Porsche finally won Petit Le Mans outright with a prototype. On Saturday, Oct. 3, the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 of Laurens Vanthoor, Kévin Estre and Matt Campbell won the 10-hour race at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. Vanthoor crossed the line 1.205 seconds ahead of the No. 24 BMW.
Notably, it was the 29th running of the race and the finale of the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. Porsche had won Petit Le Mans overall before, but not with a prototype. This time, the win came in the top class, on a wet day that set an IMSA record for cautions.
IMSA first published provisional results on race night. A later IMSA document titled “Race Official Results” shows the same top three. Here’s how the day went and what it meant for the championships.
How the Porsche 963 won Petit Le Mans
In the end, the finish was close. According to IMSA’s race report, Vanthoor held off the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 of Sheldon van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor and Robin Frijns. The gap at the flag was 1.205 seconds.
Third place went to the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz and Colton Herta. IMSA says that car moved into third on the final lap. Meanwhile, IMSA’s results sheet shows the top three all completed 368 laps, with the Cadillac 8.630 seconds behind the winner. The same sheet gives the winning time as 10 hours, 0 minutes and 50.625 seconds.
Afterward, Sheldon van der Linde gave the winner credit. “Laurens made no mistakes, and took a lot of risk in traffic,” he told IMSA. Vanthoor, for his part, said: “For me, it was a dream to win in America.”
Rain, lightning and a record 16 cautions
Above all, the weather shaped the race. IMSA says wet conditions contributed to a record 16 full-course cautions. On top of that, nearby lightning stopped the race for 27 minutes.
The drivers felt it. “I have no idea how we pulled this off,” Vanthoor said in Porsche’s release. Estre, meanwhile, put it more simply: “We’ve finally secured a big win.”
Why this Petit Le Mans win was a first
However, the headline needs one careful qualifier. Porsche did win Petit Le Mans overall in 2015. IMSA notes that Porsche “famously took the overall Motul Petit Le Mans win in 2015 with a GT Le Mans class Porsche 911 RSR entry,” in torrential rain.
That 2015 car was a GT car, not a prototype. So the 2026 win is the first overall victory there for a Porsche prototype. The Porsche Newsroom says the same thing: “For the first time, Porsche has won the ‘Petit Le Mans’ in the top class with a prototype.”
Porsche also makes a bigger claim. Its release says that, for the first time, a manufacturer won the endurance classics at Daytona, Sebring and Road Atlanta in one year. That is Porsche’s own claim. In the same release, Thomas Laudenbach said: “This victory is historic.”
Class winners at Road Atlanta
Meanwhile, the other classes had winners of their own. In LMP2, the No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR ORECA LMP2 07 of George Kurtz, Alex Quinn and Toby Sowery won. IMSA says Quinn beat Tom Dillmann in the No. 43 by 0.666 seconds. “This is incredibly special because it was really a team effort,” Kurtz told IMSA.
In GTD PRO, the No. 68 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Mattia Drudi, Valentin Hasse Clot and Marco Sorensen took the win. Similarly, the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Russell Ward, Philip Ellis and Indy Dontje won GTD. NBC Sports reported both class wins, and IMSA’s official results sheet lists the same cars.
Who took the 2026 titles
Porsche won the race, but Cadillac won the season. IMSA says Jack Aitken took the GTP drivers’ championship in the No. 31 Cadillac. That car’s Cadillac Whelen team won the team title, and Cadillac won the manufacturers’ championship.
Aitken’s title also made a small piece of history. IMSA says he is the first solo champion in IMSA’s top class since Jorg Bergmeister in the Grand-Am Daytona Prototype series. Even so, he admitted the moment felt odd: “It’s a bit of a weird feeling winning a championship rolling to the green.”
Porsche did leave with silverware, though. IMSA says Porsche won the Michelin Endurance Cup GTP title through Felipe Nasr, Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich. Porsche’s release adds that it finished second in the 2026 manufacturers’ standings.
Elsewhere, CrowdStrike by APR won the LMP2 championship, according to IMSA. It also took the Endurance Cup LMP2 title, ahead of AO Racing. NBC Sports reports that Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi clinched the GTD PRO title. It also says Ward and Ellis won their third straight GTD championship.
For the winning trio, it was also a farewell. NBC Sports says Petit Le Mans was the last race for Vanthoor, Estre and Campbell together. They signed off with Porsche’s first prototype win at Road Atlanta, by 1.205 seconds after 10 hours.
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This article was created with the help of AI and was reviewed and edited by Fast Lane Only editors before publication.
