Porsche Penske Targets Historic Triple Crown Triumph at Le Mans
After a perfect start to its IMSA WeatherTech Championship season, the sweepstakes pot keeps growing for Porsche Penske Motorsport and the regular drivers of its No. 7 Porsche 963, Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy.
Having swept the '36 hours of Florida' with victories in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the team and its two drivers have a chance to win endurance racing's classic slam with a victory at Le Mans in June. Porsche and Penske will try to match Ford's record of three victories on the trot in the 1966 and 1968 seasons, but Nasr and Tandy will vie to become the first drivers to win the three major endurance races in a single season.
Tandy, co-driving with Nasr and Laurens Vanthoor at Sebring, has already joined nine other drivers who have won the three majors, including Americans Al Holbert and Hurley Haywood. He won Le Mans on board Porsche's 919 hybrid in 2015 before being paired with Nasr for this year's IMSA campaign.
The career of Englishman Tandy, who signed on early with Porsche as a factory driver, has been a mixed bag. He has been in the right car for major endurance wins, which includes being paired with Nasr for the 2025 campaign when Porsche decided not to retain Dane Cameron. But Tandy has also experienced tragedy. His older brother Joe ran the racing team where Tandy competed for his first three years of competition. Joe was killed in a traffic accident in 2009 and the team was disbanded.
Engaging, sharp and affable, Tandy has won a lot of fans over the years. At Sebring, the 'Bedforeshire Bullet' made the key pass for track position in his final stint, passing the Cadillac V-Series.R of Frederik Vesti entering the high-speed Turn 17, scene of several major incidents over the course of the day. Following that move early in the night, the Action Express Racing Cadillac could not keep up with the leading Porsche.
'The triple crown is probably one of the more historic kind of accomplishments,' said Tandy, who has been recently lauded for winning the 24-hour events for GT3 cars at the Nürburgring and Spa in addition to the overall wins at Daytona and Le Mans in prototypes.
'It's incredible because I never realized how big a thing it would be winning all the four 24 hours. It went global. People talking about it globally.'
Tandy co-drove to victory at the Petit Le Mans in 2015 on board a factory Porsche 911 RSR, an improbable win over the DP prototypes due to the rear-engine car's better handling in a day-long deluge. Coupled with the overall win at Sebring, where he already had two class wins, he has scored victories in six major endurance races.
The Penske team chose Brazilian Nasr to contest the final stints at both Daytona and Sebring. With victory at the Petit Le Mans as well, the ex-Formula 1 driver is now poised for recognition of his endurance accomplishments, including last year's win at the Rolex 24.
'After the win in the 24 Hours of Daytona, we spoke between us,' said Nasr. 'What a dream it would be to win Sebring if we can. And here we are. It's just hard to sink it in and understand what we just accomplished here. As a team, it was a perfect race today from beginning to the end. I think there was just one time we cycled through the back very early on when I was in the car. After that, we made our way to the front. The team did a perfect execution along the race.'
Porsche Penske swept the top two steps of the podium thanks to gaining speed in the cool of the night, which has been problematic for the team in its first two seasons with its LMDh entries. Matt Campbell, Mathieu Jaminet and Keven Estre co-drove the No. 6 Porsche 963 to second after passing the Action Express entry on a pit stop.
At Le Mans, Nasr and Tandy will drive a third entry alongside Porsche Penske's two regular World Endurance Championship cars. Pascal Wehrlein is touted to be the third driver, replacing Vanthoor, who will rejoin his regular WEC team. Porsche Penske Motorsport received an automatic third entry from the Automobile Club de l'Ouest for winning last year's WeatherTech Championship with the No 7 Porsche 963 co-driven by Nasr and Cameron.
The 'triple crown' was famously attempted by Ken Miles in 1966, a year when his co-driver Lloyd Ruby was not available for Le Mans due to an injury. But as the movie 'Ford vs. Ferrari' depicted, internal Ford politics robbed him of the victory, an outcome corroborated by magazine writers covering the race.
The last team to attempt to win the three majors with the same chassis and drivers in the same season was Riley & Scott and Wayne Taylor, Scott Sharp and Jim Pace. After winning at Daytona and Sebring in 1996, it was a last-minute decision to go to Le Mans and the team suffered various issues with its Aurora V8-powered R&S Mk. III.
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