Petit Le Mans Settles IMSA’s Titles: Porsche Wins, Cadillac Celebrates

Feature photo: Porsche Penske Motorsport’s #6 963 at Watkins Glen on June 23, 2023. Archive photograph of the program, with a different driver lineup from the 2026 Petit Le Mans-winning crew. Photo: SmackJam / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Unmodified.

Porsche Penske Motorsport finished the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with the biggest trophy of the night at Road Atlanta. Jack Aitken and Cadillac left with the season’s GTP honors. Around them, three more classes settled their championships during a Petit Le Mans that kept changing shape through rain, interruptions and the final stint.

The October 3 finale is complete, and IMSA’s October 5 championship recap now gives the results a clear frame. Race victory, the full-season championship and the Michelin Endurance Cup produced different winners in several categories. Here is how the major outcomes fit together.

The #6 Porsche wins a difficult finale

Laurens Vanthoor, Kévin Estre and Matt Campbell took the overall win in the #6 Porsche 963. According to IMSA’s prototype race report, Vanthoor finished 1.205 seconds ahead of Sheldon van der Linde in the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8. The #40 Cadillac completed the podium.

The result came after 16 full-course cautions and a 27-minute stoppage for nearby lightning. Porsche’s sister #7 crashed with roughly 90 minutes remaining, leaving #6 to finish the job. Porsche had previously won Petit Le Mans overall with a GT-class 911 RSR in 2015; this was its first top-class victory at the event.

Porsche’s own account adds useful context to the recovery. The winning car served a drive-through earlier in the race, and the team had worked on its nighttime setup. Vanthoor still had to manage a late restart and traffic to secure #6’s first win of the season. Estre also earned his first IMSA victory.

Aitken and Cadillac finish the championship job

Aitken clinched the GTP drivers’ championship by starting the finale. The #31 Cadillac Whelen entry took the team title, and Cadillac won the manufacturer championship. His co-drivers contributed to the campaign, but the official full-season drivers’ award belongs to Aitken alone.

The Night of Champions results also separate those honors from the endurance competition. Felipe Nasr, Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich, the #7 Porsche team and Porsche as a manufacturer earned the GTP Michelin Endurance Cup titles.

That distinction matters when reading a season summary. The car celebrating the Road Atlanta win was #6; the full-season GTP champion drove #31; the endurance drivers’ and team awards went to #7. Each result describes a different contest.

LMP2 was decided at the finish line

George Kurtz and Alex Quinn won the full-season LMP2 drivers’ championship with CrowdStrike Racing by APR. Toby Sowery joined them for the endurance races, and that trio also secured the Endurance Cup.

At Road Atlanta, the #04 ORECA recovered from an early penalty and later contact that required replacement rear bodywork. Quinn beat Tom Dillmann’s #43 Inter Europol car by just 0.666 seconds. IMSA’s post-race analysis credits the quick repair with keeping #04 on the lead lap. The crew’s work preserved the opportunity that Quinn converted into both a race win and a championship.

The GT classes spread the rewards

Car Blanche won GTD PRO with its #68 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, shared by Mattia Drudi, Valentin Hasse Clot and Marco Sørensen. IMSA’s GT report records the team’s first WeatherTech victory and its first Endurance Cup start in GTD PRO.

Paul Miller Racing’s Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen secured the full-season GTD PRO drivers’ title in the #1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO. Chevrolet took the class’s season manufacturer championship, while BMW earned that manufacturer award in the Endurance Cup. The badge on the drivers’ championship car therefore tells only part of the story.

In GTD, Winward Racing combined its first Petit Le Mans win with a third consecutive class championship. Russell Ward and Philip Ellis were the season champions; Indy Dontje joined them for the finale. Their late-season recovery was substantial: four wins and a second place across the final five rounds. Mercedes-AMG collected the full-season GTD manufacturer title.

What to take from the final classification

The useful lesson for anyone following endurance racing is to keep three questions separate: who won today, who accumulated the strongest season and who scored best across the endurance rounds? Road Atlanta supplied different answers to all three in GTP.

For club racers, the LMP2 repair and Winward’s recovery offer a more practical takeaway. Keeping a damaged campaign moving, completing the repair properly and staying in contention can preserve results that a single difficult session seems to put out of reach. The final lap only matters if the team has kept the car in the race.

Checked October 7, 2026. All photographs are real archival images, individually credited with their dates and reuse terms.