If the fact that Honda Racing Corporation reunited with Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian to run its two-car Acura ARX-06 program wasn’t enough of a surprise, here comes the driver announcement. Presented by RACER’s Trackside Report is …
If the fact that Honda Racing Corporation reunited with Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian to run its two-car Acura ARX-06 program wasn’t enough of a surprise, here comes the driver announcement.
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In a storybook ending for Chip Ganassi Racing, the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon came back from a miserable early race to win Petit Le Mans. With a dramatic dive to the inside of Nick …
In a storybook ending for Chip Ganassi Racing, the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon came back from a miserable early race to win Petit Le Mans. With a dramatic dive to the inside of Nick Tandy in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in Turn 1 with 15m left in the 10-hour race, Renger van der Zande turned around what had looked like a hopeless day to win the last race before CGR exits the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship for the time being.
To add a bit of last-second drama, the Cadillac, which had run much of the evening with only one headlight, lost it’s headlights completely with under 5m to go. That would have surely earned a mechanical black flag, but the lights came back on shortly thereafter. They continued to go off intermittently, but were on enough to finish the race.
Porsche Penske Motorsports finished second and third, the No. 6 963 finishing ahead of the No. 7. The third-place finish earned the No. 7 squad of Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr, aided by Matt Campbell in the endurance races, the GTP championship and the Michelin Endurance Cup. Cadillac Racing closed the gap to the No. 6 team, but in the end fell short of breaking up the PPM one-two in the championship.
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The No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA and drivers Steven Thomas, Mikkel Jensen and Hunter McElrea dominated LMP2 after the polesitting No. 2 United Autosports ORECA exited the fight in an early-race crash. TDS denying the Riley Motorsports squad their first victory, as the No. 74 of Gar Robinson, Felipe Fraga and Josh Burdon finished second, also preserved the championship lead for Nick Boulle, Tom Dillmann and Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports.
Jordan Pepper in the No. 19 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2 held off a charge by Daniel Serra in the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 to take the GTD PRO victory for himself, Frank Perera and Mirko Bortolotti. The No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas and Roman De Angelis finished third, which wasn’t enough to wrest the title from Laurin Heinrich and AO Racing.
The No. 77 AO Racing Porche 911 GT3R had a rough race, encountering an electrical issue that affected shifting. Fixing the problem put the car down six laps and Heinrich, with Michael Christensen and Julien Andlauer, finished 11th. Had Gunn been able to take second in the race, the championship would have been his. In the end, the points from Saturday’s qualifying where Heinrich scored pole made the difference.
Conquest Racing was a surprise winner in GTD, Albert Costa Balboa taking advantage of a late caution to get the No. 34 Ferrari 296 into position to attack Loris Spinelli in the No. 78 Forte Racing Lamborghini Huracan and earn victory for himself, Manny Franco and Cedric Sbirrazzuoli. Winward Racing took the championship with Russell Ward and Philip Ellis and, along with Indy Dontje, the Michelin Endurance Cup, with a ninth-place finish.
Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande finished a close second to the No, 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen. It was a solid day for championship points, even if the gap to Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr grew by …
Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande finished a close second to the No, 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen. It was a solid day for championship points, even if the gap to Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr grew by another 30.
However, Bourdais and van der Zande want the wins, and believe their No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R doesn’t have the ability to propel them to victory at the moment.
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“At the end when the track dried up, we all came for slicks,” said van der Zande after giving it all in trying to get a run on Nasr in the final 16-minute sprint. “It was very clear from the get-go that every time I went to power, there was just not enough power to attack. Third gear, fourth gear, fifth gear, the gap was always increasing on every straight.”
He went on to clarify that in terms of pace over a lap, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has the four manufacturers pretty equal. Qualifying on Saturday produced a Grand Touring Prototype grid where every car was within three-quarters of a second. But the way the four different cars in GTP make lap time doesn’t always produce an equal opportunity when it comes to racing.
