Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA
***BMW M Team RLL ended a 455-day winless streak in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with Philipp Eng and Jesse Krohn’s victory in the Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last weekend. The team’s only GTP class victory came at Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen last year after the No. 6 Penske Porsche 963 committed a post-race technical violation.
***Eng earned his first WeatherTech Championship win since the 2020 Rolex 24 at Daytona as part of RLL’s GTLM class victory in the BMW M8 GTE. Krohn’s last win in the series came in 2019 at the same event with the same team and the same car model.
***BMW M Motorsport Director Andreas Roos said: “This was an incredibly successful week for our LMDh program with the first podium in the FIA WEC and the first one-two in the IMSA series. Congratulations to BMW M Team RLL, who, despite the difficult season so far, continued to push together with our BMW M Motorsport engineers and made this great success possible. I am delighted that we have now managed to translate the potential that our BMW M Hybrid V8 has shown so many times this season into corresponding top results twice in a row.”
***The double victory for Team RLL came just a few hours after Team WRT took the first two places overall in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup race in Monza. The race was won by a BMW M4 GT3 entered in the Bronze Cup and driven by Jens Klingmann.
***Nine different GTP entries led the race during the rain-affected six-hour race at the Brickyard, with only the No. 5 Proton Competition and No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Porsche 963s not leading at any point.
***Felipe Nasr managed to bring the No. 7 Penske Porsche home without power steering after the Brazilian’s system failed with less than 90 minutes to go. Nasr initially stopped on the start straight to reset the system, which triggered the sixth full-course caution of the race but did not solve the problem for the GTP championship-leading driver.
***Porsche Penske CEO Jonathan Diuguid said: “I have to compliment Felipe. The way he brought the No. 7 across the finish line without power steering was impressive. We need to take a closer look at the error.”
***Ninth place in class for Nasr and co-driver Dane Cameron and a podium finish for teammates Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche reduced the championship gap to just 14 points ahead of next month’s title-deciding Motul Petit Le Mans.
***The third-placed Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R No. 01 of Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande would need to take pole and win Petit Le Mans, and both factory 963s would need to be undefeated in the race to steal the drivers’ title.
***With a lead of 124 points over Cadillac, Porsche has the GTP manufacturers’ championship as good as in the bag. Only one of the four 963s expected to start at the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta has to start the ten-hour enduro race to win the title.
***Both Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06s showed pace at times during the race but were relegated to fifth and sixth, with the No. 40 Louis Deletraz losing a likely podium finish due to a drive-through penalty for an accident with Chaz Mostert’s No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.
***The two Acuras led a combined 46 laps. “The first half of the race was about survival and protecting the car to get to the end,” Ricky Taylor said. “Towards the end, we just couldn’t get ourselves in a position to win. We were always just out of reach.”
***JDC-Miller Motorsports took fourth place with its private Porsche, its best result of the season. The Porsche survived a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact with the No. 74 Riley Oreca 07 Gibson of Josh Burdon when Richard Westbrook was at the wheel. The Proton Competition Porsche, meanwhile, finished seventh after receiving a drive-through penalty for overtaking under yellow and spinning while battling an electrical issue on the car.
***Phil Hanson of JDC-Miller said: “What a rollercoaster race. A lucky yellow phase put us back in front. Fourth place is a solid result. Our pace was strong. However, we had to solve tricky problems again and again during the six-hour race. I imagine it was the same for every team.”
*** Action Express Racing suffered its second retirement of the season following Pipo Derani’s crash at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. It was the first retirement due to mechanical problems for the Gary Nelson-led team in recent memory. The team’s Cadillac retired when Derani stalled on the track in the third hour with a loss of oil pressure.
***Iron Lynx drove its strongest race ever with the Lamborghini SC63, leading for ten laps in wet conditions before a pit lane penalty and race-ending suspension failure occurred after Andrea Caldarelli collided with the No. 55 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 of Ben Barker.
***Romain Grosjean said: “In the wet we were flying, the car was incredible so I was able to take the lead and pull away which was fantastic. Of course in this championship there are things operationally that we need to improve but overall it was a really positive weekend. It’s a shame we had to give up but we will analyse it and get stronger and we will come back for Petit Le Mans which will be another battle.”
***Porsche Penske’s Nasr and Cameron maintained their lead in the Michelin Endurance Cup standings and head to Road Atlanta four points ahead of Bourdais and van der Zande. Action Express’ Derani, Jack Aitken and Tom Blomqvist are a further point behind in third place.
