| Porsche Penske 1-2 Points Haul Leads Entertaining, Highly Competitive Season October 17, 2024By Tony DiZinnoIMSA Wire Service |
| DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – History and numerology matter to Team Penske and Porsche. The combination of both parties into the Porsche Penske Motorsport program, through its test and development efforts in 2022 and race debut in 2023 with the intentionally numbered Porsche 963, was always meant to produce results, key race victories and championships. It’s fair to say “Mission Accomplished” for both parties in the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. Porsche wrapped nine total titles – six in Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) and three in Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) – in a mostly dominant 2024 campaign. Those six in GTP covered driver, team and manufacturer crowns across both the full-season championship and five-race IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup. Strong Start for the No. 7 Car The pair of Porsche 963 cars controlled the season early and established themselves often through the first six races, so the title would largely go through either the No. 7 car of Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron or the No. 6 of Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet. Nasr, Cameron, Matt Campbell and Josef Newgarden ticked the first “major” box for the program with a victory for the No. 7 at the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January. Two more wins – one by each Penske car – followed by the end of June, both thanks to late-race passes inside the final 20 minutes. Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R was delayed by traffic at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, which allowed Tandy to sneak through and secure the No. 6 car’s first win of the year. Then the No. 7 car made a winning move at Watkins Glen International, as Nasr passed leader Louis Deletraz (No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06) on a restart. Nasr and Cameron’s consistency of six top-four finishes and five podiums in the first six races moved them into a 93-point lead over Renger van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais in the No. 01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R following that Watkins Glen win, with the Tandy and Jaminet pair third and 132 points in arrears. Road America and Indianapolis Shift the Points |
| Inevitably, the championship battle shifted at the rounds before the finale, and not at the finale itself. With traffic also a factor late at Road America, Jaminet maneuvered through the back of the field better to resist Nasr’s advances and secure Porsche Penske’s only 1-2 finish of the season. That also brought Jaminet and Tandy within 100 points with two races to go. Then at Indianapolis, Jaminet and Tandy were third across the finish line but suffered a painful loss of points when a wiring harness/loom was discovered to be out of homologation in postrace technical inspection. Despite power steering woes for the No. 7 of Nasr and Cameron, the resultant points swing from an unofficial 14-point margin to an official 124-point gap entering Motul Petit Le Mans all but secured the title for the No. 7 car then and there. That made the finale all the easier to handle for Nasr, Cameron and Campbell. The titles were wrapped early and a third-place finish returned the No. 7 car to the podium for, fittingly, a seventh time in nine races. Cameron, Nasr Reflect on Latest Title It’s the 45th championship across all forms of motorsport for Team Penske and the sixth in IMSA, the fourth for Cameron and third for Nasr. Cameron also was part of a previous Penske IMSA title in 2019, when he shared an Acura ARX-05 with Juan Pablo Montoya in the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class that preceded GTP. |
| “I think that’s really what it takes to win these, is you need to be top three, top five every single weekend, which we nearly accomplished,” said Cameron, which rang true since the No. 7 Porsche finished lower than fourth just once in nine races. “You need to win two to three races, which we also did. Kind of winning Daytona was a bonus and is always a goal when, I think, you begin the year. Personally, for me, it was a really big goal, and I think for everybody it’s really the way you start the year is to try to win that race.” Nasr, who’d won his two previous titles with the Whelen Cadillac team, reflected on what it meant to win a championship with Cameron after racing against him for so long. “I have a lot of respect for Dane, for all the years he accomplished here in IMSA, all the championships he has won,” Nasr said. “Funny enough, we were always fighting against each other on track, and this year we finally got the chance to do it.” Tandy and Jaminet ended second in points, 113 in arrears following their runner-up Motul Petit Le Mans finish, in a year where their midseason surge of four straight podiums (including two wins) from WeatherTech Raceway through Road America wasn’t enough to offset the slightly stronger start by their sister car. At times, the dogged determination both drivers exhibited proved championship-worthy in their own right. “I would also like to probably use that moment to recognize the efforts of the (No.) 6 car,” Cameron said. “They did have a really good year. They had a good year last year as well, and honestly have been kind of out of contention for things that are outside of the driver’s hands, let’s say.” Cadillac, Acura, BMW All Winners but Not Champions Behind the two Penske Porsches, the rest of GTP finished in “Noah’s Ark” formation in the standings: two Cadillacs, two Acuras, two BMWs and two customer Porsches. |
| Van der Zande’s bold and daring move on Tandy to win the Motul Petit Le Mans served as a poignant end to his seven years with Cadillac and Cadillac’s four years with Chip Ganassi Racing. He and Bourdais finished third in points, a four-spot improvement on their 2023 season, with that win as well as a victory at Long Beach. Aitken and Pipo Derani ended fourth in points, with the pair combining for four Motul Pole Awards but no wins in the No. 31 Cadillac. Additionally, 2024 marked the end of Derani’s six years in the car, with his two titles in 2019 and 2023 serving as highlights. WTRAndretti capped off its time with Acura at Petit Le Mans as the team moves back to Cadillac in 2025. Both the No. 40 (Deletraz and Jordan Taylor) and No. 10 (Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor) pair won a race – Deletraz’s late pass on Bourdais at Sebring was one of the moves of the year – but a total of four podiums combined left the Acuras further down the order. BMW M Team RLL endured a difficult season, failing to reach the podium with either BMW M Hybrid V8 until a surprise – if welcome – 1-2 finish at the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks in Indianapolis, led by Jesse Krohn and Philipp Eng in the No. 24 car ahead of Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly in the No. 25. Team co-owner Bobby Rahal said it was one of the most special victories in his racing career. Proton Competition and JDC-Miller MotorSports both completed their first full seasons with the customer Porsche 963s after running partial 2023 campaigns, with results harder to come by in a deep, 10-car, full-season field. That said, Proton’s No. 5 car posted four fifth-place finishes and the JDC-Miller No. 85 banked a podium at Indianapolis in what proved to be Richard Westbrook’s final year before announcing his retirement as a driver. Lamborghini Iron Lynx premiered its SC63 prototype in four races and showed flashes of potential, notably leading in the rain at Indianapolis with Romain Grosjean. Aston Martin is set to debut its new Valkyrie in 2025 and with other manufacturers considering programs – including the announced Genesis program with a to-be-determined debut date – the future of GTP remains bright as its homologation cycle is open through 2029. But any contenders will have to go through Porsche Penske in 2025. |
| “On a personal level to me when I joined this program,” Nasr said, “it was, I remember, they’re asking me, ‘So why do you want to join the program?’ I said, ‘Well, I want to create history with you guys.’ I mean, you guys, look at all the statements you made. I want to continue history. “Here we are. 2022 was the development, 2023 was a difficult season. Come ’24, we completely changed the pace of the program and finally getting everything done, winning all the championships possible. “That’s exactly what I’m here for and representing such two big names in the sport like Porsche and Penske. For me as a driver and as a person, it’s a unique moment for sure to cherish.” |
