How Tandy joined an exclusive club of endurance legends

When Nick Tandy joined the Porsche factory roster back in 2013, he had a dream - to claim a win in one of the big enduros for his new employer. After eight seasons with the German manufacturer, and as he sets out on a new chapter of his career with Corvette Racing, he now has a complete set with his triumph in the Spa 24 Hours last October.

That win gave him a full house of victories - overall or class - in the four 24-hour sportscar classics at Le Mans, Daytona, the Nurburgring and Spa. But Tandy has also completed the unofficial triple crown of endurance at Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring, and the quadruple crown if you add the Petit Le Mans enduro at Road Atlanta to that list. That surely makes him a holder of the sextuple crown.

He's not the first person to achieve any of those feats, but he is the first Brit to notch up victories in the four twice-around-the-clock enduros and across all six of the classics of his racing world. The achievement is not lost on him. In fact, he actively chased it over the course of his time with Porsche.

"When I started out at Porsche, I dreamed of winning a big race," he says. "I'd look at the CVs some of the other factory drivers had posted on their websites and it would say 'three-time Nurburgring 24 Hours winner' or 'two-time Petit Le Mans winner'. I'd think, 'Wow, can you imagine if I had a win in one of those races against my name?' Winning the big races was something I really aspired to do."

The idea of winning the triple crown wasn't in the forefront of his mind back then. Tandy was racing GTE machinery, so the focus of his mind was the big events in which Porsche competed in that class, namely Le Mans, Sebring and Petit.

"When I started we had the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am, so only with unification [for 2014] did I start to think about triple or quadruple crowns," he says.

The trail started for Tandy back in his maiden season on the books at Porsche, with a victory at the Petit 1000-miler. He added the Daytona 24 Hours to his collection of victories in 2014, the first year of what we now call the IMSA SportsCar Championship, in the GT Le Mans class. Eighteen months later, he followed it up with overall victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

"I'd got three of the big four by 2015, so I really wanted the Sebring 12 Hours to complete the set," says Tandy. "I raced Le Mans-spec machinery, whether in GTE or LMP1, so I wanted to win the four big races in which those kind of cars competed. I'd been having thoughts about that since Le Mans 2015 and I felt I needed to tick off Sebring."

The same thought process resulted in the Brit chasing victory at Spa. His win at the Nurburgring 24 Hours in 2018 gave him victories at three of the four 24-hour biggies.

"The achievement of winning one of those races in GTLM is equal to winning overall, if not higher in a lot of circumstances" Nick Tandy

"I'd done Spa in 2013, but didn't attempt it again until 2019," he explains. "It was something I actively pushed for within Porsche because I wanted to complete the set. I'd always preferred to concentrate on my main programme, whether in GTLM in IMSA or LMP1 in the World Endurance Championship, but after the Nurburgring victory I did everything I could to get in a good car with good team-mates to have a proper go at it."

After a near-miss in 2019 with Rowe Racing, Tandy was back with the German team in the rescheduled race late last year and hauled its 911 GT3-R to the front over a thrilling final three-hour stint. That gave him the sextuple crown, something only eight other drivers (Emmanuel Collard, Hans Stuck, Marc Lieb, Christophe Bouchut, Mike Rockenfeller, Jorg Bergmeister, Lucas Luhr and Dirk Muller) have achieved with a mixture of overall and class wins. No one has won all six outright (see table below), just as no one has won all four of the big 24-hour races overall.

It matters not to Tandy that two of his wins in the six are class victories.

"I know that the achievement of winning one of those races in GTLM is equal to winning overall, if not higher in a lot of circumstances," he says. "We were racing against multiple manufacturers, all competing with high-level programmes. To my mind, I've completed the set."

Yet Tandy still rates his shock overall victory ahead of the prototypes at Petit in 2015 with Patrick Pilet and the factory CORE Autosport Porsche squad in front of his other three wins in the end-of-season event.

