Rolex 24 race week is here once more. With a 47-car field, littered with talent up and down the entry and a DPi class more wide open (and faster) than ever, it has all the makings of a classic.
Here’s the first part of DSC’s preview to the race, covering the GT3-based GTD class, which as usual, looks to be too close to call. Here, we’ll run the category marque-by-marque, before looking at GTLM and the prototype ranks in the next couple of days before the track action starts.
Acura
There’s two Acura NSX GT3s on the grid, both running the revised aero (and a reduction of fuel capacity by three litres after the latest round of BoP) for 2019 in the race, both entered by Meyer Shank Racing.
The MSR crew proved to be one of the pleasant surprises of the Roar, the team behind the effort is of course as experienced as they come in IMSA, but its driver crews are as a whole have fresh faces scattered across them.
In the #57, the all-female crew of Kathrine Legge, Ana Beatriz, Simona De Silvestro and (the late addition, GTD ace) Christina Nielsen will drive. They’ll be situated in the best pit garage and pit box for the race too, after Beatriz produced the goods in GTD Qualifying at the Roar, topping the times.
The other crew sees Mario Farnbacher, Trent Hindman, Justin Marks and NASCAR veteran AJ Allmendinger team up in the #86.
The new Acura, Michael Shank told DSC at the Roar is an improvement over the previous iteration, the new aero pieces “making the car more driveable”.
Will that make the difference come race time and place MSR in contention for the win?
Audi
This year there are four Audis in the GTD field, all eyeing new Rolex watches come Sunday afternoon.
All four of them are the 2019-spec EVO R8 LMS, which is fresh from its first win globally, at the Dubai 24 Hours, which was also a 1-2 finish for the car, showcasing its performance and reliability.
Arguably the most newsworthy addition to this year’s Audi contingent is the return of Starworks Motorsport, after some time away as a team in its own right. As part of the effort team owner Peter Baron has been reunited with Ryan Dalziel, who he won the 2012 FIA WEC LMP2 title and Le Mans with.
Up and comer Parker Chase, Ezequiel Perez Companc and Audi factory man Christopher Haase complete the quartet. Baron has experience in GTD and helped run the Land Motorsport effort in IMSA last year, which looked set to dominate the class at Rolex before a huge penalty was handed to the team for exceeding the minimum refuelling time.
The Starworks crew received its Audi late, so ahead of the Roar it only managed to get a small shakedown completed. Rolex race week will, therefore, be a learning experience but if anyone can extract the most out of a car and crew, its Baron. So watch out for this one.
Speaking of Land Motorsport, the German outfit returns for another crack at a class win this year, with former Rolex class winner Daniel Morad, Audi works driver Chris Mies and Le Mans class winner Dries Vanthoor confirmed in its line-up.
With the Am element of the crew still yet to be revealed, the true potential of the effort remains unknown. But Land always turns out a strong car, and has won big races and titles in the past. Will this be the year it adds the Rolex 24 to its growing CV?
The other two Audis are fielded by WRT Speedstar Audi Sport and Morespeed. The former sees Frederic Vervisch race alongside Kelvin van der Linde, Ian James and Roman DeAngelis, all hoping to score the Belgian GT3 powerhouse a first Daytona win.
It’s the same with Moorespeed, and its line-up of Andrew Davis, Alex Riberas, Will Hardeman and Markus Winkelhock. Another strong, experienced quartet capable of being in the mix.
For Rolex, the Audis will run with no BoP changes after the Roar, which saw the best of the R8 LMS run sixth fastest in the field, courtesy of Daniel Morad in Land’s example, setting a time within three-tenths of the weekend’s best.
BMW
There’s once again just a single (Liqui-Moly liveried) M6 GT3 in the field for Daytona to add to the mix of marques in GTD. Turner Motorsport knows what it takes to win big races though, and will be hoping for rather more success this time around after finishing 17th in 2018, to kick off its 21st season of racing in ’19.
The drivers for the team’s Rolex will be BMW legend Bill Auberlen, back for a full season campaign, with Robby Foley, Jens Klingmann and Dillon Machavern.
Turner was quiet during the Roar, leaving with the 14th fastest time during the sessions, and no time from Qualifying after it opted to sit out the chance to gun for a better garage and pit allocation. But that’s not necessarily a cause for concern. The car is a known quantity and the team has decades of experience.
