Road America IMSA SportsCar Championship winner Matthieu Jaminet admitted he feared a last-lap crash with Porsche teammate Felipe Nasr during Sunday’s wild finale.
Jaminet crossed the road just 0.39 seconds ahead of Nasr in his sister Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 within the 2-hour, 40-minute race on the legendary four-mile Elkhart Lake circuit, fastidiously balancing fuel economy with pace and dangerous overtaking in a bunch of GTD cars within the closing stages.
Jaminet even suggested giving up his track position to the general leading No. 7 automobile to secure first and second place.
The Penske Porsches were the slowest cars from the factory and were even re-qualified by a customer 963 run by Proton Competition. Jaminet’s team-mate Nick Tandy suffered a first-lap mishap when he collided with Pipo Derani’s Cadillac and was given a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact – although he blamed Derani for braking under the influence.
#6 Team Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Nick Tandy, Mathieu Jaminet
Photo: Richard Dole / Motorsports images
Nasr, who shares the No. 7 PPM 963 with Dan Cameron, caught Jaminet with two minutes left within the race and had 6 percent more usable energy on the leader. Nasr also had Wayne Taylor Racing’s Ricky Taylor of Andretti Acura right behind him, who had to maneuver from ninth to 3rd within the fastest automobile on the track after being forced to refuel late.
At this point Jaminet asked over the radio, “Does number seven want to take a position?” but received no response from the pit wall and referred to the team’s previous position, which was to not impose team orders.
Jaminet held on to the lead and crossed the road with just 5 percent usable energy, in keeping with IMSA’s GTP live telemetry app. The top three cars were all caught inside 1.1 seconds of one another on the finish line.
“Of course you still have to push,” Jaminet said of the run to the flag, despite his efforts to avoid wasting fuel. “In these situations, it’s best to have a teammate behind you, but sometimes it’s the worst!
“We each wish to win and also you don’t wish to crash into your team-mate, so on the last lap I said ‘er, look, maybe it would make sense if we didn’t put our championship in danger’ – they’re leading the drivers’ race but we had them (on good pace) within the last race and we were a little bit of a match for them today as well.
“We are the leaders in the manufacturers', teams' and drivers' championships, so it's a great day for the team, but it was a difficult weekend because we couldn't get good results.”
#6 Team Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Nick Tandy, Mathieu Jaminet
Photo: Art Fleischmann
The crew of Flight 6 also quickly paid tribute to one among their engineers who’s “fighting for his life,” Jaminet reported.
“This is for Zach LaGrone,” Tandy said of the previous Mazda DPi race strategist and engineer. “Our engineer, who’s within the hospital without delay, is nicknamed Zebra. So we feature around a zebra (stuffed toy).
“We wish he was still here. I'm sure he's watching us. He's always with us.”
Cameron and Nasr lead the Drivers’ Championship by 100 points over Jaminet and Tandy with two endurance races remaining within the season at Indianapolis and the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