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"It's one thing to achieve victory in the class that you are in, but if you beat the cars that are expected to be in front of you it's an extra achievement," he explains. "The story of the race, the conditions we faced and the pitfalls we managed to avoid over eight hours of rain mean I rate it above my other wins at Atlanta [in 2018 and 2020].

"I understand that in 20 years' time when someone is talking to my kids, they might not understand the story behind the class wins. Perhaps that's why I do hanker after an overall Daytona win, but I'd never put chasing that above a full-season programme."

Tandy ranks the 2015 Le Mans victory at the top of his list, though not only for the obvious reasons.

"In terms of career importance a first Le Mans win has to be the biggest highlight," he explains. "It's special because it's Le Mans, but also because it is so difficult to win, or rather to get yourself in a situation where you have a car that's capable of winning. There aren't many cars out there that can win Le Mans in any given year, and therefore there aren't many drivers who can win the race. It's the hardest one to win for that reason."

Tandy will be chasing more class wins at Daytona, Sebring, Petit and, most likely, Le Mans with his new employer, starting later this month with the opening IMSA round at the Daytona International Speedway. He'll be racing a mid-engined Chevrolet Corvette C8.R alongside Tommy Milner, with old GTLM sparring partner Alexander Sims joining them for the long races.

"I want to race at the highest level possible against top cars and top drivers in a top championship," says Tandy. "That wasn't possible with Porsche in 2021 because it was ending its factory campaign in North America.

"I was lucky enough to have another manufacturer in Chevrolet that wanted to talk to me. Driving for Corvette Racing really appealed to me, because it's one of the biggest and highest-profile programmes around."

But Tandy isn't ruling out racing a Porsche again. He wants to add to his tally of wins in the big six events, which currently stands at 11 - one each at Le Mans, Daytona, Spa and the Nurburgring, four at Petit and three at Sebring.

"I still want to take part in some of the other big events, the classics that don't clash with my Corvette programme," he explains. "I'd like some more wins."

Tandy's road to the sextuple crown

2013 Petit Le Mans, GT class victory

Nick Tandy's programme in his maiden season with Porsche encompassed racing in the American Le Mans Series enduros at Sebring and Petit Le Mans with the Walker Racing-run Falken Tire squad. It yielded a win at Road Atlanta together with Wolf Henzler and Bryan Sellers in what was then known simply as the GT class.

"We were running an older chassis after the team had destroyed that year's car at the Baltimore race, so no one had grand aspirations going into the race," recalls Tandy. "But the old narrow-body 911 GT3-RSR proved to be quick on the straights compared with the wider new car the other Porsche teams were using.

"The Falken tyres worked pretty well at Atlanta and we were quick in the wet and the dry. I had the honour of finishing the race. Derrick Walker put his faith in me, and I had a BMW [a Rahal Z4 GTLM with Dirk Muller driving] sat on my arse at the end, but managed to bring it home."

2014 Daytona 24 Hours, GTLM class victory

The CORE Autosport-run factory Porsche 911 RSR Tandy shared with Patrick Pilet and Richard Lietz looked home and dry as the inaugural round of the unified IMSA sportscar series approached its climax. They were the better part of two laps up on the pack.

But a safety car changed that and, for the final minutes of the race, Pilet was fighting a rearguard action to Joey Hand in the leading Rahal BMW.

"I was kind of only dipping in and out of the race at the end, and my only thought really was, 'Please don't less us break down'," recalls Tandy. "Then all of a sudden after the final safety car, they were only three cars between us and them in the queue. We made that one more interesting than it needed to be."

2015 Le Mans 24 Hours, overall victory

When Porsche revealed it would be running a third 919 Hybrid at Le Mans in 2015, the German manufacturer insisted that it would be much more than a back-up car. It wanted Tandy, Nico Hulkenberg and Earl Bamber to have the same chance of victory as its two crews contesting the full World Endurance Championship.

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"We were an extra bullet in the gun - that's what Porsche said and that's what we felt," says Tandy. "With who was putting the cars together, who was overseeing the set-ups and from all the testing that we'd done, we knew that we were the equal to the other cars."

