Risi Competizione and Ferrari, a winning combination like no other in American sportscar racing. Multiple class wins at Le Mans, Sebring, and Petit Le Mans. Championships in the American Le Mans Series.
But in the decade in which they’ve contested the Rolex 24 at Daytona together, Giuseppe Risi’s team from Houston and the Prancing Horse of Maranello hadn’t won before…until now. Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Davide Rigon, and Daniel Serra drove the #62 Ferrari 296 GT3 to what will surely be remembered as a popular victory in the GTD Pro class at Daytona.
It breaks two long winless droughts, for both team and manufacturer. Ferrari got their first win as a GT constructor since 2014, when Level 5 Racing’s Ferrari 458 Italia won the GTD class in the first post-unification Rolex 24.
Pier Guidi, who was part of Level 5’s class-winning lineup in 2014, picks up his second Rolex timepiece a decade later. For his 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning co-driver Calado, and for Rigon and Serra, it is their first.
And, for Risi Competizione, this is their second Rolex 24 class win. The first was as part of a collaborative entry fronted by Bill Rand and Rand Racing, whose Lola B2K/40-Nissan won the SRP II class and finished third overall. This is Risi’s first win as the sole entrant, and first with the Italian manufacturer with which it is so synonymous.
This one carries meaning for generations of sportscar racing fans, particularly those in the US, who’ve grown up watching the modern reincarnation of the old North American Racing Team of yesteryear.
“I think Giuseppe deserves this victory. said Pier Guidi, who’s spent the last seven Rolex 24s driving for Risi. “For us, were trying a lot of times to achieve this victory, We finished twice in second, and it’s a long-time partnership between Risi and Ferrari, and we’ve come with us and with the other drivers very close many times, but never been able to achieve this victory.
“And finally, we get it. If you see the footage after the checkered flag – the picture is amazing. Everyone was crying, and happy, and I went and I gave a big hug to Giuseppe, because of all the passion he put in this effort. He really deserved this.”
Daniel Serra set the tone with an early charge to the front of the field in the opening hour, and as atrition wrecked the GTD Pro field, Risi kept it clean and stayed near the front of the field in doing so. The most strife they faced came with less than eight hours remaining – when they picked up an untimely drive-through penalty for not properly handling a fire extinguisher in pit lane.
With four hours and 15 minutes left, it was Calado who got past BMW’s American phenom Neil Verhagen in the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW to take a lead it would never relinquish. Serra, the man on the charge from the sixth row of the 36-car GTD combined grid, got to take the chequered flag after 733 laps and just a touch under 24 hours of racing.
Now the new Ferrari 296 GT3, plagued by floor mounting issues in its debut one year ago, can boast two big 24-hour race wins in less than 12 months – Daytona and the Nürburgring – with many more in its sights.
“We’ve had a year to develop. There was a lot to learn,” explained Calado. “This car wasn’t as easy to get right as the 488. We took a different approach. A lot of it’s different – not only the way it’s made, but the fact that we got parts on the car which we can quick-change, which the 488 didn’t.
“Last year we were nowhere. We were two seconds off – and of course, it was a brand new car, it was its first race. But it’s won the 24 Hours of Nürburgring. And we took a lot from that, and GT World Challenge, and things like that. We’re still part of, let’s say, the development process.
“The car was nice to drive this week. Even from the Roar we knew.”
GTD Pro’s new fan-favourite, the #77 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (Seb Priaulx/Laurin Heinrich/Michael Christensen) would only finish a lap down in second place. “Rexy the GT3 Rawr” may not have gotten the storybook win that his adoring fans had hoped for, but all in all – for a second-year team in its first race in GTD Pro, not a bad result.
It’s easy to create rage bait out of Balance of Performance adjustments like the ones the Porsche 911 GT3 Rs received after the Roar Before the 24, but the 992s were far from hopeless versus last year’s awful, crisis-inducing debut.
Of course, simply running a clean race would count for a lot in GTD Pro as the race unfolded!
