Well, we’ve finally made it to the end – the finale of the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech Championship season has (unfortunately) arrived.
How fast can an 11-race, 9-month season go by? Plenty fast as it turns out, and we have just the 10 hour enduro of Petit Le Mans remaining before we close things down and enter the racing off-season.
With all practice sessions and qualifying completed, there is the unfortunate reality that Jack Aitken in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac has the GTP Drivers’ title 99.9% wrapped up following the qualifying results from Friday afternoon.
Aitken put the Cadillac fourth on the starting grid, while Laurin Heinrich finished seventh in the order, just two-tenths of a second behind. The points awarded from the session left a 151-point gap between the two drivers, and once the No. 31 takes the green flag just after noon, the minimum number of points that can be won in the race for all 11 GTP entries is 200; even if Cadillac finished last, Heinrich cannot close the gap.
So although the top prize in the series has essentially already been clinched before the race even begins, we’ll still have literally every other championship on the line in the other three classes, nevermind the results of the Michelin Endurance Cup battles as well.
The gap for LMP2 between the No. 43 Inter Europol and No. 04 Crowdstrike Racing By APR is four points. Four!
Behind those top two are the No. 22 United Autosports with Dan Goldburg P3 in the standings solo, while even the No. 99 AO Racing duo of PJ Hyett and Dane Cameron have a real shot in their own right, sitting just 108 points back and looking to go back-to-back in the class.”
The madness is highlighted in the GT ranks, as the title races have been thin for the entire season, especially in these last few rounds. No one team was able to completely pull away from the rest of the closest competitors, setting up a scenario where six teams are still mathematically eligible to pull off the championship victory.
The No. 4 Pratt Miller Corvette of Nicky Catsburg and Tommy Milner will take the points lead into the day (2729) while starting third on the grid, while the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW of Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen will start from pole and 47 points behind the No. 4.
Behind them in the standings is the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Temerario, and in what will be Pfaff’s last race as an IMSA outfit, Andrea Caldarelli qualified the car 8th in class.
Next up are the two Ford Racing Mustangs with the No. 65 of Christopher Mies and Frédéric Vervisch leading just barely ahead of the sister car No. 64 of Dennis Olsen and Ben Barker.
Lastly – the No. 77 Skeleton Rexy of Harry King and Nick Tandy will go into the 10 hours of madness with the longest odds heading into the race, but racing is a funny sport and anything can happen, just as long as you’re putting yourself in the right spot to take advantage of the breaks that may come your way.
GTD will come down to either Winward Racing, Turner Motorsports or The Heart of Racing. Philip Ellis and Russell Ward are shooting for their three-peat, while Turner is aiming to end a title drought that spans a decade-plus in the top series.
Dudu Barrichello in the No. 27 Aston Martin will have his say in the discussion as well. However, for him and other cars starting the day lower in the standings, finishing as high in the running order as possible isn’t the only thing they’ll need to become champions. They’ll also need the teams ahead of them to falter and finish lower in the running order by the time the checkered flag waves.
With so much still on the line and all of these teams mired in seriously tight fights, it’s going to be straight up bananas as the championship standings update in real time as cars rise and fall through the order. Every lap that turns and every overtake that goes down will continuously reshuffle the standings and it’ll be amazing to see the drama play out across the day and into the nighttime hours.
Of course, if you work or root for Team XYZ and will be directly involved in these battles throughout the 10 hours, it will absolutely not be fun for essentially most of the day as the pressure and anguish builds with each successive hour that comes off the clock.
It’s the biggest cliché in sports, but it holds true no matter what: don’t make stupid mistakes. Avoid the drive-through penalties, don’t have too many guys over the wall working on the car, and definitely don’t speed coming down pit lane. The margins will be so tight you won’t be able to slide a flash card through them, and no car or driver wants to be the one that sees an IMSA championship slip away because of something so minuscule yet damning.
We say that, of course, knowing those errors will absolutely still happen because that’s just how it goes in the racing game. Just don’t be one of the title contenders that sees it happen to them.
It’s not every year that we can have these kinds of battles going into the season finale with so much on the line and so many top-tier teams in the hunt. So, thank the Racing Gods for the absolute treat that Petit Le Mans will prove to be, no matter how it plays out by the time 10:00 PM arrives.
