Familiar Race Winners In IMSA’s Laguna Battle

MONTEREY, Calif. — The theme of streaks – both in the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season and at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca – continued in Sunday’s TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship.

Each of last year’s winning cars, the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963, No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R and No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, reprised their victories as achieved last year in the first two-hour, 40-minute race of the 2025 WeatherTech Championship season.

Those wins also extended streaks established in 2025, although with some slight variations.

The Porsche Penske Motorsport team won its fourth straight Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) race of the season.

But for the first time, it was Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell in the No. 6 Porsche 963 who broke through for their first win of the season instead of teammates Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr in the No. 7 car. Jaminet defended against the driver he won with in Monterey last year, Tandy, who gave chase in the final stint of the race to close within half a second of his teammate but was unable to get around the No. 6 car. Jaminet scythed through GT traffic just ahead of Tandy and emerged victorious by 1.692 seconds.

The drama came down to the 124th and final lap, where Jaminet made one final move past a GT car at Turn 10, which provided enough of a buffer to where Tandy lost momentum.

That opened the door for Motul Pole Award winner Dries Vanthoor in the No. 24 BMW M Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 to attempt a pass on the outside, but contact between the two sent Vanthoor off the road. Vanthoor limped back across the line in third place. IMSA race officials reviewed the incident and took no further action.

AO Racing changed its livery, but not its form, as it won its third straight race across the WeatherTech Championship’s two GT classes. “Rexy” – the green dinosaur – took a break ahead of the on-track weekend in Monterey with “Roxy” – Rexy’s pink dinosaur sister – now adorning the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) full-season drivers Laurin Heinrich and Klaus Bachler.

Heinrich, Bachler and Alessio Picariello won at Sebring, with Laurens Vanthoor and Jonny Edgar scoring a one-off GTD win at Long Beach, and now Heinrich and Bachler won their first race as a pair today. “Roxy’s” first ever win comes a year after AO Racing won its first GTD PRO race at Monterey last year, with Heinrich and Seb Priaulx sharing the No. 77 “Rexy” Porsche.

The polesitting No. 81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3 finished second ahead of the No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R.

In Grand Touring Daytona (GTD), the same combatants who raced for the win at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring – Philip Ellis in the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG and Jack Hawksworth in the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 – did so again in this race.

The same result occurred as Ellis and Russell Ward secured the win ahead of Hawksworth and Parker Thompson. Conquest Racing completed the podium in class with its No. 34 Ferrari 296 GT3.