Road America IMSA SportsCar Championship winner Matthieu Jaminet admits he feared a last-lap crash with Porsche colleague Felipe Nasr in the frantic finale to Sunday’s race.
Jaminet crossed the finish line just 0.39s clear of Nasr in the sister Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in the 2h40m race at the fabled four-mile Elkhart Lake track, having juggled fuel saving with his pace and risky overtaking moves through a knot of GTD class cars in the closing stages.
Jaminet even suggested giving up his track position to the points-leading No. 7 car to ensure a 1-2 finish.
Penske’s Porsches were the slowest of the factory-entered cars and were even outqualified by the customer 963 run by Proton Competition. Jaminet’s team-mate Nick Tandy suffered a setback on the opening lap when he clashed with Pipo Derani’s Cadillac and earned himself a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact – although he blamed Derani for moving under braking.
Nasr, who shares the No. 7 PPM 963 with Dane Cameron, caught Jaminet with just two minutes of the race remaining, and he had 6% more usable energy available over the leader. Nasr also had a charging Ricky Taylor’s Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura right on his tail – who had to charge from ninth to third in the fastest car on track after being forced to make a late fuel stop.
It was at this point that Jaminet asked over the radio “Does the 7 want position?” but he didn’t get a reply from the pitwall and deferred to team’s previous position of not imposing team orders.
Jaminet clung on to the lead, and crossed the finish line with just 5% of usable energy remaining, according to IMSA’s live GTP telemetry app. The top three cars were covered by 1.1s at the flag.
“Obviously you still need to push,” said Jaminet of the dash to the flag despite his fuel-saving efforts. “In these kinds of situation, it’s best to have your team-mate behind you but sometimes it’s the worst!
“We both wanna win and you don’t wanna crash with your team-mate, so that’s why, on the last lap, I said ‘uh, look, it would maybe make sense that we don’t compromise our championship’ – they are leading the drivers’, but we had them (on pace) in the last race, and had them a little bit also today.
“We’re leading the manufacturers’, teams’ and drivers’ (championships), so it’s an awesome day for the team, it’s been a tough weekend missing performance.”
The No. 6 crew was also quick to pay tribute to one of their engineers, who is “fighting for his life”, according to Jaminet.
“That is for Zach LaGrone,” Tandy said of the former Mazda DPi strategist and race engineer. “Our engineer, who is suffering in hospital at the moment, his nickname is Zebra. So we’re carrying the zebra (plush toy) around with us.
“We’d love him to still be here. I’m sure he’s watching. He’s always with us.”
Cameron and Nasr lead the drivers’ championship by 100 points over Jaminet and Tandy with two endurance races remaining at Indianapolis and Road Atlanta’s Petit Le Mans.
