The 2025 VSCA SportsCar Championship ended the way long seasons usually do: with nobody driving like it was already decided. Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, the 2.54-mile, 12-turn rollercoaster in Braselton, Georgia, served as both Round 11 of 11 in the full-season championship and Round 5 of 5 in the Endurance Cup. Those two storylines pulled against each other all afternoon. One was about the points math. The other was about pride.
From the drop of the green, GT PRO looked like it belonged to PULSAR eSports Team. Joao Pedro Teixeira put the #917 McLaren 720S GT3 EVO on pole with a 1:17.306 lap and immediately controlled the class start. The PULSAR car led early, traded the lead often, and ultimately led a race-high 182 laps in a class that saw 31 official lead changes. That’s not a typo. The race never stayed settled for long.
Traffic and temperament were obvious factors from the first laps. Within five minutes of green, Race Control was already issuing a 60-second post-race penalty to the #67 Kinetic Racing Acura after contact with the #151 World Of SimRacing Team Porsche at Turn 2. The #151 Porsche was spun in what officials called “careless driving,” and that set an early tone: this wasn’t going to be a slow-burn endurance parade. It was going to be elbows-out, and Race Control was going to keep the elbows in check.
The first of four full-course yellows arrived just 40 minutes into the race, part of a caution total that eventually added up to 95 minutes under yellow. That early neutralization cracked the pit strategy wide open. Stops under that first yellow reordered the class and pulled the #71 Sim City Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) into clean air after what driver Peter Spijkman openly called a “really bad” qualifying session. “Overtaking was really hard,” Spijkman said. “The key moment for us was the first full course yellow and the strategy that put us back in the race.”
Sim City Racing’s plan was clear from Lap 1: stay close enough to PULSAR to secure both the overall GT PRO title and the Endurance Cup. “Our goal was to win the championship and Endurance Cup,” said Spijkman. “We couldn’t really lose the overall championship, so our aim was to stay close to PULSAR for the Endurance Cup points.”
By that point, the math and the mood were already linked. PULSAR had the raw pace. Sim City had the long game. And iRacing Today Motorsports, quietly at first, was playing for something different: a statement win.
Bold Strategy Call by Sim City, PULSAR hit with penalties
As the clock crossed the two-hour mark, the rhythm settled into a familiar Petit Le Mans pattern: green-flag runs, traffic stack-ups, then penalties that echoed for hours afterward.
The #71 Sim City Racing Porsche cycled to the class lead more than once, helped by bold short-fuel calls and pit timing around caution periods. Jason Allen later described one of those calls: “Our crew chief made the call to short fill the fuel tank to get us into position for the 4-hour mark to secure points. That was huge.” In endurance racing, sometimes you’re not racing the track. You’re racing the clock, and the clock at hour four pays bonus points.
But it wasn’t just a two-car story. The #157 iRacing Today Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 kept showing up in the mirrors of whoever happened to be leading at that moment. The trio of Timothy Johnston (45, Davidson, NC), Eric Intili (36, Randolph, NJ) and Sam Gunstone (32, Machynlleth, Wales) had been hovering around the sharp end since the middle portion of the race, and they were not going away.
Traffic brought its own drama. Contact, warnings and drive-throughs piled up across GT PRO, especially through Turns 6 and 7 and on pit exit. Race Control reviewed and penalized incidents ranging from first-lap contact to blue flag violations to pit-lane lane discipline. That looked routine from the outside. It did not feel routine to everyone on pit wall.
PULSAR, for example, absorbed several major rulings that would define the final result. First, Race Control cited the #917 for rear-ending the #12 Delta Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO under cold-tire conditions at Turn 10 on a restart. That call became a doubled 60-second post-race penalty for “careless driving.” Later, PULSAR was also hit with a 30-second post-race penalty for a pit-lane fast-lane/merge-lane violation involving the #157 Mercedes, with officials saying the #917 gained a position while failing to yield.
