Acura Meyer Shank Racing’s Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun had just enough left in the tank, quite literally, to hold on for their first win of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – in an action-packed Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen that came down to fuel strategy in the final three-lap dash to the finish.
The blue and white #60 Acura ARX-06 took the victory in a race that began under cloudy skies with monsoon-level rain following soon after, ended under the blistering evening sunshine of a summer heatwave, and had ten Full Course Yellows in between, taking up just under half of the six-hour duration.
None were more impactful than the last yellow that came out with ten minutes left, caused by a left-rear suspension failure for the No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette that took Charlie Eastwood out of second place in GTD. With the pit lane closed, it turned the race for the win into a three-minute sprint to the finish with the leading GTP cars running on fumes.
The leading #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R ran out of energy coming to the white flag, and Blomqvist drove through to take the win for Meyer Shank Racing after finishing with just one per cent of virtual energy left in his tank. It was their first win since reuniting at Meyer Shank Racing this offseason.
Blomqvist said that he wasn’t concerned about running it lean at the end of the race: “We committed to that (strategy). We thought we were going to be able to go to the end, regardless of the yellow. The yellow made things a little less stressful – I could basically push the last few laps, if I wanted to.
“I think, ultimately, that’s what won us the race today – but also, the car really came alive there for me in those last couple of stints. That enabled me to have such good pace, while hitting such a big fuel target. I mean, it all kind of came to heaven for us there, at the end!”
“It’s been a challenging year at times,” mused his co-driver Braun. “We’ve had a lot of things that just haven’t gone our way on the No. 60 that, I feel like if they did fall our way, we’d have a lot of different results. So it was nice today, where it fell our way.
“Everyone did a super job, Tom did a great job there at the end on the fuel save. The guys did a really good job on strategy, fine-tuning in the numbers. It was definitely stressful from my seat, listening to those guys do all the math in the background. Hats off to everyone – huge day for our group.”
The two Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillacs finished second and third, with a season-best second place for the #40 of Jordan Taylor and Louis Deletraz, and a second straight podium for the #10 of Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque.
The younger of the Taylor brothers, Jordan, credited his team’s call to put Deletraz off-sequence and in clean air with 50 minutes left as the catalyst for their slump-busting podium. “The call kind of made our race with the yellow coming out late, and putting us up into second. The # 10 car made it in right before the yellow, and put them in third.
“I feel like we’ve kind of turned a corner on this year with a lot of the bad luck that we’ve had, and hopefully that momentum can kind of continue our steer.”
Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell took a narrow GTP points lead after finishing fourth in their #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963, overtaking teammates Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy in the Drivers’ standings. Tandy suffered a heavy accident in turn one with 80 minutes to go; while he walked away after slamming into the tires, he and Nasr only came away with 11th-place points.
After controlling most of the final two hours, the #31 Whelen Cadillac (Jack Aitken/Earl Bamber/Frederik Vesti) finished fifth after their splash-and-dash with less than two laps to go, ahead of the polesitting #93 MSR Acura (Renger van der Zande/Nick Yelloly/Kakunoshin Ohta), which came in a lap before.
Four manufacturers led significant portions of the race – including Lamborghini, which finally finished a race as Romain Grosjean and Daniil Kvyat brought the #63 Squadra Corse SC63 home to seventh place.
The #22 United Autosports USA ORECA 07-Gibson of Daniel Goldburg, Paul di Resta, and Rasmus Lindh won LMP2, their second win of the season after the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
To get there, Goldburg had to navigate through the treacherous mixed conditions of the first 90 minutes of the race, which proved difficult for his fellow LMP2 Bronzes. His teammate Nick Boulle crashed the #2 ORECA under a Full Course Yellow and was knocked out of contention.
The biggest shock of the race came when PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports’ Rodrigo Sales was spun out of turn nine, right into the path of TDS Racing’s Steven Thomas, who hit Sales head-on. Both drivers, thankfully, were unhurt despite the violent collision.
