By the Numbers – GTD Pro
Wins –
#1 PMR BMW (Road America)
#3 Corvette
Racing by PMM (VIR)
#48 PMR BMW (Watkins Glen, Petit Le
Mans)
#64 Ford (Detroit, Indy)
#65 Ford (Daytona)
#77 AO Racing Porsche (Sebring,
Long Beach)
#81 DragonSpeed Ferrari (CTMP)
Champions – Alexander Sims and Antonio Garcia, Corvette
Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports, Chevrolet
MEC Champions – Dan Harper and Max Hesse, Paul Miller
Racing, BMW
Qualifying – Poles – Rockenfeller (Daytona), Costa
(Sebring), Altoe (Laguna Seca, Road America, VIR), Priaulx (Detroit),
Caldarelli (Watkins Glen), Verhagen (CTMP), Harper (Indy, PLM)
Note – for the GT drivers, I did a running average of how
they stacked up in their Fastest Lap compared to their teammates, to give a
number I’m referring to as “rank”. Obviously drivers who were part of 2 driver
squads for the majority of the year had lower averages, so keep that in mind.
Team by Team:
Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsport – Corvette - 3
(Antonio Garcia & Alexander Sims) 4 (Tommy Milner & Nicky Catsburg)
Yes,
Corvette won another championship. Antonio Garcia is now at 5 IMSA
championships. Alexander Sims has a GT and a Prototype championship. Was 2025 a
success for this team? Yes and no. The two-car effort had a combined 9 podiums,
but only one victory, no poles, only one Fast Lap (Sims, Detroit). They didn’t
win an endurance race. In fact, neither Milner nor Garcia has won Petit Le
Mans. Results-wise, the championship winning car finished better than the
sister car in every race except CTMP and Petit Le Mans…where the champions were
two and one position respectively behind. Both crews rotated qualifying duties
fairly evenly, something I look at particularly in the sprint races where the
starting driver won’t necessarily get a stint on new tires during the race and
therefore doesn’t get the same opportunity to put down a faster lap. With the
3, Sims and Garcia each qualified five times. In the 4, Milner qualified six
times to Catsburg’s four, but Milner qualified at Daytona, Sebring, and Indy,
where both drivers got multiple sets of new tires. 6 drivers total were on the
squad for Corvette, with Nico Varrone and Daniel Juncadella joining for the
long races. Varrone won the battle of the two on every front, and was the most
impressive of all the endurance drivers with the best results for rank, time
off pace, and time off co-drivers. The most impressive of all the Corvette
drivers we will get to later…
DragonSpeed – Ferrari – 81 (Albert Costa)
What a
season it was for this little team! A combination of brains and hands from Risi
Competitizione joined DragonSpeed to create yet another Elton Julian led
underdog. They were consistent, and consistently fast! Albert Costa set Fastest
Lap of the race 3 times, at Laguna Seca, VIR and Petit Le Mans…none of them
races where they earned victory! Their only race win was at CTMP, in a fuel
saving race. Ironic, considering this crew had 4 of 10 poles on the season, so
clearly they had the speed! And Costa had speed, with a season best average
rank, the second best average position overall (including all GT3 cars), 4th
best average position class, the best average pace, and the second best time
off co-drivers. In fact, there was only one race all year where Costa was not
the fastest in the 81 Ferrari, at CTMP where his stint was a massive fuel save.
I think he’d be happy to keep that stat because it netted the team the victory.
Albert was the only driver to do every race for the Ferrari, joined by Giacomo
Altoe for all but Detroit (where Rasmus Lindh put the car in the wall very
early on) and Watkins Glen. Altoe was impressive too, notching up the 3 poles.
His individual numbers were middle of the chart, and he was actually beaten by
the third driver in terms of pace. Davide Rigon was a more than capable
substitute, getting the call up 5 times on the season. He was stable, quick,
and more impressive than a lot of full season drivers.
