Daytona Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

***Porsche Penske Motorsport made history on Sunday at Daytona International Speedway, with its No. 7 Porsche 963 of Felipe Nasr, Dane Cameron, Matt Campbell and Josef Newgarden giving Porsche its record-extending 19th overall win the Rolex 24 and first since The Racers Group’s outright triumph with its Porsche 911 GT3 RS in 2003.

***Additionally, it was Team Penske’s first Daytona 24 hours win since 1969, when Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons drove a Lola T70 Mk.3B Chevrolet to top honors in the race.

***Top brass from Porsche were on-site to celebrate the win, including Michael Steiner, member of the executive board for development at Porsche AG, who accepted the teams’ trophy on the podium. “We never gave up and didn’t let the tough setbacks from last year rock us,” Steiner said. “Now, we’re reaping the rewards of our hard work.”

***The 791 laps, or 2815.96 miles completed by the top-five finishing entries eclipsed last year’s GTP benchmark distance by eight laps, despite the 15 full course cautions over the course of the race. The No. 7 Porsche led a race-high 309 laps, compared to the second-placed No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R that was out front for 283 laps.

***Race winner Nasr said he was “confused” when he was told there were two laps to go and then was later informed it was the last lap of the race. “‘You’ve got to keep on the throttle until it’s over.’ That’s what Tim Cindric said on the radio,” Nasr said. “I was confused, too. I don’t know if there was two white flags. I really don’t know… I think at the start finish, the team just said, I think now it’s the final lap. That’s when I knew. I think for the second time it was the final lap.”

***An “officiating error” led to the early checkered flag on the race according to a statement released by the sanctioning body on Monday afternoon.

***Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle said they “reacted” to the early race penalty for the No. 6 Porsche for “failure to adhere to controlled powertrain parameters” and sent out updated software to all of the Porsche 963s during the race to mitigate the issue. He said the subsequent stop-and-hold plus 10-second penalties for the same car was “technically another problem.”

***Kuratle explained that the cars’ “jumping” over the curbs in the Le Mans Chicane was the root cause of the issue, which had “peaks” and was “too much” for the system prior to the in-race corrections made. Several other 963s, including the No. 5 Proton Competition entry, also received warnings early in the running.

***Kuratle, who also looks over Porsche’s LMDh customer program, said he was “especially proud” of the overall result, which saw all four Porsche 963s finish in the top-six overall. “Especially as reliability was one of our biggest concerns last year,” he said. “Once again we did a lot of work and getting all four cars [to the finish] was huge.”

***Porsche Penske managing director Jonathan Diuguid revealed that the majority of its FIA World Endurance Championship engineering team was either on-site in Daytona or back at Porsche’s ops room in Weissach to assist.”[They were] cycling in and out so everybody wasn’t staying up 24 hours looking at computer screens across the world,” he explained. “But there was a high level of support that took us to the finish line today.”

***Honda Racing Corporation USA President David Salters said a third place finish for the No. 40 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06 was the “most we could get out”of the race after being unable to take the fight to the Porsches and second-place finishing No. 31 Action Express Cadillac.

***Acura’s overall win streak in the Rolex 24 came to an end on Sunday, at three consecutive wins.

***Despite coming up short in the overall win, Pipo Derani, Jack Aitken and Tom Blomqvist have taken an early lead in the Michelin Endurance Cup standings, with the Action Express trio three points up on the Daytona-winning Porsche Penske quartet.

***CrowdStrike Racing by APR (LMP2), Paul Miller Racing (GTD Pro) and Korthoff/Preston Motorsports (GTD) lead their respective classes in the Endurance Cup heading into the second leg at Sebring International Raceway in March.

***BMW driver Rene Rast said the race showed how far the German manufacturer still has to go despite the strides it has made with the M Hybrid V8 since its debut last year. “We had really positive phases of the race, there was one point where I was leading and pulled a little gap, but not for long,” Rast told Sportscar365. “The car came alive at certain points, but we had a few little issues that put us many laps down.”

***Rast added that he felt BMW didn’t have the pace at the end of the race to contend for a podium, although he believed a top-five finish was on the table with a clean run.

***The race results remain unofficial pending the outcome of a new-for-2024 secondary post-race technical inspection for the top three cars from both GTP and GTD Pro, which is expected to conclude by 3 p.m. ET on Monday. Additionally, Sportscar365 understands that parts from multiple cars will be taken to NASCAR’s R&D Center in Concord N.C. for further inspection, as part of a typical post-race inspection process.

***Ryan Dalziel notched his third Rolex 24 class victory as part of the LMP2-winning Era Motorsport crew, adding to a previous LMP2 class triumph with Era in 2021 and an overall win driving for Action Express Racing in 2010. Dwight Merriman claimed his second victory, also adding to the 2021 success, while Connor Zilisch and Christian Rasmussen both became first-time winners.

