Russell Ward and Philip Ellis started last at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday and nearly won. They finished second instead, 0.501 of a second behind the race winner, and carried a six-point lead in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD standings out of Indiana. One race to go.
The No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 was sent to the rear of the 2.439-mile IMS road course grid after a formation-lap incident prevented the car from taking its assigned starting position. Ward drove the first stint, working back through the field. A well-timed final pit stop with less than 60 minutes remaining put Ellis back out in the top five. From there, heavy multi-class traffic on the IMS road course kept Ellis from completing the pass for the lead, and Turner Motorsport’s No. 96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO took the win. The No. 57 crossed 0.501 seconds behind.
The runner-up extends what has become one of the more remarkable second-half runs in recent GTD history. After sitting 207 points out of the championship lead at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July, Winward has since won at CTMP, won at Road America, and won at VIR to reclaim the points lead. The Indianapolis second place is the fourth straight strong result. The No. 57 now sits at 2,693 points, six ahead of the nearest challenger at 2,687.
Mercedes-AMG’s manufacturer position improved more sharply. The brand arrived at Indianapolis with a 20-point lead and leaves with a 94-point cushion, 2,954 to 2,860. The gap widened because the No. 57 finished well clear of the two main rival brands at IMS. For Mercedes-AMG, a third straight GTD manufacturer title is now largely a matter of avoiding a catastrophe at Road Atlanta.
The driver and team championships are a different calculation. Six points over a 10-hour race is a thin margin, and Ward said as much. The closest challenger needs to beat Winward by at least one position to reverse the gap. Both cars will be racing across four class groups on Road Atlanta’s 2.54-mile layout, which means traffic management will matter as much as outright pace.
On Saturday, the team’s sister No. 57 Winward Mercedes-AMG GT4 entry, co-driven by Bryce Ward and Daan Arrow in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, fought through a penalty and ran from 15th to fourth. Arrow was closing on a podium finish when a late caution bunched the field; a one-lap shootout to the flag left him fourth. It was the GT4 entry’s best result since Bryce Ward and Philip Ellis co-drove to a win at Watkins Glen in late June.
Petit Le Mans runs September 30 through October 3 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. Ward and Ellis have won there before in GT World Challenge America competition, with Ellis familiar with the Road Atlanta layout from a GT World Challenge win there earlier this season. Whether that familiarity translates to IMSA’s longer, more complex format is a separate question. Six points says it has to.
Source: Mercedes-Benz. Images courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
