Photo: Cadillac
Action Express Racing’s debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans last year “swayed” the team’s decision to utilize a three-driver lineup in next weekend’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona according to team manager Gary Nelson.
The defending GTP class champions are the only team in class to have opted for a trio instead of a quartet of drivers, despite the rules set to enforce four driver lineups beginning with the 2025 edition of the race.
The three-time Rolex 24-winning team has triumphed in the event both with three and four-driver lineups, its most recent in 2018 with Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi and Filipe Albuquerque as a trio.
“We’ve had equal success with the different amounts of drivers,” Nelson told Sportscar365. “We’ve done it with five once and we’ve won it with four and won it with three.
“Our drivers, after Le Mans, which is only a three-driver 24-hour event, we just looked at it, talked about it, and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Daytona is three drivers.”
Nelson admitted the only risk with three drivers is if one of the drivers becomes sick or injured.
“But when you look at the practice time and the preparation and getting the spears as sharp as possible, the risks and rewards of each decision, the four-driver lineup doesn’t let you get your guys as acclimated when the race is starting,” he countered.
“With a three-driver lineup, they’re all going to drive at night, they’re all going to drive in whatever the conditions are and they should all be more ready to go.
He added: “Le Mans has mandated only three drivers. It swayed our decision. When you look at the quality of our three drivers…
“The options for a fourth driver, most of them are from a different series. It’s harder to step out of one into another and be as sharp.
“It takes longer, more practice time from the rest of the guys, to get that one guy that’s maybe rusty in this category.
“Last year, Jack was new in our program. We needed to do things but this year we’ve got last year’s winner with Tom, and Pipo has won here and Jack is very experienced with the Cadillac now.
“For us it was the right decision.”
Derani, who won the Rolex 24 in 2016 with Extreme Speed Motorsports in a four-driver squad, echoed Nelson’s comments about drivers with experience.
“In the past we’ve had fourth drivers coming from NASCAR or some big star, but since last year we’ve only done three because since the switch to GTP it’s much harder for someone to just jump in, learn all the settings with the hybrid and everything,” the Brazilian said.
“With that in mind, we thought it was better to avoid the potential risk of having someone not knowing what to do, especially with so little testing.
“With three solid guys, it makes more sense to give ourselves more seat time and optimize the testing.”
Derani added: “I think some other manufacturers have larger pools of drivers, guys who are actually driving the same car in the WEC. That makes it an easy transition for them to do just one race.
“For us, we have some other guys racing the Corvette and we don’t have too many others to rely on. But it’s fine. It’s not like we are at a disadvantage.
Jamie Klein contributed to this report
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