Ganassi Cadillac Headlights, Porsche Penske Titles Spotlight Motul Petit Le Mans

A race that was largely dominated by an intra-team battle between Porsche Penske Motorsport teammates ceded the spotlight to headlights, under the lights, in the final 10 minutes of the 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans.

 

Toppling the pair of Porsches, the striking, one-off, pink No. 01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R driven by Renger van der Zande, Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon captured the final victory of the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. The Cadillac did so despite spotty electronics that threatened to derail its comeback drive.

 

Porsche Penske Motorsport led 235 of 443 laps but failed to win the race. It did, however, clinch championships in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class driver, team, manufacturer and Michelin Endurance Cup with Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron.

 

Sensor-related issues and a pair of pit-lane drive-through penalties sent the Chip Ganassi Racing-prepared Cadillac down the order. But the trio of drivers made up the difference in the heat of the day before another potential pitfall beckoned: faulty headlights.

 

Green-flag racing dominated the proceedings, as the race ran more than four and a half hours in-between full-course cautions. Heading into the final half hour of the race after a restart from the fifth and final full-course caution, Nick Tandy led the field in the No. 6 Porsche 963 ahead of van der Zande in the No. 01 Cadillac.

 

Yet van der Zande pulled a bold move on Tandy reminiscent of one the Englishman had done earlier in the race. With 15 minutes remaining, the Dutchman dove to the inside of Tandy into Turn 1, with a late lunge to move past him.

 

“It was the only move I could make,” van der Zande said. “I was behind Tandy for a while, and he was so fast on the straights. Every time they pulled a gap of like, I don't know, six, seven car lengths. But in the corners we were very fast. Especially we set up the car a lot for Turn 1 and Turn 3. That's where I could really make up a lot of ground.”

 

Tandy’s race nearly became unglued further a lap later with contact from Philipp Eng in the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8. Eng was assessed a drive-through for incident responsibility.

 

The drama for van der Zande in the waning minutes came not from Tandy, but instead from his own headlights on the No. 01 Cadillac. Either the left, right or both headlights flickered and intermittently went on and off.

 

At no point did they go out long enough to trigger a mechanical black flag from series officials, but it was still a potential nightmare scenario that the race win would have been erased by the lack of lights.

 

Van der Zande switched them on and off several times to try and remedy the issue and had both lights on long enough to ensure he made it home to the flag, 2.948 seconds ahead of Tandy.

 

“It was a bit of a disco going on,” van der Zande laughed. “I started to press all kinds of buttons this way, and it was still not good enough. Then it stuck more and more and more, then they told me, ‘Press the white button,’ so I pressed the white button and it worked. So, we got the lights back.”

 

The win caps van der Zande and Bourdais’ three-year tenure as co-drivers in the Ganassi-prepared Cadillac in IMSA, and van der Zande’s time, for now, with the brand after more than 70 races and seven years. The win is the second of the season for the No. 01 car and the 67th for Ganassi, 21st for van der Zande, 13th for Bourdais and sixth for Dixon in their IMSA careers. Bourdais noted how the same trio dominated this race in 2023 but didn’t win but flipped the script in 2024.

 

“I think the best way to say is last year we won the race except the last, what, half hour. This year we lost it all race long, and then we won it for the last 30 minutes,” Bourdais said. “We kind of put a race together in two years.”

 

Tandy, Mathieu Jaminet and Kevin Estre finished second both in the race and the season in their No. 6 Porsche. It was a result that had several peaks and valleys, including a Tandy comeback following an earlier penalty assessed for incident responsibility with a GTD class Ferrari 296 GT3 and a decisive pass for the lead on Ricky Taylor’s No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 into Turn 1, which positioned them well heading into the final pit stops.

 

Quicker service by the WTRAndretti crew propelled the No. 10 Acura temporarily to the lead ahead of the No. 6 Porsche, although Taylor ran wide on exit on cold tires. Things went from bad to worse when after a four-plus-hour green-flag stint, Taylor collected Corey Lewis, whose No. 55 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 was already damaged after an incident and stranded in the middle of the road exiting Turn 5.

