WRT No. 46 BMW romps to Indy 8 Hour victory with van der Linde, Rossi and Weerts

After what was effectively a four-hour race, the Indianapolis 8 Hour was claimed by the No. 46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Kelvin van der Linde, Valentino Rossi and Charles Weerts. The victory guaranteed the Intercontinental GT Challenge drivers championship to van der Linde, BMW having already assured itself of the manufacturers championship – their first.

The No. 46 was followed by the No. 888 Mercedes-AMG Team GMR Mercedes AMG GT3 EVO of Maro Engel, Tom Kalender and Luca Stolz in second, and the No. 777 sister Team WRT entry for Al Faisal Al Zubair, Augusto Farfus and Raffaele Marciello, who was van der Linde's chief rival for the Drivers Championship. 

WRT's No. 46 leapfrogged the No. 777 with clever strategy, coming in a lap earlier than necessary to get to the front. If the sister car had finished first, the drivers championship would have gone to Marciello. 

“To be honest, it's a bit of a an anti-climax with such a such a cool race, and to spend almost two hours on safety cars, a bit of a tricky one, to be honest,” said van der Linde. “I think the No. 777 today deserved the win, so I feel a bit of mixed emotions for the team. Nonetheless, four out of five for BMW Motorsport has made me very proud – all the teammates that have helped me on this journey. It's been an amazing one this year. 

“Some years just you have the luck on your side, and things work out. This is one of those years.”

The victory was the third straight Indianapolis 8 Hour win for Team WRT and BMW, the third straight for van der Linde – who took every IGTC race in 2025 except the 24 Hours of Spa – and the second in a row for Weerts. It was the fourth win for BMW in the race's six-year history. Rossi, taking his first InterContinental GT Challenge victory, becomes the first racer to win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on a motorcycle and in a car. Rossi took the inaugural MotoGP race at the track in 2008, a race also shortened by rain. 

“I'm very, very happy because it was a great race,” said Rossi. “At the end, we were very lucky. The win here is better because I won with the MotoGP in 2008, so it's something fantastic. I'm very happy that I can help Kelvin to win the championship. We did a great job with the team, so it's a fantastic feeling.”

The race ran green for four hours before lightning moved into the area. After more than two hours of red flag race stoppage and nearly an hour running under the safety car, the Indianapolis 8 Hours finally went green again, in theory turning into a 40-minute sprint race.

With cars pitting for driver changes and to reset stint length, the order was shuffled a bit before the race went green again, and van der Linde led the field to the restart in the No. 46, pursued by Engel in the No. 888 and Marciello in the No. 777. 

The race went yellow again in short order due to the No. 80 Mercedes-AMG Team Lone Star Racing Mercedes AMG stopped on the pit entrance, reportedly due to gearbox failure. It was the final blow to the team that had been the benchmark in many sessions, started on pole and led most of the first hour of the race until receiving a drive-through penalty for incident responsibility.

While the car was moved quickly, by the time pit lane was clear, the rain had picked up again and the yellow was extended. Due to too much standing water on the track, the race never restarted.

Finishing fourth overall and the first World Challenge GT America entrant, Random Vandals claimed the WCGTA championship in its first season of GT3 racing. With Conor Daly joining Kenton Koch and Connor De Phillippi in the No. 99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, Koch and De Phillippi are the Pro champs in WCGTA. 

“It's just been an amazing effort for this entire team,” said De Phillippi. “Where we started early in the year, we had a lot to learn, but we accepted that and we just focused on being better every time we hit the track and and we did that; we executed. We won a lot of races. I think we all know that there were a few race weekends that we could have done a little better, including myself. I'm just glad that we came into this last weekend with with the focus on the line of winning. We weren't really hyper focused on the whole point situation. We wanted to go out and beat the best of the best. You have some of the best GT teams here in the world today, some of the best drivers. I'm proud to say I was also with one of the best teams.”

Koch scored his second championship of the day, having secured the Pirelli GT4 America Silver category title for Random Vandals earlier alongside with Kevin Boehm.

The Pro-Am category was won by the No. 21 Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R of Dustin Blattner, Alfred Renaur and Dennis Marschall. The No. 10 Wright Motorsports Porsche of Patric Niederhauser, Antares Au and Loek Hartog was second. Finishing third, and the first of the GTWCA teams in Pro-Am, were Justin Rothberg, Robby Foley and Patrick Gallgher in the No. 29 Turner Motorsports BMW. That finish earned Rothberg and Foley their second consecutive GTWCA Pro-Am drivers title.

“If [Rothberg] stays on this trajectory, he's definitely got a bright future,” said Foley. “It's been great to see his progression, and we racked up some more wins this year, we're a bit more consistent. It's been an awesome season.”

The AF Corse USA effort for Jay Schreibman, Oswaldo Negri and Conrad Grunewald in the No. 163 Ferrari 296 GT3 managed to just nip the Dollahite Racing Mustang GT3 squad in the Am class, both in the race and in the championship for Schreibman and Negri. 

Bringing in superstar fellow Aussies Will Power and Chaz Mostert paid off for Kenny Habul and the 75 Express Mercedes AMG team, as the team's sixth-place finish delivered Habul the Independent Cup, his fifth Intercontinental GT Challenge title.