich, who charged from seventh to third in his final stint after losing ground on the final pit stop sequence due to pitting one lap later than the leaders and also taking on four fresh Michelin tires, compared to new left sides only for the winning Cadillac.

***Heinrich’s co-driver Tijmen van der Helm said he believes the separate Balance of Performance given to the 2025-spec Porsche 963 that JDC-Miller Motorsports utilizes has helped them be “more competitive.” Their car, not featuring the extensive aero updates that the factory Porsche Penske Motorsport entries debuted this year, ran 15 kg lighter and with 26 additional horsepower at the first stage, at speeds below 230 km/h, in the race.

***Van der Helm said: “I think this year it changed quite a bit after we decided also to stick with the Version 1 of the 963, and we got on our own BoP, which helps quite a bit for us to be more competitive. With the team we made great steps this year to be more competitive on each race weekend.”

***Porsche Penske’s Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer dropped to fourth in the title race, 258 points behind Aitken, after recording a fifth place finish. The No. 93 Meyer Shank Racing Acura duo of Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly, who finished runner-up on Sunday with Kaku Ohta, are now third on points.

***Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle said: “As expected, the race was difficult for us. We got the most out of our two factory cars under these conditions. Porsche Penske Motorsport seized every opportunity that arose and performed flawlessly. That was all that was possible today.”

***The second place result for the No. 93 car resulted in Honda factory driver Ohta’s first IMSA podium, in his final scheduled outing the Acura ARX-06.

***BMW M Team WRT’s four-race podium streak, when factoring in both WeatherTech Championship and WEC races, came to an end in the closing minutes of the race when Heinrich passed the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid of Sheldon van der Linde. “To be honest, a podium finish would have been a bonus today,” admitted co-driver Dries Vanthoor. “We didn’t have the pace in the race to really fight at the front.”

***The pair of Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillacs, once again, were unable to match the pace of the Action Express entry, with the team’s Nos. 10 and 40 cars finishing seventh and eighth, respectively, out of the nine finishers in the class. “We actually got lucky with that yellow at the end, but these P7 finishes are just kind of torture at this point,” said Ricky Taylor. “I don’t know what we’re missing today.”

***Roman De Angelis took responsibility for the Hour 1 pileup that took both his No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie and Colin Braun’s No. 60 MSR Acura out of the race while under the safety car, admitting that he “wished it could have resulted differently” but said he ‘didn’t know where he could have went.’

***The Canadian said: “I was just told to commence the pass around with the GTs and LMP2s. I followed Colin, who was also on the same strategy as me. He moved over, which I assumed was him letting me by. Then there was obviously a pack of cars stopped there. A bunch of people had a similar reaction of not being able to stop in time.”

***Unlike Braun, De Angelis reportedly did not have a spotter. “Luckily we had a really good spotter, Steve Welk, he told me the cars were checking up at the top of the hill,” said Braun. “I was slowing down, looking in the mirror, making sure nobody was going to run into the back of me. Got as slow as I could go and got destroyed from the back, basically. I feel bad for Roman. For him, I don’t think anyone was telling him what was happening.”

***The No. 81 DragonSpeed Corvette of Henrik Hedman, which having already slowed on track due to the queue of GT cars, got hit by Braun in the incident but the GTD class entry returned to action some 35 laps down.

***AO Racing claimed its first WeatherTech Championship LMP2 victory since Road America last year, and marked its first triumph in Endurance Cup competition. It was also third driver Jonny Edgar’s first LMP2 win and second career series win after his GTD class triumph, also with AO, at Long Beach in 2024.

***Edgar, who was coming off LMGT3 class victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, said: “It’s been a great two weeks for me, winning Le Mans and then here again. I felt like last year Dane and PJ seemed to win everything, but the five endurance races I did I never managed to get over the line in first, so I’m absolutely happy to have a win in the LMP2 car.”

***While CrowdStrike by APR’s George Kurtz and Alex Quinn continue to lead the points, Cameron and PJ Hyett have jumped from sixth to second in the title race, tied with United Autosports’ Daniel Goldburg, and only 55 points behind Rolex 24 class winners Kurtz and Quinn.

***Vasser Sullivan’s last victory at Watkins Glen came in 2023 when the team swept both the GTD Pro and GTD classes. It again appeared possible on Sunday until Aaron Telitz was served with a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility with the No. 36 DXDT Racing Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Charlie Eastwood with 1 hour and 45 minutes to go.

***Telitz said: “We kind of got our race ruined by a lapped car toward the end of the race who was blocking us and we ended up making contact and we got a drive through for it, but that’s racing. We battled from the back of the GTD field and finished fourth.”

***In GTD Pro, it marked Ben Barnicoat’s first WeatherTech Championship victory since breaking his back shortly before the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in 2024, which put him out of action for several months.

