BRASELTON, Ga. — Take a 54-car entry of four categories of the world’s fastest sports cars, turn them loose on a 2.54-mile roller coaster of Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta’s road course for 10 hours of day and night racing with all the driver, team and manufacturers titles on the line in the final round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and what do you get?
The 2026 Motul Petit Le Mans. And more than enough stories and drama to keep racing fans entertained through the offseason before the Rolex 24 At Daytona kicks off the 2027 campaign on January 30.
Consistency Captures Races, Championships
There’s no substitute for speed in auto racing. But it takes more than blistering pace to win races and more than victories to win titles. The Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) race winners and season champions provided ample evidence.
Though they started second, the trio of Valentin Hasse Clot, Marco Sorensen and Mattia Drudi didn’t lead until the final 22 laps in the final hour. The trio aboard the striking white No. 68 Car Blanche Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo picked the right time to do so, staying close, clean and penalty-free while chaos unfolded around them.
It punctuated the positive impression they’ve made from two GTD podiums in the last two Michelin Endurance Cup races before winning in GTD PRO.
“We’ve been really consistent since Thursday,” said Drudi, who was making his GTD PRO class debut after a pair of IMSA GTD outings at the Rolex 24 in a similar Aston Martin fielded by the Heart of Racing Team. “Everybody on the team did an amazing job. It’s really important for them. They came close to the podium with a fourth place. Now getting the first win in such an important one, it’s amazing.”
Paul Miller Racing achieved the win part in 2026; the team opened the season with a win at the Rolex 24 At Daytona. But its run of consistency included three other podiums and three more top five finishes. Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen in their No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO had the pace, too; Verhagen scored a pair of Motul Pole Awards this year including a crucial one here at the finale. That ability to stay fast and largely trouble-free contributed to their driver and team titles.
Chevrolet won the GTD PRO manufacturer championship, thanks to one win, four other podium finishes and a regular top five finishes with at least one of its Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs. It wasn’t the result Tommy Milner and Nicky Catsburg wanted in the driver and team titles, but the pairing in the No. 4 Corvette Z06 GT3.R ensured Chevrolet still added to its accolades.
“First place in the manufacturer championship is great for the program,” Milner said. “It’s great to have both cars all year long be very competitive all throughout the season. The 3 car was unlucky at times. But obviously it was great for them to get the win at Detroit. So that’s what you need to have… both cars being fast all year long and we had that.”
Perseverance Prevails; Resilience Rallies
Though consistency is vital to winning races and championships, resilience is an important characteristic too. Winward Racing can speak to that.
Through no fault of its own, the two-time defending Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) champions left Watkins Glen International 300 points in arrears of the points lead with another battered No. 57 Mercedes-AMG GT3. But champions get off the mat, and inspired by the crew’s rebuild efforts, Russell Ward and Philip Ellis returned to form quickly.
Dazed? Perhaps. Undaunted? Certainly. Ward and Ellis clicked off three straight wins at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Road America and VIRginia International Raceway, with the latter result moving them back to first in points. At Indianapolis, the team was resilient again – this time going from first-to-last-to-second after a pre-race infraction.
And then finally, Saturday, they captured an elusive first Motul Petit Le Mans win. Unfortunately, they didn’t get to race their championship rivals from Turner Motorsport and Heart of Racing Team after both suffered early race mechanical issues. That made the championship battle something of an anti-climax but shouldn’t diminish Winward’s recovery act en route to their third straight title.
“We really got an amazing core group of people who give us the machinery and the ability to come out and perform and put on a good show,” said Ward. “You really have to have the never-quit mentality. That’s how you get it done. Just hats off to the drivers, the crew, the strategists, engineers … everybody gave it their all today.”
Not all forms of resilience produce storybook endings. Inevitably, either the No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR or No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07 would get the short end of the stick in the similar single-point gap for the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) title battle.
Similar to Winward, Inter Europol’s full-season pair of Tom Dillmann and Jeremy Clarke authored a comeback story with back-to-back wins at CTMP and Road America. They entered Motul Petit Le Mans with a four-point lead.
The two cars found each other on track and Dillmann’s No. 43 was assessed a drive-through for incident responsibility with Alex Quinn’s No. 04 inside the final two hours. It appeared as though Dillmann was caught out by the dreaded concertina effect in a veritable Gordian knot of traffic.
But nonetheless, the No. 43 car rallied – again – while the No. 04 crew made quick repairs to that car’s rear bodywork. Algarve Pro Racing team principal Stewart Cox made sure to thank the crew for their work at Sunday night’s WeatherTech Night of Champions; the No. 04 crew stood as champs by way of Quinn beating Dillmann by just 0.666 of a second for the win, and title, at the line.
“That incident with Tom was tricky,” Quinn said. “We had damage on the car. I guess it’s a chance to thank the team because they repaired it insanely quickly, kept us actually on the lead lap, and in some ways it maybe helped us because (it gave us) a fuel advantage, the next yellow came, we cycled back to the front. Tom got a penalty for it. That switched the positions.
“I was frustrated at the time, but that’s actually when I did a lot of my best laps during the race,” a smiling Quinn continued. “I guess everything happens for a reason. In the end, it all worked out.”
Numbers Matter
In a galaxy far away from the 2026 WeatherTech Championship, one Roger Penske once noted “numbers matter.” (Full disclosure: He was explaining why he took a March 86C out of a Penske Leasing showroom to enter it in the 1987 Indianapolis 500 as a backup car with a backup driver. Al Unser was tapped to fill Danny Ongais’ stead alongside regular drivers Rick Mears and Danny Sullivan; Unser duly won his fourth Indy 500 that May.)
Looking at this year’s manufacturer champions in the WeatherTech Championship, the winners came via strength of numbers.
Cadillac’s three cars helped it ride to the full-season Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) manufacturer title while Porsche’s three cars performed best most frequently in IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup (GTP) rounds. Saturday’s overall winners Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Matt Campbell in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 also stayed out of trouble where the other two 963s didn’t.
Chevrolet repeated as GTD PRO manufacturer champions ahead of Ford, with both of the two-car efforts ahead of the armada of single-car contenders fielded by BMW, Porsche, Lamborghini, Lexus and McLaren.
“What a tremendous accomplishment for Corvette Racing and Chevrolet,” said Mark Reuss, President, General Motors. “Winning the GTD PRO manufacturer championship for the second consecutive season is a testament to the expertise, preparation and execution of our drivers, engineers and crews. We view GTD PRO as the best collection of production-based GT manufacturers and teams in the world, so to come out on top is a significant achievement.”
Lastly, Mercedes-AMG wrapped the GTD manufacturer championship, and could thank one of its extra IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup-only teams – Lone Star Racing – for a key assist there. On Winward’s two off days at Sebring and Watkins Glen, Lone Star scored two good finishes to ensure Mercedes-AMG stayed at or near the front there.
