Daytona Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jurgen Tap/Porsche

***Porsche and Penske made history on Sunday in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, with the German manufacturer claiming its record-extending 21st overall victory with a Porsche-built race car and 25th with a Porsche-engined car, coming in the 75th anniversary of Porsche Motorsport.

***Team Penske, celebrating its 60th anniversary, notched its fifth Rolex 24 class win and third consecutive with the Porsche 963, which saw Felipe Nasr part of the lineup for its triumphs in the GTP class. Sunday’s win came 60 years after Penske’s maiden class victory in 1966, with a GT+3.0 class Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray Coupe, which marked the team’s first win in any series.

***Roger Penske said: “Winning at Daytona is the perfect way to kick off the celebrations to mark the Team Penske’s 60th anniversary. I’d also like to congratulate Porsche on an outstanding start to their ‘75 Years of Motorsport’. Together, we continue to write our success story. Today’s triumph reflects the determination and dedication of everyone working for Porsche Penske Motorsport in Mooresville and Mannheim.”

***While Laurin Heinrich claimed his first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP win in only his second start in the Porsche 963, co-driver Julien Andlauer took his first series victory altogether, alongside Felipe Nasr, who completed a three-peat, joining the prestigious company of Peter Gregg and Helio Castroneves.

***Heinrich became the first German driver to win the race overall since Mike Rockenfeller took top honors in an Action Express Racing Riley-Porsche DP in 2010.

***A Porsche Penske 1-2 finish could have been in the cards had there not been multiple setbacks for the No. 6 car of Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Matt Campbell, including a late-race pit miscue that saw Vanthoor pit from the lead one lap after everyone else while under the race’s final full-course caution.

***The two factory Porsches combined to lead 521 of the 705-lap race.

***With the No. 6 Porsche fading to finish fourth, it promoted the No. 24 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 to a third place finish in the Belgian squad’s GTP debut. “To be honest, this is a very unexpected podium,” said Dries Vanthoor. “After the Roar, the practice sessions and qualifying, we weren’t particularly optimistic and never thought that we could even fight for victory.”

***Both the Nos. 25 BMW and No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 cars made late-race stops for energy top-ups, in what Tom Blomqvist characterized a “very disappointing result.” He added: “We had pace at times but we were do far out of position and then we were out of sync with the strategy so we were kind of on the back foot. Relying on luck is never a nice thing in racing and more times than none that doesn’t play out well. We have a lot of homework to do ahead of Sebring.”

***Wayne Taylor Racing’s pair of Cadillac V-Series.Rs were unable to match the pace of the second-place finishing Action Express entry, with the team’s No. 10 entry of Ricky Taylor ending up being the only retirement in the GTP class after a suspected engine failure that led to a fire at the rear of the car with just over two hours to go. It came after the car bounced back from an early race air jack failure.

***The No. 40 Cadillac, meanwhile, had issues of its own according to Louis Deletraz. “I think sometime after midnight something broke at the back of the car, to be confirmed, but we lost a lot of pace out of it,” he said. “I think we were quite good on deg but then again when its losing pace, we just didn’t have it.”

***Michelin’s new Pilot Sport Endurance range of tires for GTP, which will also be used in the FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar class beginning this year, made a positive worldwide race debut, with no reported issues over the course of the race.

***Michelin Motorsport director Matthieu Bonardel said: “The performance observed is very encouraging, even though we remain in a learning phase. We are now looking forward to feedback from other circuits in order to further strengthen our analysis. Nevertheless, we are pleased to have reached this level of performance while integrating a greater proportion of renewable and recycled materials into our tires.”

***The LMP2 class-winning No. 04 CrowdStrike by APR Oreca 07 Gibson of George Kurtz, Malthe Jakobsen, Toby Sowery and Alex Quinn bounced back from a Turn 1 accident in the opening lap that was triggered by the No. 18 Era Motorsport entry of Naveen Rao and also involved LMP2 cars from TDS Racing, AF Corse and United Autosports.

***Sowery said post-race: “It was our worst nightmare. The first thing you want to is survive Lap 1. The old corny saying, to finish first, first you have to finish. Bronzes, they vary in various skills, and for us George is super good at bringing the car back every time. Fortunately we didn’t get too much damage… and the team fixed everything on the car that was wrong within a lap or two.”

***Inter Europol Competition, in its fist WeatherTech Championship race fielding two LMP2 cars, completed the class podium with its full season No. 43 and Daytona-only No. 343 entry.

***Antonio Felix da Costa said: “This year we executed the perfect race but unfortunately we came a tiny bit short, five seconds from glory. Still to see the team with both cars on the podium is a huge achievement and I was honored to be a part of it.”

***The No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo, which led GTD Pro for 26 laps, ultimately finished ninth after Harry King was forced to serve a stop-and-hold plus 60-second penalty for jumping a restart before the car lost its nose late in the running for the second consecutive Rolex 24, which needed to be replaced.

