Three hours down and the 2020 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona is still caution-free.
Kamui Kobayashi has seized the lead of the Rolex 24 in the #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R. from Tristan Nunez in the #77 Mazda RT24-P. Outside of the occasional pit cycles, this is the first time since the start of the race that the #77 Mazda has not controlled the lead.
Kobayashi passed Nunez on the brakes into Turn 1 in the final fifteen minutes of the third hour and has already moved the #10 Cadillac out to a lead of 2.614 seconds.
The aforementioned #77 Mazda and Nunez still hold onto second place.
DPi runners were in the middle of a pitstop cycle leading to a slightly jumbled running order. The #5 Mustang Sampling JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac DPi-V.R. is currently running third, but it still owes the field a pitstop.
The pair of Acura Team Penske entries who have completed their pitstops are projected to cycle back into positions three and four once all of the pit stops have been completed.
There has still not been a yellow flag and the only drama in the DPi involved the #31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac DPi-V.R. A piece of debris lodged itself in the air intake leading to an immediate drop off in power and necessitating an emergency stop to remove the debris.
That unscheduled pitstop dropped the #31 Cadillac to seventh in the class.
LMP2
The #52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA 07 remains in the lead of LMP2, Simon Trummer is in the car and has a lead of 54.797 seconds on the next best car in the class.
A fascinating battle at the top of LMP2 has emerged between the #52 ORECA 07 and the #81 DragonSpeed ORECA 07, even if that battle is yet to materialize into door-to-door racing.
The gap between the two cars has fluctuated from being as little as five seconds to as large as one minute as the two teams cycle between their pro-rated and am-rated drivers getting behind the wheel of the car.
Ben Hanley had brought the #81 ORECA to within five seconds but he handed the car over to Henrik Hedman who could not keep the pace with Simon Trummer who had been installed in the #52 ORECA 07 at the same time.
As Trummer pulled away in the #52 ORECA, Hedman fell back into the grasps of the #8 Tower Motorsports and dropped down to third behind the #8 ORECA. Harrison Newey is now at the controls of the #81 ORECA.
In short; a quick glimpse at the timing screens won’t be enough to get the full picture of the race in LMP2. The dynamic between pro and am drivers getting in and out of the car, while not creating interesting television, is creating an interesting strategic storyline.
GTLM
At this early stage Porsche seems to have the measure of both GT classes.
Having harried the #911 pole-sitter and earlier leader, the #912 Porsche RSR-19 got the better of the Porsche team’s third pit stops to take the lead and started to edge ahead, Earl Bamber now nearly four seconds ahead of Fred Makowiecki.
Nick Tandy had doubled stinted in the lead for the #911 and was happy with early progress, his car sporting additional tape-work on its right front corner: “I’m feeling much better after heavy cold all week. The car’s been great, it’s pretty easy to run at the front and I’m glad to see the sister car going well too. It’s so fast we’re tearing the livery off!”
Having had a fairly low key start, the #24 BMW M8 had established itself solidly in third, ten seconds adrift of the Porsches controlling the pace, which seemed more than the new Corvettes could contend with. Having pushed hard at the start, the C8.Rs were circulating fourth and fifth on the road, fourteen seconds adrift of Chaz Mostert’s BMW and very much separated.
Antonio Garcia: “We can’t complain. I had a good start, learning where they were strong and where we were strong. I had a problem with the shift and slipped back. We are adjusting, cos up to this point we were guessing how the car would be over a stint. If we make mistakes its better now than towards the end. You need to know when to push and when to save the tyres, so we’re not quite at the right spot but if we can clean things up a bit we should be looking better. Even though having a new car is not in our favour, our instinct is still to go for the win.”
Tommy Milner: “We kinda had flip-flop stints, my first had car balance issues, which improved after the first pit stop and my second was better. We’re generally happy with the car but we’re losing a bit more time on out-laps and in the pits, which the guys are looking into, but pace-wise is where we expected to be. Being seated more centrally in the car I’ve found the C8.R is more forgiving of your natural instinct as a driver to correct should the car slide, whereas the C7 was a little more difficult being sat further back toward the rear axle. Our huge experience here as a team helps; as the track develops so that knowledge comes into play.”
GTD
In GTD the field was beginning to string out, some of the slower cars in desperate need of a caution period.
Dennis Olsen had the measure of the class, leading by some 16 seconds now in the #9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche that had led from the green flag. Bryan Sellers’s #48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborgini sat second, sixteen seconds adrift. The Pfaff Porsche’s lead had been challenged throughout the first three hours by the Turner Motorsports BMW M6 GT3, but the Lamborghini had the better third pit stop.
