There Was Nothing Petite About the Drama in IMSA’s 2024 Season Finale
The 27th annual Petit Le Mans, the season finale for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship held at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, was—to drag out a tired cliché—a nail-biter to the end, and the result hinged on one little round white button.
A bold late-race pass in the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac GTP by driver Renger van der Zande put the team in the lead position for the final 14 minutes, but van der Zande had his driving gloves full, not so much fending off the second-place No. 6 Penske Porsche 963—though that was difficult, too—but in literally keeping the lights on.
IMSA requires that a car have at least one headlight working, and electrical gremlins extinguished both lights periodically. Had that gone on long enough the Cadillac would have been called to the pits, thus costing them the race. As the event neared its 10-hour completion, it was indeed unsafe to be circling the track with no lights, given the massive closing speed of the GTP cars as they passed the slower GT cars, and the fact that the sun had set hours before.
The Cadillac had run most of the nighttime portion of the race (which started at 12:10 p.m.) with just one headlight, but with less than 10 minutes to go, both headlights went out. “This manual we get from Cadillac is a lot of buttons and a lot of options, so I started to press all kinds of buttons, and it was still not good enough,” van der Zande said after the race. “Then they told me press the white button. So I pressed the white button, and it worked, so we got the lights back.” Still, they seemed to flash on and off inconsistently, but it was apparently good enough for IMSA, so the Cadillac was allowed to continue.
The win was an emotional one for van der Zande, who spent much of his career bouncing from team to team until he found a home in the Ganassi Cadillac four years ago. This was the last sports car race for both Cadillac and the Ganassi team, leaving its drivers and crew to look for a job for next year.
Petit Le Mans always has a number of star guest drivers, and this year was no different: IndyCar’s Scott Dixon joined van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais in the winning No. 01 Cadillac. Colton Herta was in the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura, a sister car to the No. 10. Romain Grosjean was part of the No. 63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini GTP team. Tom Blomqvist joined early leader Jack Aitken and Pipo Derani, in Derani’s last ride with the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac.
As mentioned, the No. 6 Penske Porsche 963 finished second, with Nick Tandy driving the final stint, just ahead of its No. 7 team car, which had locked up the season championship earlier in the race.
There were only five full-course cautions in the race—fewer than expected, given the tight Road Atlanta circuit and the big, 53-car field made up of four classes of varying speeds. The most controversial caution came nine hours into the race when there was a crash between two GTD cars, the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Jan Heylen, and the No. 55 Proton Competition Mustang GT3 of Corey Lewis.
The crash left the Mustang sitting almost backwards on track, with the front end sheared off and consequently no lights, in the fast, tricky Turn 5. One of the prototypes spotted the Mustang at the very last second and veered clear to the right, leaving the overall second-place runner, the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 and driver Ricky Taylor, following close behind, with no chance to avoid the Mustang.
The No. 10 Acura, in the brand’s final event with the team, had led much of the race, and was running second when the accident occurred. “I think this just proves how hard the sport is and how ruthless it can be,” Taylor said, in a remarkable understatement. Apparently officials had called only for a “local yellow”—the caution flag was waving only in the immediate vicinity of the wrecked Mustang—when it was obvious the car couldn’t move. The caution should have been track-wide, which would have made everyone to slow down and likely would have allowed Taylor to miss the Mustang.
But that’s racing, and a lot of it was going on not just in the top GTP class, but in the other three classes as well: LMP2, GTD Pro, and GTD. In LMP2, the win went to the No. 11 TDS Racing Oreca by a healthy margin over the No. 74 Riley-74 Ranch Oreca. In GTD Pro, the No. 19 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 finished 2.3 seconds ahead of the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3. And in GTD, the win went to the No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3, less than a second over the No. 78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.
As the season finale, Petit Le Mans (“Petit,” for short) decides the IMSA season championship. We’ve mentioned that the No. 7 Penske Porsche 963 wrapped up the title for drivers Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr, with Matt Campbell helping out as the third driver for the Petit endurance race. Matthieu Jaminet and Tandy were second in the No. 6 Porsche, 13 points back.
In LMP2, the driver’s championship went to the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports team of Nick Boulle and Tom Dillman, 61 points ahead of Gar Robinson and Felipe Fraga in the No. 74 car.
Future star Connor Zilisch, 18, taking a break from his NASCAR commitments, raced with Dwight Merriman and 24 Hours of Daytona overall winner Ryan Dalziel in the No. 18 Era Motorsports LMP2 car. They finished third in the race. It broke Zilisch’s endurance win streak this year—he was on the winning LMP2 team for the 24 Hours of Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
In GTD Pro, rookie Laurin Heinrich, driving the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R, came into the race with plenty of points, which is good because his car finished 38th overall. His closest competitor, Ross Gunn, ended up just four points back. Gunn is the driver of the No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO. Yes, both Gunn and Heinrich had co-drivers during the season, but they varied, and only those two drivers competed in every points race.
In GTD, the championship went to Phillip Ellis and Russell Ward, drivers of the Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, who ended up an impressive 230 points ahead of Patrick Gallagher and Robby Foley, drivers of the No. 96 Turner Motorsports BMW M4 GT3. (In GTD, the cars are the same as in GTD Pro, but two amateur drivers must compete in each for endurance event; GTD Pro allows all professional drivers.)
This year’s Petit would have made the man who founded it 27 years ago, Dr. Don Panoz, proud; at the time Panoz owned the American Le Mans Series, which was later absorbed by IMSA and NASCAR. Panoz saw Petit as a fitting end for sports car racing in the U.S., and sports-car racing enthusiasts owe a tip of the hat to IMSA for being loyal to that vision.
NASCAR-owned series, and IMSA is one of them, no longer give out attendance figures, but IMSA said that the 2024 Petit Le Mans had record attendance, 10 percent more than last year. IMSA has had almost 90 requests from teams to run in the 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona, in a race currently capped at 61 entries, due to available pit space.
IMSA doesn’t allow its teams much off-season downtime. They’ll report to Daytona International Speedway on November 15-17 for a mandatory test, followed by another test, the Roar Before the Rolex 24, January 17-19. The Rolex 24 at Daytona is on January 25-26. The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is scheduled for March 12-15.
