Valentino Rossi, Charles Weerts, and Kelvin van der Linde have won the sixth running of the Indianapolis 8 Hour Presented by AWS in their #46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO, a race heavily disrupted and disoriented by torrential rain and lightning storms.
It’s the third consecutive Indy 8 Hour win for WRT and BMW, and with the win, Kelvin van der Linde has won the 2025 Intercontinental GT Challenge Drivers’ Championship. It’s also Rossi’s first IGTC overall race win, making him the first driver to win around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course on two and four wheels.
Van der Linde is the first driver to win both the IGTC and GT World Challenge Europe Overall Drivers’ titles in the same year, taking the championship over BMW stablemate Raffaele Marciello in what could go down as a contentious final hour-and-a-half spent mostly under a full course yellow.
After a two-hour and 25-minute red flag for lightning strikes and heavy rainfall, the field began circulating behind the safety car with about 90 minutes left, anticipating a restart. The rain picked up, as heavy as it had been before – if not more.
During the ensuing 50-minute FCY period, the cars took many trips down pit lane to reset their drivers’ stint lengths and eventually move rivers of standing water. Van der Linde brought the #46 BMW down to reset his stint with about 65 minutes left, while the #777 WRT BMW of Marciello did so the following lap, along with most of the leaders. By doing this, van der Linde jumped ahead of Marciello in the running order before the green flag came out again.
The green flag waved with 40 minutes left – only to go back to yellow again after two laps, once the #80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG suffered a gearbox failure and stopped in the pit entry lane.
Ultimately, the race did not restart due to the persistent rainfall, and the blue #46 WRT BMW took the chequered flag ahead of the #888 Team GMR Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO of Tom Kalender, Luca Stolz, and Maro Engel in second, and the red #777 WRT BMW of Marciello, Augusto Farfus, and Al Faisal Al Zubair in third.
Despite the stoppages, the race would award full points for both the Intercontinental GT Challenge and GT World Challenge America championships.
The #99 Random Vandals Racing BMW of Kenton Koch, Connor De Phillippi, and Conor Daly finished fourth, enough for Koch and De Phillippi to win the GT World Challenge America Pro class championship.
Koch, who clinched the Pirelli GT4 America Silver class title earlier in the day, becomes the first driver to hold both championships in the same year.
A strategic gamble behind the Safety Car would have given the #34 JMF Motorsports Mercedes-AMG of Michai Stephens and Mikaël Grenier the GT World America Pro title, but by leaving Lucas Auer out for an extended period, the Austrian was in breach of his 65-minute maximum stint length, resulting in a 19-minute, 36-second post-race time penalty that cost Stephens and Grenier the championship.
Rounding out the top five was the #18 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3 R (Alex Sedgwick/Jan Heylen/Alessio Picariello), which started 23rd overall.
After a 30-second time penalty for unauthorised pit work during the red flag, the #75 75 Express Mercedes-AMG of Kenny Habul, Chaz Mostert, and Will Power ended up finishing sixth. That was enough for Habul to win his fifth IGTC Independent Cup championship, ahead of defending champion Antares Au and fellow challenger Ralf Bohn.
Stephens, Grenier, and Auer dropped to the rear of the lead lap in seventh overall.
The Pro-Am class win went to the #21 Blattner Company by Herberth Motorsport Porsche of Dustin Blattner, Alfred Renauer, and Dennis Marschall, over the #10 Wright Motorsports Porsche of Au, Loek Hartog, and Patric Niederhauser, and the #29 Turner Motorsport BMW of Justin Rothberg, Robby Foley, and Patrick Gallagher. These cars rounded out the overall top ten.
Rothberg and Foley clinched back-to-back GT World America Pro-Am titles for Turner, though their path to the championship was cleared after a starter motor failure for the #11 DXDT Racing Corvette in the fourth hour of the race.
Also in the fourth hour of the race, a slow pit stop for the #6 Dollahite Racing Ford Mustang GT3 flipped the Am class duel in favour of the #163 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 of Jay Schreibman, Oswaldo Negri Jnr, and Conrad Grunewald (17th overall).
Schreibman and Negri won the class and also won the GT World America Am title over Scott Dollahite, who finished 18th overall alongside co-drivers Eric Powell and Stefano Gattuso.
Four cars failed to finish the race: The #80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG, the #61 Earl Bamber Motorsport Porsche, the #51 Random Vandals Racing BMW, and the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche.
Feature image © Fabian Lagunas / SRO Motorsports America
