Era Motorsport’s One-Off Pairing Captures LMP2 Win
By John Oreovicz
INDIANAPOLIS – Sheldon van der Linde was relentless in his pursuit of Earl Bamber in the closing stages of the TireRack.com Battle On The Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Van der Linde’s tenacity paid off when he guided the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 past the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R with less than six minutes remaining in the two-hour, 40-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship sprint race in front of the largest crowd for an IMSA race at the Speedway since the WeatherTech Championship returned to racing at the venue in 2023.
The 27-year-old South African held on to cross the Speedway’s famous “Yard of Bricks” finish line 2.926 seconds ahead of Bamber to earn BMW’s first overall and Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class win in association with longtime European partner Team WRT in IMSA competition. BMW previously won the Indianapolis round of the WeatherTech Championship when it was a six-hour race in 2024 with drivers Jesse Krohn and Philipp Eng and in partnership with locally based Team RLL.
Dries Vanthoor – who claimed his second career victory in IMSA competition – qualified the No. 24 BMW third fastest and held that position through his stint before handing the car to van der Linde just prior to halfway point. When action resumed with 48 minutes remaining after another round of pit stops under caution, van der Linde ran second to the No. 31 Cadillac – the GTP championship leader for manufacturers and Bamber’s co-driver Jack Aitken.
Van der Linde closed to within 0.3 of a second of Bamber as they worked through traffic with half an hour to go. A few minutes later, the cars made light side-to-side contact, with Bamber staying ahead. But van der Linde charged back as they came up to put a lap on the Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) class winning No. 64 Ford Racing Ford Mustang GT3.
They split the Mustang, driven by Dennis Olsen, between Turns 10 and 11 where the IMS road course rejoins the South short chute of the oval. But van der Linde held the inside line into the right-hand Turn 12, and he emerged decisively in front.
“I was pretty frustrated after the restart not to get past him earlier,” said van der Linde after his second career win in IMSA competition, and first since 2017 at Motul Petit Le Mans in Grand Touring Daytona (GTD). “My engineer said to me on the radio, ‘You’ve got one more pack of GT cars (traffic)’ with 10 minutes to go. And I knew that was my last chance to get him. Because on pace, they were just too fast for us today.
“He got stuck behind a GT car going into turn 10,” he continued. “I got a very good run and kind of went all the way to the inside, so he wasn’t able to see me in his mirrors. And yeah, I was willing to risk everything for the win today. I know how important it is for these guys (WRT) to get it.”
Van der Linde correctly suspected with Aitken comfortably leading the championship, Bamber wouldn’t force the issue.
“I knew obviously that they wouldn’t take too much risk being in the championship fight,” he said. “I had that in the back of my mind going into the race already. And that was our advantage – we could play elbows out and they couldn’t. I knew I had to use that advantage.”
The second-place finish for the No. 31 Cadillac, combined with a third-place finish for Kevin Estre and Laurin Heinrich in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963, means Aitken will head to the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway with an unofficial 147-point advantage over Heinrich. Nick Yelloly and Renger van der Zande, who finished seventh at Indianapolis in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06, are third and 271 points back.
Estre emerged from a first-corner incident that delayed both the sister No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry and also three Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class entries. Heinrich rallied from sixth to third in the final stint, but was unable to make a pass attempt on Bamber.
Aitken admitted that watching the closing laps with Bamber behind the wheel were nerve-racking. The No. 31 Cadillac has finished on the podium in seven of eight races this year.
“I don’t envy Earl for trying to hold them off for as long as he did at the end,” Aitken said. “But it’s a fantastic result. Takes us to Petit in a very strong position, and another podium in what’s been a really good year so far.”
LMP2: Late Call-Up Results in Indy Win for Era Motorsport
When Era Motorsport decided to shake up its driver lineup for the No. 18 ORECA LMP2 07 competing in the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class at the IMS road course, the team knew who to call.
The calls were the right ones, because Nick Boulle and Christian Rasmussen guided the Era entry to the LMP2 class victory in Sunday’s two-hour, 40-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship event. Using an aggressive fuel strategy, Rasmussen bested Harry Tincknell in the No. 52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07 by 15.004 seconds. Tincknell shared his No. 52 car with Misha Goikhberg while United Autosports USA claimed the final podium spot with Daniel Goldburg and Paul Di Resta in the No. 22 ORECA.
It was the third IMSA race win for Boulle and the second for IndyCar Series regular Rasmussen, who also scored a pair of USF Pro 2000 race victories at IMS in 2021. Boulle also owns two Motul Pole Awards at Indianapolis back-to-back in 2024 and 2025. This race win for the 2024 IMSA LMP2 champion and Jim Trueman Award winner came with less than two weeks of preparation.
Boulle chided himself for only qualifying seventh fastest, but that allowed him to avoid a first-corner accident that swept up three LMP2 competitors – the No. 99 from AO Racing, CrowdStrike Racing by APR’s No. 04, and No. 2 from United Autosports.
“All I can say is I’m happy I chose the outside,” Boulle said. “Actually, I got shuffled back through it, and after that, I just put my head down, tried to stay clean, and focused on the fuel, because I knew that was the big thing for this race.”
Boulle drove an extended first stint before handing over to Rasmussen for the final 55 minutes – an extraordinarily long energy run for an LMP2 contestant. And while the competition made splash-and-go stops in the final 15 minutes, Rasmussen feather-footed it to the finish line and the win.
“That is definitely the most I’ve ever fuel-saved in a race car, period,” smiled Rasmussen. “The team called the perfect strategy. I mean, fuel-save races aren’t necessarily the most fun, but when you end up at the top of the podium, that makes up for it, you know?”
The first-lap chaos had an impact on the LMP2 championship standings with one race remaining. Tom Dillmann and Jeremy Clarke, who started from pole position, finished sixth in the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07 to maintain a slender four-point advantage over the No. 04 CrowdStrike by APR duo of George Kurtz and Alex Quinn. They ended ninth.
The final round of the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is the 29th annual Motul Petit Le Mans, September 30 – October 3 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.