There was nothing small about the drama in the finale of the 2024 IMSA season

The 27th annual Petit Le Mans, the season finale of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, was – to borrow a tired cliché – a nail-biter until the end, and the result hung on a small round white button away .

A bold overtake by driver Renger van der Zande in the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac GTP late in the race put the team in the lead for the final 14 minutes, but van der Zande had his hands full and couldn’t put up much of a fight the second-place No. 6 Penske-Porsche 963 – although that was difficult too – but keeping the lights on in the truest sense of the word.

IMSA requires a car to have at least one working headlight, and electric gremlins regularly turned off both lights. If that had lasted long enough, the Cadillac would have been called into the pits, which would have cost it the race. As the event neared its 10-hour end, the track was indeed unsafe given the tremendous speed at which the GTP cars were passing the slower GT cars and the fact that the sun had already set hours before without light to go around.

The Cadillac had completed most of the nighttime portion of the race (which began at 12:10 p.m.) with only one headlight, but with less than 10 minutes to go, both headlights went out. “This manual that we get from Cadillac is a lot of buttons and a lot of options, so I started pushing all kinds of buttons and it still wasn’t good enough,” van der Zande said after the race. “Then they told me to press the white button. So I pushed the white button and it worked, so we got the lights back.” Still, they seemed to flash erratically, but that was apparently enough for IMSA to allow the Cadillac to continue.

The win was an emotional victory for van der Zande, who spent much of his career moving from team to team until finding a home in the Ganassi Cadillac four years ago. This was the last sports car race for both Cadillac and the Ganassi team, forcing the driver and crew to look for work for the next year.

Petit Le Mans always has a number of star guest drivers, and this year was no different: IndyCar’s Scott Dixon joined van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais in the winning No. 01 Cadillac. Colton Herta sat in the Wayne Taylor Racing No. 40 with Andretti Acura, a sister car to the No. 10. Romain Grosjean was part of the No. 63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini GTP team. Tom Blomqvist joined former leader Jack Aitken and Pipo Derani in Derani’s final drive in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac .

As previously mentioned, the No. 6 Penske-Porsche 963 finished second, with Nick Tandy driving the final stint, just ahead of his No. 7 team car, which had secured the season championship earlier in the race.

There were only five cautions for the entire course during the race – fewer than expected given Road Atlanta’s tight circuit and the large field of 53 cars, which consisted of four classes at different speeds. The most controversial caution came nine hours into the race when a collision occurred between two GTD cars, the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by Jan Heylen and the No. 55 Mustang GT3 Proton Competition driven by Corey Lewis.

The impact left the Mustang almost backwards on the track in the fast, tricky Turn 5, the front part was torn off and therefore there were no lights. One of the prototypes spotted the Mustang at the very last second, turned clearly to the right and drove away. Second place overall, Wayne Taylor Racing No. 10 with Andretti Acura ARX-06 and driver Ricky Taylor, followed closely behind and had no chance of catching the Mustang to avoid.

The No. 10 Acura had led much of the race in the brand’s last event with the team and was running second when the accident occurred. “I think it just proves how hard the sport is and how ruthless it can be,” Taylor said in a remarkable understatement. Apparently the officers had only called for “yellow on scene” – the warning flag was only flying in the immediate vicinity of the destroyed Mustang – when it was clear that the car could not move. The caution should have been applied the entire route, which would have caused everyone to slow down and likely allowed Taylor to miss the Mustang.

But that’s racing, and a lot of it happened not only in the highest GTP class, but also in the other three classes: LMP2, GTD Pro and GTD. In LMP2, victory went to the No. 11 TDS Racing Oreca with a clear lead over the No. 74 Riley-74 Ranch Oreca. In GTD Pro, the No. 19 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 finished 2.3 seconds ahead of the Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 No. 62. And in GTD, victory went to the Ferrari 296 GT3 No. 34 of Conquest Racing, less than a second ahead of the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 No. 78 of Forte Racing.

As the season finale, Petit Le Mans (“Petit” for short) decides the IMSA season championship. We mentioned that the No. 7 Penske Porsche 963 secured the title for drivers Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr, with Matt Campbell helping out as the third driver in the Petit endurance race. Matthieu Jaminet and Tandy finished second in the No. 6 Porsche, 13 points behind.

In the LMP2 class, the Drivers’ Championship went to the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports team of Nick Boulle and Tom Dillman, 61 points ahead of Gar Robinson and Felipe Fraga in the No. 74 car.

Future star Connor Zilisch, 18, took a break from his NASCAR commitments and raced with Dwight Merriman and Daytona 24 Hours overall winner Ryan Dalziel in the No. 18 Era Motorsports LMP2 car. They took third place in the race. It broke Zilisch’s long-distance winning streak this year – he was part of the winning LMP2 team at the 24 Hours of Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

In GTD Pro, rookie Laurin Heinrich started the race with plenty of points in the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R, which is good because his car finished 38th overall. His closest competitor, Ross Gunn, was only four points behind in the end. Gunn is the driver of the No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO. Yes, both Gunn and Heinrich had co-drivers during the season, but these were different and only these two drivers took part in each points race.

In GTD, the championship went to Phillip Ellis and Russell Ward, drivers of the Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, who finished an impressive 230 points ahead of Patrick Gallagher and Robby Foley, drivers of the No. 96 Turner Motorsports BMW M4 GT3. (In GTD, the cars are the same as in GTD Pro, but endurance races require two amateur drivers to compete; GTD Pro allows all professional drivers.)

This year’s Petit would have the man who founded it 27 years ago, Dr. Don Panoz, made proud; At the time, Panoz owned the American Le Mans Series, which was later taken over by IMSA and NASCAR. For Panoz, Petit was a fitting end to sports car racing in the United States, and sports car racing enthusiasts owe IMSA kudos for staying true to that vision.

NASCAR-owned racing series, which includes IMSA, no longer report attendance figures, but IMSA said the 2024 Petit Le Mans had a record attendance, up 10 percent from last year. IMSA has received nearly 90 requests from teams to participate in the 2025 Rolex 24 at Daytona, with only 61 entrants currently permitted due to available pit space.

IMSA does not allow its teams much offseason downtime. They will appear at Daytona International Speedway for a mandatory test November 15-17, followed by another test, the Roar Before the Rolex 24, January 17-19. The Rolex 24 at Daytona takes place from January 25th to 26th. The Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is scheduled for March 12-15.