Speaking of GTD to GTD Pro graduates…Paul Miller Racing will have every right to feel equal parts accomplished and frustrated. The #1 BMW M4 GT3 (Madison Snow/Bryan Sellers/Neil Verhagen/Sheldon van der Linde) finished third, better than what some may have expected. The reigning GTD champion team showed that it had the skill and the operational talent to fight with the best in GTD Pro, leading 197 laps to Risi’s 215 on the day.
But they’ll have been hurt that a calamitous pit stop with less than two hours to go, which led to a loose right front wheel, took them out of contention for an even bigger result – potentially second place, potentially a statement first win in GTD Pro.
It was believed the problem was a broken wheel hub. It turned out to have been a broken rotor after a brake change. And the drivers had to manage a problem with the ABS over those last hours.
Now, cast your mind back again to one year ago. Winward Racing, GTD class winners in 2021, won the pole in 2023. Days later, Lucas Auer suffered a debilitating practice crash that left him unable to race, and the team from Texas had to rush just to get a backup car ready for the race.
Winward Racing overcame that adversity to fight for the win – until Philip Ellis clipped the wall at the same spot where Auer had his crash. It was a terrible end for Winward’s 2023 fairy tale. And after testing and qualifying last week, there didn’t seem to be a hope of even coming close to avenging that loss.
But for Russell Ward, Philip Ellis, Indy Dontje, and Daniel Morad, the one that got away came back to them. Winward Racing got its second GTD win in four years with the #57 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo. It was the second GTD win for all four drivers – Ward, Ellis, and Dontje who won in 2021, and Morad, who got his first Rolex timepiece with Alegra Motorsports in 2017.
Winward Racing had to work its way back from the 15th row of that combined GTD grid but got to the lead for the first time after three hours. Once the sun had set on Saturday night, the Winward Mercedes began roaring into life, led substantial laps for the first time, and usurped the would-be favourites from Vasser Sullivan to stake its claim to GTD supremacy.
“A lot of this work was done at the (December) BOP test,” Ward recalls. “We had a bit of an advantage there and got to experience the new tyre, which was quite a bit different from last year’s tyre. We just kind of set the car for the long run. That’s what we all like, and it’s nice to put a fast lap together, but at the end of the day, you just want to be good on the long run. I think the engineers did a great job of doing that.”
In total, the quartet of Ward, Ellis, Dontje and Morad led 383 out of the 731 laps they completed by the time they won their class. It also helped to steer clear of penalties, which sunk the likes of Korthoff Preston Motorsports (fifth) and Lone Star Racing (eighth), both of whom had quick cars and quick drivers but lost out on bigger results.
Only another stroke of rotten luck would deny Winward the victory, and it seemed to come when the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus caught fire in the last hour, eliminating a near-30-second advantage for Morad over the pursuing #21 AF Corse Ferrari of Miguel Molina.
“Obviously I wanted it to be an easy victory,” Morad said. “We all did an amazing job building the gaps throughout all the stints. It wasn’t just me. It was every single person on the team and the engineering staff. The whole prep on the car was phenomenal.
“A lot easier this year than last year, having a car that was designed for the race. But if that didn’t happen, then I probably wouldn’t be here right now. Everything happens for a reason, and I’m super pumped to be driving with these guys. We all did this together. It wasn’t one specific person. We all put in a hell of an effort.”
Molina, the Ferrari Hypercar driver – in a car that was set up to surge into form once the sun had risen in the morning, clung to the racer-turned-Twitch streamer (turned racer again) Morad as best as he could. But he would fall just 2.7 seconds short of an AF Corse GTD win and a Ferrari clean sweep of the GTD class.
But let’s take stock once more in the fact that the GTD customer Ferraris had overcome the first-year gremlins for a strong sophomore showing, taking second through fourth!