The only unknown is how the BMW will react to the new Michelins when compared to the other cars in the class. Though the feedback from the Roar suggests the 2019 tyre should be consistent across the board in GTD.
It’ll be an interesting storyline to follow throughout the race, whether or not BMW’s single machine can fight for victory against the other marques, all of whom have strength in numbers.
Ferrari
A trio of Ferrari 488 GT3s graces the entry this year at Daytona, with two of them very much familiar teams.
The first is Spirit of Race, the Swiss-flagged entry, run by AF Corse brings Paul Dalla Lana with his WEC regular partners in crime Mathias Lauda and Pedro Lamy to the race along with Le Mans class winner Daniel Serra.
This is a crew that could turn heads during the race, with the chemistry between the WEC GTE Am trio so strong already. They all have experience in the 488 too, after competing together in one at the Rolex 24 last year.
The second familiar team is Scuderia Corsa, the former Le Mans-winning and IMSA GTD title-winning team racing with a WeatherTech livieried 488 for Cooper MacNeil, the rapid Finn Toni Vilander, Dominik Farnbacher and 2017 N24-pole winner Jeff Wesphal.
Both crews meantioned will be in with a shout here, should the Ferrari prove to be capable of mixing it in with the best of the pack on raw pace. It is, another car which has recieved no changes on the BoP front from IMSA ahead of race week.
The only unknown is the third Ferrari entry, from Via Italia Racing, which will compete with the relatively inexperienced Brazilian trio of Chico Longo, Victor Franzoni and Marcos Gomes, backed up by Italian factory man Andrea Bertolini.
While expectations may not be high for this crew, they were one of the Roar’s surprises, Franzoni setting the seventh fastest time of the weekend, and consequently the fastest time of the fifth session.
Lamborghini
The manufacturer with the most cars on the grid this year in GTD is Lamborghini, and that’s no co-incidence when you consider the Huracan GT3 took its first big 24-hour win at Daytona last year, and has since been improved upon over the winter with the EVO kit.
Lamborghini factory driver Phil Keen talked DSC through the the improvements to the car with the EVO kit at the Roar. Here’s what he had to say.
“A lot has changed with the car, a lot of things have been updated with the aero, bodywork and a new engine,” he said. “It’s the same 5.2 litre V10 but it’s out of the Performente road car, so it’s got different internals. The driveshaft, roll centre has changed, there’s new electronics, ABS and software. It looks similar, but it’s a very different car!
“It’s a lot more stable on the brakes, and I’d say a lot easier for amateurs to drive and extract speed from, mainly because the engine has got more torque. It’s a massive step overall, it’s surprising.
“We went out there, did a 30-hour test recently, and we’ve done performance testing too. It hasn’t missed a beat, it’s been very reliable, which is half the battle.”
If it can hold up, then will this be the car to have this year, once again?
A look at the teams running the new Huracan suggest that may be the case. And the fact that the Lamborghini has beneffitted from the pre-event BoP, the Huracans set to run with an increase in air restrictor flow to engine by onemm, and an increase of fuel capacity by two litres.
Grasser Racing returns, to defend its crown, and brings Mirko Bortolotti, Rolf Ineichen and Rik Breukers, who won the race with the team last year, and Christian Engelhart, who raced in the sister car in ’18. Top to bottom it’s clearly one of the strongest crews in the field.
Then there’s Paul Miller Racing, which went on to win the GTD title last year. FOr its 2019 campaign, Bryan Sellers returns to the team, though Madison Snow does not. Instead, Ryan Hardwick, Corey Lewis and Andrea Calderelli make up the remainder of the line-up. It’s nevertheless still a front-runner.
The other three are more unknown quantities.
The first is Magnus Racing, which needs no introduction after so many successful seasons in recent years.
The difference here is that it won’t race with Audi anymore, and instead has switched to Lamborghini for 2019, so there’s plenty for the team to learn heading into Daytona. It’s crew of John Potter, Andy Lally Spencer Pumpelly and Marco Mapelli though, are very much capable of fighting for the podium spots if the team can get up to speed quickly with its new car.
EBIMOTORS is also a bit of an unknown, but mainly because there’s still two TBD spots in its line-up at the time of writing. Emmanuele Businelli and Fabio Babini are the only two drivers named for the Italian crew, which has come on strong recently racing in the Le Mans Cup and ELMS.
