DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — P.J. Hyett and Orey Fidani won major 24-hour endurance sports car races in 2025. They’ll have the opportunity to add to those in 2026.
Hyett won the Jim Trueman Award as the championship-winning Bronze-rated driver in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Le Mans Prototype 2 class, while Fidani won his second straight Bob Akin Award as the top-scoring Bronze-rated driver in Grand Touring Daytona.
IMSA awards invitations to the following year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans to each season’s Jim Trueman Award and Bob Akin Award winners. These two awards are named for successful “sportsman” racers who made a significant impact on the sport. Both awards shine the spotlight on Bronze-rated drivers, many of whom are like Trueman and Akin – businesspeople whose passion for racing drove their deep involvement in motorsport.
Trueman is best known as the founder of the Red Roof Inns hotel chain and former owner of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. He was an enthusiastic amateur racer who formed Truesports Racing, the team that guided Bobby Rahal to victory in the 1986 Indianapolis 500. Trueman died of cancer just 11 days after Rahal’s emotional Indy triumph.
Hyett is a founder of his own, a 42-year-old entrepreneur and software developer best known for creating the GitHub software suite. His racing journey, well chronicled, only began within the last three years as he went from a track day to a world traveler across both IMSA and European racing commitments.
This year’s Jim Trueman Award battle – and LMP2 title tilt – flipped on a dime at the start of the Road America weekend in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, the closest thing to a home track for Hyett. From pole, Hyett and Dane Cameron’s No. 99 AO Racing ORECA LMP2 07 led the bulk of the race en route to their second straight IMSA win (first at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) to cap off a summer of success that started with an LMP2 Pro/Am class win at June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Chief title rival Daniel Goldburg was caught up in a first-lap incident in his No. 22 United Autosports USA ORECA and the corresponding 180-point swing moved Hyett 107 points clear in the standings, a lead he wouldn’t relinquish in the final two races.
At the time, Hyett noted how important and pivotal the Road America win was.
“From my perspective it was kind of a dream weekend, not just the race win, but also the championship point standings, and my home race,” said Hyett, a greater Chicago native. “Getting pole, winning and taking the points lead; it’s hard to beat what happened here. That’s my favorite racetrack in the country to bring home a victory for the AO crew. It’s just amazing.”
The LMP2 title, Hyett’s first as a driver and second for the AO Racing organization, ensures both “characters” are now champions. Its Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) is primarily known as “Rexy” with sister “Roxy” in full dinosaur livery, with “Spike” the dragon as its LMP2 car.
Akin, the longtime president of Hudson Wire Co., was a standout driver and entrant in the IMSA championship in the 1970s and ‘80s. He won the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in 1979 and 1986, a year in which he also won IMSA’s Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class and overall championship. Akin’s winning average speed at Sebring, achieved in a Porsche 962 with co-drivers Hans-Joachim Stuck and Jo Gartner, stood as the race record for 23 years. This year, Akin was inducted as a member of IMSA’s third Hall of Fame class.
Fidani, 38, matched Hyett as a 24-hour race winner and racing multiple cars in 2025, although his multiple-car story only arose after the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
The good news for Fidani, longtime co-drivers Matt Bell and Lars Kern and fourth driver Marvin Kirchhoefer in the No. 13 AWA entry was that they won the Rolex 24 as the first IMSA customer to win with the Corvette Z06 GT3.R chassis. The bad news is it meant this chassis was retired to be on display, and its chassis intended to run the 24 Hours of Le Mans was pressed into early service. Then there was a need to source a new chassis for Le Mans, eventually draped in a patriotic red-and-white Canadian flag livery.
Fidani, Bell and Kern did not reach the same heights in IMSA again all season but had better overall consistency than Fidani’s chief rival for the Bob Akin Award, Brendan Iribe of Inception Racing in the No. 70 Ferrari 296 GT3. They were tied heading into Motul Petit Le Mans.
On the first lap, Iribe contacted another GTD Ferrari through the esses and was forced to retire. Fidani, who’d taken evasive action to avoid the incident front of him, kept plugging away and brought the car home in ninth place. Fidani and the rebranded 13 Motorsports crew have secured an encore trip to head back to France in 2026.
“I couldn’t be happier or more proud of the way we performed this season,” said Fidani, whose Orlando Corporation adorns his Corvette. “We knew from the get-go that we wanted to go back to Le Mans, and we knew we would have to work incredibly hard to achieve it, but that’s exactly what we set out to do.
“We all have an immense amount of respect for everyone at Inception Racing, and we had a great time going up against them this season. I’m thrilled that we’re going back to France, and now with some extra knowledge and experience on our side, we’ll be ready to put up a good fight with Chevy.”
