As IMSA's GTs classes head to VIR it's anyone's game, with everything to play for

Once teammates at Corvette Racing, Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy now find themselves fighting for the IMSA GTD Pro championship for different manufacturers and teams with three races left in the 2026 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

Their season reaches a critical juncture this weekend at VIRginia International Raceway, site of IMSA’s only GT3-exclusive feature race, the Michelin GT Challenge.

Five years ago when they were at Corvette Racing, Milner and Tandy took the overall and GTLM class win in their Chevrolet Corvette C8.R. Now, they are embroiled in a championship battle that is impossibly close between the top three teams, including the No. 4 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports Z06 GT3.R of Milner and Nicky Catsburg (main image), and the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Tandy and Harry King.

They are only 15 and 21 points, respectively, behind the championship-leading No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Connor de Phillippi and Neil Verhagen – a margin that is virtually zero in IMSA’s Latford-like points system.

“I don’t remember a championship being as close as this,” said Milner, a two-time IMSA champion with Corvette Racing, who’s now in his 16th year as a GM factory driver. “It seems like for whatever reason, every year in GTD Pro, there’s one car that just has a year where nothing goes wrong. It seems like that’s not going to be the case this year.”

That’s been the tempo of a season-long battle between the No. 1 BMW and No. 4 Corvette, the two cars that have traded the championship lead from the Rolex 24 At Daytona through the eve of this weekend’s two-hour, 40-minute GT showcase sprint race. The six-hour enduro at Road America could have been the venue where Paul Miller Racing landed a knockout blow, but an untimely accident for the BMW brought it neck-and-neck again with the Corvette.

“It seems like we kind of go up and down the standings, with different teams occupying the top three a little bit. But we’ve just got to continue on the path that we’ve been on,” Milner said. “Keep scoring points as we can, take advantage of opportunities when they come our way.”

Milner and Catsburg finished third at VIR last year while the sister car of Alexander Sims and Antonio García won the race. The American driver has three wins at VIR, including his most recent IMSA win, the 2021 race that he and Tandy won together.

“VIR has been good to me in the past, but that doesn’t mean that it will be, or should be good to me again this year,” he admitted. “But we’ll do what we can to try and make sure that happens; our Corvette’s been good there the last couple of years, and hopefully we can continue that trend this weekend.”

Like the No. 4 Corvette, AO Racing’s “Rexy” hasn’t won a race this season, and its season hasn’t been 100 percent trouble-free. But just like the Milner/Catsburg duo, the first-year pairing of Tandy and Harry King has been mostly consistent all year, and took a timely runner-up finish at Road America to keep the Paul Miller Racing team within even the reach of a tyrannosaurus’ short arms.

"Rexy" hasn't yet won a race this year, but the consistency of new driver pairing Nick Tandy and Harry King have kept AO Racing's No.77 Porsche in the title hunt. Brandon Badraoui/Getty Images

“It’s one of my favorite stops on the schedule,” Tandy said of VIR, where he’s also won three times – but hasn’t raced since his win with Milner in 2021. “Being the highlight race of the season for the GT class, and the track is just one of the best. And I’ve typically had quite a bit of success there: I remember back in the GTLM days it being pretty much a Porsche circuit.

“We’ve been on a good run the last few rounds. If you include Watkins Glen – we were running fast and running well there, it could have been three podiums on the bounce. The season’s really kicked on: The cars in the class, they’re very close week-in and week-out nowadays. So it gives us a chance when we do have a strong weekend, to be up there and always in the fight.”

After three mostly successful years in the high-pressure environment of Porsche Penske Motorsport and the GTP class, Tandy’s move to AO Racing in GTD Pro has evoked happy memories of his time racing in the old GTLM class, and rejuvenated the English driver’s spirits.

“The greatest racing I ever did in my life was in the peak of GTLM, back in the ’18, ’19, ’20 period – this was just the best racing ever," he said. "And honestly, GTD Pro is becoming that sort of racing."

“It’s the sort of thing where you’ve got to be on it all the time, and generally, you’ve always got a chance. So if you don’t qualify well, you will have the chance to do something in the race and get something going towards the end. That is exactly how GTLM used to be.”

And if ever there were questions about how the all-English duo of Tandy and King would get along in this highly-competitive environment, they seem to have been comprehensively answered: King has found his stride in his rookie year of IMSA competition, getting better with every race.

“The way he’s taken to IMSA I think has shocked a lot of people – but it hasn’t shocked me, because I’ve known him for a long time,” Tandy said.

“He’s a very smart driver, even smarter than I thought he was. He takes on a lot of information, he very quickly processes that information, asks the right questions. He teaches the rest of us a lot of stuff.

“He understands that endurance racing is not just about going fast for five laps and then slow for the next 25. If he carries on the way he’s going, and I see no reason why not, then I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of him in IMSA in the future.”

To Tandy’s point about the competitive level in the class, behind the main three contenders are four other GTD Pro cars that are now within 52 points of each other, and 151 points of the championship lead. Should any or all of the top three cars have a lackluster showing at VIR, the No. 65 Ford Racing Mustang, the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus, the No. 3 Corvette – and yes, even the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Temerario – have an open runway to insert themselves as serious title threats going into Indianapolis and Road Atlanta.

Paul Miller Racing's No.1 BMW heads to VIR with the points lead - but absolutely no room for error. Mike Levitt/IMSA

“They still have a chance. They can go on a tear at any point,” Tandy says of the next rung of GTD Pro cars. “Let’s see what it is when it comes to Petit. It’s obviously great for the series that different cars are winning.

“We said before Road America, the No. 1 car was pulling a gap. They were always competitive, fast, and always at the front. But we said it only takes one bad result, and everyone’s back in it – and lo and behold, look what happened at Road America.

“Hopefully it stays close, and it’s interesting to the end.”

One storyline will be followed extensively is set to be another instance of tighter scrutiny from Race Control and the Stewards after the Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America was littered with accidents that once again called the series’ driving standards into question.

It evoked memories of last year, when another caution-filled Road America race led to a massive course correction at VIR, where any avoidable contact or blocking was met with strong penalties, to the point that some drivers felt the correction was too strong in the other direction.

“I think the race will be officiated similarly to last year,” Milner said. “We’re going to have another long drivers’ meeting with Beaux (Barfield, IMSA Race Director).

“The difference here is that at Road America last year, it was the GT cars that were exhibiting the poor driving standards – and I felt like our class was pretty good there. But obviously, the final product on TV wasn’t fantastic. I watched a good part of it after the fact, and all the yellows at the end of the race spoiled what could have been a little bit of a better show.”

While there were three full-course cautions in last year’s VIR round, the on-track action was generally much more orderly versus the preceding race at Road America.

“Not that we don’t need to listen to what Beaux has to say, but I think there’s going to be a crackdown. We had a good race last year at VIR,” Milner continued, “so I predict something similar.

“There’s going to be some discussion about it, another reminder. Even so, we had a reminder at Road America that obviously fell on some deaf ears on some drivers.”