“I have to say hats off for this championship to get to where it is. It’s super equal, lap-time-wise, very equal. Big compliment for that. We would like to race a bit more. We would have a bit more racy car to go into the final. Otherwise you make a small wiggle, as you saw on my restart, into Turn 1, they just blow by on the straights. We’re fast enough in the corners, but not on the straight.”
The Cadillac’s pace has been demonstrated well this season, with Cadillac Racing having the top qualifying time in the first four races of the year. Pipo Derani in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing V-Series.R took pole for the first three races of the season; Bourdais took the fourth at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. But only one of those produced a victory, with van der Zande and Bourdais taking victory over Derani and Jack Aitken on a tire strategy call at Long Beach. In six races, Porsche has three wins, and Acura two, to Cadillac’s one.
Both Cadillacs had the lead at a point during the race, van der Zande seizing the point at the start before ceding it to a charging Phil Hanson in the JDC-Miller MotorSports 963. In the second hour, Jack Aitken made an impressive move around the outside of Turn 7 on then-leader Philipp Eng in the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 to take the lead, although he gave it back with a half-spin later.
For the final restart at Watkins Glen, van der Zande was third behind Louis Delétraz in the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 and Nasr. The Acura seemed to have struggled on starts and restarts all day, and both Nasr and van der Zande were by quickly. But while the gap ebbed and flowed through traffic, van der Zande could never get enough of a run on Nasr to make a solid attempt at a pass. Conversely, Mathieu Jaminet, who pushed the No. 6 PPM 963 past Delétraz into third a short time later, couldn’t seem to close the gap to van der Zande.
As for the Balance of Performance, on paper the difference is pretty small. For Watkins Glen, Cadillac’s minimum weight was 1kg more than the Porsche, 1047kg to 1046kg. The heavier Porsche had 1 more kW in the power department, 511 for the Cadillac to 512kW for the Porsche. Of course, there’s a lot more to top speed than just power-to-weight ratio, and nobody but the manufacturers’ and teams’ respective engineers know how setup choices such as downforce and rake affect the drag coefficient.
Whatever the cause, it’s enough to push the No. 01 Cadillac drivers to voice their concern.
“I think I’ll just echo what Renger is saying,” added Bourdais. “Pretty much for the third weekend in a row – Detroit, Le Mans and this one – we don’t have any top speed to allow us to race and fight. I’m tired of it. We’re not asking for lap time or performance, but we need something to be done here. It’s just not a fair fight.”
Drivers and teams seemed to be in universal agreement that it couldn’t be done – that nobody could go the full race on a single set of tires as Porsche Penske Motorsports did last year to win in Long Beach. The No. 01 Cadillac Racing crew was of a …
Drivers and teams seemed to be in universal agreement that it couldn’t be done – that nobody could go the full race on a single set of tires as Porsche Penske Motorsports did last year to win in Long Beach. The No. 01 Cadillac Racing crew was of a different mind.
Aided by three full-course cautions in the 1h40m IMSA SportsCar Grand Prix of Long Beach, the No. 01 crew only added fuel when Sebastien Bourdais handed the Cadillac V-Series.R over to Renger van der Zande with an hour left in the race. Through a pair of restarts and a pileup in the hairpin, van der Zande held off Jack Aitken in the Whelen Cadillac Racing No. 31 V-Series.R to win the third round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. It was the 66th IMSA victory for Chip Ganassi Racing, the 20th for van der Zande and 12th for Bourdais.
The No. 89 Vasser Sullivan Lexus led the entire race from pole to claim the GT Daytona victory.
Polesitter Pipo Derani got the holeshot at the start as Bourdais slotted into second from his inside-second-row starting spot. Derani controlled the race at the front for the first half, and through the first full-course caution brought out when Brendan Iribe put the No. 70 Inception Racing McLaren 720S GT3 into the wall exiting Turn 5 and rebounded into the path of Adam Adelson’s Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, taking both cars out of the race.
Most of the GTP runners pitted around 30m into the race, giving them sufficient energy to make it to the end. Bourdais was the last of the bunch, after all the other cars had taken either four tires or left-side tires. Electing not to take tires as Bourdais exited and van der Zande entered moved the No. 01 out in front of the No. 31, a track position they would never relinquish.
