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BMW’s Time Is Coming, the Rare Triple Repeat and a Notable Runner-up Finish
May 13, 2025
By Mark Robinson
IMSA Wire Service
Three Takeaways: TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship
BMW’s Time Is Coming, the Rare Triple Repeat and a Notable Runner-up Finish
May 13, 2025
By Mark Robinson
IMSA Wire Service
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – After opening the 2025 season with the two longest races of the season followed by one of the short 100-minute sprints, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship settled into its first “standard-length” race this weekend.
Sunday’s TireRack.com Monterey SportsCar Championship was anything but standard for a number of reasons, though. Let’s delve into a few of those as takeaways from another stellar show at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
BMW Getting Closer to Kicking Down the GTP Door
Yes, Porsche Penske Motorsport’s two Porsche 963s have won every Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) race thus far in 2025. There’s no arguing they’ve executed flawlessly.
But who’d have guessed coming into the season that the strongest competition would come from BMW M Team RLL and its pair of BMW M Hybrid V8s? BMW once again grew closer to halting the Penske streak at WeatherTech Raceway, particularly the No. 24 BMW shared by Dries Vanthoor and Philipp Eng.
Vanthoor put the No. 24 on pole for the fourth straight race, and while he fell behind the Penske Porsches at the end of his opening stint, he and Eng remained within reach – no easy task in the two-hour, 40-minute race that ran caution-free for the first time in six years at the track.
Back in the car as the closing driver, Vanthoor nearly pulled off a dramatic pass of the No. 7 Penske Porsche for second place as they headed to the last turn on the last lap. But side-to-side contact sent the BMW off track while the No. 7 Porsche escaped unscathed to finish second to its sister No. 6.
Vanthoor recovered to take the final podium spot, which is noteworthy. Last year, BMW’s only podiums of the year came when the Nos. 24 and 25 finished 1-2 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in September. While there are no wins yet in 2025, the No. 24 has shown great pace and has a pair of third-place finishes as well as a fourth. The No. 25 with co-drivers Marco Wittman and Sheldon van der Linde already has more top-five finishes (three) than the car recorded all last season (two).
What’s more, the BMWs sit third and fourth in GTP points, boosting BMW to second in the ever-important manufacturer standings – strides better than the marque’s fourth-place finishes of the past two years.
Déjà vu All Over Again
The same three cars that won their classes at WeatherTech Raceway a year ago did it again Sunday. How often does that happen in IMSA, you ask? Rarely, at best.
The No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 repeated in GTP, as did the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R in Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) and the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 in GTD. Only the Winward Mercedes-AMG accomplished the feat with the same driver duo (Russell Ward and Philip Ellis) both years, although Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche and Laurin Heinrich in the No. 77 Porsche added their own pair of back-to-back jacks in Monterey.
According to our crackerjack research team, the closest, most recent example of this occurring came at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course from 2018-20 … and it’s still not a mirror image of a perfect triple repeat.
In 2018, the No. 7 Acura Team Penske with its Acura ARX-05 won in the top prototype class, then called “Prototype.” The following year it was the No. 6 Penske Acura in the rebranded Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class, with the No. 7 returning atop the DPi podium in 2020.
Meanwhile, in Grand Touring Le Mans (GTLM), Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor won for the Porsche GT Team back-to-back in 2018 and ‘19. Lexus recorded three straight GTD wins from 2018-20 with its Lexus RC F GT3, with 3GT Racing the first year before what was then called “AIM Vasser Sullivan,” now Vasser Sullivan Racing, took class honors in ’19 and ’20.
Again, not an exact repeat for those years, but it may be about as close as we’ll find.
Drive of the Day? No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus
Somewhat overlooked in the triple repeat of winners Sunday was the performance from the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3. Parker Thompson started sixth in class but vaulted to second on the opening lap with a daring move around the Andretti Hairpin.
While he led 22 laps midway through the race, Thompson stayed predominantly in second place, which is where co-driver Jack Hawksworth brought it home.
“Most of my race was there in Turns 1 and 2, to be honest,” Thompson said of the start, “which is famous here at Laguna Seca. It was kind of funny because we talked about the difference between the inside and the outside lanes. I was pretty solid on going to the inside, but when I saw it open up, I decided to send it on the outside and it worked out pretty well. … It’s not been our strongest track. To leave here with a good points day and now head to some tracks that are really good for us, it was a good day for our team.”
The runner-up finish could prove pivotal if Hawksworth and Thompson hope to overtake the Winward Racing drivers for the GTD title. A year ago at this time, the No. 57 Mercedes-AMG boasted a 213-point lead in the class and the No. 12 Lexus was mired in 10th place. Now, Thompson and Hawksworth sit just 124 points back in second place with six races to go.
