For the first time as GTD Pro class competitors, Madison Snow and Bryan Sellers drove the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 to victory in the IMSA Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway, their first since their 2023 championship-winning season.
The grey and red #1 BMW led from the start of Sunday’s GT exclusive race, the last sprint of the 2024 IMSA season. Snow held a narrow advantage over the #64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Mustang GT3 of Harry Tincknell, which was poised to try and take the Mustang GT3’s first-ever victory.
Meanwhile, the #23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 was trying to gain ground in the GTD Pro championship and went off-sequence to gain track position, pitting after 35 minutes and allowing Alex Riberas to hand the wheel over to his title-contending co-driver, Ross Gunn. This undercut allowed Gunn to grab the overall lead ahead of the #1 BMW of Sellers, by about ten seconds on the road.
But on the next round of pit stops, the #1 Paul Miller BMW would get back ahead, with Snow leading the #23 Heart of Racing Aston of Gunn. Making things worse for Gunn, the #23 car received a drive-through penalty for failing to adhere to the minimum refuelling time – dropping the #23 to third behind the #64 Ford Mustang of Mike Rockenfeller.
A catastrophic engine failure for the #70 Inception Racing McLaren GT3 EVO (Brendan Iribe/Frederik Schandorff) brought out a Full Course Yellow with 35 minutes to go and set up a final 22-minute sprint to the finish.
Snow held off Rockenfeller, Gunn, and the field to take the chequered flag after 86 laps of racing – Paul Miller Racing’s first since the 2023 VIR event, when they won the GTD class on the way to a historic championship and their move up to the GTD Pro class – a move that Sellers now believes was the right call following this win.
“It’s pretty satisfying because you’re always answering asking questions like, ‘Did they move too quick? Did they make the right call?’ And there have been times this year when you could say we didn’t make the right decision. But I think the one thing this shows is that there’s a lot of resilience in this team and, in the end, it was the right decision,” said Sellers, who took his 20th IMSA victory.
“It’s certainly a race I’ll remember forever,” added Snow. “First overall GTD PRO win. We had one a few years ago in GTD before there were a lot of these pros around, but this is definitely a special moment.
“When that yellow flag came out, I was like ‘OK, it’s going to take up 15 minutes and that’s nice – but then I’m really going to have to after it.’ I was definitely nervous about the cars behind us. I wasn’t sure how much pace they had, but luckily we had clean air and after a couple of laps after the restart, I was able to open it up.”
Behind them, the #64 Ford Mustang GT3 of Tincknell and Rockenfeller came home to a season-best second-place finish – the best-ever result for the Mustang GT3 in its first season, surpassing Proton Competition’s third-place run at Le Mans.
The #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin of Gunn and Riberas consolidated third – but Gunn gained valuable ground in the championship after a tough day for AO Racing and ‘Roxy’. The #77 Porsche 911 GT3 R of Laurin Heinrich and Klaus Bachler only finished seventh in GTD Pro – tenth overall out of 23 cars – after Heinrich picked up a drive-through penalty for hitting the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Jack Hawksworth. Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat recovered to finish eighth overall.
Heinrich and AO Racing’s leads in the GTD Pro standings have now dwindled to just 17 points over Gunn and Heart of Racing – and now with their win, Snow, Sellers, and Paul Miller Racing are back in the title picture, 111 points out of first place.
A great weekend for the Ford Multimatic team concluded with a fourth-place finish for the #65 Mustang (Joey Hand/Dirk Müller).
Korthoff/Preston Motorsports took its first-ever IMSA GTD class victory, courtesy of a commanding drive from Kenton Koch and Mikaël Grenier who finished fifth overall. Koch got ahead of polesitter Giammarco Levorato’s #55 Proton Competition Ford in the first few corners and kept the teal and grey Mercedes at the front virtually the rest of the way. Koch and Grenier led 82 out of 86 laps and only gave up the lead during pit cycles, giving Korthoff/Preston its first IMSA win since its 2021 debut.
But they did have close company along the way, as the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin (Zacharie Robichon/Roman de Angelis) kept within reach for much of the race, and especially after the Safety Car restart – finishing second in class, and seventh overall behind the #9 Pfaff Motorsports McLaren (Oliver Jarvis/Marvin Kirchhöfer).
“It feels really good to get the win for these guys,” said Koch, who started the year as Korthoff/Preston’s Michelin Endurance Cup driver before taking Mike Skeen’s place at Road America.
“The start was really the only place where you could make something happen. I knew we had a good car but knew it would be tough. It was all down to strategy and saving some fuel at the beginning and getting us the track position to stay ahead of those guys behind us.”
It was Koch’s first win in IMSA since he won the Prototype Challenge class at the 2016 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona. For Grenier, it was his first IMSA victory.
“The Aston was quite quick, but we had a GTD Pro class McLaren between us and that was a good buffer. The track position was most important,” added the French-Canadian driver. “Obviously, I don’t think we needed that safety car there at the end, but we were still good. The team did a really nice pit stop and Kenton was amazing on fuel saving, so we had a shorter stop.
“I think it’s mostly special for the team, and the guys are really happy. I think there were a few races over the year and a half that I’ve run with them that we should have won, but we somehow missed it. The team owner (Herb Korthoff) is putting in a lot of money and Walt (Preston, team manager) is making a lot of effort.”
Third place in GTD and ninth place overall went to the #78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 (Misha Goikhberg/Loris Spinelli), their first podium of 2024.
Spinelli took third place from the #96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 of Robby Foley with 12 minutes left, but not far behind was Philip Ellis in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG. From tenth place in class after he took over from co-driver Russell Ward, Ellis clawed his way back up the field, and muscled his way past Foley with just six laps left to grab fourth place in GTD.
Ward and Ellis finished ahead of Foley and Patrick Gallagher, and crucially, the Winward Racing duo gained 20 points to push their lead over the Turner tandem to 284 points.
The #70 Inception Racing McLaren’s retirement also had implications in the three-driver race for the Bob Akin Award. Orey Fidani and Matt Bell finished seventh in GTD in the #13 AWA Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, ahead of the McLaren, and ahead of the #66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 (Sheena Monk/Stevan McAleer), which went behind the wall and lost 14 laps with a damaged suspension.
With an automatic invitation to Le Mans at stake, Fidani now leads Monk by 60 points, and Iribe by 70.
It was the only highlight for the Corvette Racing fleet: Both Pratt Miller Motorsports cars finished at the bottom of the GTD Pro running order – the #3 (Antonio Garcia/Alexander Sims) lost nearly 30 laps with power steering issues, while the #4 (Tommy Milner/Nicky Catsburg) had a starter issue on its last pit stop.
As for the #55 Proton Competition Mustang of Levorato and Corey Lewis, it dropped from the GTD podium to eighth in class after Lewis ran off course in the closing minutes.
Images © Richard Dole, Jake Galstad, Michael L. Levitt / IMSA
