The 2025 VSCA SportsCar Championship returned to Watkins Glen on Saturday for Round 8 of the season and Round 3 of the Endurance Cup, delivering a dramatic edition of the Six Hours of the Glen. The 3.40-mile, 11-turn circuit in upstate New York played host to one of the most intense endurance races in recent VSCA history, culminating in a controversial and emotionally charged finish in the GTP class.
João Garrido set the tone in qualifying by taking pole position for the #88 PULSAR eSports Team Porsche 963 GTP with a blistering lap of 1:32.028. At the green flag, the Portuguese entry quickly established a strong lead. Meanwhile, returning to the series for the first time since Sebring, the #4 Fischer Motorsport Porsche driven by Michael Poole made an aggressive charge, climbing to third in the early going and brushing wheels with LMP2 traffic along the way. Despite those moments, the GTP category remained relatively incident-free.
The race featured only a single full-course yellow, coming just before the halfway point and lasting 27 minutes. The restart saw the top runners bunch back up, with Dani Fonte in the #51 World Of SimRacing Cadillac V-Series.R GTP overtaking the #88 in the esses, setting the stage for an epic duel between the two.
Strategy and Speed Collide
From the moment Fonte seized the lead, the Spanish team began to build a gap, pulling more than 14 seconds clear during a commanding stint. The pit stop strategies soon began to unfold. The #88 swapped drivers as João Garrido returned to the cockpit, while the #51 delayed their stop by three laps and retained Fonte behind the wheel, albeit with a slightly longer stop.
The gap narrowed. Garrido pushed hard, expertly navigating traffic and shrinking the margin to under three seconds by lap 150. The teams remained close through the next cycle of stops, with Álvaro Martínez now piloting the #51 and Garrido still at the controls of the chasing #88.
As the final hour commenced, the two leaders were separated by just 0.8 seconds. The last 60 minutes became a game of traffic management, tire conservation, and split-second decisions, with neither team giving an inch.
The Final Twist
With 30 minutes to go, Garrido brought the #88 in for a routine stop that lasted 32 seconds. Martínez followed a lap later, completing service in 29.5 seconds. The #51 emerged ahead with a 3.5-second buffer. But traffic played its part once again, and the Portuguese driver closed the gap dramatically.
On lap 201, just 14 minutes before the checkered flag, Garrido made a daring move in Turn 11. Martínez, boxed in by the GT AM #64 Ford Mustang, had no choice but to back out, and the #88 Porsche reclaimed the lead. Mere moments later, Garrido nearly threw it all away, narrowly avoiding disaster in Turn 11 with the #84 GT PRO Ferrari of Benjamin Fischer.
Despite the scare, Garrido re-established a slim margin. With one lap to go, it looked like the #88 had sealed it — until the unthinkable happened. Pushing hard into Turn 9, Garrido lost the rear on marbles, took a wilde slide, and recovered directly in front of Martínez, somehow holding on to the slimmest of leads, crossing the line first. Moments later, word came from race control: the #88 had exceeded the incident limit due to contact earlier with the #68 GT AM McLaren. The resulting post-race time penalty handed the win to the #51.
Redemption for Some, Reflection for Others
For the World Of SimRacing Team, it was a hard-earned and emotionally exhausting victory. Fonte and Martínez not only led a race-high 113 laps but climbed from fourth on the grid and avoided critical mistakes under pressure. Their official winning margin of 4.934 seconds marked the seventh-closest finish in GTP class history.
Despite the heartbreak, the PULSAR eSports Team took second with pride. Both Garrido and João Madeira expressed frustration with the penalty but remained upbeat about their performance and outlook in the Endurance Cup, where they now lead the standings by a single point.
Rounding out the podium was the #46 Rising Panda Racing Acura ARX-06, driven by Christian Campregher and Remy Loesch. After recovering from a mid-race scare in the bus stop, the team executed a clean and steady run to third. Their performance keeps them in the title fight, sitting third in both the overall and Endurance Cup standings.
Fourth went to the #963 Vulture Motorsports Porsche, despite a pair of 30-second post-race penalties for on-track incidents involving Erol Ureksoy. The #32 Wastegate Racing Cadillac finished fifth, maintaining second in the overall championship.
Battles All the Way Down
The #4 Fischer Motorsport Porsche marked its return with a sixth-place finish, despite some tense moments for Michael Poole, including brushes with LMP2 and GTP competitors early on, plus a hard crash into the turn one barriers by Reha Soganci on the restart, that dropped the team down 34 laps.
Seventh was claimed by the #37 W2 e-ProGP Ferrari, recovering from a rough opening-lap incident that required significant repairs.
With its fourth win of the season, the #51 team extended its overall lead in the VSCA SportsCar Championship to 404 points over the #32 Cadillac, while the Endurance Cup remains a tightly contested three-way battle between the #88 Porsche, #51 Cadillac, and #46 Acura—separated by just one point.
Post-Race Reactions
Álvaro Martínez, #51 World Of SimRacing Team Cadillac: "What a finish! We won again!! What a race! After 6 hours crossing the finish line, it was a lot of fun!"