***Barnicoat said the revised Inner Loop section was “quite good” for the Lexus RC F GT3, which also grabbed class pole on Saturday. “It kind of made the corner a bit faster and a bit more challenging. I quite liked it. I studied what Jack did in qualifying, so it took me a few laps to get my eye into it, but once I figured it out, no complaints really.”

***IMSA elected not to enforce track limits at the re-profiled section of the track after the majority of the curbing on the entrance to Turn 5 was removed after two pieces cracked loose in the closing stages of Saturday’s Michelin Pilot Challenge race and delayed qualifying by nearly two hours.

***The area where the curbing would normally be was painted red overnight and led to few complaints in the race.

***The No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, which crashed in GTD qualifying after Russell Ward lost control of his car over the curbless section, was ordered to start from the rear of the field due to bringing out a red in the abandoned qualifying session, a change from the provisional grid that had placed the car fourth in class based on its points position.

***The two-time and defending GTD championship-winning team had five crew members, led by crew chief Tony Ditto, work through the night making front-end repairs to the car. They returned to the hotel at 7:30 a.m. to refresh before returning to the track to work the race.

***Winward’s race was virtually over in the fourth hour following a four-car pileup in the Esses, triggered by side-by-side contact by the No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari of Ollie Millroy and Matt Bell’s 13 Autosport Corvette that resulted in both cars spinning and getting collected by Ward and the No. 44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO of Spencer Pumpelly, who was making his 250th career top-level IMSA start.

***Loek Hartog said he was “incredibly disappointed” after crashing out while in the top-four in GTD Pro in his WeatherTech Championship debut. The Dutchman, a former Porsche Motorsport North America Selected Driver, showed impressive pace and was nearing the end of his stint in the No. 911 Manthey Porsche until he lost control of the car and slammed into the Turn 6 wall, which led to a puncture and retirement.

***Hartog told IMSA Radio’s Arjuna Kankipati: “I had a great opening to my stint. In the early hours, it was very important to push and I was trying too much. With five minutes to go [in my stint] I just lost it, a silly mistake. I was checking my mirror if I was clear and racing the guys around me. I lost the car, over-corrected, [hit] the wall and had a puncture and I had to stop the car.”

***Nicky Catsburg and Tommy Milner lost thee GTD Pro points lead after Catsburg’s No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports entry was served a post-race penalty, equivalent to a drive-through, for incident responsibility after contact with the No. 65 Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 EVO of Chris Mies on the final lap, which resulted in the race ending under caution and a comprehensively damaged Mustang. “I just need to take that, learn from that and try to prevent that from happening in the future,” said Catsburg.

***Paul Miller Racing’s Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen, who finished second in class on Sunday, have re-taken the GTD Pro championship lead, 51 points ahead of Catsburg and Milner, and 61 points more than third-placed Alexander Sims and Antonio Garcia.

***Heart of Racing’s Eduardo Barrichello, meanwhile, has maintained his points lead in GTD with his fifth place class finish in the No. 27 Aston Martin.

***While Manthey scored its first GTD victory, it was also Riccardo Pera’s maiden win in the U.S. With Morris Schuring on CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa duty, the team reprised its full WEC LMGT3 title-winning lineup last weekend in drafting Richard Lietz back into the squad.

***The Austrian said: “I know at the end all the drivers complain about clashes, but for me it’s the reason I got the job this weekend! Porsche called me quite early in the year already but not saying which race and which team it’s going to be, and when Ryan and Manthey asked me, I was of course really excited to come back to America to race.”

***The No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2, which won in the category’s last time out at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, had a race to forget after Graham Doyle pitted early with a left-rear wheel nut issue followed by taking the car behind the wall with a rear toe link issue and ultimately was one of the race’s 11 retirements.

***Members of Racers Edge Motorsports have been assisting WTR’s GTD and Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America programs since Sebring, mostly on the single-make series weekends. The Florida-based team, now under new ownership, had a joint effort with the Wayne Taylor-owned operation in 2022-23 running an Acura NSX GT3 Evo22.

***Next up for the WeatherTech Championship is the Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on July 10-12, in a LMP2 headline race along with GTD Pro and GTD. There will be at least three driver changes for the event, due to the clash with the WEC round at Interlagos on the same weekend.

***Ben Hanley will replace Peugeot factory driver Paul Di Resta in the No. 22 United Autosports Oreca, while NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee reported that Ricky Taylor will be in the No. 52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports LMP2 entry, due to both Harry Tincknell and Parker Thompson also being in Brazil.

***As revealed by Sportscar365 last month, De Angelis will sub for Tom Gamble in the No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo. Full season LMP2 entrant Era Motorsport, which finished third in class at Watkins Glen, will not be present in Canada according to a team spokesperson, who declined to go into further details.

***The entry list for the CTMP round will be released on Wednesday.

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