Aitken, Bamber Team Up for Seventh Straight Podium and Championship Lead
American muscle was on full display Saturday as Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R dominated the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic, the 100-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race through the streets of downtown Detroit as part of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix Presented by Lear.
Motul Pole Award winner Bamber started the race and comfortably led the first 33 minutes before handing over to Aitken, who built a 14-second lead until a full-course caution was called for debris on the track with 20 minutes remaining. That late-race reset offered a final glimmer of hope to the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class competition.
But it was unfulfilled hope, as Aitken aced a pair of late-race restarts and was able to pull away during the final stages while chaos broke out behind him. The No. 31 Cadillac built a 6.023-second gap before crossing the finish line ahead of the No. 25 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 shared by Philipp Eng and Marco Wittmann.
Compounding the joy for General Motors in its corporate hometown at an event it sponsors, Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque took a season-best third place in GTP in the No. 10 Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R., while Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports notched the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) PRO class victory.
“My team absolutely nailed it, and to do it here at the home of GM and Cadillac, with so many friends and family with us…it really doesn’t get a lot better than that,” Aitken said. “It’s a win that we’ve been searching for for a while. With so many people involved in the program here, it was really meaningful. It’s pretty overwhelming, but amazing.”
“It was pretty nervy with those last yellows, just watching,” Bamber added. “I'm just really happy for Cadillac, and happy for the Corvette guys also, to finally get the win here in our home race. We had a great Cadillac this weekend that was super quick from the moment it hit the track. That’s a pretty perfect weekend.”
With seven consecutive podium finishes dating to a win at the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in September 2025, the Cadillac Whelen team is on a hot streak unprecedented in the four years of the current IMSA GTP era. The victory was the fourth in IMSA competition for Aitken and the 11th for Bamber.
Cadillac has now won five times in Detroit, but the first four came at the old Belle Isle circuit (2017, 2018, 2021 and 2022).
Other than working through GTD PRO traffic, Aitken pretty much had the 1.645-mile Detroit track to himself for most of his stint. Two cautions in the final 20 minutes did little to dampen his confidence.
“I’ve been lucky to be in that position a few times before, but especially on a street circuit, you really need to keep your focus and keep pushing – stay in that rhythm and not think too far ahead,” Aiken said. “Frankly, you know there’s a high chance of a yellow that will bring things together again and create that knife-fight to the finish.
“I tried not to think too far ahead,” he continued. “But on Sector 3 of the last lap, I let myself realize, ‘This is going to be pretty cool!’”
The No. 25 BMW earned its second consecutive podium finish. Eng credited BMW M Team WRT for a late-stopping strategy that helped them overcome a loss of two positions in the hectic opening laps.
“Marco drove fantastically and we didn’t make any mistakes,” Eng said. “But the No. 31 Cadillac was just out of reach for us this weekend.”
Meanwhile, Taylor and Albuquerque earned the first trip to the rostrum this year for Wayne Taylor Racing in a year that has seen the No. 31 Cadillac finish on the podium every race.
“Huge relief here in Detroit,” said Ricky Taylor. “We got very unlucky in qualifying and that could have changed our day, so the team was on the back foot again at the start of the race. I’m glad everything worked out as planned and the team was flawless.”
With the win, Aitken unofficially took over the lead for the GTP drivers championship by 144 points over Laurin Henirich, whose title hopes took a turn for the worse at Detroit with an 11th-place finish. Heinrich incurred a stop-plus-60-seconds penalty for incident responsibility that dropped the No. 5 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963 two laps down after he forced the No. 23 Aston Martin THOR Team Aston Martin Valkyrie into the wall.
Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer, who rallied to finish fifth at Detroit after starting 10th, are third in the driver standings, 10 points behind Heinrich. Cadillac has leapfrogged Porsche to lead the GTP manufacturer standings by 17 markers.
The next round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship is the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen, June 25-28 at Watkins Glen International. In the interim, nearly three dozen full-time IMSA drivers will compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans from June 10-14.
