DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca likes to throw up some of racing’s most unforgettable surprises. So, on the weekend the world bid farewell to Alex Zanardi, it was impossible not to hearken back to “The Pass” he executed on an unsuspecting Bryan Herta in the 1996 IndyCar season finale.
And long before that, John Cannon pulled off one of motorsports’ greatest upsets when he upstaged the Bruce (McLaren) & Denny (Hulme) Show to win the 1968 Can-Am race at Laguna Seca in a vintage McLaren M6B.
Thus does Sunday’s StubHub Monterey SportsCar Championship join the list of Laguna Seca surprises, as the No. 5 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963 came from last on the Grand Touring Prototype grid to claim the class and overall win.
The team became the first “privateer” organization to mount the top step of the podium in the modern era of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GTP era since the current rules package was introduced in 2023. But there were plenty more twists and turns throughout the course of the weekend.
Giant Slayers
Minnesota-based JDC-Miller has a decorated winning history across multiple IMSA-sanctioned championships, including taking titles in IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Touring Car (TCR) and the forerunner to IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge, IMSA Prototype Challenge (with 32 race wins in a row at one point).
At the top-level of the WeatherTech Championship, it now adds an improbable and remarkable overall win to its ledger, joining other marquee overall wins at Sebring (2021) and Watkins Glen (2018) and a class win at the Rolex 24 At Daytona (2016).
The team that started off with John and Katie Church fielding Formula Fords in the mid-1990s and continued on the junior open-wheel path before shifting to sports cars slayed the full factory-backed efforts from Acura, BMW, Cadillac and Porsche Sunday along with the factory-supported Heart of Racing Aston Martin.
Thanks to a combination of perfect strategy, a flawless opening stint by Tijmen van der Helm and a storming finish by Laurin Heinrich, the JDC-Miller Porsche took the win on the track where they debuted their Porsche 963 in 2023. While Heinrich justifiably received the lion’s share of the accolades in just his second start with the team on the heels of his debut at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, John Church was quick to spread the praise.
“This is an incredible day for the whole team,” Church said. “All the effort that’s gone into this over the last four years. We started here four years ago and didn’t have any idea what we were doing with this car and have been slowly building and picking up the pace. It’s been great to have Laurin come along and help guide us and give us some direction and provide some pace as well. What a day. It’s incredible.”
All the more remarkable is the fact that the JDC-Miller entry is the closest thing to a “throwback” entry in current GTP on IMSA’s “Throwback” weekend: it’s a privateer entry running in 2025 specification rather than the new-for-2026 evolutionary spec seen on the Porsche Penske Motorsport entries. JDC-Miller has focused on exploiting and executing what it has.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of help from (Porsche),” Church explained. “They have been stepping up each year. I think that this year being the only privateer running, that’s been a game changer as well. There’s been more support than there has been in the past, but it’s a big team effort and we’ve had a lot of help in the past six months. From our standpoint it’s finally come together; getting all the pieces right.
“It’s hard to figure out exactly what’s different (from the newer 963s), but (when) we unloaded for practice one on Friday the guys were happy with the car. We tweaked it a little bit, but it really comes back to the engineering group and putting all the pieces together; we unloaded well, developed a little bit and here we are.”
Church and Heinrich both gave a nod too to Richard Westbrook, a quietly key cog in the JDC-Miller chain and a three-time Monterey winner in his own career before he retired from full-time competition at the end of 2024. The Englishman serves with the team as a liaison between the drivers and engineers, among other things.
“He’s been a huge impact; a huge help to myself,” Church says. “He’s being able to liase between the drivers and the engineers and help the guys focus on the things that matter and forget about the things that don’t. From my standpoint he’s a pleasure to having him around. And he also makes a good beer!”
Heinrich added, “He knows exactly what it feels like in this car. I’m amazed when he sees the live data, he knows exactly what’s going on in terms of the car. He has a ton of experience, and two days ago, he told me something about the last corner, and it has helped me today to set up the move for the pass.”
Milner’s Soothsaying
At the tender age of 40, there’s a lot of racing left in Tommy Milner’s career. But if and when he does hang up his driving shoes for good, perhaps he can have a successful second career as a soothsayer.
“Oftentimes if you’re trying too hard to make something happen, then you’re not achieving what you’re setting out to do,” he said pre-race on an IMSA-hosted media Zoom. “We’re not getting frustrated with that; we’re just leaning on the fact that we have good race cars and we’ve had good races. One of these times, it’ll turn around.”
It nearly did Sunday, as Milner almost broke a five-year winless IMSA dry spell at the track – Laguna Seca – that literally translates to “dry lake.” While that win remains elusive, a second-place finish after starting eighth has now put Milner, Nicky Catsburg and the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R into the Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) points lead.
The winning No. 65 Ford Racing Ford Mustang GT3 turned a negative – a left-rear puncture and a drive-through assessed for incident responsibility – into a positive to go off sequence and ultimately play the best fuel game to the end. The No. 4 Corvette wasn’t far off after an eventful day of fluctuating throughout the standings itself.
“You plan for lots of different options and opportunities … starting where we started and with the start of the race I had, it was pretty clear we were going to go pretty far off-strategy,” Milner said. “If you’re not up front, you try something different to see if it’s going to work out for you. Today it worked out very well for us.
“Nicky drove an absolutely amazing race. To have the race that we had at the start and then to claw it all back at the end really feels good.”
GTP Points Anomalies
IMSA features multi-driver racing in each car. But due to two entry and schedule quirks, the top-level GTP class has two drivers alone atop the GTP standings.
Heinrich’s win now places him in the GTP lead after running all four races in two different Porsches (two apiece in the No. 7 Penske Porsche and No. 5 JDC-Miller Porsche).
Jack Aitken is second while driving all four races with three different co-drivers (Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti in three of the four apiece, plus Connor Zilisch at the Rolex 24) in his No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R.
The German holds a 21-point lead over the Englishman, courtesy of the three wins cast against four non-win podiums. Aitken even joked he’s running out of ways to say “hot streak of podiums but can we win now, please.”
The big question lingering after the next round in Detroit is whether Heinrich – currently slated to miss Watkins Glen due to a schedule conflict of his own – will be reassigned back to the third IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup round of the season in his pursuit of a GTP title.
Whether he runs the full season or not, or misses the race as currently scheduled, the 2024 GTD PRO champion is taking his incredible IMSA GTP start in stride.
“Leading IMSA is something very special,” Heinrich said. “We’ve only done four races and it’s early to think about a championship even if you are leading at the moment. Missing a race puts us in a weird spot and we are leading the championship but there are some smart people over there (at Porsche) who will figure it out, I’m sure.”
