PROOF WE DON'T SETTLE.

THE COMEBACK WASN’T FINISHED.
Winward Racing started the 2026 IMSA season with victory at Daytona. Then came the difficult races, a 300-point championship deficit, and a fight to get back into contention.

Three consecutive victories at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Road America and VIR changed everything. By the time the #57 Mercedes-AMG GT3 arrived at Petit Le Mans, Philip Ellis and Russell Ward were on the verge of a third consecutive GTD championship.

But Road Atlanta had more in store.
Sixteen Full Course Yellows, severe storms and a race suspension tested the field.

The GTD drivers’, teams’ and manufacturers’ titles were secured early, but the Michelin Endurance Cup was still undecided.

With thirty minutes remaining, the #57 returned to the lead.
Ten hours, 346 laps and one final victory later, Ellis, Ward and Dontje had delivered Winward Racing’s first Petit Le Mans win, secured both Endurance Cup titles and completed a season worth five championships.

Three consecutive GTD title sweeps for Mercedes-AMG.
A first in IMSA history.

Some championships are won through consistency.
This one required a comeback.

Photos by @gruppec_photography | Mercedes-AMG Motorsport

ENDURANCE FILES / PETIT LE MANS
An original editorial series by Dust In The Pit Lane.

Two overall victories. Eleven years apart. Two very different ways to win.

In 2015, the #911 Porsche 911 RSR did something extraordinary at Petit Le Mans. In relentless rain, a GT car beat the prototypes to claim outright victory at Road Atlanta.

Eleven years later, the #6 Porsche 963 delivered another historic moment: Porsche’s first overall Petit Le Mans victory with a prototype.

Different cars. Different circumstances. Two victories that stand apart in Porsche’s history at Petit Le Mans.

Photos by @gruppec_photography | @porsche.motorsport
INSIDE / PETIT LE MANS

AFTER DARK, BEFORE THE FLAG.
Ten hours at Road Atlanta. A race that stretches from daylight into darkness, where everything can change before the final flag.

For the #68 Car Blanche Aston Martin, the decisive moment came in the final hour.

Mattia Drudi moved into the GTD PRO lead, completing the work he, Valentin Hasse-Clot and Marco Sørensen had put in throughout the race.

A first appearance in the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup’s GTD PRO class.
A Petit Le Mans victory.

Sometimes it’s not about how long you lead. It’s about when.

Photography by @shanny_shoots @ignitemediaphoto @midgeman

Petit Le Mans doesn’t wait for night to become difficult.
Traffic is constant. The elevation hides what comes next.
Four classes share just 4.09 km of Road Atlanta.
Then the light disappears.
Ten hours from daylight into darkness, on a circuit that gives drivers very little room - or time - to settle.

That’s what makes Petit different.

RACE START | 12:10 PM ET - 18:10 CEST

Swipe through. →

Photos by @gruppec_photography | Porsche Motorsport
INSIDE / ROAD ATLANTA

THE RESULT DOESN’T TELL THIS STORY.
The #007 Aston Martin Valkyrie had the pace at Fuji. By the fourth hour, Tom Gamble had moved into the outright lead of the 6 Hours of Fuji, emerging from the pits ahead of the two Alpines.

Then came the penalty. Crossing the pit-entry line resulted in a drive-through, sending the #007 back to seventh and changing the direction of its race.

The final result would show something very different from those opening four hours. For a while at Fuji, the Valkyrie wasn’t chasing the fight at the front. It was leading it.

Photos by @dppiimages

THE CHARGE. Augusto Farfus had twenty minutes and five cars between him and the lead.
On fresh tyres, the #32 BMW went forward.
Porsche. McLaren. Mustang. Corvette. Corvette.
One by one, until there was nobody left ahead.
From sixth at the restart to first at the flag - a final stint Farfus described as one of the finest of his career.
Five cars. Twenty minutes. One win.

Photos by @dppiimages

THE GAMBLE. When the final Safety Car reset Fuji, the #34 Corvette chose track position over fresh tyres.
It worked. Charlie Eastwood restarted in the lead, with Corvette running 1–2 in LMGT3.
Behind them, though, Augusto Farfus had fresh rubber - and was coming.

The #34 eventually surrendered the lead but held on to P3, just 4.676 seconds from the win.

Sometimes the same 20 minutes can tell two completely different stories.

Photos by @dppiimages

WHEN PRACTICE BECOMES QUALIFYING.
Nobody went into Fuji’s three Free Practice sessions knowing they were setting the grid.

Then the weather changed the rules of the day.

With qualifying cancelled, laps driven for setup, long runs, tyre work - or simply finding pace - suddenly carried a different weight. The fastest times from practice would decide the grid.

Sometimes, the laps that count most are the ones you didn’t know would count.

Photos by @dppiimages

Fuji is a circuit of contrasts. One of the longest straights in WEC. A technical final sector. A history that started with plans for something very different altogether.

And then there are the stories written here - home victories, poles that led nowhere, and more than a decade of WEC racing beneath one of motorsport’s most unmistakable backdrops.

There’s more to Fuji than the mountain.

Swipe through. →

Photos by @dppiimages
INSIDE / FUJI SPEEDWAY

FUJI, Illustrated. 🇯🇵 A circuit in the shadow of Mount Fuji.
A landscape that hardly needs an introduction. Victor’s take on FIA WEC Fuji - from the first sketch to the finished piece.

Swipe to see how it came together.

Artwork by Victor Okhakhume aka @trivsdraws

BUSHI REX. 🦖🇯🇵
Part dinosaur. Part samurai.
Now a Suzuka 1000km winner.
Some liveries arrive with a story already written.

Photos by @gruppec_photography

CLOSER. You don’t always need the whole car.
Zandvoort, up close, through the lens of Pedro Dermaux.

Photos by @panningpedro

From seventh to the lead. Then, ten minutes changed everything.
The #7 Toyota had worked its way through the field at COTA, with Nyck de Vries taking the lead and building a six-second advantage in the closing stages. With barely ten minutes remaining, a hydraulic pressure issue affected the power steering.

After almost six hours of racing, the #7 was out.
No result to show for it. But for most of that afternoon in Texas, Toyota had turned P7 into a race that looked theirs to lose.

Photos by @dppiimages

0.000. That was the difference in the fight for pole at COTA.
Jack Aitken put the #38 Cadillac around the circuit in 1:52.445.
Antonio Giovinazzi did exactly the same.
Same lap time, down to the thousandth.
Ferrari took pole because Giovinazzi had set the time first.
A day later, the #38 was still right in the middle of the fight.
Aitken, Sébastien Bourdais and Earl Bamber kept the Cadillac in contention through the six hours and eventually brought it home in second.
Sometimes racing gives you metres.
Sometimes seconds.
And sometimes, absolutely nothing separates you at all.

Photos by @dppiimages

Some patterns are too good not to notice. In 2024, the #50 Ferrari left COTA in third.
In 2025, second.
In 2026, there was only one place left to go.

Miguel Molina, Antonio Fuoco and Nicklas Nielsen took the 499P to victory at the Lone Star Le Mans, giving Ferrari its first win of the season.

Three consecutive visits to COTA. Three podiums. And a sequence that couldn’t have been written much better.

Photos by @dppiimages

There are easier places to lose your air conditioning. Mattia Drudi had to finish the Lone Star Le Mans without it, fighting the Texas heat while bringing the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin home for the LMGT3 victory.

Behind him, the sister #23 finished third - completing a double Aston Martin podium at Heart of Racing’s home WEC round.

Two years after their last win here, Heart of Racing came back to COTA and gave the home crowd another one to remember.

Photos by @dppiimages