Another Porsche IMSA win, but it wasn't straightforward

In a year where a single team's dominance has been the story across IMSA and the FIA WEC's respective top categories, Porsche Penske Motorsport finishing 1-2 at Laguna Seca is hardly a surprise.

"The team has done a fantastic job, once again, made no mistakes, and did a fantastic job on strategy – which I think was a key point for us in car No. 6," Campbell stated after taking his first win of 2025, after three podiums behind team-mates Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr.

But like Ferrari AF Corse's 1-2 finish at Spa-Francorchamps almost 36 hours earlier, the final standings don't paint a complete picture of how it all went down in Monterey – and in particular, how close it could have gone wrong for the eventual winners Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet.

The closest brush with disaster came during Campbell's opening stint of the race. He'd already been passed by team-mate Nasr on the opening lap and had been shuffled from second to third.

Then about 40 minutes into the race, Campbell came out of the corkscrew and tried to pass the No. 45 Wayne Taylor Racing Lamborghini to the left at Rainey Curve, through a gap that would quickly close.

"I lost a little bit of time there with the contact with the Lamborghini coming down after the Corkscrew," as Campbell recalled.

He made contact with the left rear of Danny Formal's Lamborghini, and both drivers were oh, so fortunate not to have their races end with a plunge into the nearby concrete barriers. But the No. 6 Porsche 963 would slow down momentarily after the anti-stall kicked in from the contact, causing Campbell to slow rapidly. The Australian only dropped two positions by the time he'd got the Porsche fired up again.

"I got back going – and then Jonathan (Diuguid) on the pit stall did a fantastic job on strategy, calling us in, and really saving us a little bit of time on track due to how busy it was coming up into the next lap. I definitely think we made the right call, boxing when we did. And Mathieu did a fantastic job towards the end of the race, making no mistakes and keeping everyone behind.

"So, it definitely wasn't easy. I think car No. 7 had fantastic speed again. It's just really good to get one on the board," Campbell said in a state of relief. "Obviously, both cars have been very competitive all year, so for us to finally get one up there is a fantastic result."

Even without that skirmish, Campbell believes that Porsche Penske would have almost certainly made the same call to pit the No. 6 several laps earlier than the top two and get co-driver Jaminet out in clean air.

Michael L. Levitt/Lumen

"The strategy that JD did was really working. I think it worked well for us in our position," Campbell said when asked if the near-miss with the Lamborghini dictated the #6 car's strategy. "I don't see why it couldn't have worked. And obviously, we wouldn't have lost four, five seconds due to slowing down on track.

"It's just a shame to be in that position, being fully alongside a car that just kept moving over - but in the end, it all worked out."

The Frenchman promptly responded by setting the fastest lap of the race as the No. 7 Porsche and the No. 24 Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 made their first pit stops. That call gave Jaminet almost an eight-second lead from a 13-second deficit, and from there he maintained a healthy margin to Tandy while saving fuel and battery.

"What really made the difference was the great strategy calls," Jaminet reiterated. "I hit the energy numbers in the first stint. It was a lot of energy saving to try and stretch it through such an early stop - obviously with the sister car directly behind, you know you're gonna pay the price later on."

And Jaminet had his own brushes with trouble too: "I ended up fighting with lapped cars like it was for position! I went off the track at some point, got hit by one Cadillac, got hit by the other one... it was really hard racing out there.

"I had to try and keep the pace and get the number - and it worked out well in the end. It was fun out there. One of the best stints of racing in a long time, and also with no yellows - that's pretty good!"

Really, the only thing that was a shock is that all 160 minutes of this race ran without a Full Course Yellow, the first time in IMSA that this had happened since 2019 at Belle Isle. And it's not like there weren't collisions, debris, drivers taking risks - the usual trappings of a Safety Car parade, especially at a track as mentally exhausting as Laguna Seca can be.

"There's a lot happening on track, and a lot of contact in general," Campbell explained. "For sure, there were some close calls there where there could have been some possibilities for yellows. But I think it just goes to show how close IMSA competition is currently. No matter if it's GTD or GTP, there's some incredibly tight, close racing - and hard racing. To have another green race is surprising, but everyone kept it clean enough to do that."

Sure, the Tandy and Nasr winning streak is now over. But Porsche Penske Motorsport as a two-car team is now on the longest winning streak as a team since the 2007 American Le Mans Series. That year, Penske's two yellow and red Porsche RS Spyders reeled off an astonishing 11 straight LMP2 class wins from the Streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, until the last race at Laguna Seca. From Long Beach to Detroit Belle Isle, there were eight consecutive overall wins in there, too.

How fitting, on a week where an RS Spyder-liveried Porsche Cayman Safety Car paced the field - yet never appeared again after the start.

Porsche has a whopping 164-point lead in the GTP Manufacturers' Championship, and there's a 280-point gap between the leading tandem of Tandy/Felipe Nasr, and the highest-ranked non-Porsche entry in the Drivers' and Teams' standings.

Like the Taylor brothers' winning streak to start the DPi era in 2017, and like Ferrari's run of dominance to start the WEC Hypercar campaign, Porsche's IMSA dominance is being viewed with joy in the eyes of some, and surely some perturbed exhaustion in others who are wondering what can be done to reign the dominant force in.

And just like those other runs of dominance, now the anticipation builds to see who will inevitably defeat the Penske Porsches in North America - whenever that day comes...