 

Taylor limped the Acura, with significant left-front and left-side damage, back to the pits and behind the wall with another challenging end to their season at this race.

 

It left the final podium position to the car and team that spent the majority of the race celebrating its season-long accolades, the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry of Nasr, Cameron and Matt Campbell.

 

The No. 7 team clinched the GTP Michelin Endurance Cup title at the four-hour mark and shortly thereafter, sealed the full-season championship as a second GTP car (the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8) dropped out. It’s the sixth IMSA championship for Team Penske, fourth for Cameron and third for Nasr.

 

TDS Races to LMP2 Win, Endurance Title; Inter Europol Locks Up Season Crown

 

With apologies to Meat Loaf, TDS Racing might well say “two out of three ain’t bad.” Although the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) championship was out of reach, a Motul Petit Le Mans victory and IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup class title were there for the taking for TDS and drivers Mikkel Jensen, Hunter McElrea and Steven Thomas.

 

And after a first nine hours with an uncharacteristic dearth of full-course cautions, it seemed the No. 11 TDS ORECA LMP2 07 was well on its way to capturing the race win, having already clinched the Michelin Endurance Cup by leading at the eight-hour mark of the race and given that just one competitor – the No. 74 Riley ORECA of Josh Burdon, Felipe Fraga and Gar Robinson – remained on the lead lap

 

“Petit Le Mans is the most crazy race of the season, for sure,” said Jensen. “It’s all about survival in the beginning, then we also had the task today to try to get endurance points at four hours and eight hours, so we couldn’t just care about survival. We also had to get the car in the lead to get the points for the endurance title and then go for the win after that.”

 

But a caution with less than an hour remaining not only wiped out TDS’s handsome lead, but the resulting series of final fuel stops also enabled no fewer than four other LMP2 cars to join the TDS and Riley cars on the lead lap.

 

Having earlier set the fastest LMP2 lap of the race, Jensen quickly put paid to any potential drama. At the drop of the green flag, he carved his way past a couple GTP cars to get breathing room on Fraga, and subsequently gapped his pursuers by a second or more a lap to come home more than 17 seconds clear of the Riley ORECA to secure the win.

 

“I know how the GTP cars struggle on (cold) tires on restarts,” Jensen said. “So one of the targets in LMP2 cars is to pass some GTP cars on the restarts and by that you can gap the rest of P2 cars. I managed to pass the Lambo GTP in Turn 1 and the Proton (Porsche) in Turn 7. Fraga was following with me through that. They came back on me on the straight and it was three cars side-by-side into Turn 10, the Proton and our two P2 cars.

 

“I escaped from that one in first place, and I think Fraga was battling with them for three or four or five laps, and I managed to stay clear. Eventually, (the GTP cars) got pace in their tires and passed me, but by that point I had my gap and it was just a matter of managing the gap to the finish.”

 

Behind Jensen and Fraga, Tom Dillman was trying to maintain station in the No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen ORECA to clinch the drivers’ title for him and co-driver Nick Boulle, and the team championship for the No. 52. Dillman brought the car home fourth, more than enough to do the job.

 

“I knew I just needed a sixth and I was sixth at the restart,” said Dillman. “I let the other guys fight and bang wheels. It was kind of crazy to see. I was just coasting and letting them fight because I didn’t want to take any risk. But then I overtook a couple of cars, was sitting P4 and the podium was close. But I decided for the team not to fight for the podium.”

 

In addition to securing the season championships, the finish secured the Jim Trueman Award for Boulle as the Bronze-rated LMP2 champion. It brings with it an invitation to drive in the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans.

 

“It’s certainly surreal,” said Boulle. “Everybody’s worked so hard at Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen to make this happen. We were really consistent. Tom has been so helpful and so has Kuba (endurance co-driver Jakub Smiechowski). I think I’ll have to wait to wake up tomorrow to make sure I understand it. It’s really special.”

 

Results are HERE