Latest news with #PetitLeMans
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
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.
New York Times
11-03-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
Nick Tandy, the Farmer, Is Now Also the Endurance Champion Driver
For a farmer, Nick Tandy has not done too badly for himself in motorsport. In January, Tandy made history by becoming the first driver to win the grand slam of 24-hour racing with his victory at Daytona. It added to his wins in previous years at Le Mans, Spa and Nürburgring, all with Porsche. 'For the last three years, I've been trying desperately to win it,' Tandy said in an interview in February, referring to his win at Daytona with Porsche Penske Motorsport. 'This year it's come true. 'Honestly, you don't really think about the size of the achievement until people start talking about it, or asking questions about it. It's a massive thing for me because it's my world and it's what I do, but I'm just one person in that massive world.' Tandy said he did not realize the scale of his achievements until the following weeks. 'It brought home what I've done, something that nobody's ever done, let alone a little farmer from the north of Bedfordshire that just decided to go racing one day,' he said, referring to a county in England. Tandy, 40, has followed his father, Joe, into farming. When not at a racetrack, Tandy supports his father in running a 250-acre farm, swapping the 205 m.p.h. top speed of his Porsche 963 for the snail's pace of a combine harvester. 'If you look at history, there have been a lot of farming families that have gotten into motorsport, Jim Clark probably being one of the most famous,' he said. Clark won two Formula 1 drivers' championships in the 1960s. 'The good thing I find is when I go racing, I pack my bags, leave my house, and I'm in race mode, and then when I return, I switch off with the farming. It gives me the time off to decompress and to regather my strength for the pressure, hard work and energy involved in top-level professional sport.' After winning the Petit Le Mans in 2013, at the Road Atlanta track in Georgia, Tandy triumphed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2015. A win at the Nürburgring 24 Hours followed in 2018 and the 24 Hours of Spa two years later. Although he took a class victory at Daytona on his first outing in 2014, it has been a long wait to complete the set. Tandy said winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans was 'all my goals and dreams achieved at that point, but then you think, 'Oh, what comes next?'' After he won at Spa, he said, 'a journalist said to me, 'No one's ever won the four 24-hour races outright in history. I thought, 'There's a target, there's a goal.'' Tandy raced in Porsches from 2009 to 2012, then became a works driver the following year. After two years with Corvette in 2021 and 2022, he returned to Porsche as it again embarked on a full-time program in the I.M.S.A. WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. At the third attempt, Tandy triumphed at Daytona alongside his teammates Felipe Nasr of Brazil and Laurens Vanthoor of Belgium. Tandy and Nasr will be teammates for the remainder of this year's International Motor Sports Association calendar, starting with the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. Nasr, a Formula 1 driver with Sauber in 2015 and 2016, is a three-time I.M.S.A. champion and a two-time winner at Sebring. 'Nick has the grand slam of motor racing pretty much because he won all the most famous 24-hour races available,' Nasr said in an interview in February. 'I told Nick after we won at Daytona, 'Hey, you've got to help me win Le Mans now because you've got it all. It's my turn to ask you a favor.'' Nasr has not won at Le Mans, in any class, in five attempts. Nasr said it was a measure of Tandy's character as a driver that, with four hours remaining at Daytona, they discussed who would take the final stint. Despite what was at stake for Tandy, he let Nasr take the wheel. 'I asked him if he wanted to close the race,' Nasr said. 'He stood, and I could see he was thinking, but then after a couple of seconds he looked right into my eyes and said, 'Felipe, you're going to jump in this car and you're going to drive the hell out of it until the end. You're going to finish the race.' That was really nice. 'I have huge respect for Nick and the achievements in his career. There was no doubt he could have done the job as well, so for him to say, 'Felipe, you're going to go out there and win this race for us,' that was really cool. That was one of the coolest moments I've seen in racing.' Nasr's I.M.S.A. championship victories in 2018, 2021 and last year have been with different teammates. Although he successfully partnered with Dane Cameron of the United States at Porsche Penske Motorsport in 2024, he saw no issue switching to Tandy this season. 'The good thing about being involved with Porsche Penske Motorsport is that it has a great portfolio of drivers it can play between the series, either I.M.S.A. or W.E.C.,' Nasr said, referring to the World Endurance Championship. 'That's something I have full trust in the team. 'Dane and the team went different paths so they came up with the idea of putting me and Nick in the car, the older guys in the program, let's say, with this mix of experience and knowledge of the series.' Tandy has never won the I.M.S.A. drivers' championship in nine attempts. He finished second to Nasr and Cameron last year in partnership with Mathieu Jaminet of France. 'It's funny, but I probably had more battles with Nick on the track last year than I had with any other driver,' Nasr said. 'Now we are racing together, and despite all our successes, we are both hungry for more.' Jonathan Diuguid, the Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director, said in an interview in February that Tandy and Nasr 'have clicked right away and have been successful right off the bat. It goes to show that hopefully, we made the right decision for the rest of the season.' Diuguid said Tandy's success in the four 24-hour races was because of 'a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to be successful in endurance racing. 'It's not just about cranking out the lap time, managing the traffic, taking care of the car or dealing with conditions. It's all of these things. For him to succeed in those four races like that is a massive achievement and something I know he doesn't take for granted.' Sebring is the next box to tick for Tandy. He had G.T.L.M. class wins in 2018, 2019 and 2020, but overall victory has eluded him. With Porsche Penske Motorsport he was third in 2023 and ninth last year. 'I've been lucky enough to win Sebring three times in the GT class,' Tandy said. 'Sebring, overall, would complete the so-called triple crown of events, which is Sebring, Daytona and Le Mans. 'It would also finalize the big six of multihour endurance races, which includes the big four 24-hour events and Petit Le Mans, which is 10 hours. I'm more confident this year than the last two years, and we nearly won the last two years.'
