Several Eras Hit Final Tour Stop at 2024 Curtain-Closer
By Tony DiZinno
BRASELTON, Ga. – As college football season in Georgia intensifies in mid-October where school remains very much in session, Motul Petit Le Mans serves as IMSA’s annual “end of term” for the regular season.
It also serves as the end of a number of distinct eras in recent IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship history.
Two of Cadillac’s prototype stalwarts, Renger van der Zande and Pipo Derani, are set for their final drives with their respective teams.
Acura’s lone prototype team is set to change hands, and its flagship GT car will turn its final IMSA laps.
And one of the longest serving team-and-driver combinations concludes as Bryan Sellers runs his final race with Paul Miller Racing, in the team’s final race as a single-car entity.
These are the “known knowns” of the ends of eras, as the final checkered flag always provides a bittersweet duopoly of celebrating the race winners and season-long champions while also acknowledging it’s the last time the paddock is what it is for the year.
But as IMSA prepares to wrap the 2024 campaign, it’s worth digging deeper into those above four elements at least.
Van der Zande, Derani’s Final Cadillac Duel
Through most of the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) period and continuing into Grand Touring Prototype (GTP), there were always two different Cadillacs from two different teams, driven by two of IMSA’s most notable stars and rivals: van der Zande and Derani.
A past Prototype Challenge class champion (2016 with Starworks Motorsport), van der Zande emerged as a leading light with both Wayne Taylor Racing (in its first Cadillac stint from 2018 through 2020) and then Cadillac Racing (prepared by Chip Ganassi Racing, from 2021 through 2024).
Entering Motul Petit Le Mans, van der Zande has 71 starts with Cadillac, 30 podiums and 11 wins – including a pair of Rolex 24 At Daytona wins (2019 and 2020) and Motul Petit Le Mans wins (2018 and 2020). The wins he’s achieved with Sebastien Bourdais in the No. 01 Ganassi Cadillac V-Series.R have been primarily on street courses, with four of his six in that period at Long Beach and Detroit.
Derani, dubbed “the dynamo” owing to his blend of speed and aggression, has served as the constant despite several different teammates in the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R since 2019. He has delivered a pair of titles in 2019 (DPi) and 2023 (GTP).
His 57 starts with Cadillac have produced 28 podiums and seven wins – with his marquee triumphs a pair of Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring wins (2019, 2023).
More often than not, these two have been interlocked on track, and contact between the two at Sebring in 2021 was a memorable dust-up.
With their careers intertwined, it’s fitting their final starts in separate Cadillacs come before their next destinations are revealed, one last time, at a track where contact often looms.
“It’s the last race for Ganassi with Cadillac and I hope we can go out with a bang and win that race,” said van der Zande.
Derani added, “I’m looking forward to closing this chapter of my career with this team that has been a very successful six years together on a high, and a race win would be fantastic.”
Acura’s Pair of Swansongs
Cadillac isn’t alone having changes for 2025 after Motul Petit Le Mans. So too does longtime prototype rival Acura, with a pair of key adjustments.
The team now known as Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti will sign off its season with its pair of Acura ARX-06 prototypes. Those will be fielded in 2025 by the returning Meyer Shank Racing outfit, with the second of those two to feature a greater Honda Racing Corporation U.S. (HRC U.S.) team makeup and componentry.
Meanwhile, WTR returns to its old friends at General Motors, and will be rebranded as Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing as part of Cadillac’s shift to a unified team nomenclature across all its prototype teams, globally. Action Express Racing, which fields the No. 31 Cadillac, will rebrand slightly as Cadillac Whelen in the same framework.
The Acura NSX GT3 Evo22, meanwhile, is set for its final IMSA GT race after a solid eight-year run from 2017 through 2024. The car has eight wins and a pair of Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) class championships in 2019 and 2020 with Meyer Shank Racing. Sheena Monk and Stevan McAleer scored the car’s most recent IMSA podium, finishing third in GTD in the No. 66 Gradient Racing entry at Road America.
“It’s bittersweet to see the end of the NSX in IMSA competition,” said David Salters, HRC U.S. president.
“It’s a beautiful car and we’ve seen great success with it. It’s also a very popular car amongst fans both in its race and road car variants.”
Sellers, Paul Miller Racing Sign Off Near Decade-Long Run
It’s rare to have one long stint with a single sports car team. It’s even rarer to have two.
Yet that’s where Bryan Sellers finds himself, as he brings his Paul Miller Racing chapter to a close after nine incredible years from 2016-24. That comes after seven years with the Team Falken program, which he raced with from 2009-15.
Sellers, the 2018 and 2023 GTD class champion with longtime co-driver Madison Snow in the No. 1 BMW M4 GT3, announced he’ll take on a program manager with new-for-2025 IMSA GTD entrant DXDT Racing. But Sellers and Snow’s conquest on IMSA achieved quite a bit: together, they captured 13 wins (of Sellers’ 20 in IMSA) and 37 podiums (50 in IMSA).
“It’s another home race for me since I moved to the area in 2007. It’s the home race for the Paul Miller Racing team, for all the crew guys and their families,” Sellers said. “And it’s the home race for my wife, and my two kids were born not far from the track.
“So, to have this be my final race for Paul Miller Racing – I really couldn’t have picked a better event for it from that perspective. I’m just so thankful for my time here at this team. For the wins and the championship, of course, but even more so for the friendships and the memories.”