Porsche’s Nasr, Tandy, Vanthoor Chasing Endurance Triple Crown

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Felipe Nasr says the “ultimate” goal will be to claim victory in next weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, which would put the Brazilian and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship co-driver Nick Tandy into the history books as becoming the first drivers to win the ‘Endurance Triple Crown’ overall in the same year.

The Porsche Penske Motorsport pairing, who will share the IMSA-crewed No. 4 Porsche 963 with reigning ABB FIA Formula E world champion Pascal Wehrlein, as well as Laurens Vanthoor, who teamed with Nasr and Tandy for victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring earlier this year, both hold a chance of achieving the unique honor.

Vanthoor will be in his full-season FIA World Endurance Championship-entered No. 6 Porsche with Kevin Estre and Matt Campbell.

Speaking prior to the start of on-track activity at Circuit de la Sarthe, Nasr said: “That would be incredible, for sure.”

He added: “To have that addition in my CV, Roger’s, Penske and Porsche as well. I think that’s the ultimate goal.

“We had a dream start of this season, having won Daytona and Sebring. To me that’s already history in the making. And it’s an honor to be an honored to the part of this success together with PPM.

“But it’s always an unknown in terms of like, who is going be wearing what, in terms of performance. But I feel very confident that we have a strong group of team and people.

“It’s great that we get the chance to go there and also the mechanics, engineers, the boys and the girls from the [IMSA] team. Because you really got to give the credit that our IMSA campaign has been really, really strong and the performance the team has been shown it has been surreal.”

Nasr and Tandy kicked off the WeatherTech Championship season with a string of three consecutive GTP wins, culminating at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, before finishing second at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and fourth on the streets of Detroit.

They currently lead the IMSA GTP standings over their teammates Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche.

“It’s just been unreal already,” said Tandy. “This is the thing, and when we won Daytona, you think to go and then try and win Sebring… that’s already fairytale stuff. So you think, ‘Right, we’ve had that’s an amazing season already. We’ve had our two wins.’

“But then we go to obviously Long Beach we only go win there, so it’s just unbelievable stuff, and then it all rolls on in Laguna Seca as well.

“You think it would be totally out of this world to be able to win the three triple crown races in one season. But we look at it today and the stuff that’s happened already this year is just quite unbelievable.

“So why not think [of that]? Yeah, let’s go and do it. And it would be massive.

“It would be massive to me, to Felipe, it would be massive to everyone involved,Porsche, Penske, it’s just it’s not just of course the drivers, it be the the team the manufacturer as well.

“It would just be an amazing thing that would be in the history of books forever, of course.”

Vanthoor, meanwhile, could achieve the same feat, further strengthening the chances from the Porsche Penske camp as being in a sister car out of the three-car overall factory Porsche Hypercar lineup.

“Already before this season started, Le Mans was my biggest dream to achieve with an overall victory,” he said.

“After Daytona, this is the only success that I’m missing in terms of big racing.

“Winning Le Mans, I can join Nick’s ‘private club’ and you can take it even further with Sebring and the Triple Crown… It would be a lot of amazing boxes ticked.

“But sometimes you can’t ask the universe that much. But let’s see.

“It comes how it comes. I’m working a lot towards it. Le Mans would be my biggest career dream. It was also last year but now definitely more because it’s really the only thing I’m still missing.”

Tandy: 2015 Le Mans Win a “Life Changing Weekend”

For Tandy, who was part of Porsche’s winning lineup in 2015 in a third Porsche 919 Hybrid alongside Earl Bamber and Nico Hulkenberg, the race some ten years ago shares similarities to his effort this year, also coming in a third, additional top-class entry added by the German manufacturer.

“It was a great time of my life with the 919, honestly,” he said.

“It was our second race with the with the car and obviously we’d done quite a fair bit of testing, but it was still kind of a new car to us and during that race, it kind of … I think I said before is it’s like eventually a car becomes an extension of yourself and you know, that’s when you know you can do anything with it.

“During that race, it was like myself and that machine just became one, then it was a nice time to be driving a race car and racing a race out there in the dark by myself, you know, not much radio chatter, knowing you’re gonna be out there for three, three and half hours, trying to win the most important race in the world.

“Looking back, it was just an amazing, it was a life changing weekend, honestly, knowing how much it means from winning there before, just make sure you even more hungry to do it again.”

Tony DiZinno 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