Action Express Takes Dominant Win in 6H Watkins Glen - Sportscar365

Aitken, Bamber take second consecutive GTP win, first with Vesti, in commanding run… Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and Fred Vesti claimed victory in Sunday’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, giving Action Express Racing and Cadillac back-to-back IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship wins. Aitken drove the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R to the win over Nick Yelloly’s No. 93 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06, in a race that ended under yellow after a massive crash by Christoper Mies on the final lap. Yelloly inherited the lead during the eighth full-course caution, after pitting moments before the yellow came out for the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Simon Mann, who crashed out in the Esses after slight contact from Bamber, who did not receive a penalty. The No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Filipe Albuquerque, also on the same strategy, emerged second, although Albuquerque was ordered to give up his position to Aitken, who was deemed by Cadillac to have the faster car. A left-side only tire change on Aitken’s final stop with 52 minutes to go jumped Yelloly, who took on four fresh Michelin Pilot Sport Endurance tires, in the final pit sequence. Aitken then stretched the lead by more than four seconds over the lone-remaining Acura to claim the win and extend his GTP points lead in the process. Laurin Heinrich clawed his way back from seventh on the final pit stop to finish third in the No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports Porsche 963 that he shared with Tijmen van der Helm and Kaylen Frederick. Heinrich passed the No. 24 Team WRT BMW of Sheldon van der Linde for the final podium position with 13 minutes to go. The Dallara-chassied LMDh car, however, came alive for a brief period of the race earlier on. Van der Linde took the lead from Bamber shortly before the final yellow with 90 minutes to go, although pitted one lap later than the top two finishers and lost track position. The No. 7 Penske Porsche of Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer completed the top-five, with the sister No. 6 entry of Laurens Vanthoor and Kevin Estre in sixth. Albuquerque faded to seventh in the end despite taking for fresh tires on his last stop. He finished ahead of the No. 40 WTR Cadillac, having fought back from a right-rear damage when Jordan Taylor bounced through the grass in the Bus Stop with two hours to go, requiring a rear deck change. The No. 25 WRT BMW was ninth, after being off-sequence early and then serving a drive-through penalty for a pit entry violation. Two GTP entries were eliminated in the opening hour when Roman De Angelis spun his Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyrie into Colin Braun’s No. 60 MSR Acura while checking up on GT traffic under the race’s second caution. The incident also collected the No. 81 DragonSpeed Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Henrik Hedman, which rejoined the race some 35 laps down after repairs. LMP2 class honors went to the No. 99 AO Racing Oreca 07 Gibson of Dane Cameron, Jonny Edgar and PJ Hyett, their first of the season. Cameron squeezed his way past the No. 04 CrowdStrike by APR machine of Alex Quinn for the lead with 1 hour and 40 minutes to go and remained out front for the duration of the Michelin Endurance Cup contest. He finished ahead of Quinn, who put pressure on the defending class champion just prior to the race-ending yellow on the final lap. The No. 18 Era Motorsport Oreca completed the class podium with Ferdinand Habsburg, Jacob Abel and Naveen Rao, who bounced back from an early race drive-through penalty for an opening-hour incident with Jon Field. The top five LMP2 runners were all within a few seconds of each other before the race was neutralized on the final lap. Vasser Sullivan Takes First GTD Pro Win in More Than Two Years The pairing of Jack Hawksworth and Ben Barnicoat broke a 836-day winless streak in GTD Pro, with the Vasser Sullivan duo picking up top class honors. The No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3, which started on pole courtesy of a new qualifying track record by Hawksworth, controlled much of the race but their win chances came into doubt after several cars gambled on fuel in the closing hour, hoping for a yellow. It marked the car’s first GTD Pro win since the 2024 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. Hawksworth finished ahead of the second-placed No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT4 EVO of Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi, who took over the class points lead in the process. Dennis Olsen and Ben Barker completed the GTD Pro class podium in third after Olsen was forced to take his No. 64 Ford Mustang GT3 EVO into the pits for a splash of fuel with 11 minutes to go while in the class lead. Defending class champions Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims were fourth in the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R. The No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Nick Tandy, who was also gambling on fuel, was forced to surrender his second place position with 16 minutes to go due to a drive-through penalty for multiple track limits violations. Tandy and Harry King were classified in seventh after making a sequence of two stops late in the running, one for the penalty and another for fuel. Mies, meanwhile, escaped injury in the violent final-lap shunt after contact from the No. 4 Corvette of Nicky Catsburg in Turn 9. Catsburg, who pitted from the GTD Pro class lead with 58 minutes to go but dropped down the order, was assessed a post-race time penalty equivalent to a drive-through for incident responsibility that relegated the former championship-leading car to eighth. GTD class honors, meanwhile, went to the No. 912 Manthey Porsche of Riccardo Pera, Richard Lietz and Ryan Hardwick, marking the German squad’s firth triumph in the Pro-Am-enforced class, just one Endurance Cup race after its maiden GTD Pro win. Pera was one of the first GTD leaders to pit with 59 minutes to go and re-took the lead after subsequent stops from Robby Foley and Aaron Telitz with 23 and 14 minutes remaining, respectively. It was a Porsche 1-2 result in class with the No. 120 Wright Motorsports entry of Callum Ilott, Adam Adelson and Porsche Motorsport North America Selected Driver Tom Sargent finishing runner-up. Third in class went to the new YRB Racing squad, with the former Van der Steur Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, driven to the finish by factory ace Valentin Hasse Clot. Telitz was relegated to fourth after hopes of a double Vasser Sullivan victory faded due to the final stretch of green flag running. As was the case in GTP, the GTD class was marred by a massive pileup in the Esses that knocked out the No. 44 Magnus Racing Aston Martin of Spencer Pumpelly, the Ollie Millroy driven No. 70 Inception Racing Ferrari as well as Russell Ward’s No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG after Millroy had side-to-side contact with 13 Autosport’s Matt Bell, and both spun as a result. It brought out the race’s seventh yellow of an incident-filled race that saw nine retirements. RESULTS: Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John John Dagys' notebook from incident-filled Sahlen's Six Hours of The Glen Ryan Hardwick on Manthey's first GTD win after leading only eight laps in the... Action Express Racing's Jack Aitken on eighth consecutive GTP podium finish, second win in... Vasser Sullivan duo return to victory lane in GTD Pro for first time in...