“At one point, just keeping the car on the track in the heavy downpour on slicks was a challenge in of itself,” said Goldburg. “Reminded me of last year, when a lot of people went off. Two restarts in mixed conditions, on the slicks in the beginning with the rain coming down…yeah, it was a lot thrown at me, and I was really happy to pull it off.”
Di Resta held off the #99 AO Racing ORECA of PJ Hyett, Dane Cameron, and Jonny Edgar, who finished second, ahead of the #04 CrowdStrike by APR car (George Kurtz/Malthe Jakobsen/Toby Sowery) and the #18 Era Motorsport car (Tobias Lutke/Paul-Loup Chatin/David Heinemeier Hansson).
Paul Miller Racing’s new young duo of Dan Harper and Max Hesse came through to win GTD PRO in their #48 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, overcoming a 60-second penalty stop during the early hours of the race.
Harper earned the penalty by running the red light at the exit of pit lane after his first pit stop, which happened during a Full Course Yellow. But the frequent Safety Cars helped him and Hesse charge back through the field with their speed, eventually re-taking the lead with two hours to go, then taking their first career IMSA victories.
“At that point, I sort of thought I had blew it,” Harper recalled after taking the early penalty just over an hour into the race. “Then it was on to Max to bring us back up the order, and he did a great job.
“Also, the team with the strategy, and we got fortunate with the amount of Safety Cars today that gave us the opportunity to come forward. And then they gave me the position to bring it home. It was a nice feeling.”
Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims finished second in the #3 Corvette Z06 GT3.R, and took the lead in the GTD PRO standings by 62 points after the #77 AO Racing Porsche (Laurin Heinrich/Klaus Bachler) dropped to sixth after suffering damage in a collision during the final hour, finishing behind the #4 Pratt Miller Corvette (Tommy Milner/Nicky Catsburg).
Rexy swung up and down the running order, even leading during the mixed-weather opening phase from ninth on the grid. Harper and Hesse moved up to third in the table, ahead of the #65 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Mustang GT3 (Christopher Mies/Frederic Vervisch), which rounded out the GTD PRO podium, ahead of the #81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3 (Albert Costa/Davide Rigon).
Watkins Glen was a race of woe for the polesitting #9 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 (Andrea Caldarelli/Sandy Mitchell) which broke down twice and retired just before half-distance.
In GTD, the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage of Casper Stevenson, Tom Gamble, and Zacharie Robichon scored a stunning last-lap victory, after the #12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus ran out of fuel on the final lap while leading.
But Robichon came so close to disaster when he narrowly avoided getting swept up in the collision between Sales and Thomas. “I don’t think I ever hit the brake pedal so hard in my life. And it was a matter of inches,” Robichon explained.
“The P2 cars were right in front of us. Quite literally, I was standing on the brake for all I could. And I was like, ‘if he does hit the brake, I’m definitely in him. But luckily, he kind of just rolled off. We definitely got lucky on that one.”
One car that wasn’t so lucky was the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Russell Ward/Philip Ellis/Indy Dontje), which took collateral damage and went to the garage for extensive repairs, which put the GTD Championship leaders out of contention for the win, and trimmed their points lead.
Jack Hawksworth, Parker Thompson, and Frankie Montecalvo led most of the race in their #12 Lexus, but were left stranded in 11th after Hawksworth ran out with about half a lap to go.
Second in class went to the #70 Inception Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 (Brendon Iribe/Frederik Schandorff/Ollie Millroy), and after a tumultuous week for the team, the #32 Korthoff Competition Motors Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Mikey Taylor/Kenton Koch/Daniel Morad) finished third.
IMSA’s GTP class will take a quick vacation, as LMP2 and GT cars head north of the border to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park for the Chevrolet Grand Prix on 13 July.
Images © Jack Webster / dailysportscar.com
