Porsche Penske’s Positioned Nicely to Mirror Past Champions
By Tony DiZinno
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The late, great Bob Uecker as announcer Harry Doyle in Major League once said of Cleveland’s perpetually scuffling baseball club after winning one game, they had a chance to “extend their winning streak to… two.”
Sure, two’s the technical definition of a winning streak, but three in a row really feels like getting on a heater.
Through the opening three rounds of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season, it’s worth noting the latest three-peat and seeing how this run of form compares to other entries that have done it the last five years.
The CliffsNotes? Three-in-a-row race-winning runs aren’t overly common and when they do happen, they almost always deliver an end-of-year championship.
Will Porsche Penske Motorsport be the latest to follow this trend? Can AO Racing join the list, albeit in two different GT classes, if they win a third straight race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca?
2025
Porsche Penske Motorsport has done something no other team in Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) has since the class launched in 2023: win three races straight. And they’ve done so at a canter.
Once the No. 7 Porsche 963 of Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy, joined by Laurens Vanthoor at the Rolex 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, has ascended to the lead past the three-time polesitting No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor, it’s stayed there. The No. 7 car led 307 of 781 laps at Daytona, 166 of 353 at Sebring and 55 of 75 in Long Beach for a total of 528 laps led of a possible 1209 thus far through three races – some 43.67 percent.
“I mean it’s incredible. I haven’t had a season in my career that I started with three wins straight like this, so it’s really unique to put it all together,” Nasr reflected at Long Beach.
The No. 7 Porsche leads the sister No. 6 Porsche of Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell by 123 points, while the third-placed No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 sits some 265 points in arrears. Nasr is a three-time IMSA champion (2018 Prototype, 2021 DPi, 2024 GTP) while Tandy, surprisingly, remains in search of his first.
2023
The last prototype team in any WeatherTech Championship class to win three straight races did so in the previous Le Mans Prototype 3 (LMP3) class. Riley produced a four-race win streak in 2023 with a combination of Felipe Fraga, Gar Robinson and Josh Burdon across the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup rounds of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and the sprint races at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Road America. Robinson took the title solo as Fraga and Burdon alternated alongside depending on schedules.
2021
In the final year of another class, GT Le Mans (GTLM), Corvette Racing’s pair of then-C8.R GTE-specification cars both enjoyed separate three-race win streaks. Eventual class champions Jordan Taylor and Antonio Garcia won their three straight at Watkins Glen in both the six-hour race and the WeatherTech 240 sprint race, as well as at Lime Rock Park. Teammates Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner then added three later victories with a California sweep of WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and the streets of Long Beach before their third straight at VIRginia International Raceway in a classic GTLM battle vs. the WeatherTech Racing Porsche.
Riley produced its first LMP3 three-peat this year to become the first LMP3 class champions. Robinson and Fraga enjoyed wins at Mid-Ohio and the two Watkins Glen races, with Scott Andrews joining the full-season pair at the six-hour Watkins Glen race.
2020
The unusual 2020 season, which saw a flurry of races in an adjusted schedule in a truncated period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, also saw the greatest number of three-race win streaks by any team in the last five years. Three different teams pulled off three-peats.
Team Penske is the last WeatherTech Championship top-class prototype team to win three straight races, with the former Acura ARX-05 in Daytona Prototype international (DPi). The No. 7 of Ricky Taylor and Helio Castroneves’ three-race run at Road America, the six-hour TireRack.com Grand Prix at Road Atlanta (moved from Watkins Glen) and Mid-Ohio vaulted the team out of a significant point deficit into eventual championship contention, before winning it all.
Corvette Racing’s GTLM team in its first year with the C8.R fired on all cylinders. Its No. 3 car won the WeatherTech 240 At Daytona, the first race back after the pandemic break, with the No. 4 car capturing the Cadillac Grand Prix of Sebring and the No. 3 car back on top at Road America and VIR. The Garcia/Taylor pair won the GTLM title, ensuring both Taylor brothers won titles in two different classes in the same season.
Porsche North America, in its final year running a factory GTLM program in coordination with CORE autosport, won the final three races at Motul Petit Le Mans (No. 911 Porsche 911 RSR), WeatherTech Raceway (No. 912) and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring (No. 911).
PREVIOUS WIN STREAKS OF NOTE
Longer win streaks appeared more common before the turn of the decade. In 2019, PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports won six straight LMP2 races while Porsche GT Team won five straight in GTLM split between its two cars. Ford Chip Ganassi Racing won four straight GTLM races in 2018 with its two Ford GTs. And in 2017, the first year of the DPi formula, Wayne Taylor Racing opened the year with five straight victories while in the final year of the Prototype Challenge (PC) class, Performance Tech Motorsports won the first seven of eight races, before finally losing its first and only race of the year at Motul Petit Le Mans.
But like those winners from 2020 through 2024, the championship-winning story rang true for the above group here. Of the above five teams, four won driver championships, while Ford CGR lost the driver’s title but the blue oval still captured the 2018 GTLM manufacturer’s crown.