It may not have looked like it during the final hour when the lead battle was on fire, but Porsche Penske Motorsport capturing a third consecutive Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona win felt inevitable for the majority of this year’s race.
The 2026 edition of IMSA’s 24-hour classic was a curious one. It had a chaotic start, a metronomic period into darkness, a huge caution period for low visibility overnight that lasted more than six and a half hours, then an all-out brawl at the end. On one hand, it was a race that took too long to truly get going; on the other, it delivered superb action in the closing stages to entertain the record-breaking crowd that toughed out the fog.
The stats tell a story for Porsche, Penske and for the three drivers in the #7 963 who collected Rolex watches after the race.
Felipe Nasr, as well as Porsche Penske Motorsport, now have three wins in a row at Daytona, cementing his position as one of the most talented and accomplished drivers of the current era.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “I drove from my heart. It was amazing to be present today and feel it. I thought one was good, two was better, three, it’s going to be hard to beat that one.
“We did our homework over the winter, brought evolutions to the car, tested them, but you never know until race time because everyone else is doing the same and the whole field has improved. But Penske was in good form from beginning to end.”
The Brazilian was installed for the race’s crescendo, tasked with fending off Jack Aitken’s late surge forward for Cadillac. But a huge chunk of the hard yards in this one were dealt with by his new, younger pair of teammates, Julien Andlauer (27) and Laurin Heinrich (25), who both captured their first-ever” IMSA GTP wins in fine style. Both are living the dream.
“The journey has been so quick,” Heinrich said. “I joined the Porsche family in 2022 as a Porsche Jr., and now, in 2026, to stand here as a full-on factory driver racing for the factory team and winning the Rolex 24 is incredible.
“At this point, I also want to point out, especially for me as a German, racing for a German brand like Porsche and the factory team and making this, I would say, an even historic win. It makes me really proud, actually, and especially as you said, where I came from and how long it took me.
“I know my father was probably glued to the screen, and he played a huge role in my being here today. In the end, he put all the effort he could. I did my first year racing in cars in our own family team because we didn’t have the budget to join a professional team.
“When I think back how we raced then and how I’m racing nowadays, it’s an incredible journey, and it makes me extremely proud, but also thankful for the opportunity that Porsche provides us young talent going through the junior ranks, Cup racing, and now being a factory driver.”
Andlauer added: “Since ’23, ’24, being very close to Proton and getting the chances to drive Hypercar for the private team gave me good chances to see and to show the potential that the team had, but also that I had. Porsche believed in me and gave me a great opportunity to be here today, but also last year in WEC, and I love it.
“This is what I wanted to do. I’ve really been chasing the top category in endurance because this is my DNA and the one I share with Porsche. I’m super proud to be part of this team.
“As Felipe said before, everyone is so exceptional in the team, so much talent, from the engineers to the mechanics to the drivers and the management. Everyone is doing a fantastic job, and we can see it again here.”
In a broader sense, this achievement meant a great deal to all involved. It was a tough end to 2025 for the PPM programme following Porsche’s decision to step away from the WEC. But that adversity and change seemed to serve only as extra motivation for Roger Penske’s group, who remained entirely unfazed by the noise surrounding the team during the build-up to the race.
“Winning the 24 Hours of Daytona three consecutive times with this Porsche Penske Motorsport team is an incredible accomplishment,” Roger Penske said in reaction. “That sustained success is only achieved with great teamwork, focused and determined drivers, a resilient crew and a commitment to winning.
“Our success at this event helped put our team on the map over six decades ago, and winning here in Daytona is a perfect way to celebrate the start of Team Penske’s 60th anniversary season. I also want to congratulate Porsche Motorsport on a great beginning to their 75th anniversary in 2026, as we continue to build on our winning legacy together.
“Today’s victory reflects the efforts and dedication of all those committed men and women working on the Porsche Penske Motorsport program, from Mooresville to Germany.”
In GTP’s battle of the brands, Porsche Penske Motorsport, with its pair of upgraded 963s, was the only team that consistently looked like it had something in the pocket to fend off the other cars in the race for the overall win.
This despite the fact that both cars suffered setbacks, with the #7 requiring attention on pit lane overnight and the #6 hindered by a hole in its left side and floor damage from contact early in the race.
“It (the fog caution) gave us an opportunity to make sure our race cars were as sharp as they could be for the end of the race,” Travis Law, Penske’s competition director, added when asked about the impact the caution period had on the team’s outlook and result. “We need to look back at everything. On the six we used a lot of tape!”
The IMSA technical team will no doubt go away and study the numbers to see if the BoP set for the race achieved its intended goals for the first stop on the calendar. All but one of the GTP cars (the Valkyrie) were updated with performance ‘Jokers’ and put through the WindShear wind tunnel as part of the new-for-2026 streamlined process to homologate the top class prototypes in IMSA and the WEC. There will no doubt be fine-tuning needed as the season progresses.
It wasn’t total domination by Porsche – the #6 faded late and finished fourth, and the winning margin for the #7 was 1.5 seconds – but, as one of Cadillac’s runners-up, Earl Bamber, pointed out post-race, it wasn’t a clash of the titans between the majority of the cars in the field when the chips were down.
“It was clear from after the first hour that there were only three cars in this most of the time, the #6, #7 and #31,” he said.
“It was similar to last year at the end of the year. We knew they were going to be strong, we put our best foot forward, and we should be proud.”
In the end, there can only be one winner, and in a race as important as this, one team that basks in glory while the others lick their wounds. And in 2026, it was Porsche Penske Motorsport, once again, that got the job done.
Its the team that everyone else in GTP will be even more desperate to beat when the trucks unload at Sebring in March.
Images courtesy of Porsche, IMSA & Jack Webster
