Sportscar365’s Driver of the Year

Sportscar365 is recognizing the top competitors and moments from the 2023 sports car racing season. The final category is the revived ‘Driver of the Year’, as selected by website staff.

Driver of the Year – Colin Braun

Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS Pro-Am champion. Rolex 24 at Daytona and Motul Petit Le Mans overall winner. 24 Hours of Le Mans, Indianapolis 8 Hour and Asian Le Mans Series class winner. Many drivers would dream to have achieved those accolades over the course of a career, not to mention a single year.

That’s how 2023 unfolded for Colin Braun, who not only made a starring return to top-class prototype racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship but also shined in SRO America GT3 competition while winning three of arguably the four biggest endurance races in the world, all within a ten-month span.

Braun undertook a busy season of racing, both with Meyer Shank Racing and CrowdStrike Racing’s multi-series efforts around the globe that saw the 35-year-old Texan win in every series he entered, except for his one-off GTWC Europe outing at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

From a season-high six class wins alongside George Kurtz in the Riley-prepared CrowdStrike Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo in GTWC America to bookending the WeatherTech Championship season in MSR’s Acura ARX-06 and becoming a first-time Le Mans class winner in LMP2 Pro-Am with Kurtz and James Allen aboard CrowdStrike by APR’s Oreca 07 Gibson, Braun played a leading role in all three distinct programs.

Braun’s accolades, in fact, led to the revival of Sportscar365’s overall Driver of the Year category, which was last won by Dane Cameron in 2019 after claiming the WeatherTech Championship DPi title and missing out on the Fanatec GT Pro-Am championship due to a technicality in the rules at the time.

While some can argue that Braun’s Rolex 24 win came in the shadow of controversy, amid Meyer Shank Racing’s tire manipulation scandal, it was in fact the 200-point penalty levied by IMSA that ultimately cost he and co-driver Tom Blomqvist the inaugural GTP class title.

With MSR not returning to WeatherTech Championship competition, Braun will be all-in with CrowdStrike Racing in 2024, competing alongside Kurtz in the LMP2 class, in addition to an expected title defense in GTWC America and at Le Mans, as well as contesting the final three rounds of the 2023-24 Asian Le Mans Series, where he currently sits second in the standings after a win in Sepang.

Runner-Up – Nicky Catsburg

While not racing in prototypes, Nicky Catsburg enjoyed an immense amount of success exclusively in GT machinery, split between two platforms and three distinctly different types of machinery.

The Dutchman’s world championship-winning season in GTE-Am with Corvette Racing was chronicled with his GTE Driver of the Year award, but that’s not where Catsburg’s story ended in 2023.

Just weeks prior to taking class honors at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Chevrolet Corvette C8.R, he helped take Frikadelli Racing to a history-making overall triumph in the Nürburgring 24 in a Ferrari 296 GT3, the first for a non-German brand to win the race in two decades.

To top off a memorable summer run of twice-around-the-clock endurance classics, Catsburg also propelled SunEnergy1 Racing to the Pro-Am class win in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, while in a spare Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo following team owner/driver Kenny Habul’s back-breaking accident in qualifying.

If it wasn’t for Braun’s multi-disciplinary success, or any other typical year in sports car racing, Catsburg would have easily been considered for Sportscar365’s overall driver of the year given his achievements.