Ford Multimatic Motorsports – Ford – 64 (Sebastian Priaulx
& Mike Rockenfeller) 65 (Frederic Vervisch & Christopher Mies)
Ford’s GTD
Pro season began with a bang, in a good way! The pole and win at the Rolex 24
Hours of Daytona and a third place finish meant all eyes were on the blue oval
for high expectations. Should they be happy with the year they had? 100%. 3rd
in the championship, 3 race wins between the two cars including Daytona, Indy,
and the home race on the streets of Detroit. They had 5 podiums between the two
cars, only 2 DNFs, but 10 finishes outside the top-5. Qualifying wise, Ford
split things very evenly, with Mies taking one more qualifying session than
Vervisch. The 64 finished third in the championship while the 65 finished
eight. The Daytona winners only beat the sister car on three occasions all
year, and the other two races were painful ones for the whole squad, with
finishes of 8th and 9th at Laguna Seca, and 7th
and 10th at CTMP. Driver-wise, there was a big discrepancy as well.
The best driver of the group was Seb Priaulx, who set the fastest lap for a
Ford in half of the races. When he wasn’t fastest, he was 2nd
fastest, the sole exception coming at VIR where he was third quickest. Seb’s
average rank was 2nd best of the four driver squads, and barely a
smidge off of Sims. He had the 3rd
best average position overall, 5th best average position
class, and was best of all the Ford drivers for average pace. Vervisch,
Rockenfeller, and Mies (and Olsen for that matter) were all grouped fairly
closely together toward the bottom of the charts for rank and average position
in class and overall, the exception there being Vervisch who was mid-pack for
both regarding position. In terms of pace, the other 4 drivers were again
fairly close together in the middle to bottom third. The big surprise was Mies.
Christopher Mies has long been a GT3 superstar, but this year he struggled in
the Ford. He posted the worst numbers for a Ford driver in almost every
category, and was the fastest of the Ford drivers only at Laguna Seca. That
said, he got a Rolex this year, so if that’s a bad year something tells me he’d
still take it.
Paul Miller Racing – BMW – 1 (Neil Verhagen & Madison
Snow) 48 (Max Hesse & Dan Harper)
Paul Miller Racing has the best
strategic minds on the pit box. Three times in the last five years they’ve been
Michelin Endurance Champions, and credit for that goes to Lars Giersing and
Mitchell Simmons. I’ve talked about them before, but this year they set the
team up to win the championship with either of the two team BMWs. PMR won two
endurance races this year and one sprint, took 3 pole positions, and set
fastest lap in 2 races with the second fastest lap in 6 total. They won the BoP
game, but more on that in another article. This one examines the team and
drivers.
2025 was the first time PMR has run
two cars. The 1 won one race and finished better than the 48 in three other
contests, but all of those the 48 had some form of drama. A drive thru penalty
at Daytona and a fire at VIR, as well as a 9th place finish at CTMP
and a 7th at Road America due to the pit sequence not playing in
their favor were the only real issues for the 48 all year. The 1 had only two
podiums and only 3 top 5 finishes all year, languishing in 7th in
the championship. It was the 48 with the two newcomers Hesse and Harper who
ended fourth in the championship, took the MEC champions in their first
attempt, and shone through for the PMR standard of greatness.
So how about the drivers. Well,
Snow had the Fastest Lap at Daytona, a feat which positively skewed his average
for the remainder of the year. Keep in mind that Harper (14), Verhagen (30),
and Hesse (32) had to battle against their Daytona position as an average all
year, especially when they were in a class with normally 20 drivers. Even with
that albatross, Harper then endurance driver De Phillippi then Hesse were the
best ranked drivers for PMR. When we look to average overall position, it was
very tight between Snow, De Phillippi and Hesse, and Harper amongst them made
up four of the top 9 averages. With class averages, it was De Phillippi who led
the way here, with Hesse and Harper on a dead tie. Average pace and average
time off co-drivers is where the real story comes to tell here. We know the BMW
was arguably the best platform this year (again, more on that with the BoP
article), but how did the drivers compare within the same machinery? Harper had
the best pace of them all and was the 5th best full season driver,
averaging 0.628 seconds off. Hesse, though, wasn’t far behind. A hundredth of a
second to be exact. They were hard to separate. Snow and Verhagen were also
together on the chart, but there was seven hundredths between them, and again
they were both behind De Phillippi. In time off co-drivers, a feat which was
averaged out between all 4 drivers for each race, Hesse narrowly beat Harper…by
0.004 of a second! Once again, De Phillippi was next up, while Snow and
Verhagen were both in the bottom half of the chart.
