Porsche Finally Wins Petit Le Mans With a Prototype

Laurens Vanthoor came out of the last restart at Road Atlanta with a BMW in his mirrors and a little over an hour of a ten-hour race left to defend. He kept it there. The No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 he shared with Kevin Estre and Matt Campbell took the Motul Petit Le Mans on Saturday 3 October by 1.205 seconds after 368 laps and a race time of 10:00:50.625, and in doing so gave Porsche something the marque had never had: an overall Petit Le Mans win with a prototype.

That is the part worth sitting with. Porsche has won the race at Road Atlanta before — Auto Action notes the 2015 overall victory came from a GTLM-class 911 RSR, and puts the marque's tally at 21 wins at Daytona, 20 at Sebring and 19 at Le Mans — but the top-class prototype result at this circuit had stayed out of reach. For Estre it was a first IMSA victory of any kind. For Campbell it was a first overall Petit after three class wins at the event.

It was not a clean ten hours. The race ran to 16 full-course cautions, which Motorsport.com reports ties the event record set in 2017, and was stopped outright by a red flag for lightning in the area; accounts of the stoppage put it at somewhere between 27 and 30 minutes. A finale that had been set up as a straight title fight turned into a restart-management exercise, which is roughly how the last hour played out.

Behind the Porsche, the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor, Sheldon van der Linde and Robin Frijns finished second, 1.205 seconds adrift after ten hours of racing. Third went to the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Jordan Taylor, Louis Delétraz and Colton Herta, 10:00:59.255 — about eight and a half seconds off the win.

The championship had already been settled before any of that, and settled in the least dramatic way available. Jack Aitken needed only to start the race to take the GTP drivers' title in the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen entry run by Action Express, which he shared at Road Atlanta with Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti. He was the car's only full-season driver this year, and he finished the season with seven podiums and two wins. "Yeah, a bit of a weird feeling winning a championship rolling to the green," he told Sportscar365. Cadillac took the team and manufacturer honours alongside it.

GTD PRO produced the weekend's best story. The No. 68 Car Blanche Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Mattia Drudi, Valentin Hasse-Clot and Marco Sørensen moved to the front in the final hour and held on by 1.507 seconds over the AO Racing Porsche — a first IMSA WeatherTech win for a team that had only stepped up to GTD PRO midseason, in its first Michelin Endurance Cup start in the class. The class championship went the other way: Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen brought the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 Evo home third, which was enough for the drivers', team and Endurance Cup GTD PRO titles.

In GTD, Winward Racing finished the job it had been doing all autumn. Philip Ellis passed late in the No. 57 Mercedes-AMG GT3 he shares with Russell Ward and Indy Dontje to win the team's first Petit Le Mans, completing four wins in the final five races and sealing a third consecutive GTD championship along with the Mercedes-AMG manufacturer title. The No. 912 Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche 911 GT3 R was second in class, the No. 36 DXDT Racing Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R third.

LMP2 went to the No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR entry of George Kurtz, Alex Quinn and Toby Sowery.

So the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship closes with Cadillac holding the GTP silverware and Porsche holding the trophy nobody at Weissach had managed to collect at this track with a prototype. Ten hours, sixteen cautions, a lightning stoppage and 1.205 seconds.