The 2024 Motul Petit Le Mans reminded a lot of people why they love this style of racing so much. A 10-hour race that comes down to the final minutes in a way that no one expects perfectly embodies what makes the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship so appealing.
Saturday lacked, this year — at least in the top prototype class — the championship drama that’s become the norm, but that didn’t make the race any less crazy. Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr came in with enough of a margin that the chances of them losing the GTP championship was almost nil. Then again, when you think it’s in the bag, anything can happen at Petit Le Mans — just ask AO Racing.
Porsche Penske Motorsport as a team and Porsche as a manufacturer had the GTP championship wrapped up as soon as the two PPM 963s wet under the green flag, but that didn’t diminish the drama.
While caution periods and restarts ignite action and excitement, in this year’s Petit Le Mans it was the lack of yellows that heightened the show. Only five cautions for 1h22m of slowed pace kept the action going (last year’s race had a dozen). For an incredible four-and-a-half hours until the final yellow, the race ran under green. In that extended period of green running, there were clearly two strong contenders for the win, at least on outright pace – the No. 6 PPM 963 of Nick Tandy, Mathieu Jaminet and Kevin Estre, and the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 driven by Filipe Albuquerque, Ricky Taylor and Brendon Hartley. In the final race of the partnership between WTRAndretti and Acura, it looked like they might finally get the win that’s eluded them for the last several years.
Adding to the plot was the fact that the No. 7 PPM 963 was on a different pit sequence. Had the race run to the end without another caution, they needed one full stop from the lead while the others would need a splash of fuel to make it to the end, especially since they needed to race each other flat-out. Would that have been enough to hand the win to champions-elect Cameron and Nasr, plus endurance addition Matt Campbell?
Pit cycles left us scratching our heads all day long. PPM may have been on strategy together here, but that didn’t last long. Richard Dole/Lumen
We didn’t get to find out. With just under an hour, a two-GTD-car crash left a stranded Mustang GT3 on the track at the exit of Turn 5 — a blind corner. Ricky Taylor couldn’t avoid it and ripped off a good chunk of the left side of the Acura. The heartbreak was palpable as the TV cameras showed Albuquerque trying to console his teammate.
It ended one act of the drama, but the next act was even wilder. The No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R was running its last race under Chip Ganassi Racing. The Cadillac operation is moving over to Wayne Taylor Racing, and CGR will be sitting at least the next year of sports car racing out. Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande have faced an uncertain future for much of the season. They wanted to go out on a high, but a sensor issue and multiple trips through the pits to resolve it left them a lap down. Even when they got the lap they lost back, the long period of caution-free racing made it difficult for them to make up any ground on the leaders.
Then came that final yellow, the 01 was back in the fight, and it set up a wild ride to the finish. Van der Zande stalked Tandy for 15m before he found his opening, and made a dramatic pass into Turn 1 to take the lead. Behind them, Philipp Eng in the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 was attacking Tandy in the No. 7, but it got a little too physical as the BMW punted the Porsche, damaging the BMW and earning Eng a drive-through.
Cadillac was in the lead, and had the pace to stay there. You didn’t think that was the end of it, did you? No, with five minutes to go, the Cadillac, which had had only one headlight most of the evening, suddenly had none, and there was no way IMSA officials were going to allow it to keep circulating with no lights. Flashing the lights and fumbling with switches furiously inside the cockpit while trying to keep the Caddy on the track, van der Zande finally found the solution after several minutes of on-off-on-off.
So Chip Ganassi Racing had its beautiful swan song and rides off into the sunset with a Petit Le Mans victory. Bourdais and van der Zande end their long time as partners on a high. Oh, yeah … and Scott Dixon gets another PLM victory.
What a story. But that doesn’t even take into account the emotional roller coaster of the GTD PRO championship. Laurin Heinrich and AO Racing came into the race with a 104-point margin in the championship standings after taking pole on Friday. The extra five points earned in qualifying would prove crucial.
You want enduro drama AO Racing brought it at Petit. But from a lap down, they also brought the fight — and it worked. Richard Dole/Lumen
The No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R, though, hit trouble early with a bad steering wheel electrical connection causing shifting issues which saw Julien Andlauer drop to the back of the field, and at one point stopped on track. The fix left Rexy six laps down in ninth position. Barring any retirements, ninth was the best they could do.
As far as the championship was concerned, that wasn’t a problem as long the No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo finished third or worse. If it finished second, the title went to the team and driver Ross Gunn. Of course, HoR and drivers Gunn, Alex Riberas and Roman De Angelis were bouncing between second and third all race long. One moment the title was Heinrich’s, the next it was Gunn’s. It went on for hours.
In the final half-hour, Gunn was giving it all, reeling off his fastest laps of the day, half a second better than any other GTD PRO car did all race, but he couldn’t get the Aston Martin into second, and Heinrich, in his first season of IMSA racing, took the title by four points.
This type of thrilling back-and-forth is why fans and drivers love this style of racing, where wins and championships often come down to the final minutes of a 10-hour race or a 66-hour season. And – this is about to get personal – it’s why it’s so much fun to cover.
As a writer, I want to get the story to readers as quickly as possible, so there’s a certain satisfaction in being able to get a good bit of the report done before the checkered flag falls. How many times have I been able to do that with the WeatherTech Championship in the last three years? Exactly once. One time out of 36 races I’ve been certain enough about the outcome of the race to get a good chunk of the report written before the race was over. (If you’re curious, that race was Long Beach in 2022.)
IMSA racing is wild. It’s melodramatic. A race like this year’s Petit Le Mans was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. This race, like so many others, will go down as an instant classic. Fans and drivers – and yours truly – can’t wait for the next one.
Bring on Daytona.
