24 Hours of Daytona Porsche's 20th overall victory

IMSA

Jan 26

Porsche has extended its impressive record at the 24 Hours of Daytona to 20 overall victories with the second consecutive win for the #7 Porsche 963. For the 63rd edition of the 24 Hours of Daytona, Felipe Nasr from Brazil, Nick Tandy from Great Britain, and Laurens Vanthoor from Belgium triumphed in car #7 fielded by Porsche Penske Motorsport.

📷© Luc Warnotte at Daytona. Winning #7 Porsche 963

It is Laurens Vanthoor first Rolex 24 win, and Nick Tandy clinched the ‘Grand Slam’ of 24-hour endurance race victories with overall wins at Le Mans, Nurburgring, Spa-Francorchamps, and now Daytona.

Nick, I believe you're the first driver to have won overall Le Mans, Daytona, Spa, and Nürburgring. What does that feel like?

NICK TANDY: “I mean, to be the first person to do -- ever to do something is -- I mean, it's quite unbelievable, really. I think first of all, you've got to be proud that you've been put in a position to be able to compete in that sort of -- those sort of races, and then be in a car that can compete for the win.

But yeah, it never really dawned on me about these sort of records and stuff like this until Laurens, when we won at Spa and somebody said, well, you've got class wins in all the four majors now.

And then you kind of look into it and you see -- there's other people, legendary names on these lists who have won various things but never overall in all four. Class winners, yes.

But yeah, it's something that since that day in probably 2020, it's something that I've definitely wanted to check off the list.

Winning Daytona is a massive thing anyway as a standalone event. Don't get me wrong. I'm very proud to be sat here again. Obviously as an overall winner is special.

But yeah, like you say, to get the big four 24-hour wins -- one would be just an incredible career, so to be able to get four and a few Sebrings and a few Petits is dream come true stuff.” Source: IMSA

#60 Acura denied Porsche double

Meyer Shank Racing’s #60 Acura ARX-06 prevented Porsche's double thanks to Tom Blomqvist who overtook the #6 Porsche 963 with just five minutes on the clock. Colin Braun, Scott Dixon, and Felix Rosenqvist were Blomqvist co-drivers for the 24 hours race.

📷© Luc Warnotte at Daytona. #60 Acura just overtook #6 Porsche with 5' to go.

Tom, can you talk about those closing laps and getting Matt, and did you think you had anything potentially for Felipe?

TOM BLOMQVIST: “I mean, somehow in the race we actually struggled a lot more pace. We came into the race relatively confident, but for whatever reason we just struggled a lot to keep our rear tires under us.

Even from lap 1 you already knew it was going to be a tough stint. We kind of struggled to be honest the whole race. The Porsches were extremely strong. We were good maybe the first few and then they would just pull away especially on the double stints they had a lot more pace than us, and when the traffic came they had such an advantage. We struggled so much for traction that they would just carve through traffic so much better than us.

Yeah, last stint, the car was just better. Not much to say, really. I didn't think I was going to have anything for them, but you never give up, and I think I gave it all I had, and I think to be honest that was the best we probably could have done today.

The guys did a fantastic job to get us in that position strategy-wise. We were always making the right calls generally at the right time, so that was good.

But definitely some work to do. A lot of lessons learnt, let's say, from this race, and I think to be honest, if you asked all of us, we're super happy with second because at one point we thought it was going to be a real long day.” Source: IMSA

Podium for both Porsche Penske Motorsport entries

Winning Porsche teammates Matt Campbell from Australia and the French duo Mathieu Jaminet and Kévin Estre secured P3.

📷© Luc Warnotte at Daytona. #6 Porsche 963.

Bourdais wins LMP2 class with Tower Racing

Sebastien Bourdais will not drive a Cadillac this year in IMSA but well John Farano’s Tower Motorsports’ Oreca in LMP2. Together with Sebastian Alvarez and Job van Uitert they take the class win after Bourdais ran away in the final 25 minutes.

Sebastien Bourdais in #8 Tower Racing Oreca — Sebastien Bourdais in #8 Tower Motorsport Oreca.

Sebastien, you almost got caught up in the big one, how close was it to completely ending right then and there?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: “I was part of the big one, big time. The car over my left fender, a car over my right fender and I don't think I had trim time to back off because I made contact because I was in the gearbox of the Pratt Miller car and it all came to a stop. It was like Days of Thunder.

Yeah, honestly, when it all cleared in front of me and the car still had four wheels on it and the steering wheel was straight, I was like, man, this is just a miracle. That's about as much as I know because I didn't see anything coming I had no warning, and all of a sudden it came to a stop in front and it was no chance.

For more than one reason we feel very, very fortunate to be sitting here because it could have been over quite a few times actually.” Source: IMSA

Made in USA squad GTD PRO podium

Trump’ll be proud and so will Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Corvette’s fans with both of them on GTD PRO podium.

The #65 Ford Multimatic Motorsports’ Ford Mustang GT3 riven by Frederic Vervisch, Chris Mies, and Dennis Olsen got its first victory in global competition after clinching front row during qualifying.

As we've seen, this race may be 24 hours long but it's decided in the very closing minutes. How conscious were you of what was going on directly behind you, and what does this say for this car that you guys were able to return and get this great victory today?

DENIS OLSEN: “Oh, I have to say I was watching the mirror every single corner about the Chevy coming up the inside, and I just really made sure to cover them up and just played that the car would hold, make sure that -- hope that the diffuser and the bumper doesn't go off and getting a technical flag, but luckily didn't.

Yeah, eventually KO started and I managed to get a gap and from there it was a bit more comfortable luckily. But yeah, I think it was a faultless race by all the team, by all the drivers.

It's incredible having Ford Performance and Multimatic, new structure, new lineups. Incredible.” Source: IMSA

The #3 Corvette Racing Z06 GT3.R of Antonio Garcia, Alexander Sims and Daniel Juncadella took second place, ahead of the #64 Ford Mustang of Mike Rockenfeller, Sebastian Priaulx and Austin Cindric.

#13 AWA Corvette wins GTD

In GTD, AWA scored its second Rolex 24 class win in three years, this time with drivers Orey Fidani, Matthew Bell, Lars Kern and Marvin Kirchhöfer. It is the Corvette Z06 GT3.R first IMSA GTD victory.

📷© Luc Warnotte at Daytona. #13 AWA Corvette Z06 GT3 R.

Matt, can you touch base on that final stint and going up against the Heart of Racing in GTD there in the final stint?

MATTHEW BELL: “Yeah, the restarts were intense as we always are in IMSA WeatherTech racing. Honestly, my brain is fried. I can't even remember what happened. It was awesome racing, I have to say. All the competitors that we were going toe to toe with today were really hard, really fair. I can't remember where he overtook me. He got us in the pits. I just had to get my head down. If I saw a GTD car ahead of me I just tried to overtake it.

I remember vaguely getting a little bit of a nose up the side coming out of Turn 5. We were good in the infield. We were strong in the infield. Just managed to squeeze on past and get my head down after that and try to build a gap. Yeah, it was fun. It was definitely fun.” Source: IMSA