It’s time for DSC’s final award for 2025!
Sports prototype racing is in an incredible age of talent, as demonstrated throughout 2025 at multiple levels. Of course, WEC’s Hypercar class and IMSA’s GTP category headline the proceedings.
Below that are the various versions of LMP2 – in IMSA, in the European and Asian Le Mans Series – and LMP3 beneath that, at the regional level.
Choosing one standout driver across all levels of prototype racing is difficult. In 2023, Louis Delétraz took the honours primarily on the strength of his LMP2 performances with some IMSA GTP endurance driving sprinkled in. Last year, Felipe Nasr was the star of Porsche Penske Motorsport’s first IMSA title-winning campaign with the Porsche 963.
Wouldn’t you know it, Nasr has made our shortlist of nominees again this year along with a vast majority of Porsche Penske’s fleet across IMSA and WEC, starting off the year with three strong victories at Daytona, Sebring, and Long Beach in partnership with Nick Tandy, whose completion of the “Tandy Slam” was also our Moment of the Year.
Whether you choose to reward the #7 Penske Porsche’s hot start or punish their cold finish to the 2025 IMSA season is a matter of taste, but you can’t argue against the consistency of the #6 Porsche crew of Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell.
So consistently good were both drivers as a unit, that it’d be a travesty to separate them as they were after the season, with Jaminet moving on to Genesis. Each driver also drove most of the WEC season across the two cars, with Campbell scoring PPM’s only win of the season and coming closest to victory at Le Mans.
Speaking of inseparable combinations, Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor will remain together next year after Porsche Penske consolidated down to only an IMSA GTP programme for 2026.
Behind the wheel of their #6 Porsche 963 in WEC, Estre and Vanthoor each had their highlights behind the wheel. Estre started and finished the car’s fightback from last to second in Le Mans, and made a bold lunge to take the lead at COTA for Porsche’s only win of the season. Vanthoor was every bit as good and steadier behind the wheel down the stretch, and if you had to give the edge to one of the two, the Belgian also won Daytona and Sebring (with Tandy and Nasr) ahead of his French compatriot, then drove both Penske Porsches at Petit Le Mans to help seal another clean sweep of titles in IMSA.
And of course, there’s the reigning Hypercar World Endurance Champions themselves: Ferrari AF Corse’s #51 trio of Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi. Each driver pulled their weight and had at least one standout performance on the way to Ferrari’s first top-class sports car World Championship in over half a century.
But it was the privateer, or satellite, or non-factory Ferrari 499P that won this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans via Robert Kubica, Ye Yifei, and Phil Hanson. A major achievement for all three drivers: The apex of Kubica’s heroic second chapter in racing, the culmination of Hanson’s unlikely rise through the prototype racing pyramid, and a landmark moment for Chinese motorsport with Ye’s victory.
It’s not all about the champions and the Le Mans winners though. Do you remember how ugly Alex Lynn‘s season started at Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA when he hit teammate Jenson Button from behind under the Safety Car? Didn’t think so, not after Lynn reeled off a Hypercar class-leading three pole positions – including a shock pole at Le Mans – and was pivotal in taking Cadillac’s long-awaited first WEC victory in São Paulo.
Similarly, Jack Aitken led the way for a charge to second in the IMSA GTP Drivers’ Championship on the strength of consecutive wins at Indy and Petit Le Mans. He’ll be joining Lynn for most of the WEC season next year, and has put the start of Le Mans ’23 well in the rear view.
Speed in qualifying doesn’t get much more prolific than the start of 2025 for BMW M’s Dries Vanthoor, who took four straight poles for Team RLL, from Daytona to Laguna Seca. Only at Road America did he and RLL finally convert that searing one-lap pace into a victory, the last for the BMW/RLL partnership before it dissolved at season’s end.
Aston Martin THOR Team’s Alex Riberas and Marco Sørensen gave the Valkyrie its first marquee performances in WEC: Sørensen snuck the car into Hyperpole at Le Mans, qualified third at Fuji, then the pair finished fifth in the race itself. It was high water for the V12-powered Hypercar, surpassed later when Riberas helped the IMSA side to second at Petit Le Mans for the Valkyrie’s first podium.
In Acura and Meyer Shank Racing’s first year back after a year apart, new Acura signing Nick Yelloly was an inspired choice and a rapid runner. Particularly in the summer, where he won Detroit from pole to snap Porsche’s losing streak, but there were other close calls with victory at Watkins Glen and Road America that didn’t go rewarded.
Yelloly was also a contributor in Inter Europol Competition’s Le Mans class win, their second in three years. Pivotal to that run as well, was Tom Dillmann, who finally got his first victory in the event. Dillmann also took five runner-up finishes in the European Le Mans Series, won Sebring, and was fighting for the LMP2 title in IMSA before a back injury curbed his momentum.
That ELMS title in the “Standard” LMP2 category went to VDS Panis Racing, whose efforts were spearheaded by Oliver Gray and Esteban Masson, two potential stars of the future who took three wins. Though not within the ELMS, a fourth win painfully eluded the duo when a suspension failure in the closing minutes of Le Mans caused Masson’s lead to slip away.
While we’re talking about young drivers in ELMS, of course, our Rising Star of the Year Mathys Jaubert features on a short list of the most outstanding prototype drivers for his work with IDEC Sport, and Alex Quinn scored victories for Algarve Pro Racing in both ACO regional series, fighting AO by TF all the way to the bitter end for the LMP2 Pro/Am title.
That title did go to AO Racing, and by PJ Hyett’s side all year on both sides of the Atlantic was Dane Cameron. Cameron helped AO Racing take another major step forward in 2025, winning the IMSA LMP2 title – Cameron’s fifth in five distinct categories, all since the 2014 reunification of American Le Mans and Grand-Am. He won the ELMS Pro/Am title, of course, and he got to climb to the top step of the Le Mans podium for the first time, as LMP2 Pro/Am class winner. That’s as good as it gets for being dropped from Porsche after winning an IMSA title in the factory 963.
DSC’s 2025 Prototype Driver of the Year
Robert Kubica
We realise that other significant publications have elevated Kubica above co-drivers Ye and Hanson when picking their best drivers of 2025, to the point that the latter two have been grossly overshadowed in the context of the season. They shouldn’t be, not when both drivers were mighty impressive throughout a very successful 2025 campaign.
Some of it has to do with Kubica’s stature as a respected veteran of 99 Formula One Grands Prix before he came to endurance racing, and his well-documented comeback from life-altering injuries in a 2011 rallying accident.
All that aside, when you conjure up the defining image of the yellow #83 Ferrari’s Le Mans win, what comes to mind first? Surely, it has to be Kubica’s final three-and-a-half hour quintuple-stint, fighting off the factory Ferraris and the #6 Porsche, with no drink bottle, exclaiming “we cannot win” at one stage… Before summoning the strength and speed to take his team to victory in the biggest race of the year, he had to do so without putting a wheel wrong in that sequence.
He was also the anchor for the team that opened the year with a second place in Qatar, which, together with the fourth place in Imola and the Le Mans win, set the table for an unlikely title push for the privateer, satellite, non-factory Ferrari.
Those title aspirations slipped away gradually as the season wound down. Kubica, Ye, and Hanson finished second in the points, splitting the two factory cars in the standings.
Kubica went from the reluctant ‘heel’ of the 92nd edition of Le Mans (after his collision with Dries Vanthoor) to the triumphant hero of the 93rd. It’s not yet clear if he’ll be back for the 94th, as he was not yet committed by the end of the season in Bahrain.
We await to see if he’ll be back to write another great chapter in this amazing story.
Images © dailysportscar.com, IMSA
