Ellis Extends Winward’s GTD Championship Points Lead with Pole
By David Phillips and Dylan Spaulding
BRASELTON, Ga. – Neil Verhagen and the Paul Miller Racing team had their eyes on the pole position in today’s Grand Touring Daytona PRO (GTD PRO) qualifying session ahead of tomorrow’s Motul Petit Le Mans.
Of course, they wanted to plant the No. 1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO first on the starting grid. More importantly, they wanted to maximize their championship points haul from the session in order to whittle away at their 47-point deficit to the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the battle for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s GTD PRO manufacturer, team and driver titles.
Consider today’s job done. Having set the pace from the outset of the session, Verhagen pitted for a fresh set of Michelin tires and posted a blazing lap of 1:18.194 with three minutes remaining to secure the pole. What’s more, Verhagen garnered the accompanying 35 points for pole and, with a little help from his new best friend Mattia Drudi, closed the championship gap to 42 points.
That’s because Drudi posted a 1:18.338 in the No. 68 Car Blanche Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO for second fastest time of the session and the 32 points that go with it, while Nicky Catsburg collected 30 points for his third-place effort in the No. 4 Corvette.
“We know how critical these points are,” said Verhagen. “We wanted to make sure to close the gap down as much as possible. (So) the plan was pretty clear from the beginning, that we were going to go out and use two sets of tires. I think we’ve seen as you come to the latter half of the season, that everyone is now using two sets in qualifying chasing the qualifying points.
“I’ve done all the qualifying this year, so my job on the race weekend has been clear: come out and execute, deliver the one lap performance. So, I don’t think I really changed the mentality for qualifying today.”
Although Drudi was 0.144 seconds adrift of Verhagen on the time sheets, his second-place showing was the best qualifying performance of a season that saw the Car Blanche Aston Martin join the WeatherTech Championship at Watkins Glen International in the GTD class, and make their first GTD PRO appearance at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July. For his part, Catsburg had no complaints about the No. 4 Corvette, or his own performance for that matter. But he’s hoping today’s performance gap to the No.1 PMR BMW will vanish tomorrow.
“I honestly feel like we did a really good job in qualy,” Catsburg said. “The pace of the No. 1 to me was incredible. I don’t know where they got it from, but they’ve seemed to have it all year. So hopefully they don’t have it in the race. We just need to keep it clean. I feel like we have a better team – the best team. We’re gonna hopefully out-execute them and bring this home.”
Speaking of teams, while PMR, Verhagen and co-drivers Connor De Phillippi and Dan Harper had a little help from their friends at Car Blanche today, they will be going it alone tomorrow. In contrast, Catsburg and co-drivers Tommy Milner and Nico Varrone can rely on support from their teammates Alexander Sims, Antonia Garcia and Marvin Kirchhoefer in the No. 3 Corvette which starts beside them in fourth place.
“The entire aim of tomorrow is to maximize manufacturer and driver points for Tommy and Nicky,” said Sims. “We’re going to try to race hard and fair but there obviously are cars that we have to focus on. It’s tough. For the first eight hours, I think you have to run your race as best as possible to be in the right part of the field toward the last crucial hours. But I feel like we have prepared well and are in as good a spot as we can be to help things.”
Ellis Extends Winward’s GTD Championship Points Lead with Pole
Philip Ellis is no stranger to leading a Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class field when piloting the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. But it usually isn’t from the immediate start of the race, since he rarely qualifies.
He’ll have the best vantage point in class Saturday, as the team deployed an alternate qualifying strategy with Ellis instead of Russell Ward – or third driver Indy Dontje – aboard on Friday. The Texas-based stable entered with a six-point lead in the fight for the season-long GTD championship entering the weekend.
Ellis set a lap time of 1 minute, 18.674 seconds (116.226 mph) which advanced an early jump on the team’s quest towards a third straight class title. The No. 57 car was intended to start first the last round at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the grid was set by team championship points but wound up starting from the rear due to a pre-race infraction.
With no such issues Friday, there’s a straightforward path to the trifecta.
“It was a good qualifying session,” Ellis said. “Obviously super happy with how it went. It was good for us that Turner didn’t have a great qualifying session. Obviously making up a couple points before getting into the race helps us out a little bit, takes a little bit of pressure off of us and puts a lot of pressure onto them.”
The aforementioned Turner Motorsport No. 96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, qualified by Robby Foley using a similar alternate driver strategy( Patrick Gallagher usually qualifies for the team), qualified fifth. That moves Ellis and Ward’s lead out to an unofficial 15-point margin over Foley and Gallagher.
A red flag for an incident between two cars truncated the session by several minutes. Ellis explained how difficult it was to get a clean lap.
“But yeah, the session itself was a little bit messy,” Ellis said. “We had some cars coming out in the middle of the session, so it was important to get that track position right and then to put in the lap early since we had that red flag come out.
“Initially we were planning to get a second set, have another run, and I think a lot of people would have improved much further. So yeah, it was a to our benefit of course with the red flag how it went.”
The pole for Winward Racing and Ellis marks their first at Motul Petit Le Mans, and the second time Mercedes-AMG has started at the head of the GTD field for the race in the last three seasons (2024, Lone Star Racing).
Antonio Fuoco fell short of leading the Af Corse USA No. 21 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo to the green for a second-straight year in GTD with his 1:18.835 lap. Fuoco, alongside Simon Mann and Lilou Wadoux, now look to capitalize on their second place starting spot in their efforts to claim the 2026 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup GTD title.
Vasser Sullivan Racing’s Aaron Telitz qualified third at 1:18.883 in the No. 12 Lexus RC F GT3. Mercedes-AMG continued its qualifying success further down the class as brand junior driver Lin Hodenius qualified fourth with a 1:19.174 piloting Lone Star Racing’s No. 80 Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Saturday’s Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta is live across NBC & NBCSN, beginning at noon ET, with streaming via Peacock domestically and IMSA’s Official YouTube Channel internationally.