Yahoo Autos Porsche takes dramatic late-race Watkins Glen Six Hour win
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.