The #21 AF Corse Ferrari (Simon Mann/François Heriau/Kei Cozzolino/Miguel Molina), as mentioned, made the right adjustments to take the fight to the field and rise up the running order with a late push. What of Conquest Racing, back in IMSA full-time for the first time since unification? The #34 Ferrari (Manny Franco/Albert Costa/Cedric Sbirrazzuoli/Alessandro Balzan) showed great poise on the way to a third-place finish in what will be the car’s full-season debut.
Arguably the most pleasant surprise of those three was the #023 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari (Onofrio Triarsi/Charlie Scardina/Alessio Rovera/Ricky Agostini), which produced the best battles of the GTD classes – particularly with Triarsi against Dontje.
And it would be worth pointing out the sixth-place finish for the #83 Iron Dames Lamborghini (Sarah Bovy/Michelle Gatting/Rahel Frey/Doriane Pin), the Dames’ best finish in IMSA thus far.
The Rolex 24 at Daytona is a tough race, even in these modern generations of race cars that are engineered to be driven at the limit for 24 hours. But GTD Pro was wrought with a great deal of mechanical and incidental carnage that left only two out of the 13 entries in class to finish within a lap of the lead.
Start with the new models. The new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs didn’t have the grand debuts they’d hoped for.
The #3 had to replace a damaged oil tank which cost it seven laps, and the #4 with a power steering pump problem that required over 35 minutes to replace. And that’s just on the Corvette Racing/Pratt Miller Motorsports side in GTD Pro. Both AWA Corvettes in GTD retired from the race – the gold and black #13 with a power steering failure, and the seafoam green #17 with an electrical failure.
Chevrolet’s natural rivals at Ford fared little better with the new Mustang GT3. The two Ford Multimatic Motorsports cars were seldom a factor after nightfall, where the #64 finished seven laps down after picking up damage earlier in the night, and the #65 retired with two hours and ten minutes left in the race after going behind the wall, also from accident damage. This was a theme – as the GTD class #55 Proton Competition Mustang retired with damage to the diffuser that was too great to continue from.
And then there were the three revised Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evos, including the GTD Pro class #23 Heart of Racing Team car, which picked up accident damage overnight. In a sense, it was something of a solid effort for Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas, and Mario Farnbacher to plug away and take a fourth place finish in class – a decent foundation to build a 2023 title campaign upon.
Then again, the GTD class Aston Martins – the #27 Heart of Racing car and the #44 of Magnus Racing, weren’t so lucky – the former retiring with a fuel system failure, and the latter retiring from accident damage in an incident with an LMP2 car.
Elsewhere in the carnage of GTD Pro, Pfaff Motorsports’ debut with McLaren didn’t go as planned. Before sunset, the papaya-and-plaid #9 McLaren 720S GT3 EVO went behind the wall with a wheel bearing problem, and four hours short of the finish, the car was parked, short of its potential.
Iron Lynx’s two-pronged attack in GTD was also blunted. The #19 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 lost 15 minutes needing a radiator replacement, but they were more fortunate than the crew of the #60 car, which suffered a fatal gearbox problem. At least, from here, Iron Lynx and Lamborghini have something to look forward to when the Lamborghini SC 63 makes its American debut in two months at Sebring.
Last year’s GTD Pro champion team, Vasser Sullivan Racing, had two cars that could have took a clean sweep of both GTD classes – but neither of them were fated to win. In GTD Pro, the title-winning #14 got wiped out by an out-of-control LMP2, took a heavy hit at the front, and could never survive the damage inflicted.
The GTD class #12 looked like it would salvage at least a podium until the engine went “boom” just as Parker Thompson was about to begin his last stint. The #12 caught fire spectacularly, though Thompson walked away unhurt.
And finally, a fuel pump failure cost Kenny Habul’s SunEnergy1 Racing team a chance at the win. Maro Engel and Jules Gounon won GTD Pro together last year with WeatherTech Racing and Proton Competition, but the chrome orange #75 Mercedes-AMG GT3 just couldn’t last the distance.
Feature Image © Michael L. Levitt / IMSA
Images © Jack Webster / Dailysportscar.com
