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From the first Petit Le Mans in 1998 to No. 24 in 2021, there's been no shortage of racing drama at the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race.
Since its first running in 1998, the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta has been a classic single-day endurance race and nearly always unpredictable from the drop of the green to the finish.
As the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race reaches its 25th year in 2022, here's a look at seven race winners that few saw coming:
The first Petit Le Mans in 1998 attracted a world-class field of cars, many of them drawn by the prospect of a guaranteed acceptance to the Le Mans 24-hour for the cars of the class winners.
Headlining was the Porsche that had already won Le Mans in June of that year. Displayed prominently on billboards all over the city of Atlanta to promote the race, the 911 GT-1 helped draw a huge crowd and confirmed that a Le Mans connection could sell a lot of tickets.
In addition, the car that had defeated Porsche’s push into GT for two years running at Le Mans by winning in 1996 and 1997—the TWR Porsche—was a candidate to win in its first start in the U.S.
Owned by Reinhold Joest as part of his Le Mans spoils, the open-cockpit prototype had won every race it had started—both times at Le Mans, each time besting the factory.
Although behind on pace in qualifying and having never won at Le Mans, the Ferrari 333 SP entries of Kevin Doran and Doyle-Risi hoped to find home soil more fruitful.
The surprise finish occurred at in the afternoon with an incident that finished the chances of the race’s most dominant car. With Yannick Dalmas on board, the nose of the GT-1 caught the air of another car as it crested the rise on the back straight and then flipped 360 degrees.
Fortunately, Dalmas made it back to the shiny side up in this very scary incident. After that, the 1,000-mile distance proved perfect for the 333 SP of Doyle-Risi Racing managed by John McLaughlin for drivers Wayne Taylor, Eric van de Poele and Emmanuel Collard. They beat the ballyhooed TWR Porsche by just over a minute after 1,000 miles of racing in just under 10 hours.
Perhaps Joerg Mueller could hear the thunderous V8 of the Panoz Roadster just over the hill as the closing laps wound down.
Perhaps it was a deserved change of fortune for Don Panoz, founder of the Petit Le Mans race that became an instant endurance classic due to the interest it stirred in the U.S. and around the world.
Whether it was fate, worn tires or a missed shift (the driver declined to say), when Mueller slid into the gravel trap at Turn 10 on board his BMW V12 LMR, it sent another of Panoz’s racing inventions into Victory Lane at the Road Atlanta track he had rebuilt into a world-class circuit.
The year before, in the first year of the Petit and in front of a big crowd, the LMP-01 had been leading late in the race when its sonorous, roaring Ford V8 blew up. This time Muller made an error and was left sitting in the gravel as Éric Bernard roared past. A sure victory for the BMW Motorsports team had evaporated with the checkers almost in sight.
Having launched the American Le Mans Series that same year, Panoz was on a roll—including the idea of establishing a formal link to the Le Mans 24-hour by an American series that continues to this day.
Sure, Audi Sport was expected to win with its all-conquering R8. But at this Petit, the Champion Racing team of team owner Dave Maraj won under the direction of team manager Brad Kettler.
It wasn’t ever easy beating the factory team. But Audi considered the Maraj-led American squad strong enough to represent the brand, entering only one other R8 at the Petit under the banner of Reinhold Joest, the team owner behind Audi’s dominance of Le Mans.
It was one of the first overt signs that Champion Racing was moving up in the eyes of the factory, thanks to Kettler’s management skills and the business acumen of Maraj.
On this day, JJ Lehto and Johnny Herbert finished eight laps ahead of the runner-up Panoz LMP-01 and nine laps ahead of the Joest R8. Promoted to representing Audi Sport in the LMP1 class in the American Le Mans Series, the Champion team would win two more Petits and become one the few American teams to win overall at Le Mans as part of the Audi Sport entry in 2005.
There are some races that start with a pole-winning driver spinning behind the pace car. In others, a leading driver hits the pace car to lose the lead. But to spin behind the safety car and out of the lead and a sure victory was, well, unusual.
That was the fate of Allan McNish in the Petit Le Mans held two weeks after the “100 years rain” of 2009 had flooded Atlanta and much of North Georgia.
