GTP’s One-on-One Title Battle; LMP2’s Return; PMR’s Dual Points Goals
By John Oreovicz
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International is the first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race since the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March to feature all four classes – Grand Touring Prototype (GTP), Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2), Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO), and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD). It’s also the third of five rounds in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup, producing a bumper field of 54 cars.
For GTP, Watkins Glen is already the sixth of nine races, signaling the start of the final stretch of the title fight. LMP2 has run only two of seven events so far this year, so its championship is just getting underway. For GTD PRO and GTD, the Sahlen’s Six Hours marks the halfway point of the season.
Here’s what to watch for this weekend from the scenic upstate New York circuit:
One-on-One Battle in GTP with Four to Go
Two individual drivers lead the GTP standings, an unusual twist in a class built around driver pairings.
Frederik Vesti replaced Earl Bamber at Long Beach and joined Jack Aitken to finish second in the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R, leaving Aitken atop the driver standings with 1,760 points.
Sitting second is Laurin Heinrich, the third driver in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 that won at Daytona and Sebring with full-season drivers Julien Andlauer and Felipe Nasr. Heinrich was expected to run selected sprint races alongside Tijmen van der Helm in the No. 5 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963, but he was not scheduled for Watkins Glen.
Then van der Helm and Heinrich scored a superb victory at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, vaulting Heinrich into the lead of the GTP standings. He arrives at Watkins Glen second, 144 points behind Aitken and 10 points ahead of Nasr and Andlauer.
Heinrich’s original 2026 schedule as a Porsche factory driver included IMSA’s three longest endurance races in the No. 7 Porsche. It later grew to include selected outings in the JDC-Miller Porsche GTP car.
Letting a race in a different series fall away put Heinrich in position to pursue this year’s IMSA GTP championship before he joins the Porsche Penske Motorsport factory program full-time in 2027.
“Who would have thought I was the points leader after Laguna Seca, and still second in the points after Detroit?” Heinrich said. “In the end, the solution was just an open dialogue between myself, Porsche, Schumacher CLRT, and JDC-Miller MotorSports. We all came to the conclusion that we’re here to compete for wins, to compete for championships.
“So, I’m happy to be in Watkins Glen with JDC,” he added. “It will be my first endurance race with that team and first time driving a prototype at Watkins Glen.”
Welcome Back, LMP2!
GTP will only have three races left after Watkins Glen. In LMP2, Watkins Glen is the first of three races in six weeks after two races in the first five-plus months of the season.
“It’s a really nice feeling to be coming back to an IMSA race,” said defending LMP2 champion Dane Cameron, who shares the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA LMP2 07 with fellow champion PJ Hyett and Jonny Edgar. “It’s like starting over. You do the first two enduros, and then you get into the real part of the season.”
All three have kept sharp across both the European Le Mans Series and 24 Hours of Le Mans. Edgar shared the winning TF Sport Corvette Z06 LMGT3.R in the LMGT3 class at Le Mans with Nicky Catsburg and Ben Keating, while Cameron, Hyett and James Allen finished third at Le Mans in LMP2 Pro/Am.
The early battle for the LMP2 championship is tight, with Daniel Goldburg, Paul Di Resta and Rasmus Lindh (No. 22 United Autosports USA) leading George Kurtz, Alex Quinn and Toby Sowery (No. 04 CrowdStrike Racing by APR) by just three points. Hyett, Cameron and Edgar rank sixth, with a 92-point deficit despite leading a combined 490 of 1,024 laps at the first two rounds.
“It’s a bit of a reset for us after a bumpy start to the year,” said Cameron. “But we feel we’ve had good pace, and we’ve been close. It just hasn’t quite all come together.”
It nearly did at Watkins Glen last year. The No. 99 car came up 0.627 of a second short in 2025 and then Hyett and Cameron won back-to-back at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and Road America.
Endurance Cup Arithmetic
The IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup is a five-round championship within the WeatherTech Championship that includes Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Road America and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. Watkins Glen and Road America pay Michelin Endurance Cup points at the halfway mark and finish; Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta has three scoring segments.
Paul Miller Racing finished 1-2 in the Michelin Endurance Cup in GTD PRO in 2025, claimed another Michelin Endurance Cup title in 2024, and PMR’s No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 Evo with drivers Connor De Phillippi, Neil Verhagen, and Max Hesse leads the standings again this year after Daytona and Sebring. Hesse drops off this weekend as the team scales back to a streamlined two-driver lineup for this six-hour race.
“Paul Miller Racing has always been very competitive in the endurance cup,” said Verhagen, who was part of that 2024 title. “We always seem to have a good strategy to maximize the points. If we see that we don’t have the ultimate pace to win the race, then we shift the focus and try to grab as many points inside the race as possible.”
GTD PRO has the tightest overall championship battle of all four classes, with the top four driver pairings and teams separated by just 31 points. PMR’s primary duo of Verhagen and De Phillippi ranks second, 18 points behind leaders Tommy Milner and Nicky Catsburg in the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
“Especially with our championship standing, our goal this year is to focus on the actual championship,” said Verhagen. “The past two years, Paul Miller Racing has been endurance cup champions, but we’re trying to show that we have the material and the means to go and win an IMSA championship.”
PMR won GTD class championships with Lamborghini in 2018 and BMW in 2023 before switching classes to GTD PRO. Four different teams have won the first four GTD PRO titles since the class started in 2022; PMR would be a fifth.
Flag-to-flag coverage of the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen will be streamed starting at Noon ET on Sunday, June 28 domestically on Peacock and via the official IMSA YouTube Channel or IMSA.TV outside the USA.