The #68 TwoLemmaTree Racing McLaren 720S GT3 EVO has won the 2026 VSCA Endurance Cup in GT PRO, sealing the in-series championship tonight at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta with a fifth-place class finish in Petit Le Mans.
Travis Linscome-Hatfield and Niklas Solle brought the McLaren home after ten bruising hours around the 12-turn, 2.54-mile Braselton circuit, finishing one lap behind the class-winning #183 Blocco Motore Simsport Aston Martin but one point clear of the #18 Gowin Racing Ferrari in the final Endurance Cup standings.
TwoLemmaTree Wins GT PRO Endurance Cup By One Point
The final GT PRO Endurance Cup table could hardly have been tighter. TwoLemmaTree Racing ended the five-race campaign on 46 points, with Gowin Racing second on 45 and Blocco Motore Simsport third on 43. The defending 2025 Endurance Cup champion #71 Sim City Racing Porsche finished fourth on 42 points, just four short of successfully defending its crown, while #57 Double Stint Racing completed the top five on 39.
The #68 McLaren led the championship after every round of the 2026 VSCA Endurance Cup. Its season line was built on consistency rather than outright domination: five starts, one class win, two podiums, three top-five finishes, five top-10s, no DNFs and no disqualifications. Its best finish was first, its worst was tenth, with an average starting position of 12.2 and an average finishing position of 4.8.
Across the Endurance Cup races, the entry led 150 laps and scored with Linscome-Hatfield in all five rounds, Solle in all five, and Marco Silva as part of the Daytona lineup. It was not always the fastest car in GT PRO, but it was almost always in the fight when the endurance points were paid.
Petit Le Mans Finale Turns Into A Survival Race
The SportsCar Championship finale, and the fifth and final round of the 2026 VSCA Endurance Cup, was a stop-start Petit Le Mans shaped by 13 full-course yellows and 4 hours, 29 minutes under yellow. Race Directors were repeatedly called into action, and GT PRO still produced 16 class lead changes before the #183 Blocco Motore Simsport Aston Martin took the win.
Blocco Motore had looked like the car to beat in the dry after struggling in wet qualifying. Ian Laurence Brown, who had been one of the standout GT PRO drivers of the season, put the Aston Martin into the lead early, and the #183 ultimately led 114 laps after starting sixth. Tyler Redden completed the job as the Aston Martin won ahead of the #71 Sim City Racing Porsche and #57 Double Stint Racing BMW.
TwoLemmaTree started 13th in class and finished fifth, completing 352 laps and leading 12. Gowin Racing started seventh, led 40 laps, and finished sixth. That one-place separation at the flag proved enough for the #68 McLaren to retain the Endurance Cup lead it had carried since Daytona.
Linscome-Hatfield admitted afterward that the margin felt even smaller once the details sank in. “I’m going to be real with you, I didn’t realize we had lost the tie-breaker,” he said. “So now it feels like even more of a razor-thin win. Given that we were effectively never the fastest car on track, managing to sneak out the Endurance Cup win feels pretty awesome.”
Solle said the same focus applied inside the car. “To be honest, I hadn’t realized that the #18 had the tie-breaker on us,” he said. “Especially in this last race, we had our hands full with managing the race. The Endurance Cup was a big part of it, but not the only one, so we tried to focus on our own race as much as we could.”
Daytona Podium Gives The McLaren Early Control
The title run began at the Maconi Setup Shop 24 Hours of Daytona, where the #68 McLaren started 12th in GT PRO and finished second, 22nd overall, just 0.433 seconds off the class winner. It was the team’s highest-lap-leading performance of the campaign, with 136 laps led, nine incident points and the sixth-ranked fastest lap in class.
That Daytona result gave TwoLemmaTree 17 points and the first championship lead of the year, three points ahead of the #57 Double Stint Racing BMW and five ahead of the #44 Fischer Motorsport Porsche.
At the Monster Energy 12 Hours of Sebring, the #68 started 13th and finished sixth in class, 21st overall, 73.141 seconds back. It did not lead a lap, recorded 23 incident points and again ranked sixth on fastest lap. The result kept it on top, but the gap tightened dramatically: TwoLemmaTree had 23 points, with both Double Stint Racing and Blocco Motore Simsport one point behind.
Watkins Glen Keeps The Lead Alive
The Abruzzi Six Hours of the Glen was the lowest finish of the campaign for the eventual champion. The McLaren started ninth, finished tenth in GT PRO and 34th overall, one lap down, with no laps led, three incident points and the ninth-ranked fastest lap.
Even that difficult Watkins Glen result preserved the lead. After three Endurance Cup rounds, TwoLemmaTree sat on 29 points, one ahead of the #183 Blocco Motore Aston Martin. Double Stint Racing and the #18 Gowin Racing Ferrari were tied two points back, keeping four entries firmly in the championship picture.
The Glen was the sort of day that often decides endurance titles quietly: no trophy, little spotlight, but enough points to avoid handing control to the chasing pack.