The #19 Porsche lost out early in the race during a couple of safety cars, but during the night it came into its own when Porsche went from triple-stinting its Michelin tyres to quadruple-stinting. Hulkenberg moved past Mark Webber in the sister car during the first of the quadruples, and then Tandy and Bamber extended the advantage. By the time the sun rose and the pace of the two Porsches levelled up, #19 had a clear advantage.

"We had the fastest 919 over four stints in those conditions in the night," remembers Tandy. "There probably was a bit of luck involved, but there were also a lot of smart people looking over our car.

"I'd love to sit here and say that the drivers made the difference. I can't say that for sure, but there was a point where we all got comfortable in the car. I remember thinking during the night that it was the first time that I really felt at one with the 919. I got that feeling of being in complete control of the machine and knowing that if anything happened I'd be able to deal with it. That breeds extra confidence and the speed that goes with it."

2018 Sebring 12 Hours, GTLM class victory

Porsche didn't have the fastest car at Sebring in 2018; Tandy reckons he and team-mates Patrick Pilet and Frederic Makowiecki were "absolutely rubbish" during the heat of the day. But the race turned in the favour of their 911 RSR as the temperatures dropped.

"Three hours in, I thought we were out of it, and then the track conditions came to us: we were much more competitive when we put the soft tyre on, even if the BMW was quicker," he recalls. "We managed to get to the front and stay there, as much as anything because of good in and out-laps and good pit work."

The BMW M8 GTE with Alexander Sims at the wheel closed in on Tandy during the penultimate stint, before the Porsche driver posted a string of fastest laps to seal a victory.

"It was a stressful one," says Tandy, "one of those finishes where you know if you aren't 100% on it, it's going to be game over."

2018 Nurburgring 24 Hours, overall victory

Tandy's bid for a first win at the Nurburgring got off to an even worse start than his Sebring campaign earlier in the year. The factory Manthey 911 GT3-R he shared with Patrick Pilet, Frederic Makowiecki and Richard Lietz suffered a puncture late on the first lap and had to crawl around the grand prix circuit, duck into the back of the pits for an unscheduled pitstop, then start the lap again.

"After the puncture we were dead last and we said to each other as drivers that we'd go flat-out and see what happened," remembers Tandy. "That was the only chance we had, because at the 'Ring there are always 30 cars that can win it.

"I remember getting out of the car during the night and looking at the data with the engineer. I could see that we'd been moving forward steadily and were quite easily the fastest car out there. We never gave up and kept on it, and it helps if you've got a fast car."

There was another hiccup before the end. Tandy was penalised for a slow-zone infringement, which looked set to hand victory to the Black Falcon Mercedes-AMG GT3. But a late-race red flag after a thunderstorm reset the race. Makowiecki was right behind Adam Christodoulou and dived past into Turn 1 three laps after the green flag.

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"It was still really wet with a lot of standing water, which give us an advantage over the Merc," says Tandy. "With the stoppage, we had a lot of time to think about everything, and we said to Fred, 'No regrets, go flat-out, if you smash it into the wall going for the win, we'll back you up.'"

2020 Spa 24 Hours, overall victory

"A massive long shot." That's how Tandy assessed his chances of victory at the Spa round of the GT World Challenge Europe last October when he climbed aboard the Rowe Racing 911 GT3-R he shared with Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor with three hours to go.

"We still weren't the quickest car, even though it was pretty wet," he says, "but I got in the car with a win-or-bust mentality, because I thought I might not get a better chance to win the thing and I really wanted to complete the set.

"It just so happened that a particular set of track conditions and some awesome strategy got us back into it and allowed us to win. I could see that the gap to the leading Audi [a works Attempto-run R8 LMS GT3 with Patric Niederhauser driving] wasn't really coming down, and then the team came on the radio asking what I thought about staying on the same set of tyres at the last stop.

"The Pirellis are really pressure-sensitive. You need differently pressured tyres for different levels of rain, which is why no one had really tried it. I said, 'Let's do it'. That basically won us the race."