Did qualifying play a part? Here’s
where it’s interesting. Harper did every qualifying, yet he still had the
fastest average pace of the group. The 1 car rotated qualifiers, so it can’t be
said that Verhagen was slower because he didn’t get as many new tires. Harper
proved that isn’t necessarily a factor for the BMW. With Paul Miller Racing
downsizing to one car for 2026, if they stay with the German mark, there’s a
clear distinction in which driver line up they should maintain. If they don’t
keep Harper and Hesse, there should be a long line of teams waiting to give
them championship winning cars.
AO Racing – Porsche – 77 (Laurin Heinrich & Klaus
Bachler)
2024 was a
dream season for AO Racing. The won the championship with a young driver whose
name was fairly unknown in January but very known by October. Laurin Heinrich
proved last year he’s a super star, and he cemented that fact in 2025. Joined
by Klaus Bachler for the full season, this year was always going to be a big
test, having to share machinery with a proven factory driver from Porsche.
Laurin more than lived up. He had the best rank, bested by a co-driver only at
VIR…and at that by 0.005 of a second! His average position in class was 3rd
best, and his average overall position was 4th best. Pace-wise, he
was beaten by only Costa and Sims. Compare this to Bachler, in the same car.
Bachler had the worst average pace to co-driver of anyone, due to an outlier of
a race at Road America where he didn’t get to set a fast lap. If I remove that
race, Bachler ends up in front of only Milner for full season drivers. If I do
the same for average pace, it only moves Bachler to just above Mies, so still
21st out of 27. Numerically on pace Bachler was tied with Mike
Rockenfeller for 20th. Average overall he fared better, 19th,
but still dramatically off of Heinrich’s numbers. Bachler did qualify for every
sprint, so that could explain some of it, but he was still off of the lap times
established by Heinrich in the enduros. No matter how you try to spin it, the
truth is that Laurin Heinrich is a serious powerhouse.
They didn’t
win the championship but should AO Racing be proud of their year? Absolutely.
They won Sebring and Laguna Seca, had 6 top-5 finishes, and no DNFs. 5th
in points isn’t what they wanted, but they continued growing the brand and the
mystique around Roxy and Rexy, and for that they should be very satisfied.
Pfaff Motorsports – Lamborghini – 9 (Andrea Caldarelli &
Marco Mapelli)
Oh Pfaff.
Everyone wants Pfaff to win again. The years of plaid domination feel a long
time ago. This year, they came out swinging with a new brand, a new driver line
up, and a renewed sense of full attack to get wins. Sadly, they didn’t come.
Andrea Caldarelli did get a pole at Watkins Glen, set the fastest lap of the
race at Watkins and Road America, but the team could only achieve 9th
in the championship. They got only one podium and only 3 top-5 finishes.
Upsides? Just two DNFs this year with a new car is a big accomplishment.
Individual driver wise, Mapelli
missed one race. He was faster than Andrea in 4 rounds though. That said, his
averages were badly impacted by Daytona and Sebring where he was 75th
and 62nd overall. In fact, it’s even more impressive that Caldarelli
had the 8th best overall average after getting the 44th
best lap time at Daytona! That’s a serious accomplishment to bounce back from
that. I digress. Mapelli was the lowest ranked of all the full season drivers
for average overall, but his average within class was respectable and not too
far off of Caldarelli. When it comes to pace, Caldarelli had it! He was the
fourth best full season driver. Mapelli was the 2nd worst, only
ahead of Bachler, again due to Road America. Caldarelli had the third best
average compared to the people with whom he shared a car, and he qualified
every race except for VIR! Again, Caldarelli like Harper seems immune to the
used tires disease that plagues so many others.
