That is how you hunt down a win. Sheldon van der Linde put on a relentless masterclass in the closing stages at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, chasing down Earl Bamber before pouncing with less than six minutes remaining in the two-hour, 40-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship sprint race. The 27-year-old South African forced the No. 24 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 past the rival No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R in front of the largest crowd for an IMSA race at the Speedway since the event returned in 2023.
Crossing the finish line 2.926 seconds ahead of Bamber, van der Linde delivered a historic result: BMW's first overall and GTP class win in partnership with Team WRT in IMSA competition. Dries Vanthoor had qualified the machine third fastest and maintained the position through his stint before handing over just before the halfway mark. When the action resumed following a caution with 48 minutes left, van der Linde sat second behind Bamber's co-driver Jack Aitken, who led the manufacturer standings.
Traffic proved to be the ultimate battleground. Van der Linde closed to within 0.3 of a second of Bamber with half an hour to go, suffering light side-to-side contact before launching his decisive attack as they caught the GTD PRO class-winning No. 64 Ford Racing Ford Mustang GT3 driven by Dennis Olsen. Slicing through between Turns 10 and 11, van der Linde seized the inside line into the right-hand Turn 12 and emerged in front for his second career IMSA win and first since 2017.
Behind the leaders, Kevin Estre and Laurin Heinrich claimed third in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 after surviving a messy first-corner incident that caught the sister No. 7 Porsche. Heinrich climbed from sixth to third in the final stint, while Aitken heads to the season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta with an unofficial 147-point advantage over Heinrich. Nick Yelloly and Renger van der Zande finished seventh in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06, putting them third in the standings and 271 points back.
Meanwhile, the LMP2 class delivered its own masterclass in strategy courtesy of Era Motorsport. Bringing together a one-off pairing with less than two weeks of preparation, Nick Boulle and Christian Rasmussen guided their No. 18 ORECA LMP2 07 to victory. Boulle qualified seventh, which ironically kept him clear of a chaotic first-corner shunt that swept up the No. 99 from AO Racing, CrowdStrike Racing by APR’s No. 04, and the No. 2 from United Autosports. After an extended first stint, Boulle handed over to Rasmussen for a grueling 55-minute energy run.
While rivals made splash-and-go stops in the final 15 minutes, Rasmussen relied on an aggressive fuel strategy to nurse his machine to the flag, besting Harry Tincknell in the No. 52 Bryan Herta Autosport with PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07 by 15.004 seconds. Tincknell shared his car with Misha Goikhberg, while Daniel Goldburg and Paul Di Resta rounded out the podium in third for United Autosports USA in the No. 22 ORECA. In the championship race, sixth place for the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition entry driven by Tom Dillmann and Jeremy Clarke left them with a razor-thin four-point advantage over the No. 04 CrowdStrike crew heading into the final round.
