Laguna Seca Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jordan Lenssen/Porsche

***Porsche Penske Motorsport claimed its third consecutive 1-2 finish in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition following Sunday’s Monterey SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. With the cars placing first and third in the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, neither of the factory squad’s Porsche 963s have failed to finish off the podium so far this year.

***The last time Team Penske had such a win streak in IMSA competition came in 2007 when Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas won four American Le Mans Series races in a row at Mid-Ohio, Road America, Mosport and Detroit Belle Isle in their No. 7 Porsche RS Spyder.

***Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy, who had won all three races prior to Sunday’s two-hour and 40-minute contest, have seen their GTP championship lead reduced to 91 points over Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell, who celebrated their first GTP victory as co-drivers.

***Dries Vanthoor and Philipp Eng, who scored a second consecutive third place result in the No. 24 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid, despite a last-lap incident involving Tandy, sit 280 points behind Nasr and Tandy.

***Sunday’s race marked the first caution-free WeatherTech Championship round since Detroit Belle Isle 2022. The last time a series race at Laguna Seca didn’t feature a single yellow flag was the 2019 edition, which Penske also won with Dane Cameron and Juan Pablo Montoya in an Acura ARX-05.

***Porsche Penske managing director Jonathan Diuguid told Sportscar365: “I think the only one [that could have been a caution] where one of the Aston Martins went into the tire wall pretty hard. Honestly that would have been a really difficult strategy decision if it went yellow there, on what we would have done. We would have probably just split the cars. It was good to see all the strategies play out and the execution of the team helped take over.”

***Only four cars finished on the lead lap — Both Penske Porsches and the pair of Team RLL-run BMWs.

***Nasr took the lead from pole-sitter Vanthoor on Lap 39 in a bold move on the outside of the Belgian. He said: “When I was running second, just behind the BMW, I did see an opportunity where he got caught up on traffic and I did find a way past through the outside of Turn 5. I took the lead, which was really nice.”

***Co-driver Tandy believes that GTP traffic that held him up in the closing stages of the No. 7 Porsche’s second stint likely made the difference in missing out on the win to Jaminet, who just narrowly edged out ahead after the Englishman’s final pit stop.

***Tandy said: “I was racing, I think behind the 10 car, and it was a couple of laps before the stop. He was obviously trying to protect from going a lap down but I got a run around the outside and I was clear in the exit of 5 and he squeezed me off and we lost about three seconds, which proves pivotal a couple of laps later coming out of the pit lane.”

***Each of last year’s winning cars, the No. 6 Porsche, No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R and No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, reprised their victories as achieved last year at Laguna Seca, although with slightly revised lineups for the GTP and GTD Pro class winners, as Jaminet was teamed with Tandy and Heinrich was with Seb Priaulx in last year’s edition.

***Several cars, including the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R, both Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3s and No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari 296 GT3, all received stop-and-repair orders due to tire pressure violations at the end of the opening hour. A Michelin spokesperson told Sportscar365 this was likely due to teams miscalculating the tire pressures due to the cooler conditions on race day.

***Both of the WTR Racing Cadillacs, as well as the Action Express Racing entry, struggled for pace on Sunday, with the No. 10 Cadillac suffering right-front damage from an incident with the No. 85 JDC-Miller Motorsports Porsche of Tijmen van der Helm, which required a front nose change in Filipe Albuquerque’s final stop.

***Albuquerque said: “Another hard day at the office. It was an eventful race for me, a lot of action and too many fights with the 85 Porsche. That’s part of the game and unfortunately I had some damage with the front nose. Lost a lot of time there and then just cruising and tried to survive. We’re not there yet with the car. We need to figure it out.”

***The No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 of Colin Braun was also left with bodywork damage after an off-course excursion in the second hour, which ultimately forced Braun into the pits due to a mechanical black flag to repair the rear deck. Braun and co-driver Tom Blomqvist finished 11th, last in the GTP class after running as high as third,

***Braun said: “One of the Wayne Taylor cars had a bit of a run and then got just barely on the inside and hit the left rear tire down the Corkscrew. We had a puncture and that was pretty much our race over. It looked like we were in a good spot and then unfortunately it all unraveled.”

***AO Racing’s Heinrich and Klaus Bachler have taken over the lead of the GTD Pro standings with their second consecutive class win. The car took the win despite getting a warning for failure to adhere to controlled powertrain parameters in the opening hour.

***Winward Racing’s Philip Ellis and Russell Ward extended their lead in the GTD standings to 124 points over the Vasser Sullivan Lexus duo of Parker Thompson and Jack Hawksworth with their second class win in the last three races.

***Thompson and Hawksworth scored their third consecutive runner-up finish in the No. 12 Lexus. “We had to go slightly off strategy at the beginning, but in many ways it worked out for us because Parker was able to jump to the lead and put some good laps in,” said Hawksworth. “The Mercedes were quicker than us and were able to catch up, but then the final ten laps we did what we could to stay there in case anything happened.”

***Ellis, Ward, as well as Inception’s Brendan Iribe and Frederik Schandorff, left immediately following the post-race ceremonies to catch a flight on Winward’s jet to Spa for the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa official test days, which gets underway on Tuesday.

***The No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Casper Stevenson, which started from the rear of the field due to a minimum ground clearance infraction after initially qualifying third, ended up in the wall in the second hour and nearly brought out a yellow, although Stevenson was able to quickly rejoin, en route to a 12th place class finish with co-driver Darren Turner.

***Stevenson said: “It was a bit of a challenging weekend. We had a great qualifying, but a very tiny thing and there we were put in the back of the field. It was always going to be hearts to come through the field but we had a great strategy. We had contact with the Porsche. It’s been great to share a car with Darren. I’ve learned a lot, but it’s still tough after such a good opening two rounds.”

***With regular race engineer Tyler Neff having been on FIA World Endurance Championship duty for TF Sport in the No. 33 Corvette, chief engineer Kyle Millay filled in on the No. 4 Corvette. It marked the first time in his career (ten-plus years) that he has engineered a No. 4 Corvette as all his previous races were with the No. 3 team.

***Vanthoor’s fourth consecutive pole on Saturday brought him closer to the all-time qualifying record in modern-day IMSA history, which is currently held by Ricky Taylor, who claimed six poles in a row in the 2011 Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series season in a Wayne Taylor Racing-run Corvette DP.

***Next up for the WeatherTech Championship is the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on May 30-31, which will see GTP and GTD Pro cars in action on the downtown streets of Detroit for 100 minutes of action. All four classes will then reconvene for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on June 20-22, which marks the third round of the Michelin Endurance Cup.