"We were both (the #51 and #88) coming in very fast in the last stint, handling the traffic, but a Mustang went wide before the last corner and its rejoin wasn't very good, leaving me trapped on the outside of the last corner, and the 88 took advantage of the maneuver. From then until the end, we could only push and wait. They and the Acura 46 had more pace than us, so at the end, with 3 corners to go, I didn't expect to find the 88 sitting across the track. We miraculously avoided contact and prepared to get off to a better start towards the finish line. We missed out by 0.64 thousandths of a second, but the battle was great and exhausting, I am exhausted."
"We all deserve a good vacation, drivers, teams, and organization staff. It'll be very useful for the final stretch of the season. Two long races and one short one will be very intense, so let's enjoy the sun and some good beers. Happy holidays!"
Dani Fonte, #51 World Of SimRacing Team Cadillac: "I feel very exhausted and very happy. It was a tough and difficult race, but not as exhausted as Alvaro, who finished and had to push hard. The race was a roller coaster ride in the last 15 minutes, with so many emotions combined."
"The whole race was fun, since the distance with the closest pursuer in the race was not much, and after the safety car, more joined the party. The last lap was crazy from the outside. I don't want to think how Álvaro experienced it with this attack to the finish line by less than one tenth of a second. There were tense moments after the checkered flag, when we saw a touch from the #88 in turn 3-4. We sensed contact but we didn't know how many there would be, and then a loss of control, and we didn't know if they would be close to getting a penalty or not. In the end they did get that penalty and we were able to win the race. It would have been a bit hard to lose it by such a short distance, leading so many laps and so close to the end."
"You always go on vacation feeling happy and comfortable, but even more so with this distance. We know we can't lose focus, and we must come back stronger than when we left, as there are still many points to be won until the end of the championship."
Joao Madeira, #88 PULSAR Torreense eSports Team Porsche: "It was a very close race, a lot of laps (maybe for more then an hour) chasing the leader with a gap between 0.5 and 2secs. With the help of the traffic we were able to take the first place and we were very confident that we had the win in the pocket. Unfortunately, a slight contact ruined our chances."
"Taking into consideration that the reason we exceeded the incident limit in the last lap was due to a slight contact, we believe it's unfair to get penalized. All of the sudden things got emotional and a there was also a mistake in one of the last corners."
"Well, the #51 has been proving during the championship to be one of the fastest and solid team of the GTP field and this race was no exception. But we have no rivalry with them. We're just very focused on winning."
Joao Garrido, #88 PULSAR Torreense eSports Team Porsche: "I feel really happy with the result we got, it's our best race this season. I think we deserved that win, but even with a second-place finish I still enjoyed it, especially those intense last few hours."
"It's frustrating that out of the 13 incident points that got us the penalty, 8 came from slight, minor contacts. On that final lap I was pushing as hard as I could, my tires were gone and I knew that #51 would catch up, so I tried to go for an overtake that, although the space was tight, I believe would not have resulted in the penalty if it weren't for the slight contact."
"The battle was amazing, we were driving on the edge for the most part of the second half of the race trying to catch the guys in car #51, who were extremely quick and consistent. It's frustrating that we didn't keep the win afterwards, but it goes to show that our work is headed in the right direction, both me and João Madeira gave our absolute best in this race."
"There is not much time to relax. Although our chances for the Championship are pretty low, we still have a solid chance to win the Endurance Cup, which we are currently leading. The goal for the next few weeks will be to prepare for the next race to make sure we can fight for that Cup."
Christian Campregher, #46 Rising Panda Racing Acura: "Looking at everything that happened during the race, we are more than happy with the result. Pace was good and the car was fast and predictable. Huge thanks to the guys from HRC for the upgrades they fast tracked for this race, they significantly improved the car and ironed out some of the woes we had in recent races."
"We have yet to fully analyse the cause of the incident, for now what we know is that the car bottomed out going over the 2nd left hander in the bus stop and got unsettled then went sideways. Remy was able to catch the car and slowly slid backwards towards the barrier, where sadly the rear wing got stuck. Thanks to the quick response from the marshals, we were quickly able to continue our race."
"Tire management was crucial this race, most important for us was keeping the peak tyre temperature as low as possible especially going through T5. The team did an awesome job with the setup, which helped us alot on that matter. "
"For the summer break, I think most of us will go on a well-deserved holiday, enjoy some time in our hammocks in true panda fashion. There is also some testing and racing planned on european soil for some of our drivers. But we wont chill out for long until we shift our focus onto the next race at the Brickyard."
Summer Break sets up Final Stretch of 2025 Season
The championship now heads into a ten-week summer break before the penultimate Endurance Cup event of the season: the Six Hours at The Brickyard on August 30 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. With the title fight heating up in both the overall and Endurance Cup standings, teams are already preparing for another strategic marathon.
The twists at Watkins Glen may have excited fans, but also set the stage for a breathtaking final act in the 2025 VSCA season following the summer break.
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