PULSAR didn’t take that quietly. “We felt very good about the race we did,” said Bruno Carreira (31, Aveiro, Portugal). “We had great pace, and our strategy was spot on from start to finish. Unfortunately, a slight contact with an opponent resulted in a penalty that we felt was a bit harsh.” Teixeira (31, Porto, Portugal) was even more direct on the pit-lane call: “From our perspective, there is nothing in the rules stating that we, in the merge lane, need to yield to cars in the fast lane. We appealed, but Race Control didn’t change it. We felt a 30-second penalty for that was too much.”
While that dispute simmered, the #157 Mercedes quietly did exactly what wins this kind of race: it stayed in the fight without detonating its day. “We can’t believe it,” said Intili. “The GT PRO field is super competitive and even getting a podium is a great result for us… Consistency and traffic management were our keys.”
By roughly the halfway mark, according to Gunstone, the #157 crew realized this wasn’t just about a podium. “With about three or four hours remaining, Tim’s strong pace put us in the top three, close behind the #917 and #71,” he said. “That’s when we realized we had a shot.”
This wasn’t the first time in 2025 we’ve heard iRacing Today Motorsports talk about “progress” instead of “victory.” Earlier in the summer, after they found something in the updated GT3 tires at Watkins Glen, they said they were starting to feel like contenders instead of survivors. Petit Le Mans is where that finally cashed out.
iRacing Today Holds Off new GT PRO Champions
The final hours were less about clean air and more about surviving the accordion effect of late yellows, lapped-traffic squeezes and divergent strategies.
There were four total full-course yellows in the race, the last of which came out with just over two hours to go. That yellow bunched the class one last time and triggered a wave of pit stops: the #71 Porsche, the #157 Mercedes, the #917 McLaren, and most of the other frontrunners all hit lane together. This is where endurance racing turns into poker. It’s not about who’s fastest anymore. It’s about who can still afford to bet.
Coming out of that cycle, the #157 iRacing Today Motorsports Mercedes was positioned exactly where it needed to be: in clean air, on the right fuel number, with no major outstanding penalties. “After the last FCY, the strategy calls were perfect,” said Johnston. “We realized we might have a really good shot at pulling off a win if we could leapfrog Sim City Racing. We were able to accomplish that, as well as hold them off.”
That “holding them off” part is not a footnote. The winning margin at the line was 5.147 seconds, the ninth-closest GT PRO class finish in VSCA history. That gap looks comfortable on a results sheet. In real time, with a title-winning Porsche trying to run you down in traffic at Road Atlanta in the dark, it does not feel comfortable.
Sim City Racing threw what it had left at the #157, because second place in the race still came attached to first place in basically everything else. “All of our dedication was to the Endurance Cup and keeping tabs on where PULSAR was running,” Jason Allen said. “Their pace today was better than ours. We executed our gameplan.” Kevin Carlisle (36, Mendenhall, MS) closed the race for Sim City Racing under pressure, and Allen praised the discipline: “We were pleasantly surprised at how well we managed our off tracks. Kevin got in the car to finish the last two hours and only got one off track.”
By the end of ten hours at Petit Le Mans, the GT PRO top ten had a little bit of everything: redemption arcs, steady grinders, recovery drives and bruised egos. When the checkered flag fell, iRacing Today Motorsports finally had its breakthrough GT PRO class win of 2025 with the #157 Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Johnston called the moment “unbelievable,” crediting not just raw pace but discipline. “We really focused on making sure that we ran clean laps so that we wouldn’t end up having to do a drive-through penalty for too many incidents,” he said. “We can’t wait to see everyone in 2026.”
Sim City Racing’s #71 Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) finished second on the road and clinched the 2025 GT PRO SportsCar Championship title and 2025 GT PRO Endurance Cup title.