“When we woke up this morning, it was quite cold,” explained van der Zande. “And the sun came out at one point and it started to warm up, so we really left it until the last minute to decide. I think that’s the best you can do in racing. If you plan a start or where to go at the start, it never turns out the same way. So in this case, as well, and with tires it’s something to make the decision right at the spot. They made the right choice for sure.”
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Of course, that meant that at the end of the race, van der Zande had much older tires under him than Aitken did since the No. 31 took left-side tires. Aitken said he could see van der Zande struggling, but Long Beach is a tough place to pass under any circumstances, and the difference in grip wasn’t great enough.
“It was a handful – especially easy to look up the fronts, which at a street track I think is the end of the race most of the time. So taking it easy. When I got in the car I knew I had to keep the tires alive. So keeping control of the race and just don’t over push it, don’t over drive those tires so I have some some rubber left at the end of the race, was the key for me to how I managed the tires and it worked out that way. And traffic got really hairy at one point because the Lamborghini and the Aston Martin were fighting into … I think it was Turn 8, and we almost wrecked right there. I think those yellows always help for tire degradation, so that was nice,” van der Zande added.
BMW M Team RLL had high hopes for a good finish after Nick Yelloly qualified the No. 25 M Hybrid V8 in second, only 0.009s off Derani’s pole. But it was one misfortune after another for Yelloly and De Phillippi, starting with getting passed by Nick Tandy in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 10 minutes into the race for third position. It went downhill from there. The No. 25 hadn’t pitted as the second caution came out when Lous Deletraz put the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura into the wall in Turn 1, and ended up losing another position in the pit stop.
Chasing Nasr, De Phillippi tagged him in the back heading into Turn 9. The No. 25 suffered further damage to the nose in a pileup at the hairpin, started by Loris Spinelli in the No. 78 Forte Racing by USRT Lamborghini Huracan making contact with Mathieu Jaminet’s No. 6 PPM 963 and spinning the Porsche. After a nose change, De Phillippi buried the car into the tires at at Turn 6, bringing out the race’s third and final full-course caution with 16 minutes to go.
The No. 25 BMW’s troubles, along with the assisted spin for Jaminet, elevated the No. 7 PPM 963, giving third to Nasr and Dane Cameron. As a result, Cameron and Nasr took sole position of the points lead they had shared with the No. 40 WTRAndretti squad with 1082 points. Bourdais and van der Zande moved into second at 974, and Aitken and Derani are third, ahead of Jordan Taylor and Delétraz, with 955 points.
Jaminet and Tandy’s No. 6 Porsche was fourth, followed the No. 5 Proton Competition Porsche 963 of Mike Rockenfeller and Gianmaria Bruni.
Vasser Sullivan Lexus came to Long Beach with another ace up their sleeve — a second GTD entry. Jake Galstad/Lumen
With GTD PRO sitting this one out in favor of Detroit next month, Vasser Sullivan Racing took the opportunity to do as it has in the past and run a second car in GTD. Splitting the two regular drivers in the No. 12 Lexus RC F GT3, Frankie Montecalvo and Parker Thompson, and pairing them with the GTD PRO drivers, Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat, respectively, the team doubled its chances. They locked out the front row, Thompson claiming his second pole of the season.
The No. 12 of Montecalvo and Hawksworth had a miserable race, with Montecalvo receiving a drive-through penalty for changing lanes at the start. Later, Hawksworth had contact with the wall, breaking the suspension and retiring the car. For the No. 89, though, it was smooth sailing, and Thompson took his second victory in the WeatherTech Championship (the first came as the endurance addition in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen in 2023), and Barnicoat a second consecutive Long Beach win after he and Hawksworth won GTD PRO last year.
“It’s tough when you know execution is the only thing between you and winning the race,” said Thompson. “There was a lot of pros that qualified, so I was up against a pretty tough field at the start but controlled the race from the start, got a good jump, got into Turn 1, handled a couple of restarts and just saved our Lexus RC F to make sure that Mr. Platinum himself beside me can bring it home. So it was good. It’s really cool that 89 … the message behind that is 1989 was the first time that Lexus came stateside to the U.S., so it’s awesome to honor them, get the win for them. Back to back at Long Beach is fantastic.”
