It was a great weekend for BMW at the SRO Indy 8 Hour. It’s not only the final race on the GT World Challenge America and GT America calendar, but also the season finale of the globe-trotting Intercontinental GT Challenge series (IGTC). Team WRT won the race overall and the IGTC championship, while Random Vandals Racing and Turner Motorsport won championships in the GT World Challenge America and GT America series.
Frankly, making sense of who is who and where everyone is in the standings can get a little confusing in the Indy 8 Hour. The GTWCA teams compete in the Indy 8 Hour with the IGTC teams and can win overall, but points are scored separately for the two series. So, a GTWCA team could finish fifth overall but score first place points in the GTWCA tally.
The #46 Team WRT M4 GT3 won the race, giving Kelvin van der Linde the IGTC championship.
Regardless of series and class, the BMWs were all fast in qualifying. Following ICGT rules, all three drivers in each car had a chance to qualify, and the ten cars with the fastest average times competed in a “Pole Shootout” to set the order at the front of the grid. Philipp Eng initially had the pole in the #51 Random Vandals Racing M4 GT3 that he shared with Bill Auberlen and Varun Choksey, but the car was disqualified after it failed tech inspection for being slightly under minimum weight.
With the #51 demoted, the #80 Mercedes-AMG inherited the pole, but Team WRT BMWs were in second (#777) and third (#46) and the #99 Random Vandals BMW was in fourth. The #29 Turner Motorsport M4 GT3 made it into the top ten, but elected to fix a power steering leak rather than participate in the shootout. The field was tight, with the top seven cars qualifying within less than a half-second of each other.
The #777 Team WRT BMW finished third.
One of the big storylines of the race was the participation of MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi. Rossi is now a BMW factory driver and was driving the #46 WRT car with Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts. Rossi won the first MotoGP race at Indy in 2008, but that’s on two wheels, not four. The championship was also tight between two BMW drivers. Coming into the race, van der Linde was leading fellow works driver Raffaele Marciello–who shared the #777 WRT M4 GT3 with Augusto Farfus and Al Faisal Al Zubair–by five points. On the GTWC side, Random Vandals Racing drivers Kenton Koch and Connor De Phillippi were leading the Pro class points, while Turner Motorsport drivers Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg led the Pro-Am championship. Both of those leads were slim, so a strong result was important.
The first four hours of the race were held in warm weather with a dry track. The WRT BMWs stayed within reach of the polesitting Mercedes-AMG, and both took turns in the lead after the leading Mercedes-AMG was penalized for contact with another car. Philipp Eng also charged through the field after his qualifying penalty to lead in the #51 Random Vandals BMW. Unfortunately, the #51 was forced to retire with a throttle body issue after the second round of pit stops.
Random Vandals Racing won the GTWCA Pro class championship.
Just past the four hour mark, everything changed. Lightning in the area forced a red flag, and that was followed by heavy rain. Just before the weather hit, both Marciello and van der Linde got by the leading Mercedes-AMG to make it a WRT one-two overall. The #99 Random Vandals car was in the top five and the Turner Motorsport BMW was running in the top three in the Pro-Am class. There wasn’t much green flag racing in the last four hours, as the field ran behind the safety car amid heavy rain, with a lot of standing water on the track. Kelvin van der Linde got into the lead after pitting before Marciello, which effectively gave him the championship. Marciello finished third in the #777 BMW behind the #888 Mercedes-AMG.
The win was the third straight at the Indy 8 Hour for WRT and BMW, with van der Linde winning the IGTC drivers’ championship and BMW winning the manufacturers championship ahead of Porsche. Rossi also became the first to ever win a race at Indianapolis on both two wheels and four. “The #777 deserved the win – they were stronger the whole weekend,” said van der Linde. “But sometimes you just have bad luck in racing. Unfortunately, the weather decided the race today. Apart from that, four wins in five races make this an extraordinary year for BMW M Motorsport and Team WRT. We need to enjoy and celebrate that – it doesn’t happen every year. I’m very proud to have contributed a small piece of history in my first year with BMW M Motorsport.”
Turner Motorsport won championships in GT World Challenge America and GT America.
The Indy 8 Hour also capped off a great year for BMW teams in GTWCA. The #99 Random Vandals Racing M4 GT3 of De Phillippi, Koch and Conor Daly (who was brought in as a third driver for Indy) finished fourth overall, which gave Koch and De Phillippi the Pro class drivers’ championship that they fought hard for all season. “It’s my first championship since joining BMW M Motorsport,” said De Phillippi. “Kenton and the team did a fantastic job. It would have been nice to fight for the win here, but we had to secure our championship points. Still, it was a good day, a great year, and I’m already looking forward to 2026.”
Turner Motorsport drivers Robby Foley and Justin Rothberg won their second straight GTWCA Pro-Am class driver’s championship after finishing tenth overall and third in the Pro-Am class with help from third driver Patrick Gallagher. “Coming into this race, I was hopeful that we’d win another championship, but walking away with two is surreal,” said team owner Will Turner. “I knew the team could do it, and things just went our way. I’m super excited and ready to shoot for it again next year.”
Random Vandals Racing had a strong race going with the #51 until it retired with a throttle body issue.
Turner Motorsport driver Justin Rothberg also won the GT America drivers championship, which is a single-driver sprint race series that closed out its season with two races over the Indy weekend. It was especially satisfying for Rothberg, who just missed out on the championship last year. Rothberg had five wins in the series in 2025 and wrapped it up with a fourth place in the first race at Indy.
The 2026 SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge season opens with the Bathurst 12 Hour in Australia on February 13th-15th. The SRO GT World Challenge America and GT America seasons will open at Sonoma Raceway in California on March 27th-30th.
—David Haueter
[Photos by David Haueter, top photo courtesy SRO]
