INDIANAPOLIS — It’s not probable, but it is possible for Porsche’s Laurin Heinrich to win the driver championship in the top class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship this Saturday at the Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Considering he hadn’t even tested a Porsche 963 at this time a year ago, that’s pretty remarkable.
Going into Saturday’s season finale, British/South Korean driver Jack Aitken of the Cadillac Whelen team leads the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class with 2,752 points. Heinrich, who was born in Kurnach, Germany, has 2,605. They’re the only two still in the running for the driver title out of 32 competitors.
Aitken turned 31 last Wednesday, Sept. 23, and Heinrich celebrated his 25th birthday last Saturday, Sept. 26.
Even if he qualifies last, Aitken just has to finish ninth or better in class in the 10-hour race to clinch the driver championship, so Heinrich’s chances are largely mathematical and not something he can totally control. Porsche’s chance to win the manufacturer title are even slimmer, as Cadillac will win it as soon as Aitken’s car or the other two Cadillacs that are entered start the race.
But before the season began, few would have picked Heinrich as the most likely choice out of the 10 Porsche drivers who competed in the class as the one with the best chance to earn the driver title and lead Porsche’s attempts to earn the manufacturer championship.
Heinrich was named a Porsche Junior driver for the 2022 season, he became a Porsche factory driver in November 2025, and he’s driving for Porsche Penske Motorsports in 2026, so it’s a given that he’s good. But this year he’s made Americans sit up and take notice of exactly how good he is.
His first race driving a Porsche 963 was his 2025 World Endurance Championship debut at that series’ season finale at Bahrain last November.
Originally he was only scheduled to compete with Porsche Penske Motorsports in three of the nine races on the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP schedule: the Rolex 24 at Daytona, Fla., in January; the Mobile 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in Sebring, Fla., in March, and the Petit Le Mans.
He won the first two.
He didn’t have a ride for the full season until he got the nod from a privateer Porsche team, JDC-Miller MotorSports, to fill in the races that he wasn’t signed to drive for Penske.
In an effort to help win the titles, Porsche played a little chess with its driver lineup for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Sept. 20.
Laurens Vanthoor gave up his seat in the Porsche Penske Motorsport No. 6 so Heinrich could co-drive it with Kevin Estre. (Nico Mueller stepped into Heinrich’s JDC-Miller MotorSports No. 5 paired with Tijmen van der Helm.)
Heinrich and Estre finished third at Indy in a field of 11. Aitken and Earl Bamber were second for Cadillac, so the Porsche Penske squad didn’t gain anything in the points battles at their boss’s track.
Heinrich will be back in the Porsche Penske No. 7 at Road Atlanta with co-drivers Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer. That trio will clinch the Michelin Endurance Cup series-within-a-series for GTP once they start at Road Atlanta on Saturday.
Although it will be a tall order for Heinrich to win the GTP driver title at Road Atlanta, if he did he would have two IMSA class championships on his resume.
That’s phenomenal for anyone, but especially for one so young. He won the IMSA GT Daytona championship with AO Racing in 2024, his rookie season in the series. That title came down to the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta too, and he won by only four points.
In addition to the Rolex 24 and Sebring victories with Penske, another highlight of Heinrich’s 2026 campaign so far includes a last-lap pass of Earl Bamber for the lead at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in May after starting 11th.
The latter helped JDC-Miller MotorSports become the first (and only) privateer team to win a GTP race since the start of the LMDh era in 2023. It also gave Heinrich the points lead briefly.
The Rolex 24 and Sebring victories came in the Porsche Penske Motorsports No. 7; the Laguna Seca victory came in the JDC-Miller Motorsports No. 5, and he drove the Porsche Penske Motorsports No. 6 at Indy.
JDC-Miller Motorsports uses the previous generation of the Porsche 963 prototype, so there are differences between the cars as well as the teams. “There are quite a lot of differences between the two different packages,” Heinrich said. “Every car has its strengths and weaknesses.”