***King told Sportscar365: “The regulations state that I wasn’t dropping more than I should have. The timing was impeccable and the McLaren, which was a few laps down, checked everyone up. Because I was a few cars back in the queue, by the time the green flag was waved and I was maintaining my speed, we ended up not having to break and we could continue with momentum. Had the McLaren not been there, everyone would have gone at the same pace, so I got put into a bizarre position. We got penalized for it.”

***Manthey recorded a fifth place finish in GTD Pro with its No. 911 Porsche, which lacked pace in the closing stages to stay with the class leaders. The sister No. 912 car, which competed in GTD, battled an issue with engine temperatures. “Even though it seems we brought the Eifel fog with us, it unfortunately didn’t play to our advantage in the end,” said team director Patrick Arkenau.

***Ford had a mixed debut for its Mustang GT3 EVO, with only one of the four cars taking the finish, the No. 65 Multimatic Motorsports-run GTD Pro entry of Christopher Mies, Fred Vervisch and Seb Priaulx, which came home seventh in class.

***Both of the customer GTD entries failed to finish, with a punctured radiator damage ending Gradient Racing’s race, while the Myers Riley Motorsport entry retired after Romain Grosjean had contract with multiple competitors, with the damage determined to be beyond immediately repairable.

***The No. 64 Mustang, meanwhile, dropped out due to a suspected engine failure while Mike Rockenfeller was at the wheel. The incident, which laid oil down on the backstretch, brought out the race’s ninth and final full-course caution. Co-driver Ben Barker said: “We lost some oil pressure, but we won’t know the details until we have had a chance to investigate fully.”

***Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s debut with the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo unraveled early when Juri Vips was forced to the garage due to a tire pressure monitoring system failure, which cost the car 22 laps. The TPMS, supplied by each OEM, is required to be functional at all times per IMSA rules.

***Both of the Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus RC F GT3s struggled for pace all weekend, finishing ninth (No. 12 GTD) and tenth (No. 14, GTD Pro) in class. way. “[I’m extremely proud of Jack [Hawksworth] and Kyle [Kirkwood] for not putting a foot wrong the entire way, as well as the No. 14 team,” said Ben Barnicoat. “We all did a superb job. It’s a little hard to take in that we did everything right, managing only a 10th place finish, but that’s racing.”

***DXDT Racing’s Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R, meanwhile, retired in the 22nd hour due to a gearbox leak after being a contender for the GTD class win. “We took the lead with about three-and-a-half hours to go before we developed a crack in the gearbox,” said Charlie Eastwood. “We’re unsure how it happened, which is just gutting.”

***One of the more serious accidents came in the third hour of the race when the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche of Adam Adelson was involved with contact with Dylan Murry’s No. 83 AF Corse LMP2 car, resulting in Adelson being transported to the hospital for precautionary measures. He was released on Saturday evening.

***Forty nine of the 60 starters took the finish, with 25 finishing on the lead lap of their respective classes and an additional 12 finishing just one lap down.

***The race was impacted by a 6 hour and 33-minute full-course caution period for fog, which began at 12:45 a.m. and marked the longest safety car period in Rolex 24 history, which totaled 120 laps and required two safety car swaps for refueling purposes.

***At least three other previous Rolex 24s were also impacted for fog, the most recent being the 2013 edition which had a 1 hour and 45-minute yellow for low visibility. Two years earlier, in 2011, there was a 2 hour and 47-minute yellow flag period, while the 1989 edition of the race was red-flagged for nearly four hours for fog.

***It’s understood that IMSA race control never considered red-flagging the race, on the count of it being a 24-hour endurance race. The 24 Hours of Le Mans, for instance, has never been red-flagged in its modern history and most recently saw a four-hour safety car period in 2024 for heavy rain and track conditions.

****NASCAR rising star Connor Zilisch, who was behind the wheel of the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac at the time of the long yellow, said it was extremely boring out there while running behind the safety car.

***Zilisch said: “I tried to sing to myself and tried to make it as enjoyable as possible. It was not fun. I had my watch on my wrist and I’d look down and I’d be like, ‘Man it [feels like] 30 minutes has passed and [only] six minutes passed. I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be a long four hours!’ We had to do what we had to do. We couldn’t see anything…. We were pretty blind out there.”

***The longest drive time during the caution came from Tower Motorsport driver Kyffin Simpson, who logged 3 hours, 56 minutes and 12 seconds in his LMP2 car, just barely escaping the four-hour maximum drive time in a six-hour period rule.

***Daytona International Speedway track president Frank Kelleher announced another record fan attendance, surpassing that of last year’s previous record for the event. While NASCAR-owned tracks do not disclose attendance numbers, this year’s Rolex 24 had a nearly-filled grandstand overlooking Turn 1 and parking across International Speedway Blvd. at Volusia Mall at near-capacity.

***IMSA has not yet released provisional results from the race as it still undergoing a “comprehensive” post-race technical inspection with the top-four finishing cars in both GTP and GTD Pro, which were impounded overnight. The extended process is expected to be completed by 3 p.m. today.

Jamie Klein 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