So what was missing from Pfaff?
Luck. Pure and simple. They had the speed. They still have great minds on the
pit box. They just didn’t have luck this year. Let’s see what 2026 brings them,
but it should not necessitate a driver change, because Andrea and Marco did
their parts!
Vasser Sullivan Racing – Lexus – 14 (Ben Barnicoat &
Aaron Telitz)
If the 14 GTD Pro Lexus isn’t
victorious in the 24 Hours of Daytona, their next opportunity to race in March
will mark two years since the team was last victorious. To put it bluntly, 2025
was a horrible season for the car. Last in the championship of all the cars
running a complete season, two top-5 finishes, no poles, no podiums, 2 DNFs,
and one race setting Fastest Lap. It’s long been talked about that a new GT3
car is on the way for this manufacturer, and it seems that it is time (but more
on this to come in the BoP article).
Because they were the only team to
run a GT3 car in both GTD Pro and GTD, I think it’s only fair to compare the 6
drivers’ numbers at once. Specifically for this car, Telitz qualified every
week except Daytona (Kirkwood) and DTW (Hawksworth), but he was the fastest
driver in the car 6 times. Ben Barnicoat, only ran 7 races due to an injury
that kept him out of the car between Daytona and Watkins Glen, was fastest in
the car for 4 of those, including 3 of the endurance races. The best Lexus
driver rank was Hawksworth at 2.2, narrowly ahead of Telitz at 2.3 and
Barnicoat at 2.4. Thompson was 3.1, but he had the second best average position
of 29.3, narrowly off of Hawksworth at 28.1. In the pro car, the best was
Telitz at 29.9 compared to Barnicoat at 40.3, but again Ben missed a lot of the
smaller field races. Class positions, the best was Hawksworth (14.5), then
Telitz (16.2), then Barnicoat (19.1) and Thompson (19.2). They were all very
close in that, but the close numbers were in the bottom of the chart. How was
the pace? Driver wise, the best here for average pace was again Hawksworth,
narrowly better than Telitz, but they were the only two out of six drivers who
managed to have an average pace of less than a second off. That is not where we
are accustomed to seeing Lexus drivers run. How did they stack up against each
other? Best for time off co-drivers was again Hawksworth, averaging 0.184 sec
off. The worst was Montecalvo, just under a second off. Barnicoat and Telitz
were fairly close to one another.
It looks like there’s change coming
for the driver lineups at Lexus, as well as the new car. The most important
thing for the Vasser Sullivan organization is to find that magic spark that led
them to 3 major endurance race wins and a GTD Pro championship. Hopefully for
their fans, the new car is ready to win out of the gate, and the dry spell can
end in January.
GTD Pro Driver of the Year:
There were
possibilities all over the place for who should get this honor. Heinrich,
Costa, Caldarelli, Priaulx, and Harper all deserve shout outs for what they
were able to accomplish in 2025. But the numbers said one driver deserved it
more. He had the best average for class and overall, and not by a little. He
was 2nd for average pace, 0.577 seconds off, and 4th best
overall but best of drivers with big teams at time off co-drivers at 0.083
seconds. Out of the 10 races, he set the fastest lap of the Chevys six times
and set the only Fastest Lap the manufacturer got all year. Although he and his
co-driver got only one race victory, they came home with the biggest trophy of
the year, the championship. It was his second championship in the last 3 years.
Alexander Sims deserves this award. Last year, I said he belongs in GT cars,
that he looks so at home in them. This year, he moved the goalposts. His
co-driver and co-champion Antonio Garcia is not weak, he is not failing at
holding up his end of the bargain, yet Alexander was able to still show his
strength. Sir, you thoroughly earned this honor. The numbers don’t lie.
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