Victory Last Year at Road America Set Team on Fast Track to 2024 GTP Points Lead
By Mark Robinson
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – As Felipe Nasr returns this week to Road America, he does so with a smile. For good reason.
It was at the iconic Wisconsin road course a year ago where Nasr gained his first win in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 and set the team on a whirlwind course to the top of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class.
After a slow start to the 2023 season in the new hybrid-electrified prototype class, Nasr and his then-co-driver Matt Campbell put it all together at the IMSA SportsCar Weekend last August. They dominated, leading all but one lap in claiming the victory.
Since then, the No. 7 Porsche has been nearly unstoppable. In nine GTP races starting with that triumph, the team has three wins and seven total podium results – never finishing lower than fourth place. Over that span, the No. 7 has outscored its nearest competitor by more than 200 points, or more than 20 points per race.
It comes as Nasr changed co-drivers midstream, with Dane Cameron taking over the full-season role from Campbell this season. They haven’t missed a beat, with Nasr, Cameron and the No. 7 winning twice in 2024 and leading the GTP standings by 93 points.
The phrase “turning point” was used frequently when discussing last year’s Road America performance with those in the Porsche Penske program.
“For sure, Road America in 2023 was the turning point for car No. 7, where things really started to click,” Nasr said. … (It) was truly a weekend that we could unlock the performance of the car, the true speed of the car.
“That win was really the breakthrough of the (No.) 7 crew. … If you look at all the results since, I really think the (No.) 7 car has been on a high, really ticking the boxes and being consistent.”
Urs Kuratle, Director of Factory Racing, LMDh for Porsche Penske Motorsport, also used the words “turning point,” adding it was like the program shed extra weight from everyone’s shoulders at Road America.
“It’s like we had kind of like a backpack on us and that was filled with reliability (concerns) but also with performance topics, with operational topics as well.”
Following the win, Kuratle recalled, “I remember one guy talked to me, ‘So now we can start racing.’ I’m not saying we haven’t had any problem ever since … but maybe that’s the best expression I could say: It’s like the backpack was gone.
“But we are never leaning back, we have to keep on pushing on the whole thing.”
Nasr believes that the No. 7’s latest win at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen in June was a shining example of how the team has continued pushing growth in the areas Kuratle mentioned: reliability, on-track performance and strategy.
“When I look at Watkins Glen, I think it was really a test of all of those elements,” Nasr said. “It was a super hard race with extremely difficult conditions where we had really 50/50 of both. It was wet or it was dry and which tires to take, which time to come in the pits. I think that was a really good test to see how we operated in that race, and having the win in Watkins was what’s really not only incredible but was very important for the state of the championship.”
Individually, Nasr will also be chasing a three-peat of overall wins on Sunday at Road America. He won in the former Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class in 2021 with the Whelen Engineering Cadillac team, missed the 2022 race while Porsche was in its GTP test program, then returned to win in the Porsche 963 last year. Going for a trio of wins sounds good to the Brazilian.
“I love that idea, I can only work for it,” he said. “I think the focus is to continue this consistency run that we’ve had so far and this is key for the championship. If we can win there, it’s a bonus. It would make the whole story nicer.”
The WeatherTech Championship weekend begins with practice on Friday at Road America. Qualifying follows the next day. The two-hour, 40-minute race streams live on Peacock (in the U.S.) and IMSA.tv and youtube.com/IMSAOfficial (internationally) starting at 3 p.m. ET Sunday. An encore broadcast of the race will air that day on CNBC beginning at 6 p.m.