Just days after BMW M Motorsport officially announced that its 17-year racing service agreement with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing was coming to an end after 2025, BMW M Team RLL took a 1-2 finish in Sunday’s Motul SportsCar Grand Prix at Road America.
The #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Philipp Eng and Dries Vanthoor won the race, ahead of the sister #25 BMW of Marco Wittmann and Sheldon van der Linde, thanks to strategic gambles which were finally rewarded after several missed opportunities to win.
Team RLL split the strategies of its two cars initially, bringing the #24 BMW in during the second of back-to-back Full Course Yellows at the start of the race. Then, when the #52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA of Naveen Rao slid off and crashed at the Carousel, both cars were brought into the pits.
They both fell to the rear of the field after long fuel stops – and in the #24’s case, one of its mechanics was hit by the #60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura as it came into its box. The mechanic was thankfully okay.
The #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 had come in during the second Full Course Yellow, then short-filled on its next stop to take the lead.
With one hour left, both BMWs came in for their final routine stops, needing one more caution to help them make it to the end.
Minutes later, that break came in the form of a championship-defining clash. As Ricky Taylor and Nick Tandy battled for third, Tandy got ahead of Taylor, then the #7 Porsche blocked the #10 Cadillac hard on the run up the hill to turn six. The two cars collided, Taylor spun, and the Full Course Yellow came out.
The two BMWs cycled to the lead as the rest of the GTP field had to make their final pit stops under the Safety Car.
Eng in the #24 held his lead over the final 38 minutes to take the win, while Wittmann in the #25 held on to complete a 1-2 finish.
The #93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06 (Renger van der Zande/Nick Yelloly) finished a close third behind the two BMWs. Back-to-back cautions kept Yelloly from establishing a steady rhythm up front, but a split-decision pass on the final restart from van der Zande helped him grab the final podium position.
In fourth was the #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R (Jack Aitken/Earl Bamber), while Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell brought the #6 Porsche 963 home to a fifth-place finish.
Jaminet and Campbell extended their GTP Championship lead with two races remaining, as Tandy was hit with a 60-second stop-and-go penalty for causing the collision with the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac. Tandy and Felipe Nasr would finish 11th and last in class, falling to 75 points behind their teammates with two races remaining.
And in sixth place, the #23 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie scored its best-ever finish in either IMSA or the FIA World Endurance Championship, as Ross Gunn and Roman de Angelis established yet another high mark for the first-year project.
AO Racing scored its second consecutive LMP2 class win in IMSA; it was a straightforward victory for the #99 ORECA 07-Gibson of PJ Hyett and Dane Cameron, one that has given them the lead in the LMP2 Championship.
Hyett and Cameron did their part, but the championship picture completely changed on the very first lap of the race, when the #22 United Autosports USA car of Daniel Goldburg and the No. 04 Crowdstrike by APR car of George Kurtz made contact coming out of the first corner. Goldburg spun and hit the wall, inflicting heavy damage to the left side of the car.
The #22 car spent almost two hours in the garage undergoing repairs and would not gain enough ground for Goldburg and Paul di Resta to avoid finishing 14th and last.
Hyett withstood early pressure from surprising underdog Tonis Kasemets, who briefly took the lead during the second caution before Hyett overtook him, and Cameron took over to claim the victory. They now lead by 97 points, after going into the weekend trailing by 78.
With Tom Dillmann on the mend after a back injury suffered at CTMP, Connor De Phillippi helped lift the spirits of the Inter Europol Competition team, finishing second in the #43 ORECA alongside Jeremy Clarke, thanks to a fast final pit stop.
A hard charge from Mikkel Jensen helped the #11 TDS Racing car go from seventh to third at the end. Jensen and Steven Thomas ran near the front, but Jensen lost ground on his final pit stop. Determined, he drove his way back to the podium with three laps to go, overtaking the No. 74 Riley car (Gar Robinson/Felipe Fraga) with four laps to go.
Fraga ran out of fuel on the final lap, handing fourth place to the #2 United Autosports car (Phil Fayer/Ben Hanley), and fifth to the No. 18 Era Motorsport car (Tobias Lutke/Kakunoshin Ohta). The #04 Crowdstrike/APR ORECA of Kurtz and Malthe Jakobsen also dropped two positions to sixth on the last lap.
Though AO Racing would not get to enjoy a double victory, as a late call to the pits paved the way for the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Madison Snow and Neil Verhagen to capture its first win of 2025, and the second win of the year for PMR.
Verhagen spent the final 30 minutes battling hard with the #77 AO Porsche 911 GT3 R of Laurin Heinrich, who had cycled to the lead by staying out long, having last come to the pits during the third caution, with more than 90 minutes left in the race.
It was a massive gamble that didn’t go Rexy’s way, as Heinrich would have to retreat to pit lane with 15 minutes to go. Verhagen had enough in hand over the pack to take the win.
Mike Rockenfeller and Seb Priaulx had a quiet but productive run to second in the #64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Mustang GT3, and on the final lap, the #81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3 of Albert Costa made a dash from fifth to third, giving him and Giacomo Altoe a podium after starting on pole.
For Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims, fourth place wasn’t the result they’d hoped for. Sims got a lucky bounce when he came into pit lane for routine service just before the pits closed during the third caution. But on the ensuing restart, he was spun out by the #48 Paul Miller BMW of Dan Harper, reigniting the inter-team feud from Daytona for a moment.
With a damaged car, Sims salvaged fourth, enough to maintain his and Garcia’s points lead, while Costa moved up to second in the standings, ahead of Heinrich and Bachler.
GTD PRO was filled with frenetic action in the final minutes that at times went over the line of measured aggression, punctuated when the #4 Corvette (Tommy Milner/Nicky Catsburg) retired in the final ten minutes from damage sustained in a collision with the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.
Continuing a similar thread in GTD, a forceful pass from Kenton Koch gave Triarsi Competizione its first-ever IMSA victory. In just their second race together in the #021 Ferrari 296 GT3, Koch and Onofrio Triarsi Jnr scored a major first win at Road America.
The deciding moment of the race came with eight minutes to go, as Koch ran down the #36 DXDT Racing Corvette of race leader Alec Udell. Koch barged his way past Udell at turn six and grabbed the lead, which he would not relinquish.
Udell had taken the lead during the final caution, potentially setting the stage for him and co-driver Robert Wickens to take a popular victory. Instead, the damage inflicted from the collision caused the #36 Corvette to slump to eighth at the end.
Second in GTD went to the #78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 (Misha Goikhberg/Mario Farnbacher), and the #34 Conquest Racing Ferrari (Manny Franco/Daniel Serra) took third, giving local driver Franco a podium at his home race. The #96 Turner Motorsport BMW (Patrick Gallagher/Robby Foley) was fourth.
Championship leaders Russell Ward and Philip Ellis finished ninth in the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3; Ward and Ellis led most of the race, but fell down the order thanks in part to a late drive-through penalty for causing a collision with the #27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin (Casper Stevenson/Tom Gamble).
Images © Jack Webster / dailysportscar.com
