Whelen Cadillac Survives Late Restart For Indy IMSA Glory

The No. 31 Whelen Cadillac team in victory lane at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Jake Galstad/Lumen Digital for IMSA photo)

INDIANAPOLIS – Cadillac claimed its first victory of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season Sunday, with Jack Aitken surviving a frantic late restart to win the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Aitken, driving the pole-sitting No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R in the Grand Touring Prototype class, held off Ricky Taylor in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R by .988 seconds at the conclusion of the six-hour race on the historic speedway’s 2.439-mile road course.

With the triumph, Cadillac became the 17th of IMSA's 18 automotive manufacturers to win a race in an IMSA-sanctioned series this year.

A full-course caution for a collision of Le Mans Prototype 2 cars with nine minutes left bunched the field for a two-lap dash to the checkered flag.

Aitken, who shared the No. 31 with co-drivers Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti, got the jump on Taylor when the green flag waved and was never headed in delivering the first win of the season for his team and manufacturer.

It was the 30th IMSA class win for Action Express Racing, which fields the No. 31 Cadillac. Bamber collected his ninth series win, Aitken took his second, and Vesti claimed his first victory.

“It’s a bit of a relief to get the first one under the belt for the year,” said Aitken, whose No. 31 team combined to lead a race-high 210 laps. “I think we had a really awesome car today that was working well also in qualifying, and we were a little bit fortunate that the [No.] 60 had trouble in quali[fying] to take the pole.

“But I think with the number of laps that we led today, it shows how well we were working as a team, and it was nice having the flexibility of three drivers. It was quite a hard day out, I think, with some extended runs of green,” Aitken added. “It was a really fun race at the end, really tough, but I had a lot of fun trying to hit the [fuel] number and hold the track position at the same time.”

Taylor and co-driver Filipe Albuquerque equaled their best result of the season with the second-place finish in the No. 10 WTR Cadillac. They were also second on the streets of Detroit.

Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun finished third in the No. 60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06, after starting from the rear in class due to a technical infraction which disallowed their initially pole-winning qualifying lap from Saturday.

Steven Thomas, Mikkel Jensen and Hunter McElrea topped the LMP2 class, driving the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA LMP2 07. It was the third straight Indianapolis win for Thomas, Jensen and TDS, and the second for McElrea.

Mike Rockenfeller and Sebastian Priaulx drove the No. 64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Ford Mustang GT3 to a Grand Touring Daytona Pro class victory; while Brendan Iribe, Frederik Schandorff, and Ollie Millroy won in the No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 in Grand Touring Daytona.

The victory by the Inception crew was its first in WeatherTech Championship competition.

Sunday’s class winners were also the unofficial winners of the fourth Michelin Endurance Cup round as well, the championship-within-a-championship featuring the five extra-distance races on the calendar.

The TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks was the penultimate race of the WeatherTech Championship season. With a seventh-place GTP finish Sunday, Matt Campbell, Mathieu Jaminet, and the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 take an unofficial 131-point lead into the season finale.

Their Porsche Penske teammates – Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy in the No. 7 entry – head to the 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta on Oct. 11 as the runners-up in the standings, hoping for an upset in the title tilt.

In LMP2, Dane Cameron, P.J. Hyett, and the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA LMP2 07 lead Daniel Goldburg and the No. 22 United Autosports USA ORECA by 85 points.

The GTD PRO class leaders are Alexander Sims, Antonio Garcia, and the No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R, sitting 18 points ahead of Albert Costa and the No. 81 DragonSpeed Ferrari 296 GT3.

GTD finds Russell Ward, Philip Ellis, and the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with a 224-point lead over Casper Stevenson and the No. 27 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.