Several of the would-be frontrunners in GTD struck trouble, such as Spencer Pumpelly in his Heart of Racing debut getting tagged and spun out of fourth place by Anders Fjordbach in Turn 6. The No. 27 Aston Martin Vantage Evo Pumpelly shared with Roman De Angelis had been having a good run to that point.
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The No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 had been having a solid race as well in the hands of Albert Costa Balboa, which continued with Manny Franco, but both drivers had minor incidents of contact that left the car struggling at the end. And winner of the first two races, Winward Racing, lost any hope at victory when they were issued a drive through for too many crew members over the wall.
At the end, it was a three-way battle between cars that had started well back in the field for second. The No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 emerged in good position after the round of pit stops, and Robby Foley kept the car started by Patrick Gallagher in second.
Korthoff/Preston Motorsports had a rough start to their weekend, Mikael Grenier plastering the No. 32 Mercedes AMG into the wall in the first practice session and thus missing the second. With little practice, Grenier qualified the car in sixth and kept the car clean before handing over to Mike Skeen in fourth. Skeen benefitted from Pumpelly’s problems to get to third and proceeded to hound Foley, but could never get by.
The drive of the race, though, would likely go to the drivers that finished fourth. The No. 66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 skipped qualifying to change an engine and started at the back. Sheena Monk moved up a few positions to 11th. After pit stops, Stevan McAleer, in his first stint as full-time partner to Monk, moved the car from 12th to fourth, and was on Skeen’s tail at the checker.
The No. 55 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 of Giammarco Levorato and Corey Lewis finished fifth, followed by Orey Fidany and Matthew Bell in the No. 13 AWA Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
Russell Ward and Philip Ellis retain the GTD points lead for Winward despite a seventh-place finish with 987 points. Gallagher and Foley moved into second with 802 and Thompson is third in the points at 792 as the series heads next to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on May 10-12.
Pulling out of the pits in the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R for the first time during the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring will make it official for Renger van der Zande – 100 races in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. In his 11th …
Pulling out of the pits in the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R for the first time during the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring will make it official for Renger van der Zande – 100 races in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
In his 11th season of IMSA competition, the Dutch driver has compiled an impressive book of statistics, including 19 victories, bookended by wins at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca – his first in 2014, the most recent one last season. In the 10 seasons prior to 2024, he has earned a victory in each one.
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“If you think about how many sets of tires, how much fuel, how many kilometers run, how many engineers and mechanics and press conferences, how many big moments I’ve had in this series it’s quite impressive to hear it’s 100 races already,” van der Zande declared.
He’ll once again be partnering with Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon for the race, which will be the 400th race entered in his career, and he’s happy that the milestones are coming in IMSA competition.
“This is my favorite series; I would sign up for another 10 years in IMSA if I could do that today,” he said. “I’m proud of the development of IMSA in general. When I came to the series originally it was the American Le Mans Series and it became the Tudor American Sports Car Championship and now it’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
“And being with one of the top teams since 2017, I want to thank John Doonan for being such a great leader. I want to thank Chip Ganassi having me on for a fourth year, and close friend Peter Baron who got me in the series and has always been there to help. There are many people that I have to thank. The most incredible thing is I’m still enjoying it as much as I was in the beginning. This is what I love to do; it’s my racing family.”
Although the No. 01 was the quick qualifier two years ago, Sebring is one race that has eluded van der Zande, despite Cadillac’s record of success at the bumpy circuit built on a World War II airbase. Still, he counts it as one of his top events.
“Sebring is my favorite race weekend of the year and it’s more special this year with the 100 starts. It’s a proud moment. It’s a track that suits me very well and it also suits my teammates. We’ve always been fast there. It’s one of the roughest, toughest races to win. I’ve never been able to win it, but I’ve been close so many times. We have a really strong lineup for the endurance races, and it’s also good to see the momentum on the WEC side with the car finishing really well at Qatar,” he noted.
