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Ganassi Cadillac Headlights, Porsche Penske Titles Spotlight Motul Petit Le Mans
BRASELTON, Ga. – A race that was largely dominated by an intra-team battle between Porsche Penske Motorsport teammates ceded the spotlight to headlights, under the lights, in the final 10 minutes of the 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans.
Toppling the pair of Porsches, the striking, one-off, pink No. 01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R driven by Renger van der Zande, Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon captured the final victory of the 2024 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. The Cadillac did so despite spotty electronics that threatened to derail its comeback drive.
Porsche Penske Motorsport led 235 of 443 laps but failed to win the race. It did, however, clinch championships in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class driver, team, manufacturer and Michelin Endurance Cup with Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron.
Sensor-related issues and a pair of pit-lane drive-through penalties sent the Chip Ganassi Racing-prepared Cadillac down the order. But the trio of drivers made up the difference in the heat of the day before another potential pitfall beckoned: faulty headlights.
Green-flag racing dominated the proceedings, as the race ran more than four and a half hours in-between full-course cautions. Heading into the final half hour of the race after a restart from the fifth and final full-course caution, Nick Tandy led the field in the No. 6 Porsche 963 ahead of van der Zande in the No. 01 Cadillac.
Yet van der Zande pulled a bold move on Tandy reminiscent of one the Englishman had done earlier in the race. With 15 minutes remaining, the Dutchman dove to the inside of Tandy into Turn 1, with a late lunge to move past him.
“It was the only move I could make,” van der Zande said. “I was behind Tandy for a while, and he was so fast on the straights. Every time they pulled a gap of like, I don't know, six, seven car lengths. But in the corners we were very fast. Especially we set up the car a lot for Turn 1 and Turn 3. That's where I could really make up a lot of ground.”
Tandy’s race nearly became unglued further a lap later with contact from Philipp Eng in the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8. Eng was assessed a drive-through for incident responsibility.
The drama for van der Zande in the waning minutes came not from Tandy, but instead from his own headlights on the No. 01 Cadillac. Either the left, right or both headlights flickered and intermittently went on and off.
At no point did they go out long enough to trigger a mechanical black flag from series officials, but it was still a potential nightmare scenario that the race win would have been erased by the lack of lights.
Van der Zande switched them on and off several times to try and remedy the issue and had both lights on long enough to ensure he made it home to the flag, 2.948 seconds ahead of Tandy.
“It was a bit of a disco going on,” van der Zande laughed. “I started to press all kinds of buttons this way, and it was still not good enough. Then it stuck more and more and more, then they told me, ‘Press the white button,’ so I pressed the white button and it worked. So, we got the lights back.”
The win caps van der Zande and Bourdais’ three-year tenure as co-drivers in the Ganassi-prepared Cadillac in IMSA, and van der Zande’s time, for now, with the brand after more than 70 races and seven years. The win is the second of the season for the No. 01 car and the 67th for Ganassi, 21st for van der Zande, 13th for Bourdais and sixth for Dixon in their IMSA careers. Bourdais noted how the same trio dominated this race in 2023 but didn’t win but flipped the script in 2024.
“I think the best way to say is last year we won the race except the last, what, half hour. This year we lost it all race long, and then we won it for the last 30 minutes,” Bourdais said. “We kind of put a race together in two years.”
Tandy, Mathieu Jaminet and Kevin Estre finished second both in the race and the season in their No. 6 Porsche. It was a result that had several peaks and valleys, including a Tandy comeback following an earlier penalty assessed for incident responsibility with a GTD class Ferrari 296 GT3 and a decisive pass for the lead on Ricky Taylor’s No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 into Turn 1, which positioned them well heading into the final pit stops.
Quicker service by the WTRAndretti crew propelled the No. 10 Acura temporarily to the lead ahead of the No. 6 Porsche, although Taylor ran wide on exit on cold tires. Things went from bad to worse when after a four-plus-hour green-flag stint, Taylor collected Corey Lewis, whose No. 55 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 was already damaged after an incident and stranded in the middle of the road exiting Turn 5.
Taylor limped the Acura, with significant left-front and left-side damage, back to the pits and behind the wall with another challenging end to their season at this race.
It left the final podium position to the car and team that spent the majority of the race celebrating its season-long accolades, the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry of Nasr, Cameron and Matt Campbell.
The No. 7 team clinched the GTP Michelin Endurance Cup title at the four-hour mark and shortly thereafter, sealed the full-season championship as a second GTP car (the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8) dropped out. It’s the sixth IMSA championship for Team Penske, fourth for Cameron and third for Nasr.