IMSA MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 2, 2026

Philip Ellis

Neil Verhagen

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We're pleased to be joined by our Motul pole award winners here at Motul Petit Le Mans in the GTD and the GTD Pro classes.

We'll start with our GTD pole winner, Phillip Ellis in the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT3. His best lap was 1:18.674 seconds. Co-drivers here are Russell Ward and Indy Dontje. This is Russell's second career pole in IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship, first since the Rolex 24 at Daytona in 2023.

This is the first pole of the season for Winward Racing and Mercedes AMG. The last pole for both was at Road America in 2025. The team has had at least one pole position each year since 2022.

Congratulations on the pole position, the points standings, the points gained. I would imagine that had a lot to do with why you were in the car for qualifying. Take us through the session and what it took to get up there.

PHILIP ELLIS: No, I think it was a good qualifying session. Obviously super happy with how it went. It was good for us that Tony didn't have a great qualifying session. Obviously making up a couple points before getting into the race helps us out a little bit, takes a little bit of pressure off of us and puts a lot of pressure onto them.

But yeah, the session itself was a little bit messy. We had some cars coming out in the middle of the session, so it was important to get that track position right and then to put in the lap early since we had that red flag come out.

Initially we were planning to get a second set, have another run, and I think a lot of people would have improved much further. So yeah, it was a to our benefit of course with the red flag how it went.

THE MODERATOR: Let's slide over to our GTD Pro winner, Neil Verhagen, in the M4 GTD EVO. Best lap was 1:18.194 seconds. His third pole in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Car Championship. His other two poles came at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in 2025 and 2026. This is the second straight position here at Motul Petit Le Mans for Paul Miller Racing. Dan Harper did it last year. It's actually the team's fifth class pole overall at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

Congratulations on your pole. Just take us through the session and what it took to maintain that run of success for the team.

NEIL VERHAGEN: Yeah, for sure. For us a little bit more of a straightforward session than before. No red flags for us. So the plan was pretty clear from the beginning that we were going to go out and use the two sets. I think we've seen as we've come to the latter half of the season that everyone is now using the two sets in qualifying, chasing the qualifying points as the season is coming to an end.

But yeah, just very happy with the package that Paul Miller Racing and BMW Motorsports was able to give me for the lap. Cap felt amazing, and really looking forward and have a lot of motivation now going into tomorrow's race.

Q. Philip, they commented on the broadcast that you guys came into the pits and were adjusting the tire pressure. Can you touch base on how the track developed throughout qualifying that led to you posting that fastest lap in GTD?

PHILIP ELLIS: Well, we tried to target the first lap every time just to get that peak performance out of the tire.

To be honest, we didn't really get it early enough in the first run, so we just tried to adjust it a little bit with the temperature coming in. Of course, it was still pretty warm on the track. Yeah, that's just what it was.

Q. Neil, you set a really quick time very early in the session and then obviously on new tires bettered it. As you said earlier on the pit lane interview, that your job one today was certainly if not to get pole, but certainly to qualify ahead of the No. 4 Corvette. Can you just talk about the mindset going into qualifying about that?

NEIL VERHAGEN: Yeah, I mean, I've done all the qualifyings this year, so my job and task on the race weekend has been clear since Daytona: to come out and execute and deliver the one-lap performance.

Someone said the statistic of the nine qualifyings that we did, seven of them were in the top 3, so it's been a very good season so far from my side in the qualifyings.

Obviously the one qualifying was in Daytona where we qualified second on track but then ended up getting the lap taken away for being disqualified, and then in Detroit where we've just notoriously struggled a little bit.

I don't think I've really changed the mentality for the qualifying, but obviously, yeah, now we're going into the last race of the year as the hunters and not being the hunted. We're either going to come home a champion or we're going to come home not a champion. It puts our goal pretty clear for us. We're going to go out and attack and do it as much as we can for Paul Miller and BMW.

Q. Neil, from your perspective, to score the points for the pole position, how crucial was that working towards tomorrow and the championship?

NEIL VERHAGEN: For sure. Was obviously very disappointed after Indianapolis not to be able to go out and qualify because again, with the qualifying record that I've had this year, we felt we could have gained some points back there, and we see how valuable and crucial those are now coming into -- it's pretty both in both the GTD classes with the gap coming in at six points between Turner and Winward, and then for us 47 points coming between us and Pratt Miller.

Definitely the tightest on the IMSA field, and I think that's obviously what makes our racing so exciting as well too.

But yeah, obviously the last race of the season now, so we're going to, I'm sure Philip and everybody else is going to be pushing as hard as we can to bring home the championships for our teams.

Q. Philip, after losing some time because you guys had that issue late in the session on Thursday around this time, how much better did it feel knowing that you guys lost the time that you were able to get back out there and were able to bounce back so quick after you guys were a little bit -- because it took a lot of time yesterday out of the second session.

PHILIP ELLIS: I mean, it was more of a guessing game than anything because I think we did one actual lap yesterday in FP2. Just had some issues with the toxins. Had to get that figured out for practice. To us that's much more important than running in the daytime.

Then you just play a bit of a guessing game. You don't really know what the track conditions were in FP2. But, yeah, I've got a great team behind me that is good at that guessing game and giving me a good car that can perform well in qualifying and in the race of course.

I honestly think it's much more up to the drivers how you bring in the tire and get that peak performance out of it, which seems to be pretty difficult on this year's Michelin. But it's also fun because you have so much input as a driver and getting that last peak out of it.

I think Neil just shows that practice does come in handy, and it's great seeing people perform because of drivers and not anything else.