BRASELTON, Ga. — Chip Ganassi Racing’s Renger van der Zande was able to sweep past Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Nick Tandy entering turn 1 with just over 15 minutes to go Saturday night (Oct. 12). From there, van der Zande drove away to win the Motul Petit Le Mans with teammates Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon.
Ganassi’s margin of victory was 2.948 seconds over Tandy, Kevin Estre and Mathieu Jaminet. The No. 7 Porsche of Dane Cameron, Matt Campbell and Kevin Estre were third. BMW M Team RLL’s Philipp Eng, Augusto Farfus and Jesse Krohn were a lap down in fourth, while Action Express Racing’s Jack Aitken, Tom Blomqvist and Pipo Derani were fifth.
Action Express Racing’s Jack Aitken started from pole in his Cadillac and ran well in the opening laps. BMW M Team RLL’s Connor de Phillippi. During an early caution, everyone chose to stop for fuel…except for Jordan Taylor.
Not stopping during the first yellow put the DEX Imaging Acura in the overall lead. Once the race restarted, Jordan ran off and hid. Having a lighter car due to fuel allowed Jordan to run off to a 10-second lead.
Eventually, Aitken was able to run Jordan back down and retake the lead 90 minutes in. By that point, the two pit strategies had effectively merged.
The third caution flew when Gradient Racing’s Sheena Monk spun in the Esses after rubbing against Pfaff Motorsports’ Oliver Jarvis. Monk’s car was undamaged, but came to a stop in the middle of a dangerous part of the course.
During this caution, Aitken made an illegal pass of a lapped car. That eventually got him a drive-through penalty that took Action Express out of contention. A second penalty later on when Tom Blomqvist hit the No. 24 BMW put them a lap down.
The penalty put Campbell in the lead in his championship-leading Porsche. A couple of long green runs thinned out the teams on the lead lap. By the fifth hour, there were only five left and two of them were on the tail end of the lead lap, waiting for a caution to come out so they could come back around that seemingly never came.
Tandy was leading until he made contact with Cetilar Racing’s Roberto Lacorte, knocking Lacorte off the road. He was given a drive-through penalty for that, giving the overall lead to Nasr.
Much of the second half of the race saw the two Penske Porsches swap the lead back and forth. Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Global’s No. 10 was the main competition. Until a little after 9 p.m….
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