Era Motorsport second LMP2 win at Rolex 24
Four major leaders
4 teams led the LMP2 class for more than 88% of the race (657 laps out of 767 covered by the winners)
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024
The LMP2 race saw 8 different leaders with #2 United Autosports USA (Left) leading 208 laps of the 375 laps covered during the first half of the race and #18 Era Motorsports (Right) leading 235 laps of the 392 covered during the last 12 hours.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024
From 7:30 am until 9:30, #52 Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsport (Left) and #04 CrowdStrike by APR (Right) swapped leadership. From then on #18 swapped leadership with #52 to take definitively the lead for the last hour with #04 close. The last caution triggered by a fire for the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 condensed the pack so that Jakobsen with #04 was just behind #18 with Rasmussen.
The last duel was between #18 and #04 Oreca with the #18 Oreca 07 Gibson of Dwight Merriman, Ryan Dalziel, Connor Zilisch and Christian Rasmussen winning 6.8 seconds ahead of the #04 entry driven by George Kurtz, Colin Braun, Toby Sowery and Malthe Jakobsen.
Era Motorsports wins
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024.
Christian Rasmussen managed to withstand the pressure from Malthe Jakobsen with #04 to lead 132 of the final 136 laps and claim Era and Merriman’s second LMP2 class victory at Daytona as they won the 2021 edition with Paul-Loup Chatin, Kyle Tilley and Ryan Dalziel who scored a third win in the Rolex 24 at Daytona as he won in 2010 overall in the LMP2 class in 2021.
“It’s awesome; it’s a huge bucket list item for me,” said Rasmussen, the team’s IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup driver about to embark on his first full season of IndyCar Series competition. “We were just strong all race. We kept improving, we knew we had the pace and we had the strategy just right. Then the last stint, it came down to a caution, and I had a huge gap from I think like 15 seconds, and then obviously all of that disappeared. But I felt fairly confident. I was just slowly pulling away right before, so I kind of knew that we had the pace to do it. It was just about getting away from the start, which I did well, and then pulled out a two-second gap and just kind of managed it from there.”
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024.
Second consecutive P2 for the #04 CrowdStrike by APR squad.
The #74 Riley Oreca of Gar Robinson, Felipe Fraga, Josh Burdon and Felipe Massa completed the class podium.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024.
#52 Inter Europol by PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca driven by Kuba Smiechowski, Nick Boulle, Tom Dillmann and Pietro Fittipaldi ended fourth.
Tower Motorsports rounded out the top-five in class with its the #8 Oreca in the hands of John Farano, Ferdinand Habsburg, Michael Dinan and Scott McLaughlin.
Pato O’Ward, Ben Keating, Nico Pino and Ben Hanley, the first 12 hours leaders with the #2 United Autosports USA Oreca came home in sixth, 2 laps behind the top five.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024
#81 DragonSpeed Oreca driven by E. Lux, K. Simpson, J. Allen and S. Alvarez end 7th 3 Laps behind the class winners. (Left)
#99 AO Racing with P. Hyett, P. Chatin, M. Brabham and A. Quinn end last in class 18 laps behind the winning #18. (Right)
High attrition rate
Five LMP2 didn’t make it to the finish out go the 13 entries which is among the highest attrition rate across the four classes. GTD PRO has an identical attrition rate of 38%.
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024
#33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P217 Gibson was the last to retire of LMP2 class after 19 hours or 510 laps. (Left)
The #20 MDK by High Class Racing Oreca 07 Gibson abandoned after covering 185 laps and facing several incidents most notably causing heavy body damages to the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus that was a front runner in GTD Pro with Mike Conway on the wheel. (Right)
📷 © Luc Warnotte at Daytona 2024
#22 United Autosports entry retired after 122 laps (nearly five hours). (Left)
the #88 AF Corse Oreca of Luis Perez Companc, Lilou Wadoux, Nicklas Nielsen and Mathieu Vaxiviere retired after 3 hours 34 minutes. (Center)
Steven Thomas crashed the #11 TDS Racing Oreca at lap 58. (Right)
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