Daytona Friday Notebook

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

***Friday’s action at Daytona International Speedway featured final IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship practice for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, an autograph session in the fan village, as well as the four-hour BMW M Endurance Challenge, which was won by Kellymoss with Riley in a fuel mileage thriller.

***GM sports car program manager Laura Wontrop Klauser says she’s “very proud” of how Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports reacted to the electrical issues and engine changes that have limited the running of the team’s two GTD Pro cars.

***Klauser told Sportscar365: “They have risen to the occasion, and any hiccup that we’ve gotten into, they’ve quickly identified how to move forward and they’ve done it. You can’t assume perfection [with reliability], that’s not reality. You will have situations you have to react to and everyone is reacting well.”

***Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti’s expansion into a two-car Acura ARX-06 GTP effort will “open up the window for strategy” according to the team’s VP and general manager Travis Houge, who told Sportscar365 they’re continuing to “find every last thing we can” out of the car from a performance-standpoint.

***Houge said: “I think our benefit of having two cars is going to show towards the end of the race of being able to do those strategy things we’ve always wished we could have done by having a second car.”

***Despite running only one car at Daytona for the first time in recent memory, several of the team’s FIA World Endurance Championship personnel, including team manager Stephen Mitas, are on-site in a support capacity, with “a lot going on behind the curtain” according to CGR managing director Mike Hull.

***The downscaling of two cars at last year’s edition of the race to one for this weekend could impact strategy for the No. 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R according to the team’s global director of operations Mike O’Gara, who said they’ve lost the ability to experiment with a slower car when it comes to things like tire strategy.

***O’Gara told Sportscar365: “If you have a car that’s multiple laps down, you’re not sure if it’s cold enough for the soft or warm enough for the mediums, even wets, coming off of wets onto intermediates or full slicks, you use that other car as kind of a guinea pig for that.”

***O’Gara added that the team might be forced to take more strategy risks earlier in the race to be in a better position for the crucial closing hours. “The good thing here with the length of the race is you can afford to screw up a little bit early on and make it back up,” he said. “So as a single car entry, we will maybe try some of that stuff earlier in the race to have it in our pocket before late in the race.”

***Per a bulletin issued in November, Michelin has advised GTD Pro and GTD teams to single-stint right-side tires with the new Michelin Pilot Sport Pro GT H1 tire compound, which makes its global debut this weekend. Double stinting, however, will be possible on the left-side tires, with no changes to the GT tire allocations having been made this week.

***GTD and GTD teams are allocated up to 25 sets of tires for the entire Rolex 24 event, not counting an an additional set that could be carried over from qualifying during the Roar weekend.

***IMSA added further clarification to the WeatherTech Championship sporting regulations regarding the GT categories’ “performance expectations” which include but are not limited to “demonstrated speed and lap time performance which maintains competitive equivalency between the most performant of each manufacturer’s car within the GT category, stint length (maximum of 30 green flag laps at maximum pace) and refueling time (minimum of 1.3 seconds per green flag lap).”

***The verbiage is in relation to the so-called sandbagging clauses in the regulations that can allow the sanctioning body to force all cars from a single manufacturer to “stop and repair” if found to have demonstrated increased performance from previous on-track sessions.

***WTR Andretti recently took over shop space in Brownsburg, Ind. that was previously utilized by Team RLL, which moved into a new facility last year. WTR Andretti’s Houge explained that it has a “main workshop” where the GTP and GTD cars are assembled, alongside a Super Trofeo shop and a support structure that’s all connected in the same parking lot.

***The team’s sports car racing programs are set to be integrated into Andretti Global’s $200 million world headquarters in nearby Fishers, Ind. that’s scheduled to open in early 2026.

***IMSA will impound the top three cars from both the GTP and GTD Pro categories following the Rolex 24 in a “controlled location” overnight for a more “through and detailed” inspection beginning at 8 a.m. on Monday. The sanctioning body expects to release cars from inspection by 3 p.m. on Monday according to a bulletin sent to competitors.

***Ford Performance global motorsports director Mark Rushbrook said the manufacturer has taken a number of lessons from the race debut of the Ford GT at the Rolex 24 in 2016 and have incorporated it into the Mustang GT3’s development, which should make it a more reliable car from the start.

***Rushbrook told Sportscar365: “Some of what we experienced on the Ford GT program was a situation that came out of the race during a yellow condition that we hadn’t actually simulated. As much as we simulated race miles with the GT program back in 2016, we didn’t simulate the reality of what happens when you have a yellow flag and some of those conditions. It may have been obvious but weren’t so obvious.”

***Andrea Caldarelli says Lamborghini is “moving forward” with development on its SC63 GTP car, which is due to make its WeatherTech Championship debut at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. “We’ve been doing work at home with the engineers at the factory to take in the data that we got in December here and in Texas [COTA],” he told Sportscar365. “It’s not a lot of data, but I think the testing in December was really positive.”

***Caldarelli is expecting the next major challenge for the program to come in February, when the SC63 will be out testing at Sebring International Raceway ahead of its debut. “We will bring some updates from where we came here in Daytona,” he said. “It will be really challenging because it’s a really unique track. We don’t know yet if our car will adapt well to the track or not. I guess we have to go there and see where we are.”

***The Esses, a new community for motorsports enthusiasts neighboring Watkins Glen International, has become the title sponsor for the Michelin Pilot Challenge race at The Glen in June.  The announcement served as the public unveiling of the 172-acre property adjacent to the southeast border of the track’s property, which is set to include single-family homes, condos, storage garages, trailer parking and nature trails.

***NBC Sports’ coverage of the Rolex 24 kicks off on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. ET on network NBC before transitioning to Peacock and USA Network prior to finishing off on NBC from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday. The entire race will be available on Peacock.

***Leigh Diffey and Dave Burns will anchor NBC Sports’ coverage alongside analysts Calvin Fish, James Hinchcliffe, Steve Letarte, Jeff Burton, Townsend Bell, Brian Till and Marty Snider, with Kevin Lee, Parker Kligerman, Dillon Welch, Hannah Newhouse and Matt Yocum in the pit lane.

***IMSA Radio will also provide flag-to-flag coverage, with the usual team of John Hindhaugh, Jeremy Shaw and Shea Adam joined by Peter Mackay, Bruce Jones, Jonny Palmer, Nick Daman and Joe Bradley this weekend. Hindhaugh and co. will also continue to be the voices of the international TV streaming feed, available at IMSA.tv.

Davey Euwema contributed to this report

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John