The last half of the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen featured intense battles and four different manufacturers fighting for the victory, with strategy eventually taking hold to set up the final battle. That strategy put the No. 25 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 of Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly out front, pursued by the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsports 963 of Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet. Pace and traffic, though, eventually brought Tandy and Jaminet their second win of the season to help them pad their IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP lead.
While the early second-half driver stints featured Jack Aitken doing a masterful job keeping the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac in front and maintaining a gap over Colin Braun in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06, it was strategy in the final 90 minutes on which the race turned, setting up a BMW vs. Porsche battle as De Phillippi did everything he could to keep the BMW ahead of Jaminet’s Porsche while the gap steadily decreased. Both were pushing their cars to 1m33s laps with victory was on the line.
Traffic was the determining factor. Jaminet was able to close as De Phillipi was held up by battling LMP2 and LMP3 cars. With Jaminet on his tail, De Phillippi came up on the GTD leader, who was being passed by a couple of other prototypes. Jaminet went right, De Phillippi went left. Right was correct; De Phillippi got bottled up, and Jaminet was through. De Phillippi went wide in the following corners, dirtying his tires and ending any opportunity to counter-attack. The final aria was Bill Auberlen crashing and rolling the No. 95 Turner Motorsport BMW with three minutes left, bringing out the final caution under which the race would end.
The strategy that put the polesitting Porsche and the BMW back out front started to unfold with 90 minutes left. Both BMW Team RLL and PPM gambled, bringing in their cars to split the remainder of the race into equal stints requiring less time on both stops. MSR and AXR, on the other hand, appeared to be going for a long stint followed by a shorter one. However, AXR was the first to reverse that strategy, bringing Pipo Derani in after 30 minutes to try to force BMW and Porsche to change their plan. MSR followed suit, but choosing to take energy only, no tires.
It almost worked, but not quite. BMW M Team RLL brought De Phillippi in a lap later for energy and tires, squeezing him out ahead of Derani. PPM kept the No. 6 out, then with Nick Tandy at the wheel, risking disaster should a yellow come out. With 40m left, PPM brought the 963 in, gave it energy and tires, and installed Jaminet in the driver’s seat. The Porsche now had fresher tires and the chase was on.
With the race ending under yellow, De Phillippi and Yelloly finished second, their third second-place finish of the season. Derani, Aitken and Alexander Sims were third in the No. 31 AXR Cadillac.
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The final battle for GTD PRO was no less intense as Daniel Serra, in the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 that he had put on pole yesterday was hammering on Jack Hawksworth in the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3, but Hawksworth was able to hold Serra off to claim the duo’s second victory of the season and increase their points lead.
The No. 14 had been out front for most of the race, but in the final round of pit stops it almost all went south. A drive-through penalty for a pit-lane speed violation put Hawksworth behind Antonio Garcia in the No. 3 Corvette Racing C8.R, where he was stuck for a long time. He finally saw his opportunity, dove inside at Turn 7 to take the apex away from Garcia. That slowed him enough that Serra was able to sneak through as well. Serra and Davide Rigon finished second for Risi, with Garcia and Jordan Taylor third.
Ahead of all of them, though, was the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus, where it had been all day, with Aaron Telitz, Frankie Montecalvo and Parker Thompson winning GTD as well as finishing first among the GT cars overall. The No. 12 did have some challenges, notably from the Iron Dames as Michelle Gatting battled with Montecalvo in the middle of the race before being felled by a mechanical black flag for a tire specification violation.
The drive of the race came from the Paul Miller Racing crew. A disconnection between steering wheel and car left them sitting in the pits, eventually going two laps down. Some lucky breaks with pass-arounds and wave-by enabled them to get their laps back in one go, and Corey Lewis, Bryan Sellers and Madison Snow put their heads down to move through the field to get to second and help secure their championship lead. Ryan Hardwick, Jan Heylen and Zacharie Robichon finished third in the No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R.
George Kurtz backed up his 24 Hours of Le Mans LMP2 Pro-Am class win with his first LMP2 win in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, with him, Ben Hanley and rising start Nolan Siegel taking victory in the No. 04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR ORECA over the No. 18 Era Motorsport ORECA of Dwight Merriman, Ryan Dalziel and Christian Rasmussen.
Gar Robinson, Felipe Fraga and Josh Burdon still have a perfect record in LMP3 in 2023, having added the Six Hours of the Glen victory to their Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring title. The No. 75 Riley Motorsports squad beat the No. 30 Jr III Racing Ligier of Garrett Grist, Dakota Dickerson and Dylan Murray, who only got the call to step into the car this morning.