The 2025 VSCA SportsCar Championship ended Saturday night in Braselton, Georgia, with a familiar storyline that still somehow felt dramatic. Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, 2.54 miles and 12 turns of commitment and traffic management, was the eleventh and final round of the season and also the deciding fifth round of the Endurance Cup. After ten hours of racing and more than a few nervous moments, the #51 World Of SimRacing Team Cadillac V-Series.R GTP not only won the race overall, but also clinched the full-season championship, the Endurance Cup, adding to the already-secured Sprint Cup. That is the triple crown in GTP this year, and the #51 did it by a single point in Endurance Cup.
The race began with the #51 on pole, Dani Fonte leading the class to green. Before Turn 1, though, the tone of the afternoon was already set: the second-place starter, the #88 PULSAR Torreense eSports Team Porsche 963 GTP, driven at the start by João Garrido, was hit with a drive-through penalty for an improper start procedure. According to Race Control, the #88 accelerated ahead of the polesitter before the official race start zone, then tried to slow and give back its position, which created a dangerous stack-up behind. The call dropped them into recovery mode almost immediately.
What should have been a clean getaway for the #51 Cadillac instead became a scare. In heavy traffic through Turns 1 and 2 in the opening half-hour, contact between the #51 Cadillac, the #89 Keystone Simsport Dallara, and the #183 Blocco Motore Simsport Porsche sent the #51 around. Officials later issued Keystone Simsport a 30-second post-race penalty for avoidable contact. Fonte fell from the class lead down to fourth as a result, and Tri-State Racing’s #25 BMW M Hybrid V8, with Geordi Vermeulen in the car, took over at the front.
That first half-hour summed up Petit Le Mans in miniature: you can lead, you can get spun, and you can still win — if you don’t panic.
A full-course yellow just after the 40-minute mark brought everyone back together and triggered the first big round of stops. Under caution, the #51 got back to the top of the board when Álvaro Martínez cycled into the car and back into the lead. From there, the Cadillac settled into what looked less like a sprint to the flag and more like a long chess match against traffic, penalties, and timing.
Endurance Cup Math Becomes the Real Race
Once the opening chaos cooled and the field got into rhythm, Petit Le Mans turned into two overlapping contests. One was the obvious one: win the race. The other was quieter, but honestly more tense — win the Endurance Cup by being in the best position at key timed checkpoints.
The #46 Rising Panda Racing Acura ARX-06 GTP, shared by Ryan Ware, Christian Campregher, and Remy Loesch, and the #88 PULSAR Porsche 963 of Garrido and Francisco Santos Pereira were the main threats to deny World Of SimRacing Team the endurance title. Coming into Road Atlanta, Rising Panda held a narrow lead in the Endurance Cup, and Pulsar knew they were still in range. Everyone in that group understood that it wasn’t just about where you finished after ten hours. The points also came from where you ran at the four-hour, eight-hour, and ten-hour milestones.
That sounds clinical on paper. In practice, it looked like desperation.
Rising Panda’s race was rugged from the start, including early contact and recovery work after what Ware described as “colliding the wall after a collision with PULSAR Porsche on Lap 1.” From there the Acura never quite had the raw pace it needed. Ware said after the race that the team had been chasing performance ever since an iRacing build change earlier this year, and by Petit they had effectively pivoted to pure strategy play. They routinely stretched fuel and tried to stay off-cycle, running long whenever possible. “It goes against our nature to be stopping short,” Ware said. “Every stint we push to the outright edge.” That approach occasionally put them off-sequence with the leaders, and at one stage they even ran a lap down in the eighth hour — which Ware largely chalked up to pit cycle timing.
PULSAR, for its part, had what you’d call “the full Road Atlanta experience.” Garrido called it “a rollercoaster,” and that was generous. They started with the drive-through for the jump start. Mid-race they had a steering wheel malfunction just after Santos Pereira climbed into the car, which snowballed: they couldn’t engage pit limiter, got pinged for speeding on pit entry, and then later were collected in contact with GT traffic. Race Control eventually assessed them multiple penalties, including incident-point drive-throughs.
And still, they wouldn’t go away.
Through the second and third hours, and again in the fifth, sixth, and seventh hours, the #88 Porsche and the #51 Cadillac traded the lead through pit cycles and traffic. We saw lead changes on pit exit, lead changes under caution sequencing, lead changes on restarts, and lead changes simply because someone had to dive for fuel. At one point in the seventh hour, Rising Panda’s Acura even jumped to the front briefly, only for the #51 to immediately strike back.
By the time the race reached the deep night stretch, the theme had flipped. The #51 no longer looked like it was trying to win Petit Le Mans. It looked like it was trying to end three separate championships in one night and not drop the ball on any of them.
#51 Cadillac takes Control in Closing Stages
The last two hours were less about speed and more about nerve. The #51 Cadillac was repeatedly asked to do a mental reset under full-course yellows, to restart cleanly, and to not get dragged into someone else’s mess in multi-class traffic. Easier said than done at Road Atlanta, where slower-class traffic funnels you into high-commitment corners like Turn 12 with almost no margin for error.
