The weekend opened in Monterey with an IMSA DPi team owner asking whether he should reach out to Renger van der Zande regarding a vacancy for 2018. After the Dutchman’s daring pass on Dane Cameron to take the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship win on Sunday, that owner might need to get in line to secure his services.

“To be honest with you, I’ve been doing a lot of hard racing in the U.S., and the track here are amazing,” the Visit Florida Racing driver told RACER. “And Laguna Seca is the best form of that. It’s really hard to overtake, but there are some places that if you nail it, you get the biggest overtaking thrill that you will ever have. That sums up what happened with Dane.”

In a move reminiscent of The Pass, the famous exchange from the 1996 CART IndyCar race where Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Zanardi went down the inside of Team Rahal’s Bryan Herta for victory at the Corkscrew, van der Zande used the same surprise maneuver on Cameron’s Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R to great effect.

I have always been a big Zanardi (@lxznr) fan pic.twitter.com/nk7fwGwgf8

— Renger van der Zande (@Rengervdz) September 25, 2017

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“You have the GT cars that become a variable, and you have to push all the time,” the 31-year-old continued. “It was crazy in the last 10 minutes of the race; I was only on two new tires and the Cadillac was on four, so I had to manage them a lot. Those last 10 minutes, you’re biting the steering wheel, head down, fighting all the way.

“At the moment of the pass, you don’t think about it, but the whole race, you see where you’re better than the other cars and for sure, under braking in the Corkscrew, I was braking 10 meters later than everyone, so I knew it was the only strong point I had. I planned to use it, but the opportunity has to be there to take it. And I must say, Dane was really surprised, he was delayed in turning to the left, and where was little bit of rubbing, but it was very fair I think, and said so as well.”

The reigning IMSA PC champion has been a rocket all season for VFR, but it took a switch to the Ligier JS P217 WEC chassis late in the championship for van der Zande and veteran teammate Marc Goossens to have a shot at capturing an overall win. To say the free agent was showered with praise after the checkered flag would be a sizeable understatement.

“The biggest compliments you can have is from the other drivers, because they know there aren’t a lot of moments where you can try this and have it work out,” he said. “I’ve had manufacturers text me, drivers and team owners from IMSA, WEC, GT racing, and it’s great to get the respect from them after this amazing win and the pass we made.”

Having driven for Zanardi in karts, van der Zande was happy to pay tribute to the Italian hero last weekend.

“I certainly remember his pass, the famous one, which was a lot harder with the open wheels,” he said. “It looked a bit out of control but he got through the corner and for sure you think about that when you’re wanting to get by someone at the Corkscrew. I’m a big fan; I guess that’s why I did it!”