The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Cadillac takes place on Saturday, beginning at 9:40 a.m. ET. It begins with a trio of practice sessions on Thursday, with qualifying on Friday.
In the fourth IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race of the season, GTP has its fourth different winner and first repeat victory for a manufacturer as Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande yo-yoed through the field to claim victory for …
In the fourth IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race of the season, GTP has its fourth different winner and first repeat victory for a manufacturer as Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande yo-yoed through the field to claim victory for the No. 01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R and Chip Ganassi Racing.
Through a rough start and ill-timed yellows, both Bourdais and van der Zande ended up deep in the field and had to work their way forward while completing 100 laps around the 2.238-mile, 11-turn WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca during the 2h40m Motul Course de Monterey. On the final restart, with 40 minutes left and Alexander Sims freshly installed in the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac in the lead, van der Zande drove around the outside of Sims in Turn 3 to take the point. Sims hung on for a while, but would eventually also fall victim to Nick Tandy in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsports 963.
“I felt sorry for the guy because I’ve been in that situation, in Ohio last year, where you’re coming cold into the car and into a restart,” said van der Zande of the pass on Sims. “It’s so easy to lock up your front tires in Turn 1. It’s really easily done and those cold tires are not easy at all. So for him to do that restart, after basically he woke up this morning, then he was mine. So I’ve been in this situation and I feel sorry for Alex because it’s not how good I was, it was a bad situation for him to get that restart. He followed me really well after that. He was on the pace doing a lot of pressuring me in traffic as well.”
It was generally not a good day to be a polesitter, as the best any of them could manage was third. Overall pole winner Matt Campbell had a major brake lockup into Turn 1 at the very start, and almost everybody joined him, but Campbell in the No. 7 PPM Porsche got the worst of it, sliding well wide and dropping back into the field. Colin Braun assumed the lead in the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06. The No. 60 was looking strong, but putting a second stint on the Michelin tires early in the race left the MSR Acura sliding backward through the field and into a position from which Braun and Tom Blomqvist could never really recover.
Campbell continued to be his own worst enemy, as after having mostly passed Jarrett Andretti in the new Andretti Autosport GTD Aston Martin Vantage, he moved over to try to get inside the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura heading into Turn 11. But having not cleared the Aston, he hit it, sending Andretti into the tires that protected the beginning of the pit wall and crashing into pit lane. Andretti was uninjured in the incident. Campbell was given a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility. Felipe Nasr would later exit the course in Turn 9 and make impact with the wall, requiring some rear bodywork changes for the No. 7 and effectively ending any opportunity for a good result.
Throughout the middle of the race, the No. 31 AXR Cadillac looked unbeatable and the team clearly had the best tire strategy for that point in the race as Derani drove away from the field. When during a yellow he handed over to Sims with fresh tires, though, Sims had no luck holding off the hard charging van der Zande, who had belted into the No. 01 earlier in the race.
“Pipo was doing a fantastic job; he had really good pace,” said Sims. “I was given everything I could have been given to do the job but ultimately I didn’t have the same pace as Pipo and I made two pretty costly errors in terms of the restart not getting my tires up to temperature properly. Renger just drove around the outside of me. Then I was just being too cautious in traffic and Nick got past me. Still, we didn’t do any stupid mistakes. So good points today and nice to be on the podium.”
Tandy was charging forward at the end, but couldn’t get up to the No. 01 to mount any challenge for victory. He and Mathieu Jaminet came into the race with a one-point lead over the AXR squad, and they still left Monterey at the head of the championship.
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“Honestly, on the restart, I’m in fourth; I thought I was going to win it,” declared Tandy. “Because you know our car had pace. I knew that our restart wasn’t the best. But you know, Renger just drove well and he got the track position early, he got the gap whilst I was getting past the other guys. I think the two cars at the end were the class of the field.”
Bourdais was starting sixth, so victory looked unlikely. It had already been a rough weekend for the team. Bourdais crashed early in the first practice due to the hybrid and braking system acting up, costing the team that session. A bit of good fortune, solid strategy and driving got them toward the front, twice.
