Paired with Render van der Zande and Sebastien Bourdais, the #01 Cadillac Racing entry by Chip Ganassi Racing looked unlikely to feature after some early trouble.

The team was delivered two drive-through penalties in the opening hours of the race but got back onto the lead lap with four hours remaining.

Despite being two laps down at one point, the team resurrected its race and with 15 minutes remaining van der Zande dive-bombed Nick Tandy for the lead.

Tandy was awkwardly placed by a slower GT3 entry that compromised the Porsche driver’s line and allowed van der Zande to make the lunge at Turn 1.

However, in the closing laps, it looked like the race-leading Cadillac would be relegated to the pits when its headlights began to flicker.

At one point, the car’s lights went out entirely, forcing van der Zande to navigate Road Atlanta in the dark.

Despite the drama, van der Zande managed to get the headlights working intermittently and took the chequered flag 2.9 seconds clear of the Nick Tander/Kevin Estre/Mathieu Jaminet Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963.

The sister Porsche featuring Australia’s Matt Campbell, Felipe Nasr, and Dane Cameroun wound up 13.8 seconds adrift in third.

“It was a bit of a disco going on,” van der Zande laughed.

“I started to press all kinds of buttons this way, and it was still not good enough.

“Then it stuck more and more and more, then they told me, ‘Press the white button,’ so I pressed the white button and it worked. So, we got the lights back.”

On the pass for the lead, van der Zande explained: “It was the only move I could make.

“I was behind Tandy for a while, and he was so fast on the straights. Every time they pulled a gap of like, I don’t know, six, seven car lengths.

“But in the corners, we were very fast. Especially we set up the car a lot for Turn 1 and Turn 3. That’s where I could really make up a lot of ground.”

The 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship gets underway with the 24 Hours of Daytona on the last weekend of January.