Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet were clear favourites to take the IMSA SportsCar Championship drivers’ title going into the Petit Le Mans series finale at Road Atlanta.
The Porsche Penske Motorsport duo had to be with a 100-plus point advantage before Saturday’s race. Yet to describe their passage to the championship as a walk in the park would be far from correct. The 10-hour race was far too chaotic for that. But the description was oddly prescient. Because raceday for Campbell began with a two-mile walk to ensure he got to the track on time.
If there was ever any doubt that sportscar racing is in rude health right now, a record crowd at the Atlanta venue proved it – the attendance was 20% up on the previous best for the end-of-season enduro. It resulted in what should have been a half-hour journey from hotel to track for good friends Campbell and Jaminet turning into one lasting an hour and 40 minutes. With the clock ticking towards the start of the pre-grid procedures, Campbell decided, like any savvy driver going for a championship, to play the percentages. He got out and walked!
“One hour before I was due on track for the reconnaissance laps I thought I’d get out and walk,” said Campbell. “I didn’t want to be in too much of a rush – and it did get the legs working.”
Traffic delays weren’t the only problem for PPM on the morning of a race in which it was also attempting to wrap up the GTP class teams’ title – the one that comes with a Le Mans 24 Hours entry – the manufacturers’ crown and also the IMSA Endurance Cup made up of the five long-distance rounds of the championship. PPM World Endurance Championship driver Julien Andlauer, on hand to race the #6 Porsche 963 LMDh alongside Campbell and Jaminet, fell ill and had to drop out of the line-up.
The only option for the team if it was to maintain a three-driver line-up was to get Laurens Vanthoor, who was in Georgia to drive the #7 entry with Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr, to pull double duty across its two cars. It resulted, explained Penske Racing president Jonathan Diuguid, “in a pretty hectic hour before the start”. The good fortune for PPM was that the team uses the same basic seat on both its entries, allowing Vanthoor to slot his insert into the cockpit of #6 without issue.
Porsche’s route to the IMSA title wasn’t as easy as it may have seemed
Photo by: Jake Galstad / Lumen via Getty Images
Diuguid paid tribute to Vanthoor, a driver universally known as Larry within the team: “Larry stuck his hand up when it started going in the wrong direction and said, ‘Hey, I will do whatever you guys need me to do’.”
Vanthoor was on call almost from the get-go as PPM juggled the maths on how to ensure he hit the minimum driving time in each car. “One hour into the race the team told me, ‘Larry, you’re next’,” explained the Belgian. “I asked: ‘Which car?’, They said, ‘We don’t know yet!’ That was kind of how the day went.” Vanthoor did his time in his original mount first, getting into #7 a couple of hours into the race. Within an hour of climbing out, he was back on track in #6.
And racing at the front. The #6 Porsche hadn’t looked like the most competitive proposition at the start of the race, but it vaulted up the order and into the lead late in the third hour courtesy of a significant slice of luck. Campbell had just entered the pitlane when the fifth of the six safety cars to interrupt the race was called.
The final full stops for the GTP frontrunners took place with an hour to go, which ensured everyone would require a late splash if the race stayed green. THOR opted to bring De Angelis in early, the tactic working a treat. After the Caddy and the Porsche made their stops, he was suddenly third behind Bamber and a car that had taken the opposite strategy
The time gained allowed Jaminet to emerge in the lead when the race went green, but as the temperatures dropped along with the sun, the Porsche stayed up at the sharp end on merit. It led pretty much all the way until the final safety car with four hours remaining.
“We knew that our car would come alive a bit more in the night,” explained Campbell.
That was never more so than when Campbell climbed back. The Porsche came back at the #31 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh that was leading the race in Earl Bamber’s hands over the course of the penultimate hour. Four seconds quickly became less than one, but Campbell again played it safe. “I think the win was possible, but we were in a risk management situation,” he said.
Jaminet continued Campbell’s percentage play after taking over for the final hour: he let the Caddy, which Bamber shared with Jack Aitken and Frederik Vesti, go in the final hour, and was jumped in the final results by The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar in which WEC regular Alex Riberas again joined IMSA regulars Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis.
Cadillac ultimately sealed the Petit Le Mans victory
Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images
The final full stops for the GTP frontrunners took place with an hour to go, which ensured everyone would require a late splash if the race stayed green. THOR opted to bring De Angelis in early, the tactic working a treat. After the Caddy and the Porsche made their stops, he was suddenly third behind Bamber and a car that had taken the opposite strategy. Romain Grosjean ran second in the Lamborghini SC63 LMDh until he ducked in for his splash of fuel with five minutes left on the clock.
De Angelis was just three seconds behind the leader at this point and remained so until backing off on the final lap to finish 5.1s in arrears. Second was still by far the best result so far for the Valkyrie in either IMSA or WEC, THOR building on the promise of its showings in the past two world championship rounds at Austin and Fuji where with a bit of luck it might have made the podium.
The Aston was a genuinely competitive proposition around the 2.54-mile Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, as was the Lamborghini in what was almost certainly its last ever race. In Grosjean’s hands the Italian car, running the new rear suspension that came on stream at the Indianapolis 6 Hours IMSA round in September, was right up there in the averages. The factory-entered car run in conjunction with Riley Motorsports was deserving of the fourth-place finish it collected after its last-gasp stop.
It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suggest that either Aston or Lamborghini could have won Petit Le Mans on another day. They had the speed to do just that over the final four hours that went uninterrupted by yellows, though in the case of the Lambo only when Grosjean was at the wheel.
The Caddy, however, had the speed in the daylight and the night time hours. Aitken shadowed Tom Blomqvist in the Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 for the first two and half hours before making it through in first. That disappeared when Bamber got in at the same safety car as the Porsche took the lead. He had to quickly come back into the pits with a slow puncture caused by on-track debris.
Such was the pace of the Action Express car, however, that Bamber was back up to second by the time he handed over to Vesti during the final safety car, the Dane emerging from the pit cycle with a lead the car would hold to the end. It was a deserving victory and one that propelled Aitken into second position in the championship: Bamber was down in 10th after missing the Laguna Seca in May while on WEC duty with Jota.
Lamborghini has paused its Hypercar programme for 2026
Photo by: Jake Galstad / Lumen via Getty Images
The Brit owned his runner-up spot in the points to a late incident for the #7 Porsche with Nasr at the wheel. Ricky Taylor in the best of the Wayne Taylor Racing Caddys, neither of which were a factor at Petit this time around, made a move for sixth place at Turn 1 with three laps to go. The Porsche made contact with the wall, a battle-scarred car that already had a damaged underfloor limping home 10th.
Nasr and Tandy still sealed the IMSA Endurance Cup by a solitary point from the Action Express drivers, Porsche and PPM also wrapping up the enduro manufacturers’ and teams’ titles.
There was only one trophy missing from Penske’s Road Atlanta haul, the one for overall victory in a race that Porsche has never won with a prototype. Its only victory, remember, came in 2015 when Tandy and Patrick Pilet triumphed in heavy rain against the purebred racers at the wheel of a GT Le Mans class 911 RSR.
Porsche might have won Petit Le Mans, though for Campbell and Jaminet there was too much at stake to hang everything on the line.
Playing the percentage game at Road Atlanta was enough for Porsche to be crowned champions
Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Lumen via Getty Images
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– The Autosport.com Team
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