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MSR Acura wins tumultuous Watkins Glen 6 Hour on fumes

Acura Meyer Shank Racing’s Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun had just enough left in the tank, quite literally, to hold on for their first win of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – in an action-packed Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen that came down to fuel strategy in the final three-lap dash to the finish.

The blue and white No. 60 Acura ARX-06 took the victory in a race that began under cloudy skies with monsoon-level rain following soon after, ended under the blistering evening sunshine of a summer heatwave, and had ten full course yellows in between, taking up just under half of the six-hour duration.

None were more impactful than the last yellow that came out with ten minutes left, caused by a left-rear suspension failure for the No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette that took Charlie Eastwood out of second place in GTD. With the pit lane closed, it turned the race for the win to a three minute sprint to the finish with the leading GTP cars running on fumes.

The leading No. 31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R ran out of energy coming to the white flag, and Blomqvist drove through to take the win for Meyer Shank Racing after finishing with just one percent of virtual energy left in his tank. It was their first win since reuniting at Meyer Shank Racing this off-season.

Blomqvist said that he wasn’t concerned about running it lean at the end of the race: “We committed to that (strategy). We thought we were going to be able to go to the end, regardless of the yellow. The yellow made things a little less stressful – I could basically push the last few laps, if I wanted to.

“I think, ultimately, that’s what won us the race today, but also the car really came alive there for me in those last couple of stints. That enabled me to have such good pace, while hitting such a big fuel target. I mean, it all kind of came to heaven for us there, at the end!”

“Been a challenging year at times,” mused his co-driver Braun. “We’ve had a lot of things that just haven’t gone our way on the No. 60 that, I feel like if they did fall our way, we’d have a lot of different results. It was nice today, where it fell our way.

“Everyone did a super job, Tom did a great job there at the end on the fuel save. The guys did a really good job on strategy, fine-tuning in the numbers. It was definitely stressful from my seat, listening to those guys do all the math in the background. Hats off to everyone, huge day for our group.”

The two Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillacs finished second and third, with a season-best second place for the No. 40 of Jordan Taylor and Louis Deletraz, and a second straight podium for the No. 10 of Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque.

Jordan credited his team’s call to put Deletraz off-sequence and in clean air with 50 minutes left as the catalyst for their slump-busting podium.

“The call kind of made our race with the yellow coming out late, and putting us up into second,” he said. “The No. 10 car made it in right before the yellow, and put them in third.

“I feel like we’ve kind of turned a corner on this year with a lot of the bad luck that we’ve had, and hopefully that momentum can kind of continue our steer.”

Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell took a narrow GTP points lead after finishing fourth in their No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963, overtaking teammates Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy in the Drivers’ standings. Tandy suffered a heavy accident in Turn 1 with 80 minutes to go; while he walked away after slamming into the tires, he and Nasr only came away with 11th-place points.

After controlling most of the final two hours, the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac (Jack Aitken/Earl Bamber/Frederik Vesti) finished fifth after their splash-and-dash with less than two laps to go, ahead of the polesitting No. 93 MSR Acura (Renger van der Zande/Nick Yelloly/Kakunoshin Ohta), which came in a lap before.

Four manufacturers led significant portions of the race, including Lamborghini, which finally finished a race as Romain Grosjean and Daniil Kvyat brought the No. 63 Squadra Corse SC63 home to seventh place.

Jake Galstad/IMSA

United Autosports’ No. 22 USA ORECA 07-Gibson of Daniel Goldburg, Paul di Resta, and Rasmus Lindh won LMP2, their second win of the season after the Rolex 24 At Daytona. To get there, Goldburg had to navigate through the treacherous mixed conditions of the first 90 minutes of the race, which proved difficult for his fellow LMP2 Bronzes. His teammate Nick Boulle crashed the No. 2 ORECA under a full course yellow and was knocked out of contention.

The biggest shock of the race came when PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports’ Rodrigo Sales was spun out of Turn 9 right into the path of TDS Racing’s Steven Thomas, who hit Sales head-on. Both drivers, thankfully, were unhurt despite the violent collision.

“At one point, just keeping the car on the track in the heavy downpour on slicks was a challenge in and of itself,” said Goldburg. “Reminded me of last year, when a lot of people went off. Two restarts in mixed conditions, on the slicks in the beginning with the rain coming down…yeah, it was a lot thrown at me, and I was really happy to pull it off.”

Di Resta held off the No. 99 AO Racing ORECA of PJ Hyett, Dane Cameron and Jonny Edgar, who finished second ahead of the No. 04 CrowdStrike by APR car (George Kurtz/Malthe Jakobsen/Toby Sowery) and the No. 18 Era Motorsport car (Tobias Lutke/Paul-Loup Chatin/David Heinemeier Hansson).

IMSA’s GTP class will take a quick vacation, as LMP2 and GT cars head north of the border to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park for the Chevrolet Grand Prix on July 13th.

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