Wastegate Racing has successfully defended its VSCA Sprint Cup championship, with the No. 33 Mercedes-AMG GT3 completing a season built on consistency with a third-place finish in Saturday's Battle at the Brickyard at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Tamer Elbaga, Neill A Forbes and Will Robertson combined to give the No. 33 its second consecutive GT AM Sprint Cup title, while Forbes became a back-to-back Sprint Cup champion. Wastegate finished the championship with 2,150 points, 130 clear of the No. 19 Gowin Racing Ferrari and 360 ahead of the No. 515 Wolf Motorsport Simracing Mercedes.
Indianapolis Recovery Seals the Championship
The finale offered a fitting summary of Wastegate's Sprint Cup season. Starting 13th in class, the No. 33 had work to do at Indianapolis but once again moved steadily forward, gaining ten positions to finish third in GT AM and 21st overall, 20.297 seconds behind the class winner.
For Elbaga, there was little need to complicate the approach. "It's just one of those things where you know there's a lot of time on the clock, so you just have to get your head down and run as clean a race as possible," he said.
That approach brought the Mercedes onto the podium for the third time in five Sprint Cup appearances and completed a remarkable statistical pattern: Wastegate finished higher than it started in every Sprint Cup race it contested this season.
The title brought satisfaction, but not quite an opportunity to relax. The No. 33 has simultaneously surrendered the overall SportsCar Championship lead to the No. 19 by 25 points with Petit Le Mans still to come.
"It's of course exciting to take hold of the trophy in the Sprint Cup, but we have more work to do," Elbaga said. "Same strategy as always: drive clean, stay out of trouble and see where it all shakes out."
Two Runner-Up Finishes Establish Early Lead
Wastegate's Sprint Cup campaign began at Long Beach in February, where Elbaga and Robertson started twelfth in class and charged through to second. They finished 17th overall, only 10.903 seconds behind the GT AM winner, despite recording only the ninth-fastest class lap.
That result immediately put the No. 33 at the top of the Sprint Cup standings, a position it would never relinquish.
GT AM did not compete in the Sprint Cup round at Laguna Seca, making Virginia International Raceway the class's second appearance of the championship. Again, Wastegate finished second. Elbaga and Robertson started sixth and moved forward four places, finishing 23rd overall and 15.944 seconds away from victory while recording the fourth-fastest lap.
Two races had produced two runner-up finishes. There was no victory, but the championship picture was already beginning to favor a team that was collecting substantial points every time it arrived at the finish.
Homestead and CTMP Test Wastegate's Consistency
The results became less spectacular through the middle of the Sprint Cup schedule, but the No. 33 continued to bank points.
At Homestead-Miami, Elbaga was joined by Forbes for the first time in the Sprint Cup campaign. Starting seventh, the Mercedes climbed to fourth in class and 28th overall, finishing just 5.331 seconds behind the winner. Its sixth-fastest race lap underlined that this was not a weekend dominated by outright pace, yet another top-five kept Wastegate firmly in control of the standings.
Canadian Tire Motorsport Park produced the team's weakest Sprint Cup result. Elbaga and Forbes started tenth and finished eighth in class, 25th overall and one lap behind the winner.
Even there, however, the No. 33 moved forward from its starting position and showed considerably more pace than the final result suggested, recording the second-fastest GT AM lap of the race. Most importantly for the championship, it reached the finish and retained the points lead.
That left Wastegate heading to Indianapolis having led the Sprint Cup standings after every one of its GT AM races in 2026.
Consistency Delivers a Championship Without a Victory
The numbers behind Wastegate's title illustrate just how effectively the team played the long game. Across its five GT AM Sprint Cup races, the No. 33 recorded three podiums, four top-five finishes and five top-tens. It had no DNFs and no disqualifications.
Its class finishing record read second, second, fourth, eighth and third. From starting positions of twelfth, sixth, seventh, tenth and 13th, the Mercedes produced an average starting position of 9.6 and an average finish of 3.8.
In total, the No. 33 gained 29 positions relative to its class starting spots across the five races. It did so without winning a single one of them.
That makes the championship less a story of domination than one of avoiding the damaging weekends that can undo an entire short-format campaign. Wastegate was running at the finish of every Sprint Cup round available to GT AM and never finished outside the top ten.
"Consistency has been the key all season," Elbaga said. "We just go out there and do what we do."
Team manager Kyle Birnie echoed that assessment after the finale. "Our focus has always been consistency over the season," he said. "We have been the most consistent team in the class this season, and we need to stick with the same strategy."
Wastegate and Forbes Repeat Their 2025 Success
The championship is the second successive GT AM Sprint Cup crown for the No. 33 Wastegate Racing entry after it also secured the title in 2025. Forbes likewise leaves Indianapolis as a back-to-back Sprint Cup champion.
For Elbaga, securing at least one piece of championship silverware was validation of the work across the season.
"It's awesome when the hard work pays off," he said. "We ran a strong season, and I'm so glad we have secured at least one trophy."
He also directed the credit beyond the cockpit. "My teammates have done a great job. Thank you also to Kyle, our team manager, and of course our families who let us do this."
Birnie said the consecutive titles demonstrated how effectively the Wastegate group has learned to manage a championship campaign. "Back-to-back championships prove they know how to race well over a season," he said.
Petit Le Mans Remains for the Overall Championship
The Sprint Cup trophy is secured, but Wastegate's 2026 season is not finished. The SportsCar Championship concludes at Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, where the No. 33 will arrive 25 points behind the No. 19 after having led the overall standings earlier in the season.
The situation changes the championship table, but Wastegate says it will not change the method that delivered the Sprint Cup.
"Nothing changes," Birnie said. "We are in the position we are for a reason, and there is no reason to change just because it is the last race of the season."
There is one achievement still missing from the No. 33's remarkably consistent campaign: a race victory. Birnie said the team will head to Petit Le Mans hoping that breakthrough finally arrives, while keeping the same priority that carried Wastegate to another Sprint Cup title.
"Going into Petit, we are just going to keep with the same strategy and hope we are able to get the breakthrough win, but otherwise do our best to finish as high as possible."
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