Precision Performance Motorsports is the fifth car on the list, and it’ll race with two bronze drivers, Steve Dunn and Don Yount in its car, which will prove to be somewhat of a hinderance up against some of the stronger line-ups. Lines Lundqvist and Milos Pavlovic will provide punch though.
Lexus
This event could prove to be a real baptism of fire for the AIM Vasser Sullivan team, which takes over from 3GT Racing as Lexus’ IMSA representative.
The Vasser-Sullivan effort of the newly-formed outfit is more adept to racing in single-seaters, with a reputation for success in IndyCar, involved in IndyCar and Indy 500 wins, but not long-distance racing.
The AIM side of the team’s experience though will come as a huge help, as former Grand-Am champion AIM Autosport, led by Andrew Bordin and brothers Ian and Keith Willis, will play a part in hand the team’s IMSA debut.
For the race, the team has signed up a mixture of experience and youth to drive its RC F GT3s, into their third season of IMSA competition.
In the #12, Frank Montecalvo and Townsend Bell, who raced with Scuderia Corsa in last year’s NAEC rounds together, IndyCar racer and IMSA debutant Aaron Telitz and former Rolex Sports Car title winner Jeff Segal.
Then in the #14, Porsche Supercup racer, Richard Heistand will race with the mighty impressive Jack Hawksworth who has plenty of experience in the Lexus GT3 programme, former K-PAX PWC driver Austin Cindric and Lexus Super GT ace Nick Cassidy.
It’s hard to see AVS going and winning on it’s IMSA debut, stranger things have happened, but this may be just a little too early to expect fireworks. The Lexus is a known quantity at least, and did score two race wins last year.
Like the majority of the GT3 cars in the class, the two Lexus’ BoP remains unchanged from the Roar.
Mercedes
Riley Motorsports and P1 Motorsports bring Mercedes AMG GT3s to the race this year, and arguably, it looked the strongest chassis throughout the Roar test weekend, with Riley’s crew topping the majority of the sessions.
It’s a car which still feels new, but in fact is the oldest in the pack now, with no EVO kit to speak of or major upgrades since it made its global debut back in 2014. Nevertheless it’s still a winner, and despite showing-class beating pace earlier this month (allbeit in a non-competitive environment) will run with no BoP changes for race week.
Riley’s crew, running a livery that pays tribute to the Hotchkis Racing Porsche 962 which that raced in the IMSA GTP class from 1986-1991, will race with Ben Keating and longtime teammate Jeroen Bleekemolen, alongside Luca Stolz and Felipe Fraga. The three Pros alongside Keating, who has proven to be one of the most consistent Ams, all have extensive experience racing the Mercedes, and therefore should be considered a contender here.
P1 Motorsports meanwhile, also brings a trio of pro drivers with a lot of experience behind the wheel of an AMG GT3, with Maxi Buhk, Fabian Schiller and Dominik Baumann, to race with Silver graded JC Perez.
Both of these entries should be in the mix when the chips are down.
Porsche
A quartet of new-for-2019 Porsche 911 RSRs are the final entries to cover in the GTD ranks.
For the new season, the 911 has had aerodymanic improvements made to it, which Matteo Cairoli told DSC have made the car feel “unbelievable, so easy to drive, much easier than the old one to handle.
“Braking efficiency is much stronger here with the new GT3, the old car suffered with understeer, this one is really well balanced and precise to drive.
“The Michelin tyres too are making a big difference too, compared to the Continentals last year, it’s such a different feeling here, which is a track with low grip. It’s a big step.”
Cairoli will drive with the Black Swan Racing crew, alongside longstanding GT3 driver Marco Seefriend, factory man Dirk Werner and team owner Tim Pappas for what should be a contending crew.
Park Place too, has a real shot at glory, with Patrick Lindsay joined by Nick Boulle, and Porsche drivers Pat Long and Matt Campbell. As does Pfaff’s 911, which has a line-up featuring PWC standout Scott Hargrove, Dennis Olsen (who drove in ELMS GTE with Proton in ’18) alongside Manthey VLN/N24 regular Lars Kern and Silver-graded Canadian Zacharie Robichon
The fourth of the Porsches is far more of an Am effort. NGT Motorsport, which used to run in the IMSA GTC class, brings a pair of Bronze’s Juergen Haering and Steffen Goering to the race, backed up by Herberth Motorsport regular Alfred Renauer, Klaus Bachler and works driver Sven Muller.