Road America Win Becomes The Championship Cornerstone
The Advanced Sim Racing Endurance Grand Prix at Road America became the decisive swing of the season. TwoLemmaTree started 14th in GT PRO and won, finishing 23rd overall, leading two laps, collecting four incident points and ranking seventh on fastest lap.
That victory was the only class win of the #68 McLaren’s Endurance Cup campaign, and both drivers pointed to it immediately after clinching the title at Road Atlanta. “The first win at Road America was pretty awesome,” Linscome-Hatfield said. “A championship without any wins would definitely feel a touch hollow, so I’m glad we got that one in there.”
Solle called it “a huge relief” and tied it to the team’s season-long pattern of recovery drives. “Our car wasn’t that strong in qualifying this year, and we knew there wasn’t much we could do,” he said. “We always prepared to fight back on track, which is tough but also so much more rewarding when it works out.”
The Road America result moved TwoLemmaTree to 38 points. Gowin Racing rose to second, just two behind, while Blocco Motore slipped six back after a race compromised by damage from an incident. That race ultimately gave the #68 McLaren just enough room to absorb the pressure of Petit Le Mans.
Road Atlanta Incidents Keep The Title In Doubt
Petit Le Mans never allowed the leaders to settle. The first full-course yellow arrived inside the opening three-quarters of an hour, with the restart a little after the one-hour mark. Further yellows came shortly after 1h20m, just before the three-hour mark, shortly after three hours, just after four hours, just after five hours, in the final four hours, and repeatedly through a fractured final phase.
The #68 McLaren’s race included several moments that could have tipped the Endurance Cup away. Linscome-Hatfield said scoring at the early endurance mark was important, but another mark later in the race nearly went the other way. “It was really good that we managed to get a couple of points at the first Enduro mark,” he said. “Honestly, I was afraid we’d lost it when we missed out on eight-hour points by half a car length. All good in the end, though.”
Solle said the team had built its strategy around those scoring opportunities. “It was a busy race for us indeed,” he said. “We tried to do what we could at every endurance mark and optimized our strategy toward it.”
There was contact trouble as well. Deep into the second half, the #84 Unitronic Fischer Motorsport Porsche was later assessed a 35-second post-race penalty by the Stewards for contact with the #68 McLaren. Later, just after the eight-hour mark on the race clock, TwoLemmaTree cycled into the GT PRO lead under yellow before falling back during the pit sequence. A pit-lane infringement for excessive speed and a subsequent spin under caution added to the strain.
The final minutes were no calmer. Inside the last ten minutes, the #68 served a drive-through for too many incident points, while the Stewards also assessed a 35-second post-race penalty to the #757 Flight Level Racing Dallara for contact involving the TwoLemmaTree McLaren. The #18 Gowin Ferrari also came under post-race review in the same late window, receiving a 35-second penalty for an incident at Turn 7 involving several GT PRO cars.
By then, the title fight had been reduced to position, discipline and damage limitation. TwoLemmaTree’s fifth place, 63.948 seconds behind the winner, was not glamorous. It was enough.
Blocco Motore Wins The Race As Rivals Fall Short
The #183 Blocco Motore Simsport Aston Martin closed the Endurance Cup strongly with victory at Road Atlanta, but third in the final table left it three points short. Its pace in the dry reflected a wider breakthrough season for Aston Martin in GT PRO, including the manufacturer’s first championship success in series history, though the Endurance Cup silverware went to McLaren.
Gowin Racing came closest to taking the GT PRO Endurance Cup away from TwoLemmaTree. The #18 Ferrari led 40 laps at Petit Le Mans and had been only two points behind after Road America, but its sixth-place finish at Road Atlanta left it one point shy after five endurance rounds.
Sim City Racing’s title defense ended with a strong second-place finish in the finale, but the #71 Porsche’s 42-point total left it fourth in the Endurance Cup standings. Double Stint Racing, a key threat through the opening half of the championship, finished third at Petit Le Mans but fifth in the final table.
A Small Team Turns Consistency Into A Championship
TwoLemmaTree’s 2026 VSCA Endurance Cup title was not built on qualifying pace. The #68 McLaren’s average starting position was 12.2, and it started 12th, 13th, ninth, 14th and 13th across the five endurance races. The average finish was 4.8, a measure of how often the team raced forward rather than started there.
Its final record reads second at Daytona, sixth at Sebring, tenth at Watkins Glen, first at Road America and fifth at Petit Le Mans. The McLaren was running at the end of every race. It never suffered a DNF or DSQ. It led at Daytona when the season was young, won when it had to at Road America, and then survived Road Atlanta when the championship was there to be lost.
For Solle, the meaning was tied to the team’s growth as much as the trophy. “I’m so happy with our progress as drivers and as a team,” he said. “We started out as a fresh team this season, and we are still one of the smaller teams to this day. However, we always make the most of it, even with challenges on and off track. Winning the Endurance Cup is an amazing reward for all the work we put in.”
The celebration in the TwoLemmaTree pit was for a title won by a single point, but also for the way it was won: without a dominant car, without a clean finale, and without ever giving up the championship lead from Daytona to Road Atlanta.
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