Porsche Penske Motorsport will have a chance next month to win an IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Nick Tandy hopes Roger Penske’s organization still has two chances to capture the trophy.
Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet, the co-drivers of the No. 6 Porsche 963 hybrid prototype, trail the series-leading sister car of Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr by 100 points heading to this weekend’s TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks, a six-hour sports car race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. If Tandy and Jaminet can finish ahead of the Cameron-Nasr duo in the No. 7 car, the title fight will go to the season-ending Petit Le Mans on Oct. 12 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
While Tandy said getting Porsche the manufacturer’s championship is first on the priority list with the team earning its first series title since 2020 a close second, he hopes the No. 6 car can be the one to deliver those.
“On a personal side, each group and each set of drivers wants to have a chance to win a team and a driver’s championship,” he said. “It’s still open … (but) if we lose ground at Indy, it will be tough to do anything more than support the 7 at Road Atlanta.”
Tandy and Jaminet have much working in their favor. For starters, they won last year’s IMS race, and while they haven’t tested at the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course this year, they expect what worked for them a year ago in a 1-2 Penske finish will carry over despite the increase in distance. Last year, the race spanned two hours, 40 minutes. This year, it’s six hours.
Secondly, the No. 6 car has won two of the past four races (the Motul Course de Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and the IMSA SportsCar Weekend Road America). After finishing behind their teammates in the first three races this season, including the Rolex 24 At Daytona, which the No. 7 car won with NTT INDYCAR SERIES driver Josef Newgarden contributing, they have won the head-to-head battle three times in the past four races.
The No. 7 car also won the Sahlen’s Six Hours at The Glen in June, its second win of the season. Porsche Penske Motorsport has won four of the seven races overall this season.
“Both cars have been performing really well, but since kind of (the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach in the third race of the season) we’ve been really proud of what we’ve being doing (with the 6 car),” Tandy said. “We’ve had two wins and another two podium (finishes) the last four rounds.
“So, momentum’s on our side.”
The No. 6 car finished second in the Detroit Grand Prix and was third at Watkins Glen, delivering an average finish of 1.75 over the past four events. The No. 7 car’s average finish in that span is 2.5.
While Cameron and Nasr hold a 100-point lead over Tandy and Jaminet with two races left in the season, the latter’s advantage over Cadillac Racing’s No. 01 driven by four-time INDYCAR SERIES champion Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande is 85 points. But Tandy made it clear: He is looking forward.
“I’m not interested in finishing second or third,” he said. “The main aim, and this is for every season that we go into, is to get a Porsche car to the front and to get Porsche manufacturer points. It will be great to finish first and second in team points, but at the same time if there’s a chance to do something risky and potentially lose points to the 01 or any of the others against a smaller chance of something paying off, we probably would go for it.
“The normal tactics will be the 7 car will play the safe strategy being ahead in points, and then maybe the 6, if there’s a situation to play split strategies, we’d tend to go the option, let’s say. From a team’s point of view, we just need one car in front at all times, and most of the time it doesn’t matter which unless we’re both together and we can manipulate the places.”
One concern for Tandy is the No. 6 car’s lack of results in endurance races over the past two seasons. There were four such races last year and three so far this season. This weekend’s race is the fourth.
Tandy and Jaminet didn’t finish any of the endurance races last year – there were mechanical issues and contact – and they were fourth, ninth and third in the longer distance races this year. Given that the final two races this year are endurance races, as the Petit Le Mans is 10 hours, their championship hopes rest in finally breaking through.
“Managing tires is going to be the key,” Tandy said. “We haven’t historically been that great with results from endurance rounds looking back the past two years, so from that point of view I’d have probably preferred (this race) been a sprint race.
“But I’ve always enjoyed the longer races. They give you more opportunities to do something different (strategy-wise) and to make a difference as a team as opposed to (success) coming down to pure pace of each individual car.”
While the championship is the big goal ahead, the return to IMS, which happens to be owned by the owner of the race team, is significant. The Penske drivers understand that.
“Of course, you want to win every race you go into, but there are special ones,” Tandy said. “Indianapolis (is) the home track for Team Penske, and it’s big from that point of view. And, it’s the Brickyard.
“I think I said last year, anytime you get to race there or win there it’s a mega thing – just the history of the place and the sport, and all of that is on top of looking for points and winning a championship. There’s lots of stuff going on.”
Tickets and information for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks are available at IMS.com.
