Why Tandy’s enduro record should be celebrated after his Daytona triumph

Nick Tandy’s smile was as broad as the Bedfordshire fields his family farms. He’d just triumphed at last month’s Daytona 24 Hours, a feat that gave him a record all of his own. He now has a victory – that’s overall, to be clear – in each of the major 24-hour enduros after adding another win to his outright successes at Le Mans, Spa and the Nurburgring. “Not bad for a farmer,” he reckoned. Not bad for a driver who started out racing Minis, you might add.

Casting aside such quips, the Porsche driver admitted in the wake of this year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship curtain-raiser that he’d been thinking about reaching this milestone for some time. In fact, since he made it three out of four with victory at a delayed Spa 24 Hours in October 2020.

But here’s a thing. That victory driving a Rowe Racing Porsche 911 GT3-R made him a winner at all of the 24-hour biggies. Tandy notched up his Le Mans and Nurburgring ‘overalls’, as the Americans like to say, in 2015 and 2018 respectively, but before putting either in the book he’d scored his first Daytona victory in class. That came in 2014 in GT Le Mans in his second year as a Porsche factory driver.

Spa completed a set – and actually a bigger set than a full house at the twice-around-the-clock events. You might remember a story in the pages of Autosport magazine early in 2021 [14 January 2021 issue – ed] celebrating the Tandy victories – overall or in class – not just in that quartet but also at those other sportscar classics, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Petit Le Mans enduro at Road Atlanta (though ‘Quick Nick’ wasn’t the first to do it). He notched up his first Petit victory in 2013, two years before that amazing overall victory aboard a Porsche 911 RSR in sodden conditions in 2015. Further class victories were chalked up in 2018 and 2020, while he took the first of a hat-trick of Sebring class successes in 2018.

To save you the bother of counting, Tandy now has a total of 12 winner’s trophies from the big six. We can’t say that’s unprecedented. Tom Kristensen’s combined record tallies of overall wins at Le Mans and Sebring surpasses that figure, even before you add in the Dane’s solo Petit triumph to pump up his total to 16. Note the absence of a Daytona victory: Kristensen never competed there, so missed out on the chance to complete what is known as the triple crown of endurance with wins at the self-styled World Center of Racing, Le Mans and Sebring.

That brings me on to how we should judge all these crowns – the triple, the four x 24 quadruple that seems set to become known as the grand slam, and the sextuple? Which is the greater achievement?

Tandy (right) 12 years ago taking his first class win at Petit Le Mans, the start of his run of triumphs at all major enduros

Photo by: Eric Gilbert

That’s difficult to say. What we shouldn’t forget is that Spa and the ’Ring were traditionally touring car fixtures, even if the former did start out as a Le Mans copycat. They became sportscar races – GT events specifically – really only this century, which goes a long way to explaining why no one had done the grand slam before.

Laurens Vanthoor is now only one away after triumphing at Daytona alongside Tandy in their Porsche 963 LMDh. Earl Bamber and Mike Rockenfeller are also missing one outright victory, at Daytona and Spa respectively.

There are other winners of three of the four. One is the great Hans Stuck, who won Spa in a tin-top and at the Nurburgring in both types of machinery. He somehow contrived never to triumph at Daytona, despite his two Le Mans wins and three at Sebring.

Should Tandy win the 12 Hours, this March or somewhere down the line, he’ll also have completed another quadruple crown of outright wins, one formed of Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring plus Petit

The absence of a Daytona success also means Stuck failed to complete the triple crown in the races in which prototypes race for overall victory. There are some other notable absentees, endurance legends Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell included. Ickx never won the Daytona 24 Hours, only the early-season Florida enduro when it was held over six hours during the fuel crisis in 1972. Bell never won at Sebring, though he has the suspicion that he did. Some suggest that the Spice-Chevrolet in which he finished second in 1995 somehow contrived to lose a lap on the official count courtesy of a timing glitch.

Only a select few have managed the triple crown: just 10 drivers. Some pretty impressive names – Dan Gurney, Hans Hermann, AJ Foyt and Hurley Haywood included – are on the list. Tandy has now set the target of joining them by winning overall at Sebring after a couple of near-misses over the past two years.

And should Tandy win the 12 Hours, this March or somewhere down the line, he’ll also have completed another quadruple crown of outright wins, one formed of Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring plus Petit. Only one driver, Andy Wallace, has achieved that, so that would be quite an accolade.

And when the arguments start about what is the most important – the triple or quadruple crown or the grand slam – he’d be able to trump anyone.

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Tandy will target the Sebring 12 Hours next month to continue his collection of major race wins

Photo by: James Gilbert - Motorsport Images