Sebastien Bourdais expects a wild TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks on Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Last year’s race was a two-hour, 40-minute sprint race. This year the race extends to a six-hour endurance event.
“Oh, yeah, there’s going to be fireworks, for sure,” Bourdais said.
With an additional three hours and 20 minutes of racing, the approach and strategy change. But the expectation of chaos doesn’t.
“There’s a survival period that comes into play,” Bourdais said. “You kind of have four hours of, ‘Let’s make sure that we got all the bits on the car and not do anything stupid to take yourself out of contention.’ The short race, it’s more about positioning yourself and then, go, go, go.”
One of the challenges for Sunday’s race starting at 11:40 a.m. ET is there are 56 cars across four classes sharing the same 2.439-mile, 14-turn track.
The premier GTP class has 11 entries, and the faster cars are continuously going to catch the 10 LMP2 machines and 35 GTD cars. Over six hours, there is bound to be contact.
“Trying to set up a car when you have 56 cars on track, a short racetrack, makes it difficult,” Bourdais said. “Trying to string two corners together and trying to keep the tires clean, you try and go offline but get debris pickup on all four tires. Just a big challenge to get reads.
“I think for all of us, it’ll be the single biggest challenge to not hit anyone and not get hit. I think whoever manages to do that the most appropriately will definitely have the best chance of ending up on top.”
Bourdais hopes the second-fastest lap of 1 minute, 16.177 seconds in Friday’s practice in the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R for Cadillac Racing is a good indicator for a victory in Sunday’s race. He made nine Indianapolis 500 starts, but the four-time INDYCAR SERIES champion has a best finish of seventh. Securing a second Indianapolis victory in a sports car – he was part of the overall winning team in the GRAND-AM event in 2012 – would be a special moment for the Frenchman.
“I think the car is somewhat in the window but how close, it’s almost impossible to know,” he said. “I think the car is good. It’s just a matter of not making wrong assumptions.”
The defending race winners of the No. 6 Penske Porsche Motorsport driven by Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet led the way in the session at 1:16.138. The duo also won the last race at Road America.
Bourdais and his teammate Renger van der Zande are third in the standings and enter the weekend 185 points behind the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry driven by Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr in the GTP championship. Cameron and Nasr were seventh quickest in practice.
Wickens Racing at ‘Home’
Robert Wickens and co-driver Harry Gottsacker set the third-quickest lap in Friday’s practice session in the No. 33 Hyundai Elantra N TCR for Bryan Herta Autosport with Curb Agajanian in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR class with a top lap of 1:32.545. The duo was second quickest in final practice at 1:32.757, but that lap was slower than the morning session with drivers competing with cooler conditions.
Wickens, a Toronto native and former NTT INDYCAR SERIES driver, finished second with Gottsacker in last year’s race. He has a unique circumstance this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Wickens moved to Indianapolis several years ago and has more people from his Canadian home on hand to watch him race at his new home.
The nature of racing in front of family and friends doesn’t faze him, but living life with a “home game” provides unique scenarios.
Race car drivers aren’t used to sleeping in their own beds for race weekends. Wickens left Canada to race in Europe and didn’t have a home race for 12 years while competing in the junior categories. The 2018 Sonsio Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge were his only opportunities to race in Indianapolis before last season.
Even while racing in IMSA at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park east of Toronto, he stayed at a hotel because of the distance to his family’s house.
“Even though it's your home country and it's your home track and you grew up there your entire life, racing on the karting track over there, this (Indianapolis) is more of a home race,” Wickens said.
What makes racing at Indianapolis unique is Wickens is still husband, dad and son. Most race weekends his family doesn’t travel with him. Wickens competes on track, goes out to dinner and returns to his hotel room for bed.
He left the track Friday and returned home for normal activities. He will wake Saturday morning to head back to the track before anyone in his house is awake. Being quiet enough to keep his wife and son asleep will be a challenge but a pivotal task.
But, to race in front of his son, his wife, his in-laws and parents and more support coming from Canada to watch him race in person is something he won’t take for granted. Having an opportunity to win at IMS with them in Saturday’s two-hour race that starts at 1:10 p.m. ET is a cornerstone achievement.
Zilisch Pulling Triple-Duty Across Two States
Connor Zilisch finished earned the pole in Thursday night’s ARCA Menards Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway as well as in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race later that night. He finished 26th in ARCA and 19th in the Truck Series after getting tangled with lapped vehicles in both races.
After pulling double-duty, Zilisch flew to Indianapolis to take part in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship weekend at IMS.
Zilisch was 21st overall in the No. 18 Era Motorsport ORECA LMP2 Friday, 10th among the 11 cars in the LMP2 class.
The TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks is Zilisch’s second race at IMS. His first was in 2021 when he finished third out of 90 cars during the SCCA race weekend. That was the first year he raced an actual “car” on United States soil.
North Carolina native Zilisch, 18, moved to Italy when he was 11 to race karts. He spent three years in Europe and quickly realized a path to Formula One wasn’t in the cards. One season he was teammates with Kevin Harvick’s son, Keelan, and the three-time Brickyard 400 winner and 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion swayed Zilisch to take a stock car route.
Zilisch made his oval debut in 2022. The rapid progression saw Zilisch finish runner-up in his ARCA Menards Series debut in 2023 at Watkins Glen. He then won five of his seven starts this season, with the other two finishes a second at Milwaukee Mile on Aug. 25 and 26th at Bristol.
He also won the pole for his Truck Series debut at COTA this March by seven-tenths of a second. He won his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut at Watkins Glen on Sept. 14.
Zilisch signed a multiyear contract with Trackhouse Racing as a developmental driver and could compete soon at IMS on the famed 2.5-mile oval. He will drive the No. 88 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in the Xfinity Series next season.
Zilisch hasn’t turned his back on road course racing, either. He was part of the winning LMP2 team in the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January and drove the car to the win at Sebring in March.
Odds and Ends
- The TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks in the fourth race of five IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup events this season, joining the Rolex 24 At Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, Six Hours at Watkins Glen and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans.
- The 56 cars on site are eight more than in last year’s race.
