Aitken Has No Plans to Cruise and Collect IMSA GTP Title
Photo: Brandon Badraoui/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
By Dennis Krause
Jack Aitken would like nothing better than to settle the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) driver’s title in Friday afternoon’s qualifying session, freeing him up to race hard and defend his win of a year ago in Saturday’s 10-hour Motul Petit Le Mans season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
“I think it's a track and a race that we like,” said Aitken, driver of the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R. who leads Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Lauren Heinrich by 147 points entering the weekend. “We've done well there over the the last few years, particularly last year. So we're pretty confident we can come in and have a decent car off the bat.
“My goal is to try and have a great qualifying, and hopefully that means that we could go into the race worry-free and just enjoy it and race for the win. If we're going in and we still have a similar gap in the championship, then need to be a little bit smarter, but it's nothing that we haven't been doing all year long anyway.
“We've got a good feel in the team right now, and I've got a lot of trust in people around me. So, very happy to just go in and treat it like any of the races that we've been to this year and come out with very good results.”
With race wins at Detroit and Watkins Glen, Aitken has sat on the pole twice and finished on the podium in seven of eight races. Aitken’s podium streak was broken in August at Elkhart Lake’s Road America when he was involved in a late race contact with the Porsche of Kevin Estre and wound up in the first turn gravel trap.
Critics have suggested the 31-year-old Aitken and co-driver Earl Bamber should be paying more attention to collecting points instead of pushing to be on the podium. Needless to say, Aitken doesn’t see it that way.
Photo: Brandon Badraoui/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
“I like to keep a very simplistic view of it because it makes my life easier, which is I feel like I'm a broken record, but we've done a very good job over the last year, I think both in terms of putting a fast car out there and having pretty clean, efficient, well-called races, and we do that by weighing up risk, by planning out and prepping a lot of the stuff that we do.
“And every professional,” the driver with British and South Korean heritage continued, “whether it's the guys making the calls on the pit wall, or me, or Earl, or (third driver) Fred (Vesti) in the car, put a lot of effort into trying to calibrate that risk reward level and and trying to get it right. And all that to say, we feel like we live in a pretty happy spot and go for the moves that we think are are going to pay off and work well for us and that's about as far as we we think about it.
“You can always argue to play it a bit safer when you have a lead in the championship, but it's also dangerous to start changing your methods and to change the way that you approach things because when you're in a groove and when things are working well, you want to keep it as similar as possible.
“So, to people that question that method is really more that we want to keep doing what we're doing and the way we're doing it because it works well for us and it's to change as little as possible and it's also more fun to race that way. I think it's more ambitious.
“And it's as simple as that from our point of view. Not saying it's absolutely the right way to do it, but it's the way that we like to to go about it, and it's worked out well for the most part. The only race where we haven't been on the podium, I don't think it was because we were taking excessive risk or anything like that. So we're going to carry that on into Petit Le Mans.”
This year’s driver’s championship battle is unique in that it is between two individuals from two different teams, instead of sharing that with co-drivers. For Aitken, looking to wrap up his first title, it’s bittersweet that his season-long co-driver, Bamber, is not part of the driver’s championship.
Photo: Brandon Badraoui/Lumen Digital Agency/IMSA
“I think it's a bit of a shame. It seems to be happening more often at the moment with drivers generally being pulled in more directions with more clashes between championships that are expanding and trying to fight for limited spots on the calendar.
“So it's slightly inevitable these days, but like I say, it's a shame because Earl, as my my full season teammate, has been fantastic, and has put more than his fair share into this championship. The fact that he misses one race and will pay for that by not being on the podium with me, wherever that ends up being, is yeah, feels quite unfair.
“But it's the way it is. And Fred, as the endurance driver, has contributed a huge amount as well. And I sort of know from that position being, you know, I was in the endurance championship in 2023 when Whelen secured the teams and drivers championship then.
“I don't know if there's a way around it. If there would be a way to have a drop round or something in the points to account for this kind of thing, but yeah, it does feel quite bittersweet. But I'll buy him some drinks at the end of the year. Hopefully that evens it out.”
If Aitken is more than 150 points ahead of Heinrich after qualifying, Friday, he can buy the whole team a drink that night.
Dennis Krause has spent decades covering all forms of motorsports, including over 40 Indianapolis 500s, with stints at WIBA Radio, PIT PASS - Radio’s Premier Motorsports Magazine and Motorsports Minute.