Sportscar365’s Drivers of the Year

Sportscar365 is recognizing the top performers and moments from the 2024 sports car racing season. In the final article of the series, we look back on the year’s best drivers, now in the form of a Top 10 list looking at all categories, Prototype and GT, together.

Honorable Mentions:

***Matt Campbell was stunningly quick for Porsche Penske Motorsport in the FIA World Endurance Championship, proving the pick of the No. 5 crew, while also shining on his cameos in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The Australian also underlined his versatility with a Repco Bathurst 12 Hour win in GT3 machinery.

***Felipe Nasr was a deserving IMSA GTP champion alongside Dane Cameron. He sealed the deal for Porsche’s Rolex 24 triumph, out-dueling Tom Blomqvist’s Cadillac in the final stages, and picked up another memorable win for the No. 7 car in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen with an excellent pass on Louis Deletraz’s Acura.

***Nicklas Nielsen emerged as arguably the pick of the Ferrari Hypercar drivers in year two of the 499P program, underlined by a superb fuel-saving drive under immense pressure (with the added challenge of a door coming loose!) to wrap up the 24 Hours of Le Mans. There were plenty of other impressive drives in the WEC, plus a bonus WeatherTech Championship victory in an LMP2 car at Watkins Glen.

***Dries Vanthoor was our pick for Rookie of the Year for his performances for BMW in his first year in the WEC’s top class, and gets another shout here for a very strong campaign in both LMDh and GT3 machinery. Topping first qualifying at Le Mans and second place at Fuji were the highlights in the WEC, while star turns in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa and the FIA GT World Cup at Macau cement his place on this list.

***Sho Tsuboi cemented his status as the driver to beat in SUPER GT, as he and TOM’S teammate Kenta Yamashita absolutely demolished the opposition in the No. 36 Toyota GR Supra with three victories from eight. The highlight was an electrifying opening stint in the penultimate race at Motegi, as Tsuboi shrugged off a 53 kg handicap to take control of a race that effectively sealed his third GT500 crown.

***Tommy Milner‘s efforts for Corvette squad DXDT Racing in Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS powered he and Alec Udell to an incredible eight consecutive victories in the Pro class. Milner twinned that campaign with a season sharing the new Z06 GT3.R with Nicky Catsburg in the WeatherTech Championship, highlighted by podiums at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.

10. Louis Deletraz

Stepping up from his third driver role, Deletraz proved himself a worthy addition to the full-time Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti roster in the WeatherTech Championship, as he joined Jordan Taylor aboard the No. 40 Acura ARX-06.

The undoubted highlight was the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, where the Swiss driver pounced on Sebastien Bourdais’ Cadillac with seven minutes on the clock to take the win for himself, Taylor and Colton Herta. That followed a strong third-place finish in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, while Deletraz also picked up his second career pole position in qualifying for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Deletraz made it three European Le Mans Series titles in four years as he anchored the AO by TF LMP2 effort, taking victory together with Robert Kubica and Jonny Edgar at Spa and three other podiums to claim the crown. Deletraz was also a stand-out in the Asian Le Mans Series for 99 Racing, further enhancing his status as one of the most dependable performers in a Prototype worldwide.

9. Mirko Bortolotti

They say the third time is the charm, and after two previous misses, including finishing runner-up in 2023, Bortolotti finally captured the championship in DTM. He did so in style, too, finishing in the podium during the deciding race at Hockenheim after a weekend in which the championship lead changed hands multiple times.

While Bortolotti only captured a single win all season, six podiums across the year proved enough to put him ahead of nearest challengers Kelvin van der Linde and Maro Engel.

While a title in what arguably remains pound-for-pound the most competitive GT3 series around was enough to land Bortolotti a place on this list, there were other successes too. Along with Franck Perera and Jordan Pepper, he achieved a hard-fought victory in October’s Motul Petit Le Mans, and as part of Lamborghini’s WEC Hypercar lineup, he secured a top-ten finish in the 24 Hours of Le Mans debut for the SC63 LMDh.

8. Maro Engel

Engel has long been regarded as one of Mercedes-AMG’s finest factory aces, and in 2024, the 39-year-old provided a reminder of why, with consistently strong performances across some of the most prestigious GT3 races and championships worldwide.

