MSR wins Petit Le Mans as Whelen Cadillac takes championship

Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian went out with a bang, taking victory in the 26th Motul Petit Le Mans in the team’s last IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race for the foreseeable future. During a late-race yellow, in a race punctuated by 13 full-course cautions, the team kept the No. 60 Acura ARX-06 out to gain track position, and Colin Braun swept around leader Renger van der Zande on a restart to take the lead and eventually the win for him, Tom Blomqvist and Helio Castroneves.

“It’s amazing with all the crap this team has been through this year. It’s too much. It’s just too much,” said team principal Mike Shank, his voice breaking.

While the victory brought MSR into spitting distance of the championship, it was Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims taking the title for Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing as their competitors took themselves out one by one. They finished sixth in the No. 31 V-Series.R with Jack Aitken, but it was enough to take the title, Derani and the team’s second in three years.

Ben Hanley, George Kurtz and Nolan Siegel won LMP2 in the No. 04 Crowdstrike by APR ORECA, delivering the Michelin Endurance Cup title to Kurtz and Hanely, as well as the Trueman Award for Kurtz. The championship went to Ben Keating and Paul-Loup Chatin, who finished third with Alex Quinn in the No. 52 PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA after their chief rivals TDS Racing crashed out.