Felipe Nasr crosses the finishing line 24 hours after the green flag was waved in front of the remaining 41 cars that were able to finish this year’s Daytona 24.
The Daytona 24 is a 24-hour race that starts on Saturday afternoon and finishes on Sunday afternoon. All teams have three to four drivers per car, each taking turns driving the same car. Tiredness from the drivers and the team can create issues towards the final hours of the race.
For this year’s Daytona 24, there were four classes, which included 61 cars. The fastest is the GTP, also known as the Hypercar (front far right in picture), followed by the LMP2. These are like mini Hypercars, but all cars are identical (front middle right in picture). Then we have the GTD Pro and the GTD (front cars on the left). These use the same cars, but the major difference is the rating the drivers have. These cars you may recognise on the roads, but I can assure you, everything else in the car is different. Car companies like Porsche, Mercedes, BMW and Ferrari make cars for the GTD Pro and GTD classes.
Although the number 7 Porsche won the race, just like last year, this only tells you a tiny part of the story. Before sunset, the warmer, still cold for Daytona conditions, benefited almost every other manufacturer besides the Porsche. Even the Lamborghini looked good for the first two hours. However, the Italians’ luck didn’t last long, as they had a mechanical failure and became the first GTP to retire.
In the last hour, four cars were on the lead lap, and the 14th and final late Full Course Yellow (Safety Car) bunched the pack up again, giving all on the lead lap a fighting chance until the first corner. This is when the 24 BMW tapped the back of the Porsche 6, breaking the front nose and forcing the car to pit. The car became a lap down and struggled to stay in P4.
The final contenders for the race win were Porsche Penske numbers 6 and 7 and Acura Meyer Shank Racing number 60. With the Porsches starting to struggle in the warming Florida sun, the Acura made the move from P3 to P2. But sadly for the Meyer Shank Racing team, slower classes of cars and lapped traffic were in the way of the charging Acura, giving the number 7 Porsche the much needed gap of about 2 seconds to take home the victory.
This win was impressive for Felipe Nasr and Laurens Vanthoor, but for their co-driver, Nick Tandy, it was record-breaking. The 40-year-old from Bedford can add the Daytona 24 to his trophy cabinet next to the trophies from the Spa Francorchamps 24, Nürburgring 24 and the king of all races, Leman. Tandy is the only person in the world who has that collection at his home. Not bad.
Anyway, this summed up a tiny bit of the race, so I recommend re-watching this 24-hour race again. IMSA has all 24 hours on their YouTube channel for you to enjoy.
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