Tandy, Pilet complete IMSA’s ‘endurance triple crown’

March 20, 2018

Tandy, Pilet complete IMSA’s ‘endurance triple crown’

March 20, 2018

With their win in Saturday’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, Nick Tandy and Patrick Pilet have now completed a career “triple crown” driving together in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s three longest endurance races.

Tandy and Pilet drove together in the first race of the new factory Porsche GT Team at the 2014 IMSA season-opener, the Rolex 24 at Daytona. They promptly won on debut with the CORE autosport-run Porsche 911 RSR, co-driving with Richard Lietz in the no. 911 car

A year later, the same trio captured the season finale in even more dramatic fashion. In the pouring rain at the 2015 Petit Le Mans, the GTLM Porsche beat the prototypes to claim an unlikely overall race victory in the rain-shortened race.

Tandy and Pilet shared this win Saturday at Sebring with Fred Makowiecki, to complete the trio of wins at Daytona, Sebring and Road Atlanta – the three longest races on the IMSA calendar. These are the three longest races in the four race Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup, whose fourth race, the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen, runs in July after the 24 Hours of Le Mans break.

It’s the first Sebring win for all three drivers. Tandy, who won overall at Le Mans in 2015 in one of Porsche’s LMP1 prototypes, can now say he’s won at all four marquee endurance races.

“They say that the best victories come from the toughest races,” Tandy said. “Today was such a race. We didn’t have the slightest problem over the entire distance and that was the key to our success.

“My last two stints were incredibly intense, especially the duels with the Ferrari and the BMW. We switched to new Michelin tires during the last pit stop – after that, nothing could hold us back.”

Pilet added, “This win was missing from my collection. It was a great team effort. The pit crew didn’t make one mistake and our strategy was perfect. To celebrate this achievement with my friends Nick and Fred is incredible. After the qualifying, victory seemed a long way off. But when you’re determined to achieve something and you go for it, you can do it. This race is proof of that.”

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