Two-Time IMSA Bob Akin Award Recipients Set to Tackle Circuit de la Sarthe Once More
By Tony DiZinno
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – For many years, a train horn blaring from a Corvette garage to declare “lunch time!” at Circuit de la Sarthe has stood out as one of North America’s major exports at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Last year saw the birth of a new North American export to Le Mans – one from Canada – and this year it’s back for a familiar red-and-white encore.
The 13 Autosport Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R made its debut at the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans after Orey Fidani won the 2024 Bob Akin Award as the top-scoring Bronze-rated driver in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class.
Sharing the No. 13 Corvette with longtime co-drivers Matt Bell and Lars Kern, Fidani swapped what had been its usual black-and-gold Corvette to an entirely patriotic Canadian maple leaf red-and-white livery that immediately turned heads and headlines as one of the crowd-favorite liveries of the 2025 edition.
It took a nail-biting finish at the 2025 Motul Petit Le Mans season finale for Fidani to secure an encore trip back to Le Mans for 2026 ahead of chief rival Brendan Iribe and Inception Racing, another past Bob Akin Award recipient. Fidani survived a first lap skirmish that took out multiple GTD cars, including Iribe, to make it through and eventually home to the finish.
“We were devastated to see how they went out; not their fault at all,” Bell said. “But we were equally happy with the outcome. It was a bit of a nerve-wracking moment! Orey did a phenomenal job to avoid it.”
The second outing for Fidani, Bell, Kern and the renamed 13 Autosport team at Le Mans – formerly AWA – serves as a crucial and important opportunity to build on the lessons learned from what was a dream scenario to just get to Le Mans in 2025.
The team now has a better grip on the Le Mans-specific rules and regulations. It also has a year’s worth of data with the Corvette chassis both in IMSA and at Le Mans, including with a different tire partner for the LMGT3 class at Le Mans.
“We just wanted to go back after doing it the first time, and to have (the Bob Akin Award) secured and to know we’re going back is pretty wicked,” Fidani said. “We got the first one under our belt last year, and that came with a lot of challenges with learning a lot of the rules and regs.
“And we feel now that we’ve done that, we’ve probably got a better shot this year and a lot of data from last year as well. I’m pretty excited to go back.”
The 13 Autosport team is part of a wider five-car umbrella from TF Sport, a winning European series specialist that will have cars across both LMGT3 and Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2).
The TF Sport team runs both full-season Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs in the FIA World Endurance Championship and will support both additional Corvettes racing at Le Mans this year. That includes both the 13 Autosport entry and the JMR entry from Malaysia.
TF also is part of AO Racing’s European effort, which coincidentally features IMSA’s other automatically invited entry, the No. 99 ORECA LMP2 07 of Jim Trueman Award and 2025 IMSA LMP2 champion PJ Hyett. In a twist of fate, the two cars will be lined up in garages right next to each other.
Fidani’s comfort level in the Corvette has grown by leaps and bounds, too.
“I think a lot of that’s just come from spending time driving the car, and then what our engineering team and our crew’s done,” Fidani said. “They’ve done a very good job with the car, which also makes me more comfortable in it, as well. Generally, the more you do things, the better you feel.”
All that’s different for the Canadians, really, is the team name change owing to Fidani’s increased investment that took place over the winter.
“Everyone’s pumped,” Fidani said. “The plan was to just take it from what it is and step it up to the next level. I mean, I’m planning to be around for a long time, so I think it just made sense for me to take in all the overhead and take over the team.
“Now we can push things a little further. We have a nice new shop that’s being built. We will have a lot more resources. Yeah, just trying to make everyone’s jobs little easier, cleaner and more comfortable.”
It’s for all intents and purposes the same team, with focus on Le Mans coming up immediately after a tough WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca round in Monterey. Iribe leads Fidani by 10 points for the Bob Akin Award this season through four of 10 rounds.
The team shook down its Le Mans chassis at MotorLand Aragón in Spain shortly after the Monterey race to get it ready before Le Mans Test Day action. It was eighth and fourth in the two Test Day sessions.
While they weren’t particularly satisfied with a 10th place finish in a 24-car field in 2025 – which was still impressive on debut given the first-year challenges – there are higher expectations for 2026 in a 25-car field, even if they’ll have to carve through the field after qualifying.
“We got the result at this 24-hour race in Daytona (a win at 2025 Rolex 24), but we didn’t get the result at that 24-hour race in Le Mans,” Bell said. “But it was everyone’s first go-around. The Monday afterwards, everyone wanted to do it again straightaway. We know what we left on the table and where we left it.
“We want to be more competitive and we’re charging for the podium there, we really want to win it. It’s a real motivator to perfect everything here (in IMSA) more and take it there.”