Driving the Audi R15 TDI in which he had scored the fastest lap, the Scotsman lost traction behind the safety car in what became pulverizing rain. After putting on rain tires, he spun a second time, dropping from second to third shortly before the race was called just past halfway. The already saturated red clay could absorb no more water, leading to water running across much of the circuit.
Franck Montagny and Stephane Sarrazin took over the lead for the final 16 laps of caution and got the win in their Peugeot 908 HDI FAP, the first of three straight victories in the Petit for the French manufacturer.
It was the right thing to stop the race, said McNish, who predicted that there wouldn’t have been any cars left had it continued. Thus, the nine-race winning streak of Audi launched by McNish, Dindo Capello and Michele Alboreto in 2000 came to an end.
The victory of a 911 RSR in the Petit over a field of prototypes in 2015 ranks as one of the biggest upsets by Porsche in IMSA endurance racing.
Others on the list include an overall victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona by a Porsche 911 against the new Daytona Prototypes in 2003 and the victory by a non-factory-sanctioned Porsche-powered Riley (which had a V8, not a flat 6) at Daytona in 2010 under the Action Express banner.
This time, the factory could celebrate its first overall Petit victory along with factory GT pilots Nick Tandy, Patrick Pilet and Richard Lietz. Everybody knew it would rain, but nobody predicted a GT car winning. The rain was bad enough to cancel the final two hours, but that didn’t decide the outcome.
Whenever under green, Tandy had been disappearing into the spray on Michelin wets.
How did they pull off the upset? The team practiced with a dry set-up on Michelin’s wet tires the night before. Purpose built for the team and its 911, the treaded rubber worked well enough that no suspension changes were made in advance of the weather. (When the steady rain arrived, the prototypes rode on standard Continentals.)
Plus, who said having the engine weight sitting over the rear wheels is a problem?
One never knows when the racing gods might introduce a sudden change of fate at the Petit.
In this one, the masked marauders of Wayne Taylor Racing made off like bandits to take the 2020 victory before celebrating in pandemic-style facial attire.
The race turned on a bid for the lead with 10 minutes remaining in the 10-hour event. The dispute over real estate at the apex of Turn 6 sent Ricky Taylor’s Acura and Pipo Derani’s Cadillac spinning, handing the lead and victory to the trailing Cadillac of Renger van der Zande, Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon.
Was Taylor overly optimistic in his Acura DPi when trying to overtake leader Derani’s Cadillac after the two had dueled nose-to-tail for 60 minutes and exchanged the lead twice?
Did Derani close the door only after Taylor had gotten halfway alongside? It’s a question still in the racing gods’ hands. Unofficially, it might have been the closest finish on record. Moving up from third place, the winning Caddy of van der Zande barely nipped past Taylor’s Acura as it came back onto the track in the half-light between Turns 6 and 7.
In 2021, fans got a double dip of unpredictable events on the last lap. The DPi championship was decided on the final go-round in a dispute over second place that was the most incredible racing Hail Mary ever seen in North Georgia—following an unlikely comeback by Mazda Motorsports.
With three corners remaining, Acura’s Ricky Taylor dove inside the Cadillac of Felipe Nasr at the end of the back straight, where there was a razor-thin margin for error. After splashing the gravel when the left side wheels went off, the Acura skated past the Cadillac, then across the track and into the grass on the outside of Turn 10.
Taylor led into Turn 11, but ever-cool Nasr’s momentum due to staying on the asphalt carried him past going down the hill toward the flag stand, the checkered flag and the championship.
“It’s crazy how it ended,” said Nasr.
Times two. In its final race, Mazda Motorsports took the checkered flag first—recovering from three laps down in the fourth hour. The race took place in November due to pandemic scheduling problems, but there were no complaints from Harry Tincknell, Jonathan Bamarito or Oliver Jarvis. Early nightfall and cooler temperatures helped the turbocharged trio’s RT24-P rocket back into contention and the lead under go-for-broke conditions for its temperamental four-banger.
Tincknell’s scintillating drive through traffic to get the lead left no time for a prayer. “At the start of the program, we were spraying fire extinguishers at it,” said Tincknell of the engine that required an early-race spark plug change. “Now we’re spraying champagne.”