By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
After six hours of racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it was Cadillac taking victory with a 1-2 victory in the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks.
The No. 31 Whelen Engineering team took the win overall, with Jack Aitken taking the checkered flag. Aitken takes victory with Fredrik Vesti and Earl Bamber. Aitken was able to stretch his last stint to 56 laps and make the fuel mileage work to bring the car home. Cadillac led all but seven laps on Sunday, with the No. 31 Whelen completing 243 laps in the six-hour race.
“It’s a bit of a relief to get the first one under the belt for the year,” Aitken said. “We had a really awesome car today that was also working well in qualifying. We were a little bit fortunate that the No.60 had trouble in qualifying to take pole. With the number of laps we led today, it shows how well we were working as a team. It was nice to have the flexibility with three drivers, it was quite a hard day out, with some extended runs of green. It was a really fun race at the end, really tough but a lot of fun trying to hit the fuel number and hold the track position at the same time.”
Wayne Taylor Racing’s No.10 of Ricky Taylor and Felipe Albuquerque completed the double podium for Cadillac.
Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 60 Acura, driven by Tom Blomquvist and Colin Braun, ended the day in third, after starting from the rear of the GTP field. The No.60 was slated to start on pole, but after qualifying on Saturday, they failed technical inspection, due to “failing to comply with bodywork tolerances as defined in LMDh technical regulations”, per IMSA.
Along with GTP, three other classes competed: LMP2, GTD GTD Pro. In LMP2, TDS Racing won for the second year at IMS with the trio of Hunter McElrea, Steven Thomas and Mikkel Jensen. The TDS Racing Oreca finished 11th overall, 2 laps behind the No. 31 Cadillac. Sunday’s win is the third year in-a-row that Thomas and Jensen have won in LMP2 at IMS.
The LMP2 class had its fair share of incidents on Sunday, even bringing out the last caution with just under nine minutes left in the race. Jensen was grateful to survive the chaos in his class and credited the performance of the car and its ability to save fuel, compared to the field.
“We always have a great car coming here,” Jensen said. “It shows after three wins in-a-row. We’re very confident here. It got to be a fuel saving race in LMP2, which is not normally the case. You didn’t know what the strategy was of the other cars after the first stint. We were afraid we were over-consuming and not doing enough laps. After the first pit stop, we saw that everything was under control, compared to what the other teams were doing. From then on, we were quite comfortable and just tried to stay out of trouble. It was a hard race and once we got in the lead, we just had the pace to pull away. Thanks to TDS Racing for once again, a great car, and my teammates for bringing the car through the field to make my job easier.”
The duo of Mike Rockenfeller and Sebastian Prialux took home the victory in GTD Pro, driving the No. 64 Ford Mustang for Ford Multimatic Motorsports. The No.64 captured its third win of the season after passing the No.77 AO Racing Porsche driven by Laurin Heinrich, controversially in Turns 5 and 6, with 40 minutes to go in the race.
Prialux, who was a former co-driver with Heinrich, was satisfied with the move and thanked IMSA for officiating a clean race.
“Firstly, thanks to IMSA for making cleaner racing,” Prialux said post-race. “That’s made a lot of help for us to actually race clean and is actually more fun, I would say. It was a nice pass. I felt like I executed a perfect move there and he [Heinrich] went wide, and that was it, really. It was the move for the win. It’s easy to get stuck behind there and you need to be assertive and I was. Just had to get it done.”
The GTD win belonged to Inception Racing and the No. 70 Ferrari 296, driven by Brendan Iribe, Frederik Schandorff and Ollie Milroy. The No.70 started 15th in the GTD class and all three drivers claimed their first victories, as well as Inception’s first victory, in IMSA competition. Iribe managed to get the win in his 38th start in IMSA, Milroy, his 16th and Schandorff’s 34th.
“We’ve been at it for quite awhile,” Iribe said. “I didn’t know it was 38 IMSA races. Sounds like more than it feels. It is a great feeling. This is an iconic track, a beautiful track. If there’s a place to win, this is it. It really feels good, especially after how hard the team has worked. Just really proud of everybody on the team, all the engineers and the drivers. Everybody does such a good job and puts their heart and soul into it.”
Next year, the Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis moves back to a 2 hour and 40 minute contest, with the current length of six hours, moving to Road America. The IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Series will conclude their 2025 season at Petit Le Mans, held at Road Atlanta on October 11.