It’s been five years since Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy, as teammates at Corvette Racing, won the IMSA Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway.
Now as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship returns to VIR for another edition of the series’ GT-exclusive showcase round, Milner and Tandy find themselves on opposite sides of a three-way title race that is currently way too close to call, and could have more teams hit the front before it’s all over.
The #4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Z06 GT3.R of Milner and Nicky Catsburg, and the #77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Tandy and Harry King are within 15 and 21 points, respectively, of the championship-leading #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Connor de Phillippi and Neil Verhagen. And in IMSA’s points system of big numbers, those margins are so miniscule that they’re all practically level on points.
“I don’t remember a championship being as close as this,” said Milner, who’s won two IMSA titles in 16 years with Corvette Racing. “For whatever reason, every year in GTD Pro, there’s one car that just has a year where nothing goes wrong. It seems like that’s not going to be the case this year.”
From the Rolex 24 At Daytona to the eve of Sunday’s two-hour, 40-minute race at VIR, the #1 BMW and #4 Corvette have traded the GTD Pro points lead. De Phillippi and Verhagen could have landed a heavy blow at the six-hour enduro at Road America, but an accident has brought the #4 Corvette and #77 Porsche back together again.
“It seems like we kind of go up and down the standings, with different teams occupying the top three a little bit. But we’ve just got to continue on the path that we’ve been on,” Milner continued. “Keep scoring points as we can, take advantage of opportunities when they come our way.”
It’s been five years since Milner’s last IMSA win, that 2021 victory with Tandy in the Corvette Racing C8.R, but the track has previously been a happy hunting ground: Milner has three wins at VIR, and finished third last year alongside Catsburg, while the sister Corvette of Alexander Sims and Antonio García won the race.
“VIR has been good to me in the past, but that doesn’t mean that it will be, or should be good to me again this year,” he admitted. “But we’ll do what we can to try and make sure that happens; our Corvette’s been good there the last couple of years, and hopefully we can continue that trend this weekend.”
Meanwhile, Tandy hasn’t been to VIR since that 2021 race, but like Milner, he’s won at VIR three times during the GTLM years. Like the #4 Corvette, AO Racing and Rexy haven’t won a race this year, and their 2026 season has been mostly consistent though not perfect. But Tandy and King are within a tyrannosaurus’ arms-length of the points lead after scoring back-to-back podiums at CTMP (Mosport) and Road America.
“It’s one of my favorite stops on the schedule,” Tandy remarked of VIR. “Being the highlight race of the season for the GT class, and the track is just one of the best. And I’ve typically had quite a bit of success there: I remember back in the GTLM days it being pretty much a Porsche circuit.”
“We’ve been on a good run the last few rounds. If you include Watkins Glen – we were running fast and running well there, it could have been three podiums on the bounce. The season’s really kicked on: The cars in the class, they’re very close week-in and week-out nowadays. So it gives us a chance when we do have a strong weekend, to be up there and always in the fight.”
Even before the season began, Tandy was as candid as ever about how, for all his success in GTP, he looked forward to a change of pace with AO Racing versus the high-pressure environment that was Porsche Penske Motorsport from 2023–2025. In landing back in GTD Pro, the Bedfordshire Bullet finds himself reminiscing of his favourite era in IMSA.
“The greatest racing I ever did in my life was in the peak of GTLM, back in the ’18, ’19, ’20 period – this was just the best racing ever. And honestly, GTD Pro is becoming that sort of racing,” Tandy said.
“It’s the sort of thing where you’ve got to be on it all the time, and generally, you’ve always got a chance. So if you don’t qualify well, you will have the chance to do something in the race and get something going towards the end. That is exactly how GTLM used to be.”
If ever there were questions about how the all-English duo of Tandy and King would get along in this highly-competitive environment, they seem to have been comprehensively answered: King has found his stride in his rookie year of IMSA competition, getting better with every race.
“The way he’s taken to IMSA I think has shocked a lot of people – but it hasn’t shocked me, because I’ve known him for a long time,” Tandy says.
“He’s a very smart driver, even smarter than I thought he was. He takes on a lot of information, he very quickly processes that information, asks the right questions. He teaches the rest of us a lot of stuff.
“He understands that endurance racing is not just about going fast for five laps and then slow for the next 25. If he carries on the way he’s going, and I see no reason why not, then I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of him in IMSA in the future.”
And to Tandy’s point about the competitive level in the class, there’s another rung of GTD Pro cars that are now within 52 points of each other, and 151 points of the championship lead. The #65 Ford Racing Mustang, the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus, the #3 Corvette – and yes, even the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Temerario – are in that mix, poised to close the gap should any or all of the leading three contenders slip up in VIR.
“They still have a chance. They can go on a tear at any point,” Tandy said. “Let’s see what it is when it comes to Petit. It’s obviously great for the series that different cars are winning.
“We said before Road America, the No. 1 car was pulling a gap. They were always competitive, fast, and always at the front. But we said it only takes one bad result, and everyone’s back in it – and lo and behold, look what happened at Road America. Hopefully it stays close, and it’s interesting to the end.”
No matter how the title race swings at VIR, it will almost certainly be run under tighter scrutiny from Race Control and the Stewards off the back of another Road America race littered with crashes and cautions. IMSA’s driving standards were once again called into question just over two weeks ago in the aftermath of the six-hour race in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
Last year, a messy race at Road America led to a massive course correction at VIR: Any avoidable contact or blocking was met with strong penalties, to the point that some drivers felt the enforcement had swung too hard the other way. Milner predicts a similar outcome this weekend.
“I think the race will be officiated similarly to last year,” he said. “We’re going to have another long drivers’ meeting with Beaux (Barfield, IMSA Race Director).
“The difference here is that at Road America last year, it was the GT cars that were exhibiting the poor driving standards – and I felt like our class was pretty good there. But obviously, the final product on TV wasn’t fantastic. I watched a good part of it after the fact, and all the yellows at the end of the race spoiled what could have been a little bit of a better show.”
While there were three full-course cautions in last year’s VIR round, the on-track action was generally much more orderly compared to the race before.
“Not that we don’t need to listen to what Beaux has to say, but I think there’s going to be a crackdown. We had a good race last year at VIR,” Milner continued, “so I predict something similar.
“There’s going to be some discussion about it, another reminder. Even so, we had a reminder at Road America that obviously fell on some deaf ears on some drivers.”
Images © Jack Webster/Dailysportscar.com
