Winward Racing ended the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season with a GTD victory at Motul Petit Le Mans and a third consecutive class title. The No. 57 Mercedes-AMG GT3, driven by Philip Ellis, Russell Ward and endurance co-driver Indy Dontje, won the 10-hour finale at Road Atlanta.
It was Winward's first Petit Le Mans victory. The championship itself was effectively secured earlier in the race when its closest title rivals ran into trouble, but the fight for the race win continued into the closing stages. IMSA reports that Ellis first resisted pressure from Riccardo Pera in the Porsche 911 GT3 R, then passed Lilou Wadoux on lap 320 to take the GTD lead.
The third straight title goes beyond the team trophy. Mercedes-AMG says it completed a third consecutive sweep of the full-season GTD driver, team and manufacturer championships. IMSA describes Winward's run as the longest active championship streak by a program in any of its classes.
The path to that result was not a season-long procession. According to IMSA, Ellis and Ward produced four victories and one runner-up finish over the final five rounds. That late run erased an earlier deficit and amounted to the second-largest championship comeback since IMSA introduced its current points structure in 2021. The Road Atlanta result was Winward's fifth GTD win of the 2026 season.
In a championship where the headline machinery is often the factory-backed GTP prototypes, that consistency in GTD is easy to overlook. The Mercedes-AMG GT3 is a customer racing car rather than a purpose-built top-class prototype, yet one team has now kept control of the class championship for three consecutive seasons while facing changing rivals and a calendar that mixes shorter races with major endurance events.