Indianapolis, Indiana(September 21,2025) — In a six-hour war of attrition at the world’s most famous racing facility, Cadillac finally stood above the rest. The TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, penultimate round of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, ended with Action Express Racing’s No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R celebrating its first victory of the season.
Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber, and IMSA newcomer Frederik Vesti combined to lead 210 of 243 laps on Sunday, converting months of near-misses into Cadillac’s biggest triumph in two years. Their margin of victory—a razor-thin 0.988 seconds over Wayne Taylor Racing’s No. 10 Cadillac of Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque—belied just how dominant the red-and-white Whelen machine had been across the six hours.
“It’s a relief more than anything,” Aitken admitted after climbing from the winning car. “We’ve had pace all year but no results to show for it. Today, everything finally clicked—strategy, pit work, execution. Even when we had to save fuel at the end, we had enough to defend.”
For Cadillac, the win was more than symbolic. It was their first IMSA WeatherTech Championship victory since Sebring in 2023 and their second-ever at the Speedway, a venue steeped in American racing mythology. The three-driver lineup also marked milestones: Vesti celebrated his first endurance-racing win, Aitken earned just his second IMSA triumph, and Bamber notched career victory No. 9.
Cadillac Flexes, Acura Rallies, Porsche Stumbles
The stage for Cadillac’s victory was set before the green flag. Tom Blomqvist put the Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 on pole Saturday, but a post-qualifying infraction sent the car to the back of the GTP grid. That handed the front row to Aitken’s No. 31 Cadillac, just 0.041 seconds off Blomqvist’s disallowed time.
Aitken seized the advantage immediately. Even when early full-course cautions shuffled pit strategies, the Whelen crew’s decision-making proved bulletproof. On lap 28, Aitken muscled past Ricky Taylor’s No. 10 Cadillac to reclaim the point, a lead his team would not truly relinquish until the checkered flag.
Behind them, chaos defined much of the GTP field. Albuquerque’s mid-race puncture forced Wayne Taylor Racing off-sequence, and only a perfectly timed late yellow saved them from a splash-and-dash. “We had no fuel to make it otherwise,” Taylor admitted. “That yellow gave us a fighting chance. Second feels like a win after the day we had.”
Blomqvist and Colin Braun salvaged third in the No. 60 Acura after serving a drive-through penalty for blocking, completing a comeback from last on the grid. “We had the pace, but we burned too much energy fighting through traffic,” Blomqvist said. “Still, a podium from where we started is huge.”
For Porsche Penske Motorsport, the Brickyard was punishing. Championship leaders Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet finished only seventh in the No. 6 Porsche 963 despite setting the race’s fastest lap. Their teammates Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy endured a nightmare day of penalties and gearbox trouble in the sister No. 7, limping home 12th.
That left BMW as best of the rest. Dries Vanthoor and Philipp Eng brought the No. 24 M Team RLL car home fourth after an earlier blocking penalty, while the No. 93 Acura of Renger van der Zande, Nick Yelloly, and Kakunoshin Ohta rounded out the top five.
With Petit Le Mans looming, Campbell and Jaminet maintain a 131-point cushion over Nasr/Tandy, with BMW’s Vanthoor/Eng 145 back.
TDS Racing Makes It Three Straight in LMP2
If the GTP battle was Cadillac’s coronation, the LMP2 contest was a reminder that perfection breeds repetition. TDS Racing’s No. 11 ORECA 07-Gibson, driven by Steven Thomas, Hunter McElrea, and anchor driver Mikkel Jensen, claimed its third consecutive Battle on the Bricks class win, cementing the team’s Indy dynasty.
The race hinged on Jensen’s marathon closing stint. For the final two hours and 40 minutes, the Dane drove like a man possessed, carving a gap of more than 20 seconds before yielding briefly to Toby Sowery’s alternate-strategy CrowdStrike entry. But when Sowery was forced to pit for fuel with 10 minutes left—and then crashed out to trigger the decisive caution—Jensen was untouchable.
