| Triple Crown of Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans Wins In Same Season Would Be Unprecedented June 10, 2025By John OreoviczIMSA Wire Service |
| DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Staged annually since 1962 (in a shorter format the first four years), the Rolex 24 At Daytona International Speedway is the newcomer among international sports car racing’s “Triple Crown” of endurance races. The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring has been contested since 1952, while the history of the 24 Hours of Le Mans spans more than a century, back to 1923. Only 10 drivers have claimed overall victory in all three races, and no one has accomplished the feat in the same year. The esteemed list includes Timo Bernhard, Mauro Baldi, A.J. Foyt, Hurley Haywood, Hans Herrmann, Al Holbert, Jackie Oliver, Andy Wallace and Marco Werner, and one new member this year: Nick Tandy. Four of those drivers (Herrmann, 1970; Haywood, 1973; Foyt, 1985; and Baldi, 1998) were part of the winning team at Daytona and Sebring and had a shot of capturing the Triple Crown at Le Mans in the same season. Herrmann came closest of the above to the triple; his teammate Jo Siffert qualified on pole for Le Mans ’68, but their Porsche 908 dropped out in the fifth hour. Ken Miles won Daytona and Sebring for the factory Ford team in 1966, but he never got to Le Mans; he was killed in an accident at Riverside Raceway while testing the Ford J-car prototype. Jacky Ickx won both Daytona and Sebring in 1972, but the Daytona race was not 24 hours that year. Ickx, Haywood and Foyt didn’t contest Le Mans in the year they doubled-up at Daytona and Sebring, while Baldi’s attempt fell short with a 14th place finish at Circuit de la Sarthe in a Ferrari 333SP. By co-driving the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 to overall victory in the opening two races of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – the Rolex 24 and the Sebring 12 – Tandy joined the exclusive group of sports car Triple Crown winners. Now he and fellow Porsche pilots Felipe Nasr and Laurens Vanthoor have the rare opportunity to taste triumph in all three crown jewel endurance races in the same season. |
| At Le Mans, Tandy, his full-time WeatherTech Championship teammate Nasr, and Pascal Wehrlein will drive the No. 4, a third Porsche entry awarded to the PPM team for its 2024 IMSA Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) championship (photo right, courtesy Porsche Newsroom). Vanthoor, who is the third driver with Nasr and Tandy in IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup events, co-drives the No. 6 Porsche full-time in the FIA World Endurance Championship with Kevin Estre and another IMSA full-timer in Mathieu Jaminet. Julien Andlauer, Michael Christensen, and Matt Campbell – Jaminet’s IMSA teammate – share Porsche’s third Le Mans challenger, the No. 5 car. There are therefore two potential successful outcomes for the Triple Crown storyline – Tandy/Nasr or Vanthoor – and the fact that they will play out as an intra-team battle between two factory Penske Porsche entries makes it all the more intriguing. Speaking at the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic, where they finished fourth, Tandy and Nasr declared themselves ready to take on the challenge of Le Mans. “That’s the ultimate goal, and it would be incredible to have that addition to my CV – for Roger Penske and Porsche, as well,” Nasr said. “We already started the year really well, like a dream. It’s been fantastic to get Daytona and Sebring back-to-back in the same year, so I’m already like, ‘Wow! This is unique and special, what we have accomplished so far.’ “That’s already history in the making, and now Le Mans is a race I dreamed of winning since I joined sports car racing,” he continued. “It’s a huge goal for Roger, Porsche, and the team to win that race. It’s always a big unknown, but I feel very confident we have a very strong group of people and team.” |
| Tandy joined the exalted club of sports car Triple Crown winners thanks to his overall Le Mans victory in 2015, also achieved with the factory Porsche team and co-drivers Earl Bamber and Nico Hulkenberg. Sweeping the ‘Big Three’ in the same season would put him in the conversation about all-time sports car greats with the likes of Ickx, Brian Redman, and Tom Kristensen, among others. “If you’d asked me about winning the Triple Crown before, I’d have said, ‘That’s never going to happen. It’s just unbelievably likely to happen,’” Tandy related. “The problem is we’ve had an unbelievably unlikely season so far. I’m incredibly proud to get to this point where we’re still talking about it now, because it means we’ve won Daytona and we won Sebring. That’s an incredible thing to say, by itself. “So, you begin to think, ‘What is possible?’” he added. “When luck is on your side and things are rolling your way, you’ve got to roll with it. Why not take it on to France next weekend?” Perfect execution has been the hallmark of Porsche’s 2025 season in the WeatherTech Championship. Tandy and Nasr used superior driver change speed to post a sprint race win at Long Beach to their Daytona and Sebring endurance triumphs. They finished a strong second to the team car driven by Jaminet and Campbell at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, then were in position to win again at the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic until Nasr was bumped out of the lead late in the contest. In 2025 IMSA competition, the Porsche 963 hasn’t been the fastest car over a single lap. But it has demonstrated phenomenal race pace, and when combined with Porsche Penske Motorsport’s keen strategy and mistake-free operation, Tandy and Nasr have compiled a near perfect start to their season. Their ultimate goal is the IMSA championship, but with Detroit in the rear-view mirror, they are fully focused on Le Mans. “We will be there with a car capable of winning and a group of people running the car that are the best in the business, and three drivers who know their way around the racetrack,” Tandy declared. “We’ve got every chance to do it. If the car works, and the tires and the track conditions suit what we’ve got in our package, we’ll be ready to win it. “We’re not trying to score points for the championship like the other two cars. All we are trying to do is get Porsche back to Victory Lane at Le Mans. It’s the biggest motorsport event in the world, isn’t it? It’s like the World Cup, where the best in the world get together for a one-off showdown. “It would be massive to me.” |