Engel and Winward teammate Lucas Auer came out on top in a season-long Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup battle over Team WRT pairing Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts. Engel personally significantly contributed to that title when he held off Vanthoor in a high-stakes battle at Hockenheim. He also delivered his best DTM season to date, finishing third in the standings as comfortably the highest-ranked Mercedes-AMG driver. A race win escaped him, but he would likely have stood on the top step at the Nürburgring had it not been for a collision with Rene Rast.

Top top it off, he took home the FIA GT World Cup at Macau, having been perfectly placed to take advantage when Raffaele Marciello and Antonio Fuoco came to blows on the final lap, albeit with a five-second penalty of his own for contact with Vanthoor.

7. Laurin Heinrich

This was only Heinrich’s second season in GT3 machinery, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way the 23-year-old German performed at the wheel of AO Racing’s ‘Rexy-‘themed Porsche 911 GT3 R in his first full WeatherTech Championship campaign as he narrowly came out on top in a nail-biter of a GTD Pro title race.

Wins at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Detroit and Indianapolis proved Heinrich’s all-round abilities, particularly as he had to cope with a revolving cast of co-drivers aboard the No. 77 car following Seb Priaulx’s mid-season departure. Setting a new GT3 course record in qualifying for Motul Petit Le Mans was crucial in his eventual four-point triumph over Heart of Racing Team’s Ross Gunn, as multiple unscheduled pit stops for a faulty steering wheel came worryingly close to derailing his title bid.

Outside of the WeatherTech Championship, there was an on-the-road victory in the Indianapolis 8 Hour for Wright Motorsports, albeit taken away by a five-second time penalty, a second-place finish for Schumacher CLRT in the Nürburgring round of the Fanatec GT Europe Endurance Cup, and a handful of star turns in Fanatec GT Asia for Origine Motorsport.

6. Kamui Kobayashi

Toyota didn’t always have the fastest car in the WEC this year, but when it did, it was often Kobayashi who was there making the best of use of it. And even when things seemed to be going against the manufacturers’ title-winning outfit, the Japanese driver was quite often at his brilliant best: witness his inch-perfect drive in the closing stages of a rain-soaked Imola race, while he had Kevin Estre’s Porsche bearing down on him.

At Le Mans, Kobayashi set the fastest lap and was the second-fastest of the Toyota drivers on 50-lap averages, behind only Sebastien Buemi, and he and his teammates in the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, Jose Maria Lopez and Nyck de Vries, were unfortunate that punctures and engine problems denied them a chance to win. Kobayashi made up for that with superb drives at Sao Paulo and at the Circuit of the Americas, only losing a win in the latter with what Toyota felt was a dubious penalty for ignoring yellow flags.

Kobayashi wasn’t immune to making mistakes, the most costly of which was his ill-judged lunge on Matt Campbell’s Porsche at Turn 3 in the closing stages at Fuji. But it would be a stretch to say that this cost Toyota a chance of winning the drivers’ title, as a badly-timed safety car destroyed the No. 7 crew’s strategy and left them scrapping over eighth place and without the raw pace to mount a fightback.

5. Mathieu Jaminet

Although it was Nasr and Cameron that took the WeatherTech Championship crown, it just as easily could have been their Porsche Penske Motorsport stablemates Jaminet and Nick Tandy who walked away the silverware come the end of the season. The No. 6 Porsche 963 failing post-race technical inspection following the Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis deprived the duo a third-place finish, putting the sister No. 7 car almost home and dry heading into the Motul Petit Le Mans finale.

Despite that setback, Jaminet in particular turned in another season full of strong performances in what his only his second season in prototypes. Consistency was his calling card — had it not been for the Indy penalty, he and Tandy would have never been off the podium from their victory at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca onwards. But the real highlight for Jaminet was the second win at Road America, which followed a sensational fuel-saving effort at the head of the pack.

Having been part of the third-string Porsche Hypercar effort at Le Mans in the last two years together with Tandy and Nasr, Jaminet will have his best chance yet to go for overall honors in the La Sarthe classic next year when he joins Julien Andlauer and Michael Christensen aboard one of the marque’s two primary WEC entries next year.

4. Philip Ellis (GT Driver of the Year)

As part of Mercedes-AMG’s famously high-quality lineup of factory drivers, Ellis raced on multiple fronts in 2024. And it is the almost herculean number of trophies that the Swiss racer took home that makes him Sportscar365’s highest-ranked GT driver of the year.

Ellis’ season began in style with a GTD class victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, a win that fired the starting gun on a dream season for Winward Racing that earned it the moniker of Sportscar365’s Team of the Year. After that, Ellis and full-season co-driver Russell Ward won at Sebring, Laguna Seca and Watkins Glen en route to the GTD title.

