DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — If the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s new six-hour endurance race at Road America delivers half the action, entertainment and plot twists of yesterday’s two-hour, 40-minute sprint race, a bevy of spectators and television viewers will have gotten their money’s worth.
The phrase “argy bargy” was on display with more car-to-car contact than you’ll see in a month of Saturday nights at your local short track. But there were some popular podium finishers, championship shakeups aplenty and some emotional victors in the Motul SportsCar Grand Prix.
Forte’s Good Karma
Saturday morning practice provided a brutal body blow to Pfaff Motorsports’ Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2. Luckily, the willingness of the paddock to step in to help ensured the plaid-liveried fan favorite entry made the grid.
After an incident between Pfaff’s No. 9 Lamborghini and an LMP2 competitor, Lamborghini worked quickly with its other customer teams to see how Pfaff could source a backup chassis. Both Wayne Taylor Racing and Forte Racing had one available, but only Forte’s was on-site as a loaner.
With the primary Pfaff Lamborghini unable to be repaired for Sunday’s race, Forte Racing indeed “loaned” its back-up Huracan to the Canadian team, who in turn burned the proverbial midnight oil on Saturday to prepare the car for Sunday’s race.
Although they started at the rear of the field, Mapelli, Andrea Caldarelli and the Pfaff crew soldiered on to an eighth-place finish in Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO).
Forte was rewarded with its efforts more than they could have expected in a bounce-back race. Mario Farnbacher and Misha Goikhberg finished a season-best second in Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) in their No. 78 Huracan. It came a race after – coincidentally – contact from an LMP2 competitor at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park eliminated a potential podium finish there.
Farnbacher’s pre-race quote proved prescient: “Hopefully we can show that we have good potential, that we can win races there. We almost did it in Mosport but had an unfortunate situation with the contact. Hopefully we can follow up with a good performance at Road America together with Misha and the team.”
It wasn’t the only rebuild effort of the weekend. After an opening lap race incident, the United Autosports USA team worked to get its Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) championship-leading No. 22 ORECA LMP2 07 back on track in the hope of salvaging some points. While they were unable to gain any positions, it did reveal the desire and determination to attempt to do so.
“Spike” On a Roll
Although its GTD PRO strategy came up snake-eyes, all was by no means lost on Sunday for the AO Racing squad. A second straight victory for Dane Cameron, PJ Hyett and “Spike,” the purple-dragon No. 99 ORECA LMP2 07, comes just three weeks after the team’s breakthrough at the Chevrolet Grand Prix at CTMP.
Its CTMP win had a degree of good fortune built in after an apparent mechanical issue sent the leading No. 43 Inter Europol Competition entry into the wall. The Road America win did not, with Hyett on pole, a flawless pit stop and driver change, and Cameron defending against fellow former GTP driver Connor De Phillippi – substituting for the injured Tom Dillmann in the Inter Europol car alongside Jeremy Clarke – for the win.
“Getting that first one at Mosport was great to get out of the way, but I didn’t like it because it felt like a gift,” Cameron said. “So I wanted to do it again and make sure there was no doubt what the team is capable of.
“I think the self-doubt is always there until you get that first one. You are always short and trying to get over that hump is hard sometimes. Everybody was executing perfectly. You see that little bit of lightness, that weight off everybody’s shoulders once they know they can do it. And now we’re proved it again.”
BMW’s Ultimate
BMW had a rare opportunity to put both its M Hybrid V8 GTP car and its M4 GT3 EVO GTD PRO car in Road America’s victory lane, back-to-back, at the conclusion of Sunday’s race after its first same-day double victory with both cars in IMSA competition. Both wins meant a lot to the respective programs.
For BMW M Team RLL, the win came mere days after public confirmation BMW M Motorsport would not renew its contract with the team to field the M Hybrid V8 in IMSA GTP in 2026. Its two wins prior to Sunday came at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen in 2023, awarded following post-race technical inspection, and at last year’s TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks in Indianapolis.
A first 2025 win had been elusive for the program given Dries Vanthoor’s early season pace of four straight Motul Pole Awards. But on Sunday, strategy delivered for BMW M Team RLL when for most of the year, it hadn’t.
The two BMWs were the first GTP runners to make their final pit stops and thus vaulted up the running order when the other competitors pitted during a caution a few laps later. That move put them in the lead with more than enough energy to go the distance.
“It’s a big relief for the whole team,” Eng said. “First of all, the most important thing is that our driver helper is OK. There was a little incident in pit lane. Our car was on rails today (and) our team did a strategic masterclass, boxing us in the very early window and here we are. I can’t be happier.”
“It’s been such a difficult, weird season with a lot of highlights but also a lot of lows as well for us,” added Vanthoor. “So to always come back and try everything we can to win. It’s never easy, but we never gave up. We had to take risks because we were last and that works out sometimes. So super happy we could get a win after many poles (when) we could never get a win, so I’m happy we could bring it home today.”
The Team RLL pit wasn’t the only happy place for BMW at Road America. Further along pit lane, Madison Snow, Neil Verhagen and the crew of the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO were also celebrating that car’s first win of the season, and the PMR team’s second.
“We finally got the monkey off our back,” Snow said. “And it was a good race for us. I mean it’s family and it just keeps growing. I love these crew guys . . . they put in so much effort and so much work and we finally got a win today.”
Verhagen joined Vanthoor as a first-time IMSA winner, one race after he’d scored his first IMSA pole at CTMP.
“This is incredible, obviously. First win here in IMSA.” Verhagen said. “Madison has a couple under this belt, so I’m going to start trying to catch-up. It’s been great to be working with him this year. It feels so awesome. I felt like we had some momentum going our way with the pole at (CTMP), so to pull off the win here feels incredible.”