One of Heinrich’s strong points throughout his career has been his ability to fit in with different teams quickly. Personalities and methods of doing things are always a little different, as are set-up preferences.
Adapting to different tire compounds can be difficult. Gelling with co-drivers, engineers, mechanics, and other team personnel quickly can also be challenging.
But Heinrich relishes these challenges. His business card could read “Have seat insert. Willing to travel.”
“I think I’ve grown a lot by driving different cars for different teams and in different series,” he said. “I’m a quick learner because I’ve had to be!
“I’m used to getting to know new people; not only in America, but also in racing in Asia and Europe,” he continued. “All the people have different work ethics and procedures, and I have to adapt to their routines and procedures, and try not to turn their whole worlds around. But the philosophies of how teams set up a car is usually quite different.
“I realize how lucky I’ve been with the opportunities I’ve had, and that drives me to give 100 percent.”
Language barriers can be a factor in international competition too. Heinrich speaks English and French as well as his native German.
But what sets Heinrich apart the most is simply his ability to drive fast.
“We all know there are a lot of talented race car drivers out there, and he is very talented,” said John Hayes, JDC-Miller MotorSports’ engineer. “He has a real good feel for the car, but what is amazing about him is his driving. He is so aggressive! He gets 100 percent out of the car.
“We could be last in class at the beginning of a race, and then he would get in, and if we had no other issues, before long we were in contention for a podium. He shines as a racer, and a real good racer, and it shows in his results.”
He loves driving race cars, both in sim racing and especially in real life.
“After the Long Beach race was over, I noticed that he was just sitting in the transporter, and he looked so sad,” concurred Will Paul, one of JDC-Miller’s mechanics. “I asked if everything was OK, and it turned out that he was just really sad that the race was over. He wanted to still be out there driving. The guy just loves to drive race cars.”
Heinrich got his start in karting at the age of 8, but originally he did it just for fun with his dad. Whereas many youngsters start racing karts when they’re 5 or 6, Heinrich didn’t start actually racing them until he was 14. He earned the Swissauto250 Cup championship in karting in 2016, and before long his original goal of becoming a pilot when he grew up changed to trying to become a professional race car driver.
His father is a car dealer and a former kart racer, and although the family could be considered affluent, it isn’t in the position to own a big IMSA sports car team.
The family did field a Formula 4 car for Heinrich in 2017, with his dad and three kart mechanic friends who worked for free serving as his mechanics/engineers.
Due to budget constraints and his father’s time constraints from racing and working a “real” job simultaneously, he took a break from racing in 2018 to finish school, but in 2019 with the help of another friend who had a car he won the 2019 Porsche Sports Cup Germany championship. Extensive experience and success in the GT ranks around the world followed before the opportunity came to drive prototypes.
And now he’s a professional race car driver, primarily living out of suitcases and going from hotel to hotel. When asked what is something few people know about him, he disclosed that he loves to cook and bake, but doesn’t get the opportunity to do that much now unless his racing schedules allow him to be home.
“It’s a bit of a hobby,” he said.
He recently moved to Graz, Austria, so that’s home nowadays.
No matter what happens during 10 hours of racing at Road Atlanta on Saturday and how the final point standings add up, it will be interesting to see what Heinrich’s future holds.
Could driving on the oval at IMS in the Indianapolis 500 be in the cards someday, seeing that Heinrich got his start in karting and he has F4 experience too?
“It’s possible,” he said. “I’m not rushing to do it, but I’d like the opportunity to drive an Indy car,” he said.
After all, they’re race cars too, and they go fast. And Penske does have a team.
But first they’re all concentrating on Saturday’s Petit Le Mans, and Heinrich’s goal is simple: qualify on the pole and win the race, and let the points fall as they may.
Should that happen he’ll have won all three of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s marquee events in the same season, and thrown in Laguna to boot.
No matter what, 2026 will have been a very good year for him, whether he was driving the No. 5, the No. 6, or the No. 7.
