The Petit Le Mans is known for surprise endings and this year’s race had several.
In the first unexpected development, the Acura team of Meyer Shank Racing, down two laps at one point, won the 10-hour event with an ambitious pass by Colin Braun at Turn 1 and an energy gamble, running one hour and 21 minutes after its final pit stop with the help of three full-course cautions.
The second surprising twist was Acura driver Felipe Albuquerque’s odd decision to attempt an outside pass of the Action Express Racing team’s Pipo Derani in Turn 1 with 72 minutes remaining. Contact sent Albuquerque’s ARX-06 into the wall. As a result, Cadillac V-Series.R drivers Derani and Alexander Sims won the first GTP driver’s title in the WeatherTech Championship’s inaugural hybrid season.
Derani and Sims narrowly captured the championship after their co-driver Louis Deletraz won the pole on Friday, Wayne Taylor Racing’s Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor finished second in the points. Albuquerque, meanwhile, was taken to the hospital for observation after his late-race mishap.
It appeared Albuquerque tried to back out of the throttle before contact. “He was too optimistic trying to go around the outside,” said Derani, who carefully drove the final hour and finished sixth.
Pit strategy helped Cadillac Racing’s Renger van der Zande, Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon clinch the factory title.
Yet Another Surprise in GTP
Another surprise was Cadillac’s Chip Ganassi Racing choosing an even more risky pit strategy than the winning Acura squad, a move that earned the manufacturer’s championship for Cadillac.
In this case, the team ran 1 hour, 34 minutes following its last pit stop. After leading the most laps, the Caddy of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon finished one position ahead of the Proton Competition Porsche 963, which was enough to clinch the factory title. Also trying to steal a march on the same pit strategy, the Proton entry of Harry Tincknell was not fast enough to make the needed overtake of the Ganassi Cadillac.
The No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry stayed out one lap more than the No. 01 Cadillac before pitting, lost track position and finished fourth.
Meyer Shank Racing W/Curb-Agajanian’s Acura ARX-06 of Colin Braun, Tom Blomqvist, Helio Castroneves won the race, but finished short of a season title.
Meyer Shank Wins Season Finale for Acura
The race winners at Meyer Shank, Tom Blomqvist and Braun, had a mathematical chance of winning the drivers’ title, but finished third despite capturing their third race of the year and second with Helio Castroneves. The only three-time winners this season were penalized 200 points after their victory at the Rolex 24 at Daytona for defeating IMSA’s telemetry and running low Michelin tire pressures without detection.
“There’s a reason why we’re getting results,” said Blomqvist, referring to the scandal and the team’s second victory after the belated penalty was administered by IMSA. The team was not renewed by Honda Performance Development for the 2024 season and Blomqvist will go IndyCar racing next season with Meyer Shank.
Braun, whose future plans remain unclear, made the winning pass in Turn 1 on a re-start with 31 minutes remaining, passing van der Zande, who was trying to save fuel. “I knew it was going to be hard. Renger has always raced me super hard and super clean. I put it all on the line and we didn’t have a whole lot to lose.”
The rather messy and confusing finish was consistent with the day’s 13 cautions, most due to contact as well as off-course excursions. The No. 6 of Porsche Penske Motorsport and championship contenders Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet was taken out of contention in the second hour. Tandy was collected by an incident started by LMP2 driver Dennis Andersen.
Heavy traffic led to a few incidents at Road Atlanta.
A Real Caution-Fest
Were there too many cars and gentleman drivers on the track at the Petit Le Mans? One of the world’s most challenging sports car endurance events was more like a NASCAR race, where drivers and teams raced from caution to caution.
The cautions were so plentiful the GTP teams, careful about maintaining track position in a close fight for the drivers and manufacturers championship, did not make green flag pit stops in the first seven hours of a race where 52 cars took the green.
Perhaps the Petit Le Mans needs to take a page from its namesake in France and begin limiting the entry according to the track length of the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. On the other hand, the mix kept the on-track action hair-raising for the bumper crop of fans. Judging by an infield jammed with cars with nary a parking space and a packed amphitheater at Turn 10, it was the one of the biggest turnouts in the Petit’s 26-year history. The track shut down infield parking two hours after the start of the race.
