How Garcia and Dane found different routes to the top of the IMSA mountain

When talking about the most successful drivers since the reunification of American sports car racing, Antonio García and Dane Cameron are near the top of the list.

Both drivers further cemented their future IMSA Hall of Fame cases when they left Saturday’s Motul Petit Le Mans with their fifth championships since 2014. García and Alexander Sims won the GTD PRO championship for Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports, while Cameron and PJ Hyett won AO Racing’s first LMP2 championship.

As drivers, Garcîa and Cameron now have the most IMSA class championships since the start of the modern era in 2014, but they have taken different paths to get there.

All of García’s titles have come during a 17-year run with the factory Corvette Racing team that goes back to the days of the American Le Mans Series.

He was the ALMS’ final GT class champion (the forerunner to the IMSA GTLM and GTD PRO classes), bringing his total championship count to six. A mainstay of the bow tie brand, García has driven three generations of Corvette race cars to championships.

Asked how he’s been so successful over the years, García credited the continuity of everyone at Corvette Racing and Pratt Miller – not just the consistency over a year’s worth of races. “If you go around the whole Corvette crew and members, there is quite a few that have been there for a long time,” explained the soft-spoken, senior driver of Corvette Racing. “When that happens, everything runs very, very smooth.

“Obviously, you are taking new members once in a while, for sure. You need to keep the ball rolling. But I think that consistency and the loyalty to every single member of the team, that's what it takes, because I think it's a real family.

“I think that's the answer: Running with the best team. Running with the best teammates, and over the years, I think I’ve had the best ones. That's pretty much it.”

Even after all these years, García felt the nerves of a winner-take-all battle between the famous Velocity Yellow No.3 Corvette and the No. 81 DragonSpeed Ferrari, the proverbial David to Corvette Racing’s Goliath. 

“I was nervous today. Even if I'm as old as I am and the experience I have to date, I felt everything had to be perfect. So that's why I was kind of with a little bit of that extra pressure, in a way,” García admitted. “Once the flag went, I think I forgot about everything. And I think it's not only me. I think everybody on the team knew what to do. In a way, takes a lot of pressure away, because you know everybody that surrounds you, either Alex or Dani (Juncadella) as drivers or every single member of the team, you know everybody is going to be doing the best they can.”

With just one win, but six podiums and only one finish outside the top four in 11 races, García and co-driver Sims capped off a great second season for the Corvette Z06 GT3.R, one which proved that the first full-scale Corvette Racing car for customer teams is a worthy successor to the four generations of factory-exclusive cars that came before it.

Meanwhile, Cameron has now won his five IMSA championships in five different classes, with four different organizations.

While Garcia has won all of his championships with the same program, Dane (above) has made his mark across four different teams. Richard Dole/IMSA

After winning the inaugural IMSA GTD title in 2014 for Turner Motorsport, Cameron won championships in three different iterations of the top class: The 2016 Prototype championship with Action Express Racing, the 2019 DPi championship with Acura Team Penske, and the 2024 GTP championship with Porsche Penske Motorsport.

“Honestly, pretty incredible. Five is a special number,” Cameron said, after wrapping up the LMP2 title with a sixth-place finish. “That's obviously the goal when you start the year, and I believed in the project and the pieces that were there that it had this potential to bring a championship. Just needed a little bit of glue to hold everything all together and elevate things a little bit more. Just grateful, thankful that PJ and Gunnar (Jeannette, team principal of AO Racing) thought that I could be the guy. I thought there was some potential there to do it.

“The mission was to get some wins for Spike after a tough year for them last year. Of course, the moon shot is to get the championship. That all came together.”

Cameron joined AO Racing’s burgeoning LMP2 program after he was let go from Porsche Penske Motorsport – a brutal cut after he’d helped lead PPM to the 2024 GTP championship and won the Rolex 24 At Daytona for the first time.

But he values this most recent championship in LMP2 just as much as any of his three premier class titles that came before it.

“I would say this one is as valuable or as meaningful to me as any of them, as much as it is to win an overall (championship) and to do it with a manufacturer. This is just as much. So I don't have any less love or value for this one, being a spec category or pro-am thing like that.

“It's hugely competitive here. There's a ton of talent – guys that are also racing in Hypercar programs, guys that are on their way to Hypercar programs. It's every bit as competitive as any other category.

“Even though we won the championship last year (at Porsche Penske), it was personally a tough stretch for me. For me to feel back on my own two feet a little bit is good. I'm very, very proud of this one.”