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By R.J. O'Connell - Jun 6, 2025, 12:05 PM EDT

IMSA drivers and teams front and center at Le Mans

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is well-represented in this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans grid, in terms of drivers, personnel, and teams that have made the trip across the Atlantic to be a part of the 93rd Grand Prix d'Endurance.

IMSA teams at Le Mans are headlined by Porsche Penske Motorsport, which is having an all-time superlative season in IMSA's GTP category. The chase for Porsche's 20th overall Le Mans win, Roger Penske's first, and all three legs of the Triple Crown of Endurance Racing in the same calendar year will be one of if not the biggest stories leading into next week's race.

Yet while it's been a dream season in IMSA – with four straight wins to open the 2025 season – PPM has endured a nightmarish start to the FIA World Endurance Championship, as its cars haven't finished better than eighth in the first three races.

One of the Porsche Penske entries – the No. 4 963 of Felipe Nasr, Nick Tandy and Pascal Wehrlein – earned its place on the grid by way of the team's 2024 IMSA GTP title, which brought an automatic invitation. The other two, of course, are the full-season WEC cars.

Nasr is one of three drivers who can accomplish the unprecedented feat of winning Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans in the same year, along with his co-driver Tandy, and Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 6 Penske Porsche. Asked about what it would mean to him to pull off the 2025 Triple Crown, Nasr said simply, "It would be incredible. It's a dream of mine.

"Since I switched to sports car racing after Formula 1, I put that goal in my list every day. I have Daytona, I have Sebring, which is already kind of unique. And to see everything unfolding this year has been very, very special. But to win that race would be... I don't even know what to imagine! We've just got to keep working hard, as we've been doing every single weekend, and just go for it."

Seeking to become the first American automaker to win the race since Ford in 1969, Cadillac's four-car effort at Le Mans features the race debut of Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing and the return of Cadillac Whelen (Action Express Racing) for the third year in a row. Both were at-large invitations to Le Mans to fill out a 21-car Hypercar class field, and should, in theory, benefit from GM's renewed focus on having its teams cooperate and collaborate more closely.

WTR has high expectations coming into its first Le Mans entry, with five Rolex 24 At Daytona wins and three IMSA premier class titles to its name. In the last IMSA round at Detroit, they took the Cadillac V-Series.R's first podium of 2025, across IMSA and WEC.

While the Whelen Cadillac team has been here before, its first two attempts were marred by significant accidents. And while team driver Felipe Drugovich told RACER today that he is fully focus on Le Mans, the possibility of a last-minute driver change – if Drugovich has to fill in for an injured Lance Stroll in next week's Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix – certainly can't help the preparation.


Earl Bamber – who drives for Cadillac Whelen in IMSA but will be racing with Hertz Team JOTA at Le Mans, as he's done in WEC – has already seen the benefits of the "One Cadillac" approach. "I know that all the JOTA and the Action guys; they're back-and-forth all the time, even during a racing weekend," said the two-time Le Mans winner. "So, we definitely find some benefits. We find some benefits in the sim. And I think it also just helps, bringing the drivers closer, which is obviously going to be something pretty critical when we go to Le Mans with all four cars."

The only other full-season IMSA GTP team with a presence at Le Mans is Aston Martin THOR Team (The Heart of Racing), which already runs two of its new, V12-powered Valkyrie AMR-LMHs in the WEC full-time. Ross Gunn and Roman de Angelis have driven the Valkyrie in IMSA since its North American debut at Sebring and continue to make incremental progress at every race.

It's the culmination of a difficult journey for the Valkyrie Hypercar that was first announced in 2019, cancelled in 2020 and revived in 2023. Not many racing concepts that get shelved end up getting a second chance.