Porsche Penske Motorsport kicked off a year in which the German manufacturer and American racing team celebrates the many achievements of its past, by creating new history with their third straight win at the Rolex 24 At Daytona.
But while the factory Porsches looked like the dominant force for most of this year’s Daytona 24 Hours, as it so often does in IMSA, the race came down to a sprint finish that made the team and star driver Felipe Nasr have to fight to the bitter end to secure the victory.
Nasr took the lead on the first lap of the race, and together with young co-drivers Julien Andlauer and Laurin Heinrich, they led 375 out of 705 laps completed. Together with the #6 Penske Porsche, the factory team led nearly three-quarters of the race, leaving drivers from rival teams in disbelief, perhaps demoralised.
It wasn’t a race without challenges: The #6 car suffered damage from collisions with cars in other classes, leaving the car with residual damage. The #7 car also had to make repairs to the nose of the car during the agonising six-hour, 33-minute, 25-second Full Course Yellow to wait out heavy fog and poor visibility overnight.
And at the end, a strong challenger came to the forefront: The #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R came to life in the final two hours of the race.
Nasr would have to fend off Jack Aitken over the last 45 minutes, masterfully fighting through traffic to keep Aitken at bay. Aitken was able to run Nasr close, and with 22 minutes to go, he made an attempt to lunge up the inside of the Porsche at turn one – only for the Brazilian to close the door. Aitken would never get as close again and the Porsche kept the Cadillac at arms’ length until the cheqred flag.
Three straight wins for Nasr – matching the mark set by his legendary Brazilian compatriot Hélio Castroneves, three in a row for Porsche (25 in total) and for Penske.
Don’t overlook what the win meant for Andlauer and Heinrich, their first wins in IMSA GTP. It’s the culmination of Andlauer’s rapid ascent through the Porsche racing ladder, and a perfect way for Heinrich to begin life as a full works Porsche driver.
Action Express Racing drivers Aitken, Earl Bamber, Frederik Vesti, and Connor Zilisch finished second in their #31 Cadillac. They came back from the rear of the GTP field after the car failed technical inspection after what would have been pole for Aitken. They then had to come back from a lap down after being handed a 60-second stop-and-go penalty when Zilisch ran the red light at the exit of pit lane during the “fog delay”.
Completing the podium was BMW M Team WRT, whose #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 (Sheldon van der Linde/Dries Vanthoor/Robin Frijns/René Rast) finished third in the team’s IMSA GTP debut. That establishes a solid foundation for WRT as it begins its new challenge in IMSA.
The #6 Penske Porsche faded to fourth after running as part of a 1-2 for most of the race. Completing the top five was the #93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing ARX-06 (Renger van der Zande/Nick Yelloly/Álex Palou/Kakunoshin Ohta) – which had the pace to fight the Porsches on Saturday night until the car lost a wheel just before the aforementioned fog delay.
Nine cars finished on the lead lap after 24 hours, a group rounded out by the #40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac, the #85 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche, the #25 WRT BMW, and the #60 MSR Acura.
And ten of those cars finished the race, including the #23 Aston Martin THOR Team Valkyrie in its first Daytona start. The car broke down several times during the race – including a steering issue with about an hour to go – but The Heart of Racing Team did not give up and ensured that the car would make it to the finish.
The #10 Wayne Taylor Cadillac wasn’t so lucky. Its fiery breakdown – identified as a transmission failure by Ricky Taylor when he brought the car back to the pits – brought a frustrating end to the race, as WTR continues to try and search for its missing form to start the year.
In LMP2, CrowdStrike Racing by APR finally got the monkey off its back. After finishing second in class two times in the last three years – once by only 0.016 seconds – good fortune finally went the way of Algarve Pro Racing and George Kurtz at Daytona.
It’s a strange thing to say after Kurtz was collected in a four-car accident at the very start of the race, suffering suspension damage and falling off the lead lap. The other three cars involved would finish several laps down, or retire (in the case of TDS Racing’s #11 car).
Toby Sowery started the recovery drive, and co-drivers Alex Quinn and Malthe Jakobsen would drive the team back into contention after sunrise. Algarve Pro’s strategy in the final hour worked perfectly, capped off with a perfect splash-and-go stop with 15 minutes left. It finally checks the last remaining box in Kurtz’s driving career, and serves as an immediate cure for a frustrating 2025 season in IMSA.
Inter Europol Competition put its two cars on the other two steps of the podium, a strong race from both the #43 (Jeremy Clarke/Tom Dillman/Bijoy Garg/António Félix da Costa) and the #343 (George Kolovos/Nick Cassidy/Jakub Śmiechowski/Nolan Siegel), who finished second and third and led significant laps after sunrise.
The #22 United Autosports USA car and #99 AO Racing ORECA car rounded out the top five; despite AO Racing’s golden “Spike” leading more laps than any other LMP2 car and being the dominant car before midnight, they weren’t a factor in the finish of the race.
Unlike last year, LMP2 lacked the dramatic twists and turns of last year, but it did have some outstanding competition, and yielded a worthy winner.
