Sportscar365’s Team of the Year

Sportscar365 is recognizing the top competitors and moments from the 2024 season. Next up is the Team of the Year award, as selected by website staff. 

Team of the Year – Winward Racing

Winning races and championships on one side of the Atlantic would have been impressive enough, but Winward Racing managed to do so in two of the most competitive championships that sports car racing has to offer.

In the U.S., the team’s immense run to the GTD title in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is a deserved headline grabber.

After Daniel Morad held off Miguel Molina to land the Texan team a second Rolex 24 at Daytona victory, an effective last-to-first performance in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring added to a run of four wins from the first five races that resulted in a points lead the team would not relinquish.

Over in Europe, meanwhile, Maro Engel and Lucas Auer spearheaded an equally fruitful campaign in Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS. After an enthralling, season-long battle with Team WRT pairing Charles Weerts and Dries Vanthoor, Engel and Auer took the Sprint Cup drivers’ crown.

In the Endurance Cup, the Mann Filter Mamba-liveried Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo stormed to victory in the inaugural 6 Hours of Jeddah, a race that its Silver Cup car could afford to miss as it had wrapped up that particular title at Monza the round before.

While race wins escaped the team in DTM, Engel’s sheer consistency (not finishing outside the points once) and seven podiums kept him in the championship hunt until the very end of the campaign.

With the team’s U.S. arm also moving into a new 38,000 square-foot headquarters in Houston earlier in the year, it’s safe to say that 2024 has been one of the most significant years in Winward’s history. Only time will tell if its success can be repeated in 2025.

Honorable Mentions

***Porsche Penske Motorsport achieved a dream season across top-level sports car racing, earning the FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar drivers’ title with Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer, along with the drivers’ teams and manufacturers’ championships in the WeatherTech Championship GTP standings, courtesy of Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron’s title. It came in a near-storybook season that was highlighted by overall victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and further wins in WeatherTech Championship and WEC competition.

***In IMSA’s GTD Pro class, AO Racing prevailed in a tight championship battle with its fan favorite ‘Rexy’-liveried Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Laurin Heinrich and a variety of others across the season. The Gunnar Jeannette-led team also enjoyed success in the LMP2 class with four pole positions out of seven for the team’s ‘Spike the Dragon’ Oreca 07 Gibson, while its partnership with TF Sport yielded a runner-up finish in LMP2 Pro-Am in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and as well as a hard-fought European Le Mans Series LMP2 crown.

***The team with the most race starts in BMW machinery, Turner Motorsport, enjoyed success in both of North America’s top sports car racing series, with Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg winning the Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS Pro-Am title, while Foley and Patrick Gallagher finished runner-up in the WeatherTech Championship GTD standings. With Rothberg also finishing second in the GT America powered by AWS championship, the Will Turner-led team was honored with the BMW M Sports Trophy for the second consecutive year.

***Hertz Team JOTA etched itself a place in WEC history as it became the first privateer squad to win a race outright in the Hypercar era with the No. 12 Porsche 963 shared by Will Stevens and Callum Ilott. That was the undoubted highlight of a season in which the attractive gold-liveried cars were frequently contenders, and even if the occasional incident or bout of unreliability stopped them scoring as many points as they might have, the British squad still ended up with a deserving 1-2 in the FIA World Cup for Hypercar Teams classification.

***Comtoyou Racing‘s decision to switch from Audi to Aston Martin machinery paid off in spectacular fashion as it scored a memorable victory in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa with Mattia Drudi, Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen, marking the British brand’s first win in the Fanatec GT Europe Endurance Cup blue riband since 1948. Drudi and Nicolas Baert also ended their Sprint Cup campaign with a second-place finish at Barcelona.