The #51’s driver trio — Carlos Hernandez G of Talavera de la Reina, Spain; Dani Fonte of Madrid, Spain; and Álvaro Martínez of Cedillo del Condado, Spain — managed those moments without blinking. Martínez admitted afterward that it was not nearly as calm from inside the car as it might have looked. “Everything had been under control up to that point, but we had contact under braking in T3 and almost lost everything,” he said. “We were incredibly lucky because we didn't hit a wall, nobody passed us, and we were stuck in the middle of the track.” He compared it to “what happened last race,” a nod to Road America, where the team suffered a DNF.
But in this race, the #51 Cadillac regrouped, focused on the eight- and ten-hour marks, and made sure it was ahead when it counted. “Our focus in race preparation was on being as far ahead as possible in hours four, eight, and the finish,” Martínez said. “The more difficult the goal is, the better it tastes.”
When the checkered flag finally dropped at Road Atlanta, the #51 Cadillac was still out front, taking victory.
Rising Panda Racing’s #46 Acura ARX-06 GTP finished second overall, and PULSAR’s #88 Porsche 963 GTP completed the podium in third despite the penalties, the hardware gremlins, and late-race contact with GT traffic.
Tri-State Racing’s #25 BMW M Hybrid V8 took fourth after an up-and-down day that included contact rulings, black flags, multiple repairs, and a long stretch of damage management. Wastegate Racing’s #32 Cadillac V-Series.R GTP came home fifth after a bruising run that saw them cycle through multi-lap deficits, repeated penalties, and repair stops. Sixth place went to Fischer Motorsport’s #4 Porsche 963 GTP, which spent much of the race in survival mode after repeated contact incidents, drive-throughs for incident points, and repair work and ultimately did not finish the race but had to retire early, but was still classified by completing the required 70% distance.
That locked in the final race GTP clas results of the season.
When you zoom out, the result is straightforward: World Of SimRacing Team won Petit Le Mans. But sitting trackside at Turn 7 watching all this unfold, it didn’t feel straightforward. It felt like watching a team carry a season’s worth of pressure in the last hour of daylight and somehow walk out with all of it.
Post-Race Reactions
João Garrido, #88 PULSAR Torreense eSports Team Porsche: “Even though this is a great result, it feels bittersweet. I think we deserved a better result but this race just didn't go our way.”
“Rollercoaster is putting it lightly! On the race start I lost sight of the polesitter due to the car's massive blindspot and ended up getting the start wrong. Then, halfway through the race, just a few laps after Francisco had jumped in the car we suffered a steering wheel malfunction and had to pit to correct it, but having no steering wheel meant we couldn't activate the pit limiter and exceeded the speed limit on the pitlane. Even with all that we managed to keep close to the dominant #51. What ultimately ended our hopes of a better result was a crash on the final hours of the race where we were rear ended by a GT3, we received a drive-through penalty and couldn't recover from that.”
“If there was a single event where we lost that one point, that cost us the Endurance Cup, it was definitely here in this race. After the first milestone we were leading the Endurance Cup and had the pace to keep it that way during the race, but a series of unfortunate events meant we just couldn't quite do it. However, it does show that the work the team put in during the year is heading in the right direction for the future!”
“Once we dropped down from the lead pack, we decided to do a different pit strategy so that we would be on our own on the GTP field, avoiding on-track battles. From there it was just a matter of keeping the head down and focusing on getting consistent lap times and dealing with traffic in the best way possible, which had a pretty good result all things considered.”
Álvaro Martínez, #51 World Of SimRacing Team Cadillac: “It's incredible to be able to close out the season like this! I'm truly excited! It's been a long road from January to today, and looking back... since we entered the championship in 2022, how much we've improved, the way we race, the way we prepare for races... it's impressive how much we've progressed. Thanks to everyone who trusted World Of SimRacing Team!”
“Everything had been under control up to that point, but we had contact under braking in T3 and almost lost everything. We were incredibly lucky because we didn't hit a wall, nobody passed us, and we were stuck in the middle of the track. It was reminiscent of what happened last race, where we couldn't avoid each other. And we had better luck than at Road America. We were able to get back on track with minimal damage and got back to work to fight for the Endurance Cup. This drive-through [in the fourth hour of the race] denied us the chance to fight for the maximum points in hour 4, which was a real letdown for our morale, as we had hoped to pass first, but we recovered quickly and focused our strategy for hours eight and ten. There was no time for regrets.”
“We already won the Sprint Cup, and if we were going for the Endurance Cup, that meant we'd done a great job for the SportsCar Championship. So our focus in race preparation was on being as far ahead as possible in hours 4, 8, and 10, without thinking about the rest. We finally achieved it and it was just a close call, just 1 point ahead of Pulsar and 2 points ahead of Rising Panda. It was a very good fight between the three teams, and I can only congratulate them because they also did a magnificent job. The more difficult the goal is, the better it tastes.”
