After Season-Ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta
BRASELTON, Georgia – Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Customer Racing teams and Mercedes-AMG completed a perfect six-for-six IMSA GT Daytona (GTD) class 2024 championship sweep Saturday in the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. Winward Racing’s steady run to eighth place as the highest finishing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the three competing in Saturday’s 10-hour race put the final touch on a dominating season for the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Mercedes-AMG that led the team, driver and manufacturer standings all year after a season-long performance that was the best overall in the four-class IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series.
The year started with Winward’s second Rolex 24 At Daytona GTD victory in four years when the full-season pairing of Russell Ward and Philip Ellis were joined by teammates Indy Dontje – the team’s IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup (IMEC) addition this season – and Daniel Morad in adding the victory to go along with 2021’s GTD win in America’s premier 24-hour race. Ward, Ellis and Dontje captured the “36 Hours of Florida” with another strong performance for the win one race later in the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the Winward Racing and Mercedes-AMG season-long run of success was on.
Winward won the first sprint race of the season at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in May and followed it with its third-straight Michelin Endurance Cup triumph in the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen in June.
Amid Winward’s strong opening volley of four race wins – the most by a single team in any WeatherTech class in 2024 – in the year’s first five races, the No. 32 Korthoff Preston Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 team stepped up to carry Mercedes-AMG’s honors in April’s Grand Prix of Long Beach with a third-place finish. In addition to Mercedes-AMG driver Maximilian Götz joining the team for the Rolex 24 opener, the No. 32 was driven in the full season this year by Mikael Grenier, Kenton Koch and Mike Skeen.
The No. 32 team and drivers entered the championship conversation in both the WeatherTech Championship and IMEC with a late season-run of success that included the team’s first career IMSA win at VIRginia International Raceway (VIR) in August and a third-place finish one race later in the six-hour race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
While Winward edged out the No. 32 team’s attempt to secure its second-straight IMEC GTD titles, the late surge elevated Grenier and the Korthoff Preston team to third place in the final full-season GTD driver and team championships.
The No. 32’s third-place finish at Indy was also enough for Mercedes-AMG to clinch both the WeatherTech and IMEC GTD manufacturer championships one race before Saturday’s Petit Le Mans finale. The WeatherTech GTD championship was the first for Mercedes-AMG since entering North American competition in 2017 while the IMEC manufacturer crown was the second in a row and fifth for the Silver Star following previous titles last year and three straight from 2017 through 2019.
With the manufacturer titles wrapped up, the four remaining GTD championships were on the line at Road Atlanta and Winward walked away with them all. Leaving nothing to chance, Winward raced to the finish in its most challenging event of the year even though both the WeatherTech GTD team and driver titles were mathematically clinched with the retirement of the first GTD competitor early in the race. Even if Winward would have been the next to retire, they still would have earned enough points to lock down the championships thanks to this year’s dominating season.
As it was, Winward finished Petit Le Mans for the first time in four attempts to put the crowning touch on its first season of seeing the checkered flag at every race in the championship as well.
Winward’s wrap up of the IMEC titles took a little longer to seal at Petit, but ultimately their nearest challengers – including Korthoff Preston – couldn’t amass enough points in the race’s three segments to surpass the slight edge Winward held going into the race.
All four GTD championships – driver and team titles in both WeatherTech and IMEC – were firsts for Winward and its drivers in its third full-season of top-tier IMSA competition.
In total, the Winward and Korthoff Preston teams combined for a WeatherTech Championship series-leading five Mercedes-AMG GT3 victories and four more podium finishes in this season’s 10 races.
The most competitive Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Customer Racing performance of the Petit Le Mans weekend came in Friday’s qualifying session that saw the trio of Mercedes-AMG GT3 entries in the race earn the pole and three of the top four qualifying positions. Ellis clocked in third fastest for Winward, Skeen was fourth quickest with Korthoff Preston, but the GTD pole went to Scott Andrews in a breakout performance in the No. 80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Contesting the five race IMEC championship this year, Andrews and Lone Star secured their first career IMSA poles, and the team was primed for its best race of the season in its Petit Le Mans debut. Andrews led the opening race laps from the pole only to have a hard-to-explain spin in turn five just minutes into the race. The No. 80 went two laps down after the incident and never had a decent chance of making up the gap as Saturday’s race was one of the most caution-free editions of Petit Le Mans on record. The team and drivers Andrews, Salih Yoluç and Rui Andrade fought to the end for a 10th place finish.
