Laurens Vanthoor brought the No. 6 Porsche Penske 963 home 1.205 seconds ahead of Sheldon van der Linde's No. 24 BMW after ten hours and 368 laps at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, according to Al Kamel's provisional classification. That file, stamped 12:30 a.m. on 4 October, was still the only classification posted on 5 October, so every position below is provisional. IMSA's race report calls it Porsche's first overall Petit Le Mans win with a prototype; its previous one, in 2015, came with a GT Le Mans car.

Kevin Estre, who shared the car with Vanthoor and Matt Campbell, scored his first IMSA win. Campbell was making his final start as a Porsche factory driver, Sportscar365 reports.

The last 50 minutes

Vanthoor was the last of the leaders to make his final stop, with 50 minutes to go, taking energy and left-side Michelins only. He ran off course in the Esses on his out lap and briefly lost the lead to Earl Bamber's No. 31 Action Express Cadillac, then took it back two laps later through traffic at Turn 12, in Sportscar365's account. Van der Linde passed Bamber for second with 45 minutes left.

Bamber's race ended with 19 minutes remaining, in the Turn 1 barriers after contact with Roman De Angelis's No. 23 Aston Martin Valkyrie. That brought out the last caution and earned the Aston Martin a drive-through penalty, and it left roughly ten minutes of green running. Van der Linde, sharing the BMW with Dries Vanthoor and Robin Frijns, pushed through traffic on the final two laps and finished second.

Sixteen cautions and a lightning stop

IMSA and Sportscar365 both call the 16 full-course cautions a record for the race. The flags analysis on the timing system logs the lightning red flag at 26 minutes 23 seconds, against IMSA's "27-minute" figure and Sportscar365's 30. Toby Sowery's No. 04 LMP2 Oreca came out of that rainstorm in the class lead on slicks, while nearly everyone else had changed to rain tyres.

Eleven GTP cars started and six were running at the finish. Felipe Nasr's No. 7 Porsche crashed on the front straight with 90 minutes to go, going airborne after checking up behind Vanthoor and the No. 28 RS1 Porsche; Nasr climbed out unaided. He, Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich had arrived chasing what Sportscar365 called "an unprecedented sweep" of Daytona, Sebring and Petit Le Mans in one season. Earlier, Kevin Magnussen ran into Alex Palou's No. 93 Acura and put the No. 25 BMW into the Turn 5 barriers in the fourth hour.

Acura's last lap

Tom Blomqvist had put the No. 60 Acura on pole, Acura's front-row lockout recorded in Honda's release of 2 October, which also confirmed the brand was "set to pause the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP program at the conclusion of tomorrow's race". The car ran third into the final lap and then had to pit for energy, IMSA says at the white flag. It finished sixth, 42.082 seconds down, and the stop promoted the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Jordan Taylor, Louis Deletraz and Colton Herta to third.

Four titles, two of them won without winning

Aitken clinched the GTP drivers' title by taking the start in the No. 31 Cadillac; Sportscar365's phrase is "just rolling off the grid". Bamber's crash did not change the other two GTP titles: Action Express took the teams' championship and Cadillac the manufacturers'.

LMP2 and GTD were the classes whose champions also won the race. George Kurtz, Alex Quinn and Sowery recovered from a drive-through penalty in the third hour and from a lap down after Tom Dillmann hit Quinn with 1 hour 47 minutes to go. Paul di Resta's No. 22 United Autosports car then had to stop for fuel on the last lap, and Quinn beat Dillmann's No. 43 Inter Europol Oreca to the line by 0.666 seconds. Kurtz and Quinn are champions, and Kurtz's Jim Trueman Award carries an invitation to the 2027 24 Hours of Le Mans.

In GTD PRO, the No. 68 Car Blanche Aston Martin of Valentin Hasse Clot, Marco Sorensen and Mattia Drudi beat the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche by 1.507 seconds on its first Endurance Cup start in the class, per IMSA. Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi finished third in the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW, enough for the drivers' and teams' titles. The No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes of Russell Ward, Philip Ellis and Indy Dontje won GTD by 0.733 seconds from the No. 912 Manthey Porsche, and IMSA counts the GTD championship as Winward's third in a row.

Honda's release calls it a pause and gives no date for a return, so GTP goes into the winter without the car that started Petit Le Mans from pole.