“Every time we come here, we seem to find another gear,” Jensen said. “The car was incredible, and once Sowery stopped, I knew it was ours to lose.”
The final restart shrunk Jensen’s cushion to nothing, but in a race to the checkers he held off Tom Dillmann’s No. 43 Inter Europol ORECA by 0.714 seconds. The Riley Motorsports trio of Gar Robinson, Felipe Fraga, and Josh Burdon completed the podium.
Further back, AO Racing’s No. 99 ORECA (PJ Hyett, Dane Cameron, Jonny Edgar) finished fifth but retained an 85-point lead in the LMP2 standings heading to Petit Le Mans.
For Thomas, the three-peat carried special weight. “To kiss the bricks three years in a row—that’s something you dream about as a racer,” he said.
Mustang Muscle in GTD Pro
The GTD Pro fight was as much about resilience as raw speed, and Ford’s new Mustang GT3 proved both. Sebastian Priaulx and Mike Rockenfeller delivered the No. 64 Multimatic Ford Mustang GT3 its second class victory of the season, holding off DragonSpeed’s No. 81 Ferrari of Albert Costa and Davide Rigon in a bruising late sprint.
It wasn’t straightforward. The Mustang served a drive-through penalty for a pit infraction mid-race, dropping it behind the Paul Miller Racing BMWs and AO Racing’s “Rexy” Porsche. But once Priaulx clawed to the front, he showed no mercy, muscling past Laurin Heinrich’s Porsche with 37 minutes remaining.
Contact between Heinrich and Corvette’s Nicky Catsburg dropped the green dinosaur-themed Porsche to seventh, leaving the Mustang to fend off Ferrari and BMW pressure in the final restart.
Priaulx’s winning margin: 0.594 seconds.
“This car just comes alive at the end of a stint,” Rockenfeller said. “We got the yellow we needed, and Seb did the rest.”
Hesse and Harper’s Paul Miller BMW took third, while Corvette Racing’s Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims hung on for fourth.
Long-Awaited Ferrari Triumph in GTD
In the pro-am GTD ranks, patience finally paid off. After years of knocking on the door, Inception Racing’s No. 70 Ferrari 296 GT3 of Frederik Schandorff, Ollie Milroy, and Brendan Iribe broke through for its first WeatherTech Championship win.
Schandorff inherited the lead when the Winward Racing Mercedes of Philip Ellis was penalized for speeding in pit lane with less than an hour left. From there, the Dane controlled the restart and held Wright Motorsports’ No. 120 Porsche at bay by 2.276 seconds at the flag.
“This is huge for us,” Iribe said. “We’ve been so close so many times. To finally get it done, and at Indy of all places—it means everything.”
The Conquest Racing Ferrari rounded out the class podium, while Ellis rebounded to fifth to preserve Winward’s narrow points lead entering Road Atlanta.
The Brickyard Proves a Fitting Stage
The Battle on the Bricks is still a young fixture on the IMSA calendar, but Sunday’s six-hour contest delivered all the hallmarks of a modern endurance classic: strategy swings, mechanical heartbreaks, fuel gambles, and a last-lap shootout at one of racing’s most sacred venues.
For Cadillac, the win was overdue validation after a year of frustration. For TDS Racing, it was a continuation of an Indy love affair. For Ford and Ferrari, it was a statement that the GT3 era has truly arrived.
Most importantly, it set the stage for an explosive championship finale. The Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta (October 8–11) will decide it all: the GTP crown between Porsche and BMW, the GT battles still on a knife’s edge, and the endurance cup fates of every class.
Until then, the bricks at Indianapolis bear the lipstick of Cadillac, TDS, Ford, and Ferrari—four names who, on a warm September Sunday, defined perfection at the Speedway. ~John Swider
Results-Battle on the Bricks 2025
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