Make It Three Straight For Penske Porsche

LONG BEACH, Calif. — After the first two IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup rounds of 24 hours and 12 hours in Florida, the much shorter 100-minute Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach in California produced the same IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship winners as the last race.

Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy captured their third consecutive overall and Grand Touring Prototype class win in Saturday’s Long Beach race. The pair co-drove the winning No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963, parlaying a better move ahead on an early and singular pit stop to leapfrog the Motul Pole Award-winning No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8.

The Porsche Penske Motorsport team completed its second straight 1-2 finish, with Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell again finishing second in their No. 6 Porsche 963. The No. 24 BMW, started by Dries Vanthoor and finished by Philipp Eng, came home third for both the pair and the team’s first GTP podium finish of 2025.

It’s the first time a top level IMSA prototype class team has won the first three races of a season since the Wayne Taylor Racing crew of Jordan and Ricky Taylor did so in the 2017 Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class, when they won the first five races.

Nasr and Tandy’s co-driver from the first two races of the season, Laurens Vanthoor, added his third IMSA win of the season as well, but with a twist. The Belgian shifted into the No. 177 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (992), which made a cameo appearance in the Grand Touring Daytona class and won that class with Jonny Edgar. It’s the team’s second straight win this year, as its Grand Touring Daytona Pro full-season No. 77 Porsche of Laurin Heinrich, Klaus Bachler and Alessio Picariello won the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Similar to the Porsche in GTP, this car moved ahead on pit strategy – albeit running a lap later than most of the leaders after GTD teams completed the minimum drive time of 35 minutes – and then exited ahead of one of the Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3 cars that pitted on the same lap.

In GTD behind “Rexy,” which added its first GTD class win to four previous GTD PRO class wins, came the pair of Vasser Sullivan Lexus entries. That team came up just short of its own three-peat, having won at Long Beach in GT in two different classes the last two years.

The polesitting No. 12 Lexus RC F GT3 of Parker Thompson and Jack Hawksworth finished second ahead of the No. 89 Lexus RC F GT3 of Aaron Telitz and Frankie Montecalvo, third in a one-off entry.

The GTD debut of Robert Wickens, racing with a specially designed Bosch electronic braking system in his No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette Z06 GT3.R, produced a mixed bag similar to his weekend. Wickens handed over the car with an 18.7 second driver change to Tommy Milner. Milner gained four spots on his stint up to fifth in class, but contact with another car in the hairpin, Turn 11, saw the No. 36 car incur a mechanical black flag that dropped the car to an unrepresentative 15^th-place finish.