Petit Le Mans Classic - 3 Up, 3 Down for GTP, GT Classes
That was a fitting end to what was an incredible, all-time 2024 IMSA season.
It's difficult to completely encapsulate the emotion of what goes down after any endurance race, and what we got Saturday night at Road Atlanta was yet another amazing display of the kind of cinematic masterpiece that comes with 50+ cars racing each other for hours on end with so much on the line.
Here's our 3 Up/3 Down recap as we do our best to highlight the madness of the aftermath.
GTP 3 Up -
No. 7 PPM
The No. 7 had to keep their nose clean through 10 hours of racing and they did just that. Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron got a helping hand once the No. 85 and No. 25 were put behind the wall and retired while the race was still underway, clinching the drivers' championship well before the checkered flag waved. It was a massively impressive season for the 963 machine - a pair of wins and 7 total podiums in nine races - with all of it starting with a victory at the Rolex 24 in January. In an illustration of just how important it is to cross the finish line, the No. 7 was the only GTP car to not suffer a race retirement this season, and in the second year of the new GTP era Porsche Penske Motorsports have dual championships between the drivers' and manufacturer. Not bad at all.
No. 01 Cadillac -
What a way to close out this chapter of racing for everyone involved at Cadillac and Chip Ganassi Racing. The 01 was dealt a tough hand at multiple points in the race, from an early mechanical black flag to a spin out on the track to even running P10 in class at one point. As time wound down you could barely believe that Sebastian Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon were in contention for the race win, and the last 30 minutes were straight up bonkers with RVDZ behind the wheel. With 15 minutes on the clock van der Zande made the sublime pass on Nick Tandy going into turn 1, and with UNDER FIVE MINUTES TO GO we saw the unbelievable sequence of BOTH headlights going out on the car, giving us the Final Boss of "You Gotta Be Shitting Me!" moments that has plagued Cadillac these last two seasons. As van der Zande explained after the race, he was hitting every possible button he could find on his wheel and inside the cockpit in absolute desperation to avoid being black-flagged with roughly three laps to go. It's a cathartic victory for an operation that's departing the IMSA grid and one that has been so close so many times, and after flirting with the trademarked bad luck that has hung over this team - for this one night at PLM, they finally came out on the right side of things.
We're putting the No. 24 on the 3 Up podium simply for the move that Philipp Eng pulled off when he deftly avoided the wrecked No. 55 Ford Proton Mustang when it was dead on track. How Eng avoided nailing that car is one of the most impressive manuevers you're ever gonna see on a race track. Otherwise, Eng and Co. would be on the 3 Down list due to how their night ended, which was a blown opportunity to score a podium finish. With just 13 minutes on the clock Eng got into it with the No. 6 in a move that didn't need to take place, producing the dreaded double-whammy of a popped tire from the contact and a subsequent pit stop to fix it, as well as a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility. Woof.
GTP 3 Down -
No. 10 WTR
It's simply amazing that this keeps happening to Wayne Taylor Racing and Co. at Petit Le Mans year after year. It's a broken record for those guys as they keep reinventing ways to finish out a season with maximum pain and heartbreak. This season's flavor came in the version of Ricky Taylor clipping the aforementioned Proton Ford and tearing apart the left side of his Acura ARX-06. The obligatory "it could've been way, way worse" is obvious, as five inches further to the left and we would've seen an absolutely cataclysmic, red flag-producing incident. Putting aside the health and safety angle to things, there is so much #pain coming out of the ultimate result as the No. 10 was running at the top of the pack for much of the day and into the nightcap, and it felt like things were finally going to break for WTR's way, even if they weren't in contention for a championship. Where Chip Ganassi Racing closed out their relationship with Cadillac on a high note, the Road Atlanta Nightmare continued for WTR and Acura as they experienced yet another inexplicable turn of events and another DNF in their last race with the manufacturer.
The 31 started on pole following Jack Aitken's performance from Friday, yet save for the first few flying laps out of the gate the Whelen Cadillac never really was a serious challenger on the day, which is saying something across 10 hours of racing. We're not sure if they had some mechanical holdups that prevented them from getting ahead of the pack and staying there, and drive through penalties didn't help their cause, either. At the end of the day a P5 finish a lap down was the best that the team could muster.
GTD Pro 3 Up -
No. 77 AO Racing -
The Racing Gods did all they could to interfere with Rexy's day as an electrical gearbox/steering issue was born just an hour and a half into the race and became a gigantic threat to their championship hopes. Give a ton of credit to the AO pit crew for pulling off the mechanical change in the pit lane as quickly as they did, yet the time in the box put Rex 5 laps down. Couple that with a stretch of about five hours straight of green-flag racing and what we had was a scenario where the No. 23 Heart of Racing was thiseffingclose to pulling off the shocking upset and stealing away the Pro title (more on them in a bit). Laurin Heinrich deserves his flowers for keeping his composure lap after lap even with the mounting frustration stemming from the fear of losing the championship and being unable to do anything about it. In the end, the difference was only f o u r points in the standings. Thank God Heinrich scored a pole victory on Friday!
No. 19 Iron Lynx -
Quite easily the best day the Iron Lynx have managed to put together through their first two years in the WeatherTech Championship series. The No. 19 only runs in the endurance rounds of the IMSA schedule so naturally they have fewer opportunities to secure a race victory compared to other teams that run a full season. Their Huracán GT3 Evo ran strong all day, which might be the most improbable thing to come out of the entire weekend. The Lambos have struggled to compete at a top level across both GT classes, with the main issue being just simple reliability to remain on track and avoiding a retirement. The IL team will enjoy this one for a while.