***The results of Sunday’s race depend on the comprehensive technical inspection of seven of the 11 GTP cars, which is scheduled to take place at IMS on Monday and Tuesday. IMSA announced the seizure of the machines five minutes after the race’s checkered flag, which apparently surprised several competitors.
***With their victory in the LMP2 class, Mikkel Jensen, Hunter McElrea and Steven Thomas of TDS Racing are now level on points with the trio Tom Dillmann, Kuba Smiechowski and Nick Boulle of Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports at the top of the Endurance Cup.
***It was back-to-back class wins at the Brickyard for Jensen and Thomas after a day of ups and downs for the French team, which was one of nine LMP2 cars to receive an early drive-through penalty for waving past during the race’s third yellow period.
***McElrea said: “My engineer is French and on good days he’s really hard to understand. Sometimes weird things happen, like the long yellows, the yellows for the whole track, and overtaking wasn’t working. And I was getting passed by other cars and I was totally confused. I was complaining a little bit about what’s going on and then I got passed and then I got turned around by a GT car and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m probably at least a lap down.’ And then before you know it, I’m leading by ten seconds at the end of the stint. That sums up IMSA. You’re never out of the race.”
***Boulle, meanwhile, extended his lead in the Jim Trueman Award standings to 70 points over Riley’s Gar Robinson, while Orey Fidani is now 120 points ahead of Brendan Iribe in the Bob Akin Bronze Cup championship. Both titles automatically qualify for next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans in the LMP2 and LMGT3 classes respectively.
***AO Racing’s third GTD Pro class win of the season gives the No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R and Laurin Heinrich a 99-point lead over the No. 23 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Heart of Racing Team’s Ross Gunn ahead of the season finale in October. Heinrich, who will be joined in the car by Michael Christensen and Julien Andlauer, can take the title with a podium finish regardless of where the No. 23 Aston finishes.
***Christensen had a run-in with the Aston driven by Alex Riberas early in the race. The Dane said: “There was a lot of contact, I’m not sure who, but we did have a couple of long-distance lights from an Aston Martin in our bumper; we got hit so hard. And we got pushed off at Turn 8 – I think it was 23, but he hit me so hard that he went off too. So that was a bit weird. But we kept the car in one piece and eventually overtook them and carried on from there.”
***Sunday’s victory was Christensen’s first in the WeatherTech Championship since the 2017 Rolex 24, when he was part of Alegra Motorsport’s race-winning GTD class.
***Jack Hawksworth’s No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 led the GTD Pro standings at the start when rain started to fall in the first hour after the team decided to keep the Englishman out on slicks. “It started dry, then it rained and the guys made a good decision by staying out on slicks,” he explained. “We went into the lead at times, which was good, and then the rain came back. We fell back at the end because we stayed out earlier, but with good pace on the wets we were able to get through and get back into a good position.”
***Despite an eighth-place finish in class, the Paul Miller Racing trio of Bryan Sellers, Madison Snow and Neil Verhagen continue to lead the Endurance Cup standings in GTD Pro. Winward Racing’s Russell Ward, Philip Ellis and Indy Dontje, who lost their first Endurance Cup race of the season, now have a single point lead over Inception Racing’s Iribe, Frederik Schandorff and Ollie Millroy in the GTD standings.
***With a 222-point lead in the season points race, Ward and Ellis need to finish at least 18th in class at Petit Le Mans to win the Drivers’ Championship (not counting any potential points swing from qualifying). Turner Motorsport duo Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher currently sit second in the overall standings.
***Mercedes-AMG has already secured the GTD manufacturers’ title as its customer cars took off from the start on Sunday.
***The No. 19 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 with DTM drivers Maximian Paul and Luca Engstler was the first driver of the race to retire after Paul crushed the No. 65 Multimatic Ford Mustang GT3 of Dirk Müller in the opening laps. Paul was given responsibility for the accident.
***Mueller’s Ford returned to the track at the end of the first hour after a lengthy stay in the garage, only to fall behind the wall again in the second hour. Meanwhile, a gearshift actuator on the car failed towards the end of the four-hour drive, causing even further delays.
***A total of seven cars failed to finish the six-hour race, including the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus (accident) and the No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 (suspension damage). Numerous LMP2 and GTD cars in particular were involved in spins and incidents during the action-packed race.
