Pressure Is on Tandy, Jaminet, Porsche Penske as IMSA Returns to Indianapolis Motor Speedway

• The drivers of the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 are determined to hold off Cadillac in the IMSA GTP manufacturer championship.

• And, they trail their teammates and drivers of the No. 7 Porsche 963, Dane Cameron and Filipe Nasr, by 100 points in the drivers’ championship.

• The race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the next-to-last race on the 2024 schedule.

Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet are the co-drivers under the most pressure in the GTP class when the WeatherTech Championship visits the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for IMSA’s first six-hour race at the hallowed track.

Given the stakes, kissing some of that race grit on the bricks once again after this year’s event is certainly a sweet proposition for last year’s winners.

But entering Sunday’s race, Tandy and Jaminet are in a bit of a pickle. The drivers of the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 need to help keep Cadillac at bay in the manufacturer championship in the penultimate round before heading to the Petit Le Mans. And, they trail their teammates and drivers of the No. 7 Porsche 963, Dane Cameron and Filipe Nasr, by 100 points in the drivers’ championship.

“We will need to finish in front of them at Indy to take a good chance into Road Atlanta for the drivers’ championship,” said Tandy. “Yes, the pressure is on.”

Then there’s the external pressure of racing at boss Roger Penske’s facility in addition to the fact that Tandy and Jaminet won last year’s two hour 40-minute sprint race. Tandy said the goal is to get to the front at the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks and stay there to avoid their Porsche Penske teammates. “I’m not interested in finishing second or third,” he said.

But those bricks at the start/finish everyone wants to smooch will be traversed from noon until dinner time. In a six-hour race, the traffic from three additional classes, the wear on the Michelin tires and pit strategy will inevitably be factors. Count on close quarters in the passing zones on the front and infield straights, which at Indy are generously wide and inviting. There’s always the specter of safety car periods.

There are no team orders from Penske, which has helped the team earn four victories and an 89-point lead over Cadillac in the manufacturers race.

“Going into the race, the only team orders are don't take each other out, and then see what happens,” said Tandy. “The main thing is to get one of the cars to the front and beating the other three manufacturers. If we can help each other, then we do. The team tends to favor the cars higher up in the championship. That was Mathieu and I last year. At the moment, it's the No. 7 Porsche.”

Tandy said it makes sense for him and Jaminet to take chances in traffic, which can bog down the GTP cars between the two straights. “If there’s a chance for Mathieu or I to do something risky and potentially lose points to the (No. 01 Cadillac), we would probably go for it.”

The Porsche Penske race strategies are up to the team on the pit wall. “I imagine the normal tactics will be for the No. 7 car to play the safe strategy, being ahead on points, and possibly the same for (our car),” said Tandy. “If there’s a situation where it might pay to split strategies, we’d probably tend to go on the option. We just need one car in front at all times.”

Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande, drivers of the Cadillac Racing V-Series.R fielded by Chip Ganassi Racing, trail the drivers of the No. 6 Porsche by 85 points. To have a shot at the title in the Petit Le Mans, they need to cut into the lead of the drivers of both Penske Porsches. That could also help give Cadillac a shot at the manufacturer’s title in the always unpredictable season finale, albeit there are also the privateer Porsches of the Proton and JDC-Miller teams competing at Indy.

The key, said Bourdais, is working traffic. “You’re fighting for a couple tenths and then you give up five seconds on a lap because you get stuck behind a GT or something for six corners. It’s a tough one.”

The drivers of Cadillac Racing’s entry from Action Express Racing, Pipo Derani and Jack Aitken, trail their fellow Caddy drivers by 57 points and the overall leaders by a distant 242 points. But they can still figure in the manufacturer championship.

There is additional external pressure on all the Porsche drivers. The Porsche Penske squad is poised to win the manufacturers and drivers titles in the World Endurance Championship in the November season finale at Bahrain despite fierce competition from Ferrari and Toyota. It would be embarrassing, let alone a career setback, for the American teams competing in the same LMDh Porsche 963 to not bring home those two titles as well.

“We don’t want to go to the Porsche awards night in December in Germany and have all the talk about the WEC team winning,” said Tandy. “We want the conversation to be about all our cars.”