“We were a bit stuck after that kind of shaky start with the Porsches lighting it up, and I was kind of caught in the in the smoke,” Bourdais explained. “I didn’t know really where I was going after that. And then went with it because I was so…scared that somebody was going to do the same down the inside and taking me with them. So I kind of shied away from turning and kind of drove myself with them way out there. And then a bunch of guys had lockups, so we gained track position and got to third. The track started to warm up and it really started to work pretty well for us. So the car kind of came to life.
“We get the tires, and we’re looking really good with a big gap and run down the two leaders and (at) that point, I was like, ‘Man, this is looking really good.’ And then the yellow came out and then it was all to be done again. And thankfully, Renger’s really, really good at it. So we kind of had to do it twice, and that was not an easy day but you know that makes those wins that much better.”
It was a nice redemption from Long Beach, where Bourdais crashed at the start, and the pair’s first win since Canadian Tire Motorsports Park last July. The victory made Cadillac the first manufacturer to repeat as a winner in the new era of GTP, and gave Cadillac the lead in the manufacturers’ championship.
Mikkel Jensen got the drop in the end after a hectic battle at the front of the LMP2 field. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images
The LMP2 fight came to a head with only 23 minutes left as the top six were all fighting for the lead. Ryan Dalziel in the No. 18 Era Motorsports ORECA got a run on Ben Hanley in the No. 04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR entry, going side by side through Turn 11. But contact at the exit sent Dalziel spinning. Hanley lost enough momentum that Paul Loup Chatin got a run in the No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA, but it was Mikkel Jensen that eventually emerged with the lead in the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA that he held to the end for a win for he and Steven Thomas.
“That was a crazy race,” said Jensen. “First there was a miscommunication with Steven in the beginning, so we lost track position. I think I got in third or fourth and drove up to first. And then there was a miscommunication when the pits opened to prototypes, I was the only guy that stayed out and came out in seventh. But just an awesome race. It shows what IMSA is, it’s never finished. I was shouting on the radio when we got back seventh, I thought it was over, but the team team told me to stay calm and just to do my job and all of a sudden I was in first.”
Defending LMP2 champion John Farano crashed hard in Turn 5 during the race. He was transported to a local hospital, awake and alert, for observation.
Renger van der Zande will be making his 100th start at the highest level of North American sports car racing at this weekend’s Motul Course de Monterey at Laguna Seca and the Dutchman would happily sign up for another 100. “I’m super proud of that,” …
Renger van der Zande will be making his 100th start at the highest level of North American sports car racing at this weekend’s Motul Course de Monterey at Laguna Seca and the Dutchman would happily sign up for another 100.
“I’m super proud of that,” van der Zande said. “It’s become my racing home; I’m racing with my racing family who are all American but I’m from Holland, so it’s been a trip… I made a lot of friends, not only with my teammates and the teams but also with the competition. I think it’s 100 races of joy. Obviously, we don’t always win. We don’t always have the best result, but I would sign up for another 100 races here in IMSA if I can.”
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After a disappointing season in DTM in 2011, and being all but out of racing entirely in the following year, the American Le Mans Series, and later IMSA, became his landing spot in 2013 onwards. He has collected eighteen career IMSA wins including two Rolex 24 at Daytona victories.
A 2016 title in Prototype Challenge vaulted him to a ride with VisitFlorida Racing the next season. He and co-driver Marc Goosens scored the first win for the 2017-spec LMP2 cars at Laguna Seca against a strong field of DPi cars in the class’s first season.
Wayne Taylor added the Dutchman to his roster of drivers in 2018 and van der Zande spent three years within the WTR stable before moving into a full-factory role with Cadillac and Chip Ganassi Racing.
“I think the United States is someplace where racing and fun is combined, but also the racing is on a very high, professional level. I would say it’s very close to the most pure racing you can get, and I think some other championships have lost that. It’s a tribute to how the Americans keep it simple and go racing,” van der Zande said.