The #917 PULSAR McLaren 720S GT3 EVO crossed the line in third place, after leading the most laps (182), but post-race penalties shaped where they were ultimately classified versus where they had run much of the day. Still, Teixeira emphasized what the season meant to the team: “We also got 3rd place in the SportsCar Championship; 2nd place in the Endurance Cup; and me and Bruno got 1st place in the Drivers Championship. Either way we as a team consider this as a win.”
PULSAR’s frustration after multiple post-race penalties — including the 60-second ruling for contact with the #12 and the 30-second pit-lane infraction after the late yellow — hovered over the podium conversation and will likely carry into the offseason debate about officiating standards.
Fourth place went to the #151 World Of SimRacing Team Porsche 911 GT3 R (992), driven by Marco A Pereira, Luis M. Díaz and Adex Martinez Sanchez. They were in the middle of several early-race flashpoints, including being spun in the first-lap incident that triggered the heavy penalty on the #67, but regrouped and stayed on the lead pace late.
The #183 Blocco Motore Simsport Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) finished fifth with Lennart Blok, Erik van Spijker and Ian Laurence Brown. Blocco Motore’s day was busy even by Petit standards: they led at various points, took a black flag, served drive-throughs, and still turned it into a top five.
Sixth went to the #68 TwoLemmaTree Racing McLaren 720S GT3 EVO of Niklas Solle and Travis Linscome-Hatfield. TwoLemmaTree spent long stretches inside the top three, even leading the class outright in the final hours, but also dealt with off-track excursions, pit cycles that dropped them down the order, and a late-race warning for “unpredictable driving” in traffic.
Seventh place was earned by the #6 Torque Freak Racing McLaren 720S GT3 EVO of Neil Middleton, John A Goodwin and Jonathan Dance. Torque Freak quietly gained seven positions from its P14 starting spot and survived multiple drive-through penalties for incident points to climb into the top half of the board by the flag.
Eighth place went to the #44 Fischer Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) of Jay Van Meppelen and Daniel Gruber, putting a rather disappointing end to the team's GT PRO title defense, that ultimately fell short by 518 points.
Ninth went to their sister car, the #84 Fischer Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) of Benjamin Fischer, Manuel Mayer and Christopher Daniel, a car that was dealing with trouble almost immediately — when on lap 14 Mayer was startled to find the throttle had stuck in his Porsche, leading to impact into the tire barriers in turn 6, followed by lengthy repairs and the #84 car being lapped multiple times within the first half-hour. But the team kept answering the bell through a very long night.
Rounding out the top ten was the #12 Delta Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Douglas Souza, Higo Oliveira, Lucas Freire and Felypi Sauner. Delta’s race was eventful in every possible sense: they led, they were spun, they were penalized more than once for contact, and they still ended the race running.
Sim City celebrates SportsCar & Endurance Cup title in historic season
In the bigger picture, Sim City Racing’s #71 ended the year on 3604 points, locking in the GT PRO SportsCar Championship. The #157 iRacing Today Motorsports Mercedes finished second in the final standings, 261 points back, completing what the team openly calls a turnaround from “a tricky start to the season.” PULSAR eSports Team’s #917 McLaren finished third in the standings, 413 points behind, but second in the Endurance Cup. “We didn’t exactly come here to win the race,” Teixeira said. “We came more to win the Endurance Cup.”
In the Endurance Cup tally, which covers the long-distance rounds including Petit Le Mans, Sim City Racing also came out on top with 51 points. PULSAR finished second, just three points behind after the penalties were applied. iRacing Today Motorsports took third in the Endurance Cup, 18 points off the lead. Jason Allen summed up the #71 team’s Saturday with a sort of quiet disbelief: “I believe we are the first team in VSCA to sweep all three championships in the same year?” That’s the overall title, the Sprint Cup, and now, the Endurance Cup.
Road Atlanta was the finale, but it didn’t feel like a goodbye lap. It felt like a warning shot for 2026.
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