The substantial haul of championship honors, as well as several performance awards for in-season achievements, were presented to the Winward and Korthoff teams and drivers and executives from Mercedes-Benz USA and Mercedes-AMG Motorsport in Sunday night’s WeatherTech Night of Champions at Chateau Elan near Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Christoph Sagemüller, Head of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport: “First of all, congratulations to Winward Racing and our three drivers on winning the GTD class championship. This great success means a lot to us as a brand and concludes our most successful season in IMSA since the start of our Customer Racing program. With Korthoff Preston Motorsports, Lone Star Racing and Winward Racing, we have strong teams at our side in North America, who together are responsible for this success with every single result. Many thanks to everyone who represented our brand so well throughout the season.”
Stefan Wendl, Head of Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing: “I’ve been at the Motul Petit Le Mans, and it was a great end to the season in a wonderful family atmosphere. I can only thank everyone involved. The Mercedes-AMG GT3 scored its victories at the beginning of the season, but also impressed with good results on more difficult race weekends. Last weekend was not only a very successful one in America, but also in Europe. In Barcelona, Winward Racing with Lucas Auer and Maro Engel won the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup driver and team championships in a thrilling finale.”
Russell Ward, Driver – No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: “This is the first championship for Winward Racing here in the USA. It’s an amazing feeling. This is the end goal. You want to win and be competitive, but all of us have an eye on the championship. It is really a testament to the hard work of the crew. Lots of long nights, hard nights, and they deserve this after all of the non-stop work. Nobody sees that. We arrive at races and the car is well prepared, the trailer is organized and ready and everything looks good. They are constantly working 12 hours a day to keep everything perfect. We really have the easiest jobs. We just show up and drive, didn’t put a wheel wrong and had the Mercedes-AMG GT3 to do it, but the crew guys are the ones who really make it happen. This is for them.”
Philip Ellis, Driver – No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: “I’m super thankful to be here with Winward Racing. The team made it really easy this year. They did such a perfect job. We always had a great car, a great strategy and they were always on it in the pit box. We were one step ahead of the competition, and as drivers we just had to bring it home. I think we did the heavy lifting earlier this year in the first part of the season, but we had some more difficult races at Indianapolis and also here at Petit Le Mans. We still kept it together. We didn’t really put a foot wrong and won the championship.”
Indy Dontje, Driver – No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: “It is just really cool to see what Winward Racing is today from how it started seven years ago. Winning an IMSA championship is an incredible achievement. I had a small part of it, only in the endurance cup, but to win that championship also, for me, is something really special. At the beginning of the year, we won almost every race. That was a big part of it and really helped a lot. All of the guys really did it in the opening endurance events, but the team and Russell and Philip really did a nice job in all of the sprint races. We were a bit on the back foot in the last two rounds, but we managed to do it and won the team and driver championships in both the full season and the endurance cup, so I am really happy for that.”
Scott Andrews, Driver – No. 80 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3: “Winning the pole, most importantly, was great for the morale of the team as we have had a really fast car but a difficult season. I was really privileged to get the opportunity to qualify the car, but I kind of went hero to zero in a bit of a way. That was pretty much the story of our whole year in the Michelin Endurance Cup. We had a rocket ship. AJ Petersen and all the boys all did such a good job with our Mercedes-AMG GT3. We all work really hard behind the scenes to make sure the car is really fast. This weekend we showed that, but we also showed how knife-edge it can be as well to have a fast setup here. We really don’t know what happened in turn five in the opening stint. The car just took a weird set to the right, I corrected it, and it just snapped back the other way. It was just really strange, really weird, but it was fun driving back through the field. We really needed a bunch of yellow flags to get back on the lead lap for good, but they never came. Then, unfortunately during the race with some traffic and whatever else, we got some damage, and the front splitter was basically just completely gone, not doing anything. It was just surviving after that, but we brought it home to the finish.”
