Full-Season IMSA Program the Result of Early Success
By John Oreovicz
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Laurin Heinrich entered 2026 as Porsche Motorsport’s global utility man. His tentative schedule included the three longest IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963, along with an assortment of appearances in GT-class Porsche 911s in sports car championships around the world as a factory-appointed driver.
By the end of the season, the 24-year-old German had contested all nine rounds of the WeatherTech Championship in three different Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class Porsches, finishing second to Jack Aitken in the driver’s standings. And with one notable exception, Heinrich also honored all of his original Porsche GT commitments, including co-driving AO by Absolute Racing’s ‘Bushi Rex’ to a win at the Suzuka 1000 Kilometers.
On top of all that, he scored a Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) Pro/Am victory with eventual 2026 IMSA LMP2 champions George Kurtz and Alex Quinn for CrowdStrike Racing by APR at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Not bad for his LMP2 race debut.
Heinrich started the year by co-driving the No. 7 Porsche with Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer to victories at the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. In April, it was announced he would be competing in five of the six IMSA GTP races with JDC-Miller MotorSports in the team’s 2025-specification Porsche 963 prior to his scheduled return to the No. 7 factory Porsche for the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
The key to Heinrich ultimately completing the full WeatherTech Championship campaign was his astounding overall and GTP class victory in the StubHub Monterey SportsCar Championship race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca with Tijmen van der Helm in the privateer JDC-Miller Porsche 963. The historic win convinced Porsche Motorsport to find a way for Heinrich to continue his challenge for the IMSA GTP driver’s championship, which he led at that point.
“When I got out of the car in Laguna, someone told me, ‘You’re now leading the championship,’” Heinrich recalled. “I think that was the first wakeup where I thought, ‘Hey, well, that’s crazy!’ Then soon the discussion started: What are we going to do with the Watkins Glen clash? Are we prioritizing the IMSA title fight? Once the decision was taken, it was game on and I was trying to focus as much as I could on that championship.”
Collaboration across multiple parties allowed Heinrich to skip the Spa 24 Hours – where he would have raced for German team Schumacher CLRT – and still drive the JDC-Miller GTP car at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. A third-place finish at Watkins Glen International with van der Helm in late June kept Heinrich in the championship hunt. The championship battle intensified when Heinrich benefited from a late-race incident between the Nos. 6 and 31 cars at Road America and finished second alongside van der Helm and Kaylen Frederick at the Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix.
A whirlwind series of changes followed to where Heinrich eventually raced all three Porsches in three consecutive IMSA races. Placed alongside Kevin Estre at the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the No. 6 Porsche, the new pairing finished third. Heinrich then returned to the No. 7 Porsche with Nasr and Andlauer as scheduled at Motul Petit Le Mans.
Aitken secured the IMSA GTP driver’s crown, but Heinrich earned accolades for his unlikely and unexpected challenge for the championship. He also won the Michelin Endurance Cup GTP title with Nasr and Andlauer. He heads into 2027 secure in the knowledge that he will be a full-time member of Porsche Penske Motorsport’s GTP lineup.
“It’s been a big pleasure to watch Laurin develop,” said Urs Kuratle, Porsche’s Director of Factory Racing, LMDh Program. “We’ve followed him since a young age, from the early times in his career, and it’s great to see him progress. It was only one year ago that we had him on the simulator, and he’s exceptional…he’s not a kid anymore, he’s a young man. He takes all the information he’s given and his interaction with the engineers is really great to see. He for sure has a great career ahead of him.”
Porsche followed up Heinrich’s summer 2025 simulator run at Weissach, Germany, with a test outing in a Porsche 963 at Michelin Raceway in August. He drove there directly from VIRginia International Raceway, where he had finished fifth in AO Racing’s GTD PRO class No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R.
Back at Michelin Raceway for this year’s Motul Petit Le Mans race, he recalled the occasion fondly.
“That was very exciting, my very first experience testing for a factory team,” he said. “As a young driver coming through the Porsche ladder, you’re always looking up to this chance and then you get it for the first time. I remember it was a development test for the 2026 evo kit. Obviously, they had their primary goals of evaluating the kit and the changes and all the parts. You’re waiting the whole day, and maybe at the end of the day you’ll get some laps – and I did, which I was really thankful about.
“You come in as a new driver, like a greenhorn, and you have no reference,” he continued. “The engineers say, ‘Be careful, don’t go off because some parts are still not manufactured as the final part will be, so they are more or less 3D printed. If you go off, the new development paths will be destroyed.’ For a new young driver, you get so scared. You just want to go out and drive! But in the end, it was a great experience, something I will never forget. I mean, my very first laps and my very first car race in the United States were on this track. So, there’s a lot of great memories around that place.”
Heinrich credits his experience racing GT-class Porsche 911s around the world for preparing him to drive with three different GTP teams in his first season racing top-class prototypes. He won the 2022 Porsche Carrera Cup Germany and the 2024 IMSA GTD PRO championship in AO Racing’s No. 77 ‘Rexy.’
“I come from GT customer racing, where you race for different GT teams, basically every weekend,” he said. “I’m used to getting to know new people. Right now we’re here racing in America, but I’m also used to racing in Asia and Europe, and all the people have different cultures, different work ethics, so I think that has really prepared me also for a situation like this, which I think I cope with pretty well. I think it’s also something which speaks for me as a teammate.”
Heinrich has one more race on his 2026 slate; he will co-drive a Porsche 911 decked out in AO by Absolute’s latest character livery Chìjīn Rex (“Red Gold”) in the Macau Grand Prix November 19-22.
“Thinking back to the start of the year where I thought I would only do the long races, to win Daytona and Sebring to start was a dream come true,” Heinrich said. “This year was something crazy and I’m really thankful for the chance, because it has been a wild ride.”