Three to Track in Final Three GTP Races of 2025

By John Oreovicz, IMSA Wire Service

It’s mid-summer, but it sometimes feels like the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona wrapped up just yesterday. But make no mistake, August is nearly upon us, and the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has completed two-thirds of its nine-race 2025 campaign – six down, three to go, starting with the Motul SportsCar Grand Prix at Road America.

After the first three races (Daytona, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, and the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach), some folks were already ready to hand the championship trophy to Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr and the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963. They won all three (with the help of IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup third driver Laurens Vanthoor at Sebring and Daytona) and opened up a 123-point lead over their teammates Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche.

But the tables turned over the course of the last three events. Jaminet and Campbell won the TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Porsche’s third consecutive 1-2 result, then finished better than Tandy and Nasr at both the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International. Jaminet, Campbell and the No. 6 pair have procured a slim 12-point lead over their teammates in the No. 7.

Here’s a look at how the title battle might play out between the Porsche Penske pairings, and whether any of a trio of teams currently in a close fight for third place in the standings can move into contention.

1. Protecting Porsche’s Championship

Few things hurt worse than finishing second to your teammates, and Jaminet and Campbell were visibly discouraged after losing out in the intra-Porsche battle in the opening three rounds.

A thrilling victory at WeatherTech Raceway provided a big morale boost, then the No. 6 took third place ahead of the No. 7 in fourth at Detroit. The big points swing came at Watkins Glen. Neither Porsche was a factor for the win, but while Campbell and Jaminet grinded out a fourth-place finish, Tandy crashed heavily for Porsche Penske’s only DNF of the season.

Suddenly, the No. 6 duo find themselves atop the standings, but by the slimmest of margins. The No. 7 could make ground on their 12-point deficit by simply continuing to qualify better than the No. 6; Nasr/Tandy are +8 points in qualifying so far this year.

If the competition between the Porsche entries is as intense in the final third of the season as it has been for the first two, the championship is essentially going to come down to which car finishes better in two of the final three races.

“It’s incredibly close between us and the No. 7, so for sure there will be a big fight between the two coming into the end of the year,” said Campbell. “To be honest, I’m really excited. There are some exciting races to come, and Petit Le Mans (the October 11 season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta) traditionally has fantastic racing and I’m sure it’s going to come down to the line there.”

Nasr is equally pumped up about the No. 7 team’s chances.

“It’s still all to play with three good races to the end,” he observed. “I’m always up for a good clean battle and it’s good that the team is in the position right now with both cars one and two in the championship. Most important, of course, is the team and the manufacturer’s championship that we want to keep stretching the gap to the other competitors.”

Porsche Motorsport Director of LMDh Factory Racing Urs Kuratle confirmed that Porsche Penske Motorsport does not enforce any team orders between cars, other than the time-honored classic “don’t crash each other out.” The furious final lap in Monterey – when Tandy threw caution to the wind in a three-wide lunge trying to pass his teammate, defend against Dries Vanthoor’s BMW M Hybrid V8 and also avoid a GT car before the final corner – is proof of that.

“Team orders are always an ugly thing,” Kuratle declared. “I don’t see an extra challenge on this one to be fair. As long as a Porsche wins, we are happy. If the championship is decided between the No. 6 and the No. 7 on the last lap in Road Atlanta, as long as there’s no contact between the cars, we don’t have a problem with it.”

2. Acura In Ascendance

For 2025, Acura renewed its GTP partnership with Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian, which expanded its capabilities to run two cars for the first time. As part of that growth, the team’s No. 93 Acura ARX-06 features engineering support led by associates from Honda Racing Corporation USA (HRC US).

Acura Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 60 started the season strongly, splitting the Porsches with a second-place finish at Daytona. A slump of 10th, 9th, and 11th-place class finishes dropped them to eighth in the standings, but sixth at Detroit and a well-judged victory at Watkins Glen lifted Braun and Blomqvist back up into the top five.

Meanwhile, the No. 93 Acura with Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly claimed the Motul Pole Award at the last two events and finished both in the top six, including a victory at Detroit. With two wins and two poles on the trot, Acura definitely has the momentum. But it also has a seemingly insurmountable deficit of 266 points for the No. 93 drivers and 308 points for the No. 60 duo.

The Manufacturer’s championship, on the other hand, could still be achievable, as Acura lies just 90 points behind Porsche.

“The driver’s championship, realistically, it’s kind of gone; we’re not really chasing it, to be honest,” said Blomqvist. “But we still stand a chance if we keep it up, and we still stand a chance in the Manufacturer’s, which is definitely a big goal of Acura’s. That’s kind of the goal really for us now.”

“It’s been a challenging year at times,” Braun added. “We’ve had a lot of things that haven’t quite fallen our way on the No. 60 that I feel like if they did fall our way, we’d have a lot different results. It was nice at Watkins Glen where it fell our way. A huge day for our group, and we need to keep that momentum going.”

3. Best of the Rest

The 12-point gap between the Porsche pair is close. The battle for the next four cars from third to sixth feels even closer; covered by just 46 points. Yelloly and van der Zande sit third in the No. 93 Acura with 1,766, with Braun and Blomqvist sixth, 46 behind them. Unfortunately, that puts them from 266 to 308 points adrift of Campbell and Jaminet’s total of 2028 points.

BMW M Team RLL failed to take advantage of its early season qualifying pace, unable to convert four consecutive poles by Dries Vanthoor in the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 into a victory. Vanthoor and Philipp Eng boast a pair of podium finishes and two additional top fives to rank fourth in the standings with 1,753 points.

The pair of Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing entries have had tougher goes to start but are turning the formbook in the direction anticipated following WTR’s reunion with longtime partner General Motors. With back-to-back podiums, Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque are fifth with 1,749 points in their No. 10 Cadillac V-Series.R. Jordan Taylor and Louis Deletraz added their first podium of the season at Watkins Glen in the No. 40 car, the team’s first double podium, and sit ninth in points.

“It’s not been the easiest start of the year, clearly,” Deletraz admitted. “To finally get a podium, which we worked hard for is good, and to share it with the 10 car was fantastic.

“We’ve had such a rough start to the year that we’re too far to catch up for the championship. But never say never. We will go for wins. If we can win all three last races, we will see where we end up.”