Cadillac Whelen keeps podium run going with impressive Watkins Glen win

With a commanding victory at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen on Sunday, Cadillac Whelen and lead driver Jack Aitken are now in firm control of their championship destiny as the second half of the 2026 IMSA season has begun.

Aitken, Earl Bamber, and Frederik Vesti avenged a difficult loss in last year’s Watkins Glen Six Hours. Collectively they led 143 out of 182 laps in a race littered with accidents and calamities, including one flashpoint late in the race which could have deprived the team of its second straight win of the year, and an incredible eighth consecutive GTP class podium dating back to the final two races of last year.

Over an hour and 33 minutes remained in the race when Bamber was leading, but fighting off Sheldon van der Linde in his hard-charging No. 24 BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8.

As they battled in traffic, Bamber and the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Simon Mann made side-to-side contact at the apex of turn four, contact which sent Mann and his GTD Ferrari hard into the guardrail, and out of the race. Bamber blamed the incident on turbulent air from an LMP2 car directly in front of him.

“I got in the tow of the Tower (Motorsports LMP2) car, I followed it up – and then I was inside of the Ferrari. I got a little bit of aero wash and then he touched in the tail. It was just a very slight touch,” said Bamber, who was overtaken by van der Linde just moments later due to the loss of momentum.

The race had nine full course cautions for accidents and debris, plus more than a fair share of penalties – but the incident between Bamber and Mann was never investigated by the Stewards and thus, never subject to a decision on whether or not to render a penalty.

Instead, they took a win that has given the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R a 245-point lead in the GTP Teams’ Championship over the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06. Aitken, who’s been the team’s only driver to run every race, leads Porsche works driver Laurin Heinrich (who’s split the season between Porsche Penske Motorsport and JDC-Miller MotorSports) by 203 points.

Then the two Porsche Penske cars, the No. 7 and No. 6 963s, sit third and fourth in the teams’ standings – while their drivers are fourth and sixth in a mixed-up drivers’ table – and neither car is within 250 points of the leading Cadillac.

“The car was fantastic today,” remarked Aitken. “Another great performance from the Whelen Cadillac guys, and my teammates who were out front pretty much the whole race, in some form or another.

“It’s a real pleasure, and it feels a bit surreal to keep the streak going.”

The No. 31 Cadillac resisted late pressure from the No. 24 BMW. Brandon Badraoui/IMSA

Aitken started and finished the race in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac: He navigated a tricky final hour and 12 minutes of green flag racing, beginning from third place on the final restart of the race. While he’d gotten out of the pits ahead of the No. 24 BMW, the No. 93 MSR Acura and No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac had pitted before the yellow and jumped to first and second.

“The way it worked out, we had a couple of cars in front of us with a bit of an advantage, stopping just before the yellow came out. We knew we had a bit of a fuel advantage, so it’s just trying to stay close to them and keep saving fuel. See if we could get by, if there were any opportunities.”

Cadillac Racing used intra-squad tactics with an hour to go, as Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 10 WTR machine let Aitken go through into second place. That put only the No. 93 Acura of Nick Yelloly ahead of Aitken, who then set the fastest lap of the race late in the penultimate stint.

“I think at the next pit stop sequence, the team played it pretty much perfectly. So we got out with a decent gap, and we were able to just manage it from there. We kind of just made sure we were taking care of the car and managing the traffic – which is always a lot of fun here, but quite scary at times!”

A final-lap crash between two GTD Pro cars afforded Aitken the chance to coast over the line to victory.

The win erased the sting of having to cough up the lead on the last lap at Watkins Glen last year, when the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac ran out of fuel coming to the white flag – as well as the more recent pain of Aitken and Bamber’s DNF at the 24 Hours of Le Mans just two weeks ago.

“You have to just chalk it up as a learning experience sometimes on a day like that,” Aitken recalled of last year’s finish.

“We haven’t made mistakes like that in a long time, and that’s part of the reason we’re on this (podium) streak. It is lovely to do it right, and come back and win it. Because you never know when you’re going to get a chance to win these big races, so it’s fantastic.”

There’s only three races left on the calendar featuring the premier GTP class, and those aforementioned championship leads cannot be overturned in the upcoming Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America on August 2nd.

With or without the influence of a Balance of Performance adjustment to the Cadillac fleet, it’d take a significant collapse for Aitken, Bamber, Vesti, and the Action Express Racing team behind the Cadillac Whelen banner not to dethrone Porsche Penske Motorsport as GTP champions of IMSA.