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.

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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.

THOR hopes to build on the progress its Aston Martins have made over the season's IMSA and WEC races. Julien Delfosse/DPPI

"I think I was there at Le Mans when it got announced," recalls Gunn. "It was a very exciting period. And then obviously, COVID came and things chanced quite significantly for the company. But it's been incredible to see how it's been brought back to life. It's brought a smile to a lot of people, not only in the team, but also the fans watching, as well. And I'm just so proud to be a part of that."

IMSA also has a presence in the LMP2 and LMGT3 categories by way of the Jim Trueman and Bob Akin Awards. Every season, the top FIA Bronze-ranked drivers in IMSA's LMP2 and GTD classes receive an automatic entry to Le Mans in their corresponding classes.

2024 Trueman Award winner Nick Boulle helped give Inter Europol Competition a successful start to its new North American racing venture. Competing in collaboration with PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports, Boulle and Inter Europol won the hotly contested IMSA LMP2 championship last season.

While Boulle transferred to United Autosports in the off-season in IMSA, he always planned to come to Le Mans with Inter Europol, the 2023 Le Mans LMP2 class-winning team, entering two cars in this year's event including the No. 34 ORECA 07-Gibson that Boulle will drive.

Inter Europol looks to recapture its Le Mans-winning magic of 2023 with Trueman Award winner Boulle. Javier Jimenez/DPPI

Two worthy challengers for the 2025 Trueman Award are on the LMP2 Pro/Am grid with him: 2023 LMP2 Pro/Am winner George Kurtz returns with Algarve Pro Racing, as does PJ Hyett with AO Racing (in conjunction with TF Sport). 2024 Le Mans LMP2 winner United Autosports, TDS Racing and AF Corse also have full-season IMSA LMP2 entries.

Orey Fidani won the 2024 Akin Award for AWA Racing and will be the anchor of the Canadian team's Le Mans debut in LMGT3. Fidani, Matt Bell, and Lars Kern also won this year's Rolex 24 in GTD, AWA's second Daytona class win in three years. They'll receive support from Corvette Racing and its main WEC client, TF Sport.

Heart of Racing Team also has a full-season IMSA GTD and WEC LMGT3 presence and will enter its Aston Martin Vantage LMGT3 "Evo" with the backing of Prodrive. Heart of Racing's Mattia Drudi was just one of the drivers that Bell fought off at Daytona in the final minutes to win five months ago.

And this summary only covers IMSA's full-time teams on the Le Mans grid: Proton Competition, Iron Dames, and AF Corse also have commitments to the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup, mostly in the GT classes – and in Proton's case, with a GTP Porsche 963 of its own.

Not to mention the collection of regular IMSA drivers that will be running at Le Mans in different teams and different classes. This group includes all four Acura Meyer Shank Racing drivers, scattered across four different LMP2 teams that will likely battle each other for class honors.

There will be many IMSA fans across North America waking up early Saturday and Sunday to catch the start and finish of this year's Le Mans 24 Hours (and as much of it in-between that they can), knowing that one of their favorite teams has a real chance to win any one of the three classes by the time the big Rolex clock hits "all zeroes" on Sunday.