Not content with having won two major endurance classics in a single calendar year, he then linked up with Al Manar Racing by GetSpeed to capture the Gold Cup class victory in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

Also worthy of mention was his stint in GT World Challenge America with Regulator Racing, where he and co-driver Jeff Burton used a reverse-driver strategy to pick up some very strong results. Standouts were the victory for Ellis and Burton in Race 2 at VIR, as well as a storming drive through the field at Barber Motorsports Park en route to third overall and a second class win of the year.

3. Renger van der Zande

Like a fine wine, van der Zande just seems to get better with age. The 38-year-old Dutchman has been a fixture of the WeatherTech Championship’s top class for eight years now, seven of which have been with Cadillac, and his final season for the GM marque might have just been his best as he assembled an impressive campaign alongside his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Sebastien Bourdais.

The duo quickly put the disappointment of a mechanical failure robbing them of a chance to fight for victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona with a strong run to second in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, and then scored victory in an intense strategic battle on the streets of Long Beach, as van der Zande soaked up the pressure from fellow Caddy driver Jack Aitken to bring home the silverware. There were then further podiums for the No. 01 car at Detroit and Watkins Glen, but van der Zande saved the best for last with the stint that clinched victory in the Motul Petit Le Mans finale.

There, van der Zande turned in one of the drives of the season as he passed the Penske Porsche of Nick Tandy into Turn 1 with just 15 minutes on the clock to clinch a fairytale comeback victory for himself, Bourdais and Scott Dixon in the last WeatherTech Championship race for the CGR-Cadillac partnership — but not before he had to deal with the drama of his Cadillac V-Series.R’s headlights shutting off once he had completed the winning move. It was a memorable way to round off a vintage season.

2. Kevin Estre

If this list was judged on the WEC alone, Estre would probably be number one. Maybe that’s because, while Porsche crewmate Laurens Vanthoor was generally strong and consistent everywhere (Bahrain aside), the Frenchman had more ‘highlight’ drives, including the pursuit of Toyota’s Kamui Kobayashi in the closing stages at Imola and a fine comeback to second place at Sao Paulo. He also played a key role in getting the No. 6 Porsche back into the mix in Bahrain after Vanthoor’s fraught opening stint.

But it was on one-lap pace that Estre shone the most in 2024. Entrusted with qualifying the No. 6 Porsche in all eight WEC rounds, he only failed to get out of the first segment of qualifying once all year, giving him a record second only to Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco. But it was at Le Mans that his knack for extracting a quick lap when it matters really paid off, as he beat Cadillac driver Alex Lynn in a thrilling Hyperpole showdown.

Outside of the WEC, Estre made two WeatherTech Championship outings for Porsche in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and Motul Petit Le Mans, helping Tandy and Jaminet finish second in the latter event, and there was another runner-up placing in the Nürburgring 24, where he, Vanthoor, Ayhancan Guven and Thomas Preining finished second overall in a fog-interrupted race, earning maximum IGTC points in the process.

1. Laurens Vanthoor

It was touch and go between the two standout drivers of the No. 6 Porsche 963 in the WEC to top this list, and it could have gone either way. But with a win in the Repco Bathurst 12 Hour as well, it’s Vanthoor who gets the nod over Estre for the top spot.

The Belgian had already established himself as the standout Porsche WEC driver in the inaugural year of the 963 program, and he carried over that fine form into 2024 as he played a key role in the German marque’s first WEC win in the season-opening Qatar 1812km. He was the quickest of the Porsche drivers at Le Mans on average, and was also instrumental in securing the No. 6 crew’s second win of the year at Fuji.

By Vanthoor’s own admission, an error-strewn showing in the Bahrain title decider was “not one of my proudest performances”, but fortunately for he, Estre and Andre Lotterer, the drivers’ title was almost as good as won by that stage, such was their consistency up to and including the penultimate round in Japan.

And then there was Bathurst, where Vanthoor, together with Campbell and Guven, delivered Manthey victory in the IGTC season opener, coming back from a drive-through penalty for a pit stop infringement in what was otherwise a dominant performance in a race characterized by showers and safety car periods in the second half.

On top of his other factory GT exploits for Porsche at the Nürburging, Spa and Macau, Vanthoor even found time to contest the 24 Hours of Zolder in a Porsche 992 Cup car. A true all-rounder and a worthy recipient of our Driver of the Year prize!