IMSA Wire: Early Dominance Set Stage for Winward’s GTD Championship

Winning Four of First Five Races in 2024 Put No. 57 Mercedes on Path to Title
October 22, 2024By Jeff OlsonIMSA Wire Service

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – While other teams were stressing over points and possibilities of championships during the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans, Philip Ellis, Russell Ward and Winward Racing were celebrating before the race had ended.
Or trying not to, anyway.
Ward, Ellis and the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 didn’t need much to begin the celebration and sweep all class championships in the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
They had clinched the manufacturer championship for Mercedes-AMG in September and needed only to finish 14th in the season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta to claim the driver and team championships.
“This is the end goal, right?” Ward said in the postrace press conference. “You come here, and you want to win races. You want to be competitive. All of us have eyes on the championship.”
The early celebration was put in place by some hard work and positive results earlier in the season. The team won four of the first five races and finished no worse than eighth over the course of the 10-race season.

“We did the heavy lifting earlier this year and the first part of the season,” Ellis said. “We had some more difficult races at the end in Indy and also here (at Petit Le Mans). We still kept it together. We didn’t really put a foot wrong and put the championship up.”
Early heavy lifting, indeed. Winward opened the season by winning the Rolex 24 At Daytona. An adjustment to new Michelin tires left Ward praising the team’s engineers for the strength of the Mercedes over longer stints.
“We just kind of set the car for the long run,” Ward said. “That’s what we all like, and it’s nice to put a fast lap together, but at the end of the day, you just want to be good on the long runs. I think the engineers did a great job of doing that.”
And what’s better than winning the Rolex 24? Following it with a victory in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, where Ward, Ellis and endurance specialist Indy Dontje brought the car from the back of the pack after a technical infraction during qualifying.
“In the end, we knew that we had a good car,” Dontje said. “From the second stint onward, we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s get this.’”
Following a seventh-place effort at Long Beach, where Ben Barnicoat and Parker Thompson teamed to win in the No. 89 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3, Winward returned with successive wins at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and Watkins Glen International. The latter victory established Winward as the favorite to win the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup for the best performances throughout the season’s five endurance races.
A runner-up finish behind the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo co-driven by Roman De Angelis and Spencer Pumpelly at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park further established Winward’s hold on the GTD championships.
At Road America, the team finished fourth while the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 co-driven by Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher prevailed. A third-place finish was secured by Winward at VIRginia International Raceway while the No. 32 Korthoff/Preston Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 co-driven by Kenton Koch and Mikael Grenier found the winner’s circle.
A fifth-place finish at Indianapolis clinched the manufacturer’s championship while the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R co-driven by Jan Heylen, Adam Adelson and Elliott Skeer won, setting the stage for Winward’s eighth-place finale at Motul Petit Le Mans while the No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 celebrated victory with co-drivers Cedric Sbirrazzuoli, Albert Costa Balboa and Manny Franco.

When the dust settled, Ward, Ellis and the No. 57 Mercedes finished 230 points ahead of Foley, Gallagher and the No. 96 BMW in the driver and team standings.
“It’s just an incredible result for the team,” Ward said. “A lot of long nights and hard – long, hard nights. It’s just been difficult but exciting at the same time. It’s really good to be able to bring it home.”
As drivers often do, Ellis redirected the praise to the engineers who set up the No. 57 Mercedes and the strategists who got it to the front of the field.
“We have one of the easier jobs on the team as drivers,” he said. “The team really made it easy this year. They did such a perfect job. They always had a great car, great strategy in the pit box. We were always one step ahead of the competition. As drivers, we just had to bring it home.”
And, once they brought it home at Michelin Raceway, Ward and Ellis wanted only to get back to their teammates to celebrate.
“I’m looking forward to getting back with the crew and really celebrating this win, because those are the guys who get it done,” Ward said. “As drivers, we come here for the interview session, but in reality, all the work is done at home. We show up here and just try to execute.”