No. 4 Corvette Goes Behind Wall in Hour 10

The No. 4 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R dropped out of contention from the Rolex 24 at Daytona GT Le Mans class battle with an oil leak in the tenth hour.

Marcel Fassler brought the car in around eight laps early in its stint to cut Corvette’s lead challenge down to one car on the new mid-engine model’s first race appearance.

The No. 4 Corvette, which had been running on the lead lap since the start of the race prior to its issue, had not re-emerged from its garage by the end of Hour 10 and had lost nine laps to the class leader.

The car, which is being driven by Fassler, Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin, spent a solid chunk of time in fourth position during the period between hours six and nine, behind the battle for the lead between two Porsches and a BMW.

Milner admitted that he struggled to find a suitable balance in the opening stint while the Corvette crew also struggled with fuel nozzle issues in the early stages.

With 14 hours remaining, the remaining No. 3 Corvette C8.R was running fourth in class and around 25 seconds off the leading No. 24 BMW M8 GTE.

In the overall stakes, Wayne Taylor Racing led the way after 10 hours from fellow Cadillac outfit Action Express Racing and the No. 55 Team Joest Mazda RT24-P.

Scott Dixon opened up a significant lead in the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R before an eight-hour Full Course Caution for an LMP2 nosing in the horseshoe hairpin tire barriers disrupted the DPi order.

While WTR managed to bring its car in just before the caution was flown, Mazda elected not to pit its No. 77 machine during the intervention which put Tristan Nunez out front.

The Cadillac and the Mazda have since been trading the lead through their different pit strategy approaches.

In GT Daytona, Pfaff Motorsports and Paul Miller Racing battled for the front spot in class while several other entries hovered around the top three.

Pfaff’s Porsche 911 GT3 R led at the ten-hour timestamp ahead of the Paul Miller Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo and the No. 88 WRT Speedstar Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo.

The LMP2 lead battle has changed twice since the quarter-distance mark.

Right at the end of Hour 7, Nico Lapierre put the No. 8 Tower Motorsports by Starworks Oreca ahead of Nick Boulle in the No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca to end a period of PR1 dominance extending back to the start of the race.

The race’s second Full Course Caution led to PR1 retaking the lead but Simon Trummer was duly caught and passed by DragonSpeed’s Ben Hanley who continues to lead.