“Some of these guys don’t know how to drive side-by-side,” said Andy Lally, whose Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Magnus Racing was knocked out of contention. Davide Rigon, driver of the Risi Competizione Ferrari and a veteran of European events, described the heavy traffic as “dangerous.”
There were seven full course cautions in the first five hours, one of which flew because championship contender Nick Tandy’s Porsche 963 was blindsided and sent into a gravel trap. Tandy, who entered the race five points out of the lead in the driver championship, was resigned to his fate.
“You get good days and bad days,” he said. “It makes it bitter.”
The No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07 of drivers Ben Keating, Paul-Loup Chatin, Alex Quinn finished third, but won the season championship.
Spinning and Winning in LMP2
Ben Keating won the war but lost the battle in the LMP2 race. By finishing third in class on Saturday, the Texan clinched the class championship, co-driving the PR1/Mathiasen ORECA with Paul-Loup Chatin and Alex Quinn,. But another key goal of getting an automatic bid to Le Mans next year escaped him. Bronze-rated driver George Kurtz claimed the invitation to the 24-hour by winning the class. His CrowdStrike Racing by APR entry was co-driven by Ben Hanley and Nolan Siegel.
Keating, who had a spin at Turn 6 at the end of the first hour, credited Quinn with the saving the championship bid after the youngster spun at the Turn 10 complex with under two hours to go, then powered through the gravel trap. “When I’m not a race car driver, I’m a farmer,” said Quinn. “I think that helped me know how to get out when stuck in fields.”
Garr Robinson and his Riley Motorsports team clinched the LMP3 title by a wide margin. But the final duel of the season between the Riley team’s Felipe Fraga and Garrett Grist of JR III Racing came up short. After side-to-side contact between the two Ligier JS P320s coming up the hill to Turn 11, a cut rear tire forced leader Fraga into the pits with 22 minutes remaining. Grist, Nolan Siegel and Bijoy Garg brought JR III its first win of the season.
It’s a GTD Pro win for the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan, Lexus RC F GT3 of drivers Jack Hawksworth, Ben Barnicoat and Kyle Kirkwood.
Vasser Sullivan Clinches GTD Pro Titles
After clinching the GTD Pro titles by starting the race, Vasser Sullivan completed the seven-year quest of Lexus for a championship. Although the RC F is a homologated version of a GT3 car and the oldest model in the field, the team took advantage of having a known quantity when racing against purpose-built GT3 entries. The team may have also benefitted from a conservative BOP for the new GT3 Porsche and Lamborghini.
Credit for success also goes to the hands-on engineering of Toyota Racing Development. Although not always the fastest, the team scored nine podiums. “We knew the car’s strengths and its weaknesses,” said driver Jack Hawksworth. “We had a car capable of winning races and we knew how to use it.” He shared the title with fellow Englishman Ben Barnicoat. “We took it to (manufacturers) who race all over the world,” said Barnicoat. “And we beat them.”
Alas, after leading early, Hawksworth threw the Lexus off track on cold tires. Corvette Racing then suffered the first failure of the flat crank engine in the four seasons of C8.R era. That left the GTD Pro race victory to the WeatherTech Racing trio of Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Maro Engel, who brought the team its fourth win of the season.
Including one pit stop penalty, it was not a smooth run. The Mercedes AMG-GT3’s fuel system shut down when Engel got on board after three hours. The Mercedes development driver had to recycle the ECU three times while coasting under caution, then switch to the back-up fuel pump.
The No. 78 U.S. RaceTronics, Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of drivers Misha Goikhberg, Loris Spinelli and Patrick Liddy took care of business in GTD.
And in GTD…
The Forte Racing team brought the Lamborghini Hurracan GT3 EVO2 its first victory in GTD, despite a series of late-race cautions that bunched the field. Loris Spinelli, who co-drove with Misha Goikhberg and Patrick Liddy, handled the final stint and edged the BMW M4 GT3 of Robby Foley by 5.873 seconds at the finish.
The already confirmed GTD champions of Paul Miller Racing, winners of five races, had their BMW unceremoniously bounced off the track in the early going. After getting stuck in the gravel trap, the team, which will move up to GTD Pro next year, elected to retire.
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