Daytona Thursday Notebook

Photo: John Dagys

***IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship teams unloaded Thursday at Daytona International Speedway for the beginning of a 11-day stretch in Florida that kicks off with this weekend’s Roar Before the Rolex 24. Drivers, meanwhile, stayed busy going through the annual media day activities in the Daytona 500 Club, which included getting photo headshots as well as conducting interviews with assembled media, including Sportscar365.

***Several drivers are absent from the Roar test due to the Michelin 24H Dubai, which takes place this weekend. It includes Jules Gounon, Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Sven Mueller and Matteo Cairoli, while Winward Racing Michelin Pilot Challenge racer Daan Arrow is also racing in the Middle East.

***Despite initially being on the entry list for Dubai, DragonSpeed driver Giacomo Altoe is actually on-site in Daytona this weekend, which will see the Italian driver share the team’s new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R with Henrik Hedman and Casper Stevenson. Cairoli will join them for race week.

***The busy weekend also extends to several teams that are also pulling double duty between Daytona and Dubai, including Winward, GetSpeed, WRT, Optimum Motorsport (Inception Racing) and Muehlner Motorsport. GetSpeed and WRT will also be contesting the final four rounds of the 2025-26 Asian Le Mans Series season in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which immediately follows the Rolex 24.

***WRT is amid a six-week stretch of international events that began with last weekend’s Michelin 6H Abu Dhabi and will conclude with next month’s Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour on Feb. 15, totaling 82 hours of racing spread across venues such as Daytona, Yas Marina Circuit, Dubai Autodrome and Mount Panorama. Team principal Vincent Vosse will be on-site at Daytona this weekend instead of being in Dubai.

***Mercedes-AMG’s Engel recently announced a contract extension, making the German driver the longest-running GT factory pilot with the brand as he readies to kick off his 19th season with the three-pointed star .

***DragonSpeed team principal Elton Julian told Sportscar365 that the team, now based in Concord, N.C., took delivery of its new Corvette in late November and completed a single-day rollout at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, S.C. with Cairoli, Hedman and Corvette factory driver Nicky Catsburg.

***Longtime Team Penske race engineer Raul Prados will switch full-time to the team’s NTT IndyCar Series program, it has been confirmed. Prados has been replaced as race engineer on the No. 6 Porsche 963 by one of the team’s former engineers from its now-defunct FIA World Endurance Championship program. Brandon Fry, meanwhile, will continue to engineer the No. 7 Porsche.

***Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid said they will go into the WeatherTech Championship season without a dedicated reserve driver. The team had one on a rotating basis throughout the IMSA and WEC seasons last year due to its eight-driver core roster between the two series, which has now been reduced to six with an IMSA-only program.

***Diuguid told Sportscar365: “We’ve got three guys here (in each car). Scott [McLaughlin] is going to be in a Corvette and Josef  [Newgarden] is a phone call away, so that’s probably going to be our approach. I wouldn’t say we have an official reserve driver to communicate.”

***Sportscar365 understands that Porsche Penske’s plans to run a retro livery at Daytona, in honor of Team Penske’s 60th anniversary, didn’t materialize but could still happen later this season. It’s believed that heritage liveries based off its DHL-sponsored Porsche RS Spyder and the Penske Sunoco Porsche 917/30 are being considered.

***Kaylen Frederick will get his first laps at the wheel of JDC-Miller Motorsports’ Porsche on Friday as the 23-year-old American was not at last November’s IMSA-sanctioned test. The ex-Super Formula Lights driver is set for his sports car racing debut and confirmed for the Michelin Endurance Cup races according to John Church.

***Church told Sportscar365: “He’s done well in open-wheel so we expect that he’ll take to it fairly quickly. I think the biggest thing for him, like anybody, coming from an open-wheel [background], is adjusting to multi-class racing and driver changes. But I think they all adapt pretty quickly.”

***The JDC-Miller team principal revealed they considered running a four-driver lineup like last year but elected to go with with three in order to “not have too many newbies at once” in the program. In addition to newcomer Frederick, Nico Pino, well experienced with the 963 from his time with Proton Competition in both the WEC and WeatherTech Championship, is joined by team veteran Tijmen van der Helm in the No. 85 entry.

***Church explained: “Last year we had two newbies and unfortunately we kind of cut Pascal [Wehrlein] quite short on drive time up until the race, which wasn’t helpful for him, nor us, in the end. You look at the schedule and it looks like you’ve got a lot of track time. But then when you try and put four drivers in, it’s tough.”

***With Sean Heckman returning to Magnus Racing to call strategy this year, Mike Johnson has been drafted into Pfaff Motorsports as its new full season strategist for its GTD Pro class No. 9 Lamborghini entry, which will become a Temerario GT3 beginning with the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

***Johnson, who also owns Archangel Motorsports, was most recently in the same role with Forte Racing, which is no longer on the WeatherTech Championship grid after three seasons.

***He told Sportscar365: “Having never done GTD Pro before, I am sure I will come across some new challenges with the Pro/Pro driver format and we’ll have to come up with some new secret strategies to get and stay up front. There are so many strong teams in GTD Pro with the best manufacturers and tools in the business.”

***Among the fallout from Forte’s withdrawal included former GTD class champion Mario Farnbacher, who was unable to secure a WeatherTech Championship ride. The 33-year-old German is instead in Pegram Racing’s Honda Civic FL5 TCR car for next week’s Pilot Challenge season opener.

***Scott Dixon received a knighthood in his native New Zealand late last month.  The six-time IndyCar champion has been named a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (KNZM) for services to motorsports.

***The No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-06 has switched primary sponsorship from Ask ROI to BitcoinMAX, a Swiss-based Bitcoin trust that’s launching this month. Both companies are under the portfolio of entrepreneur Todd Ault and will see the sponsorship also extend to MSR’s IndyCar entries.

***Ault said: “As we launch both OnlyBulls and BitcoinMAX globally, this partnership is one of many we plan to announce over the coming months. It’s great to have well-known international driver athletes representing our brands. This partnership with MSR secures us a fan base from New Zealand to England and from Sweden to Brazil. I am very excited to be partners with both Michael Shank and Jim Meyer.”

***Longtime IMSA executive David Pettit retired at the end of last year following a 17-year stint with the organization that began as a director of sales and partnership of Grand-Am. Pettit served as the senior vice president of business operations since 2019 and played a key role in securing and organizing the filming of last summer’s blockbuster movie ‘F1’ during the 2024 Rolex 24, providing significant exposure to IMSA racing.

***Paul Byrd, a facilities and track services expert with more than 25 years of racing experience, has joined Sebring International Raceway as director of operations. Byrd replaces Matt Muha who held the same position and was recently promoted to the role of president and general manager of the facility.

***WeatherTech Championship track action kicks off on Friday with a pair of sessions that are set to run from 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. ET and 4-6 p.m. Pilot Challenge testing and practice for this weekend’s pair of season-opening VP Racing SportsCar Challenge races are also on tap.

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