AWA Racing’s Orey Fidani & Brendan drivers of Corvettes Iribe of Inception Racing head into this weekend’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans in a dead heat for the Bob Akin Award and its automatic invite to next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, in what both teams have called a “healthy battle” for the coveted entry to the French endurance classic.

Both are previous Akin Award winners. Iribe ended up victorious in 2023, which propelled the Bas Leinders-led Inception squad to a Le Mans berth the following year, where Iribe scored LMGT3 pole for the race.

Fidani, who ended up as the highest-placed Bronze-rated driver in the WeatherTech Championship GTD class last year, took the entire Canadian squad to Le Mans for the first time on the heels of its breakthrough class victory in January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Both Fidani and Iribe enter Saturday’s ten-hour enduro at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta tied on 2,930 points apiece, which means whichever car places higher in the race will bag the coveted title and guaranteed place on the Le Mans grid next June.

“It’s a slightly different picture to last year where we just had to start the race in order to get our ticket to Le Mans,” said Fidani’s season-long co-driver Matt Bell. “This year we’ve got to finish it ahead of the guys in the 70 [car].
“It’s been a real back and forth competition all year.
There’s some races [that have] definitely gone in our favor. Some got in theirs and it’s ended up we are dead tied going into the last race.

“It’s healthy competition; we enjoy competing against each other.
I think there’s a good relationship between the two teams. But both of us want to go to Le Mans and only one of us can win the invite.”
Ollie Millroy, who serves as Iribe’s driver coach and third driver in the No. 70 Inception Ferrari 296 GT3 added:
“We’ve had a fun battle with the 13 car again, and obviously with the guys there.

“It’s been really enjoyable. They’re really good guys as well so it’s been a nice, healthy battle, and it’s obviously going down to the last round, which is really exciting.
“It makes Petit Le Mans a bit more exciting. It also affects how both teams approach the race from like a strategy point of view. We’re also leading the IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup as well. So we’ve got to kind of weigh up [our strategy].

“Luckily this isn’t my department too much, but someone’s got to weigh up, whether we target those Michelin Endurance Cup points or focus solely on the Akin Trophy and the end of the race.”
Millroy, Iribe and Frederik Schandorff are coming off their long-awaited first WeatherTech Championship class victory in last month’s Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which put Iribe back level with Fidani in the Akin title race.

However, as Millroy alluded to, the British team also leads the Michelin Endurance Cup standings, in GTD another title that’s on the eyes of the Ferrari squad.
“It’s a difficult one (juggling both title pursuits), but then at the same time, it isn’t,” said Millroy.
“We had this discussion before every race, and that is absolute priority is to keep it clean.
“IMSA as we know, especially at Petit, can be chaotic with all the restarts.

“People often lose their head and try and win the race with five hours to go, and you just have to stay mature or stay calm, try and keep the thing as clean as possible to the end of the race, and that’s obviously important for the Endurance Cup and for the Akin trophy, but it’s important if you want to win any endurance race.

“Even if we’re going for the outright win, we’re not going to do it with a broken front splitter or something. I think our approach for Petit will be exactly the same, and that would be just to go in [and] keep it clean.

“I think there’s probably more pressure on the guys on the pit wall with the strategy and making the right calls during the race. Then there is what’s on us as drivers, really. Our job is to just go there, drive as fast as we can without the hitting anything, basically.”
Bell, who shares the No. 13 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R with Fidani and third driver Lars Kern, said the team has extra motivation to return to Le Mans after a disappointing debut in the race this year.

“We definitely felt like we left a little bit on the table at Le Mans,” he said. “So that is our priority to get there and go back and achieve and compete properly for a podium there on that side of the pond as well.
“But I do really like the Petit Le Mans trophy as well.

“If it’s a case of a ten out of ten risk to win the race, I might lose the Akin award, I think I would be shot if I went for it!
“But you are always trying to manage risk as a driver. We all want the top step. That’s the end of it. So going into the race, it’s Akin first and let’s see what happens in the last hour.