No. 62 Risi Competizione -
The Risi Ferrari couldn't quite catch the No. 19 ahead of them to claim P1, but their effort to stay in front of the Heart of Racing and play the blockade game was an unbelievable side effect of how strong Daniel Serra was racing in the last stint of the night. Just try to imagine the focus and concentration that's needed to race around PLM at night across waves of traffic and not only keep the pressure on a car in front of you as you try to hunt them down, but also to keep your wits and hold on to your own place when there's a car behind you that would push their own grandmother down the stairs in order to get ahead of you. Similar to the Lynx, Risi ran a reduced schedule in 2024 yet had a pretty great campaign with three podiums from just five races, highlighted by their Pro victory at the Rolex 24.
GTD Pro 3 Down -
No. 23 Heart of Racing -
A gut-wrenching finish to their 2024 season, the HoR close out their Pro program by finishing just four points back from AO in the standings. There was a period of time where it looked like Ross Gunn was going to pull off the miracle they needed and flip the script on Rexy but he just couldn't get past Serra as the minutes closed down, even as Gunn was racing inside the tailpipes of the Ferrari. It's a tough pill to swallow as the car and team have been amazingly consistent for years now, and as the group transitions over to the Valkyrie GTP program for next season it would've been quite a story doing so as Pro champions.
No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports
No team will be happier to close the book on 2024 than the Pfaff crew. A P9 class finish on a day when nothing really went right for the boys from Toronto two weeks after reports detailed that the program was on the verge of folding due financial issues. It was confirmed by IMSA that Pfaff has secured a place on the grid for next season and year two with their McLaren 720S, and hopefully more time spent with the car will lead to more success in 2025. Going off of that, at one point James Hinchcliffe mentioned on the broadcast that the team had zero time to tweak and prepare their new McLaren before hitting the track at Daytona for the Rolex back in January.
No. 3, No. 4 Corvette Pratt Miller -
The No. 4 Corvette saw their day submarined when they ran into the No. 2 LMP2 United machine and spun out into the tire barrier. The damage put them behind the wall and ended any chance of a race victory, meanwhile the No. 3 was running strong before needing a front brake change with just under two hours remaining in the race, dropping them from the front of the Pro pack and ending the chance for Corvette to end their long-running drought at Petit Le Mans. The first season with Pratt Miller running the Corvette's was a mixed bag of success with a handful of pole's secured, a 1/2 finish at Mosport and five total podiums between the two cars. The No. 3 finished third in the overall standings, while the No. 4 finished in 7th.
GTD 3 Up -
No. 34 Conquest Racing
An unbelievable move by Albert Costa on the No. 78 Forte Lamborghini with just 30 minutes to go propelled the No. 34 to the GTD victory. A team that secured a GTD Pro victory back at Road America, this win kinda comes out of nowhere as they too ran just a handful of races this season. To come out on top when racing against such a deep GTD field will always be impressive for any car that claims a class victory. The win will serve as a major springboard for the Conquest operation as they prepare to take on a full-season in 2025.
No. 57 Winward Racing
Your GTD champs, as if it was ever in doubt. By building up such a massive lead in the standings going into the season finale, Winward wrapped things up with a P8 class finish and earlier on they were aided by the No. 44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin bowing out via race retirement. The race order shuffled about to a point where it was mathematically impossible for Winward to lose the title, leading to a scenario where Philip Ellis, Russel Ward and Indy Dontje just had to finish things out before officially clinching when the checkered flag fell. Four class wins and six podiums delivers WWR the goods.
No. 12 Vasser Sullivan -
In the "came out of nowhere" category, the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan somehow navigated the madness to find a podium finish, which is just so them as a racing program. You could see in the aftermath how much it meant to the team from their reaction in the pit box, and give Parker Thompson a ton of credit for securing the P3 result after dealing with plenty of adversity throughout the day, highlighted by qualifying in the back of the pack for the start of things.
GTD 3 Down -
No. 32 Korthoff/Preston Motorsports -
An original P4 class finish was taken away following a post-race penalty issued by the stewards. We're still looking to confirm what the infraction was, stay tuned.
No. 55 Proton Competition -
The No. 55 Mustang isn't on the down list because of their own wrongdoing, rather because of how things took a turn for the worst so late in the action. As the team explained afterwards via Instagram, a competitor (it was the No. 120 Porsche of Wright Motorsports) took out Corey Lewis from behind and sent him into the wall, with the car ultimately settling on the track facing oncoming traffic. The car was running strong for most of the day and was in contention for a podium finish before disaster struck. It's a lousy break for the Ford machine, but things could've turned out way worse.
No. 70 Inception Racing, No. 66 Gradient Racing
There was a ticket to Le Mans up for grabs for three teams, and the duo of Inception Racing and Gradient Racing were beaten out by the boys at AWA for the Bob Akin Bronze cup. Give credit to the Corvette gang as they managed to secure the amazing prize that is an entry ticket into the legendary 24 hour race. It sucks for Inception and Gradient to miss out on such an amazing opportunity, but only one team could've come home with the ticket and it was AWA.
(photos via IMSA.com)
Comments
Post a Comment