***Dalziel praised the performance of his younger co-drivers Rasmussen and Zilisch. “I feel like today Dwight and I just kind of did our job, and I actually at the end, I gave up my last stint because I felt like these two guys were the strongest guys on the day and wanted to make sure that we put the best feet forward for that last stint,” Dalziel said.

***Sean Creech Motorsport’s Bronze-rated driver Lance Willsey vowed the team will “get back stronger” after it endured a tough debut outing in LMP2. The No. 33 Ligier JS P217 Gibson was involved in several incident and encountered a battery/alternator issue on two separate occasions before it ultimately retired after the car’s rear decklid failed on Sunday morning.

***United Autosports picked up a sixth place class result with its best-placed Oreca 07 Gibson driven by Ben Keating, Ben Hanley, Nico Pino, and Pato O’Ward. The car was an early front runner, but lost ground after suffering overnight bodywork damage. The sister No. 22 car, which encountered suspension damage after Daniel Goldburg went off in the second hour, was retired on Saturday evening.

***Pietro Fittipaldi thanked Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports for the “last-minute call up” to the No. 52 Oreca. “I’ve very happy with the job that everyone did, we finished P4 at the end and we were in the fight for the podium position all the way to the finish line,” he said.

***Clement Novalak, who Fittipaldi replaced after the French driver suffered a late injury, was at the track to watch the race with the team, an Inter Europol spokesperson told Sportscar365.

***Risi Competizione claimed its second Rolex 24 class win, more than 20 years after its first. The Houston-based squad, in association with Rand Racing, claimed SRP2 class honors in 2022 with a Lola B2K/40 Nissan with drivers Anthony Lazzaro, Bill Rand, Terry Borcheller and Ralf Kelleners.

***GTD Pro class winner Alessandro Pier Guidi said it would be a “dream come true” to race the Ferrari 499P at Daytona in the future, although admitted that the “game is not in our hands” alluding to the fact that the Italian manufacturer currently has no plans to introduce the LMH car into the WeatherTech Championship.

***Giuseppe Risi, however, made comments to IMSA Radio during the race on his continued interest in acquiring and running a 499P in the series, although stated that the car isn’t ready for privateers until its third year (2025) and that the finances required would be high.

***Mike Conway felt “really gutted” following his opening hour accident that took the No. 14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 out of contention after contact with Dennis Andersen’s spinning High Class Racing Oreca in Turn 3. The GTD Pro contender returned to action after extensive repairs only to be retired later in the race.

***Conway said: “Not much I could do to avoid the spinning car in front of me. Maybe I could’ve seen it coming, but once it happened, I had nowhere to go. I’m really disappointed as I thought we had a good shot at the podium, so unfortunate we couldn’t achieve that.”

***Seb Priaulx revealed to Sportscar365 that he missed about two hours of  scheduled driving time aboard the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R after becoming unwell in the early hours of Sunday morning. Co-drivers Michael Christensen and Laurin Heinrich took turns to take the car to the flag on Sunday, where Priaulx joined them for the podium ceremonies.

***Miguel Molina said that the second-placed GTD class Ferrari that he drove in the closing stages, the No. 21 AF Corse car, “gambled” on not changing the front brakes during the race, as he came up 2.731 seconds short of Daniel Morad’s Winward Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

***Molina said: “At the end this cost us some performance, and the Mercedes was a bit better on pace. They had good traction and they also had the tow of the Risi [GTD Pro] car for that whole last stint, so I could not attack them properly.”

***None of the debuting customer Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs or the privateer Ford Mustang GT3 made it to the finish. AWA retired both of its GTD class cars, with the No. 13 entry, which started from the pit lane, succumbing to power steering issues and the electrical gremlins hitting the No. 17 Corvette. Proton’s Mustang GT3, meanwhile, retired due to an accident.

***The No. 66 Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 that had starred in practice was forced to retire from the race at 4 a.m., having been put behind the wall due to ECU issues according to an Acura spokesperson. The car was also delayed by a puncture and some light front bodywork damage, a legacy of Stevan McAleer running over some debris.

***Honda Racing Corporation President Koji Watanabe was present over the weekend in the first race for the newly restructured Honda Racing Corporation USA organization (formerly Honda Performance Development).

***While official attendance numbers were not released, IMSA President John Doonan said pre-race that the event was trending to be the most-attended Rolex 24 in race history. It was confirmed that the Roar Before the Rolex 24 had record attendance levels.

***The Austin Hatcher Foundation, an official charity of IMSA, presented Doonan with the Impact Award on Saturday morning prior to the start of the race. The foundation for pediatric cancer has raised $3.6 million since its formation in 2009. Doonan, meanwhile, has recently become a member of its board of directors.

Jamie Klein & 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