“I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the organizers for the championship we had, all the drivers we shared the track with, also Rising Panda, Wastegate, Pulsar, Fischer, Digital Chicane, Tri-State and all the other teams we've shared the paddock with throughout the year. Now it's time to celebrate and get some rest this offseason!”
Ryan Ware, #46 Rising Panda Racing Acura: “Second place is good, but we had our sights firmly set on the Endurance Cup, coming into Petit with a one point lead. We couldn't do anything about the pace however, after qualifying on the back row. It's a disappointing end to the season as we all gave it everything to challenge for the Endurance Cup trophy.”
“We didn't really have any pace. The Acura has been lacking all year after the first iRacing build change. We tried to shift our focus onto strategy as best we could. We didn't take too long to recover from Chris colliding the wall after a collision with PULSAR Porsche on Lap 1. We knew that there would be plenty of time to reclose that gap from the start with the pitstop cycles and virtual safety cars.”
“On going a lap down during the eighth hour of the race: I can't recall going one lap down. It was likely due to the pit cycle, as a full service here pretty much costs one lap in total. In the end, whilst second place was nice, it was too short by that point. We all were keeping an eye on the Endurance Cup points and it looked sealed at the eight-hour mark. On the final restart I got a good run on the WOSR Cadillac but inevitably locked up due to cold tires, which take an age to warm up after so many laps at caution pace especially in the evenings.”
“Us being off-cycle during pit stops was intentional. We don't know why people pit with 3-5 laps of fuel still in the tank. It's an Endurance race! It goes against our nature to be stopping short. Every stint we push to the outright edge! It was incredibly frustrating though to see so many cautions before the four and eight hour mark, as we firmly believed we would have finished stronger at those points due to the stint advantage we gave ourselves by making our stints last longer than anyone else's. A lot of our driving featured lift and coast on every single lap.”
Dani Fonte, #51 World Of SimRacing Team Cadillac: “We're very, very happy. It was a long race, with a lot still at stake, and fortunately we won. It's an incredible way to end a championship.”
On the early incident in T1-T2: “I saw the wall as very close and the chances of winning as very distant, but after overcoming the situation, we calmed down and thought about what lay ahead — a long race and still plenty of options — so we went for it. Regarding the penalty, we knew it would come at some point in the race, just as it would for our rivals. We just had to be careful not to have to do a second one.”
“We saw in practice that overtaking was quite difficult, except for the first lap due to tires and traffic, so grid position was important for us. We narrowly achieved it, and our times with our rivals were very close. The lap was almost perfect; the Cadillac didn't have much left and apparently wasn't the favorite car for it. At the start, we knew it was important to get into traffic first. We managed it, and that gave us some breathing room over our rivals, which only lasted until the incident in T1-T2.”
“We set out with the mentality of securing the overall championship, but with an eye on the Endurance race in case it suited our strategy in the key hours. We knew our car would have a very good second half of the race. And when we found ourselves in a good position in the first Endurance qualifying session, we decided to take a bit more risk without compromising the strategy or the car's stability. In the end, everything went perfectly, as if it were a movie script. We couldn't be happier this year.”
Titles Won and What Comes Next
By winning Petit Le Mans, the #51 World Of SimRacing Team Cadillac V-Series.R GTP capped off a season that began in January and will be talked about all offseason. They closed the book on the 2025 VSCA SportsCar Championship with 3,995 points, good enough to take the overall series championship. Rising Panda Racing’s #46 Acura ARX-06 GTP finished second in the standings, 450 points back. Wastegate Racing’s #32 Cadillac V-Series.R GTP ended the year third, 453 points behind.
World Of SimRacing had already clinched the Sprint Cup earlier at Road America in September. At Road Atlanta, they defended their Endurance Cup title from last year, winning it again with 47 points across the five Endurance Cup rounds. The margin tells you how thin the ice really was: PULSAR’s #88 Porsche 963 GTP finished just one point behind in the Endurance Cup, and Rising Panda’s #46 Acura was two points back.
In plain terms: the #51 won everything there was to win in GTP in 2025. Series Championship. Sprint Cup. Endurance Cup. They are repeat Endurance Cup champions. They leave Petit Le Mans with the race win and all three titles.
For everyone else, the work to challenge the champions starts now. The offseason begins immediately, and the 2026 VSCA SportsCar Championship is not far away. The Roar Before the 24, the traditional non-points qualifying race, opens the calendar on January 3. One week later, on January 10, the series returns for the fifth annual Maconi Setup Shop 24 Hours of Daytona, the first championship round of 2026. There is already talk in the paddock about potential new machinery, including rumors that iRacing could introduce another GTP manufacturer — possibly Aston Martin — before next season. If that happens, the class that just produced a title fight decided by a single point may get even deeper.
And if this Petit Le Mans taught us anything, it is this: one point is plenty to break your heart. But one point is also enough to make history.
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