1026 replies to this topic

[Risil]

After a January that’s felt at least four times as long as previous Januaries, we finally arrive at its traditional conclusion: the second twenty-four hour race nobody needs, the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway! January is always a good time to visit coastal Florida, even in your mind. Testing, practice and a qualifying race have already taken place, and I can assure you that we now have polesitters for all 5 (five) classes. That sounds like a lot of classes but with the Covid pandemic and the normal state of flux that sports car racing finds itself in, they had to scrape hard to get a field of race cars together. But scrape they did, and we have assembled what my phone’s calculator app tells me is 49 entries! That’s more than a NASCAR race! Twice as many as an Indycar race! It’s plenty. I will tell you about them all, or at least some of them, below.

But the most important things first. The race is run on the Daytona road course, which is pretty much the oval with four tight infield turns after the start/finish line (the circuit folksily calls them “horseshoes”) and a bus-stop style chicane on the back straight. It starts on Saturday at 3.30pm, US Eastern time and finishes at the same time, albeit the following day. It being winter there’s a bit more night-time running than there is at the other 24 hour event in France. If you're not a maps person here's a video of Weathertech scion Cooper MacNeil driving around in a Porsche 911.

How can you watch it? Depends where you are. IMSA’s official website makes me upset to look at it, but I can tell you with moderate confidence that if you’re in the US you can watch the first hour on NBC (network TV!), but then you’ll have to switch back and forth between NBC Sports and internet streams (NBCSN.com? IMSA Trackpass?) according to taste. With less-than-moderate confidence I can say that Canadians can watch it with Discover Velocity, South Americans with Fox Sports, New Zealanders (??) with Sky, and everyone else who’s fortunate enough to live in a country where IMSA is largely irrelevant can watch it directly on IMSA.com. Radio Le Mans is presumably doing an audio stream for you to listen to when you’re asleep. I did this for the 2011 Le Mans 24 Hours and it was a surreal experience.
 
Anyway, here’s your field run-down. If you want a real one, or detail, or whatever, you could do worse than Dailysportscar.com or even IMSA’s own prototype and GT previews.
 
Prototypes
Headlining the Daytona 24 Hours is a small but potent Daytona Prototype entry of four Cadillacs, two Acuras, and a single Mazda. Daytona Prototypes are, kinda, LMP2 chassis with custom bodywork mated to a production engine. There is confusingly also an LMP2 class but we can get to that later.
 
The Cadillacs (Dallara P217 chassis, Cadillac 5.5-litre V8 engine)

#01 Chip Ganassi Racing: Scandinavian F1 refugees Kevin Magnussen and Marcus Ericsson lead the team, providing a heartwarming example of how people from two similar countries can put aside their differences to achieve something. They’re joined by Dutch sports car specialist Renger van der Zande and, excitingly, Chip’s Indycar champion Scott Dixon. CGR haven’t run a prototype at Daytona for a while, having skipped 2020 and been tied up before then running Ford’s GT entry.
 
#5 JDC-Miller Motorsports: The team is running three French drivers of varying fame and experience – returnees Loic Duval (ex-Audi) and Tristan Vautier, joined for the endurance events by the evergreen Sebastien Bourdais. All three are returnees for 2020, but have condensed into one car after the JDC-Miller team gave up its second Cadillac.
 
#31 Action Express Racing: Almost the same line-up as last year: fast Brazilians Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani return from last year’s race, as does moonlighting Toyota driver Mike Conway. Joining them, not literally, in the cockpit is reigning NASCAR Cup champion William Clyde Elliott II from Dawsonville, Georgia. They’re starting from pole on Saturday and are sponsored by Whelen Engineering, who make warning lights, sirens and the like. Perhaps you already knew that, or perhaps you’re like me and never even thought that sirens had to have a manufacturer. Either way, they’re a good team.
 
#48 Action Express/Hendrick Motorsports: Weirdly enough the joint IMSA/NASCAR team, formed especially for the 24 Hours of Daytona, is not the one running the NASCAR champion. Not this year’s NASCAR champion anyway: the team is being led by some Indycar driver by the name of Jimmie Johnson, backed up by no-names Kamui Kobayashi, Simon Pagenaud and Mike Rockenfeller. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. A lot of race wins between those four, anyway.

The Acuras (Oreca 07 chassis, Acura 3.5-litre turbo V6 engine)

#10 Wayne Taylor Racing: 2019 and 2020’s race winning team have swapped their Cadillac for one of the Acura outfits vacated by the departing Penske team. They have an all-new, mostly ex-Penske line-up with Portuguese sports car veteran Filipe Albuquerque the odd one out among Roger’s men Ricky Taylor, Alexander Rossi and Helio Castroneves. If you’re watching with pictures, this is the one with the attractive blue-and-black Konica Minolta livery.
 
#60 Meyer-Shank Racing: The other former Penske Acura has been repainted in Meyer-Shank’s pink-and-black branding and leavened with a couple more Penske transplants, this time Juan Pablo Montoya and Dane Cameron. Last year’s second-place finisher Olivier Pla and CCWS legend A.J. Allmendinger join them on the team.
 
The Mazda (Riley-Multimatic MkXXX chassis, 2-litre turbo inline-four engine)

#55 Multimatic Motorsports: Mazda’s IMSA programme had an uncertain 2020 even by 2020 standards, switching from Joest at the start of the year to Multimatic at the end. This didn’t affect their results much, with a second place at Daytona last January and a win last November at Sebring. They’ve since gone down to a single entry and like the JDC-Miller they’ve retained a couple of drivers from each team and sort of bade farewell to the rest. It’s a tough business. Oliver Jarvis stays from last Daytona’s second-place finishers, and from last Sebring’s winners Mazda have held onto Harry Tincknell and Jonathon Bomarito.

There are two other prototype classes with varying levels of honour and glamour attached. LMP2 is the top pro-am category: this is the place where Grand Prix winners, NASCAR drivers, minor captains of industry and members of the German nobility rub shoulders and occasionally drive the cars. They have big 4.2-litre V8s supplied by Gibson Engineering of Repton, and drive around while sitting in a mix of Orecas, Dallaras and Ligiers. The highlight of the 10-car class is indisputably the #20 High Class Racing team, mostly because of its name but also because among its four drivers are former BMW and Renault F1 driver Robert Kubica and descendent of emperors Ferdinand Zvonimir Maria Balthus Keith Michael Otto Antal Bahnam Leonhard von Habsburg-Lothringen, although he’ll probably just be called Ferdinand Habsburg in the TV graphics. But the favourite is probably the #81 DragonSpeed Oreca which can call upon the services of Indycar’s Rinus Veekay and Ben Hanley, so keep an eye out for smoke, punctures and other signs of ill fortune from the 81.

Next one down is (predictably) LMP3: the baby prototypes (actually roughly the same size as the others, and with more engine displacement than LMP2) are definitely here to make up the numbers but this being Daytona, you’ll be looking at the times and positions crawl at 2am and realize that Gabby Chaves is still a racing driver, Oliver Askew has been reduced to field-filler, and wasn’t Wayne Boyd the guy who backflipped his F3 car at Macau some years ago? For they are all taking part, along with plenty of other drivers familiar and less-familiar (mostly less familiar; some may be dentists but then so was Stirling Moss’s dad). Anyway, there’ll be 7 of these cars taking the start. The CEO of Crowdstrike George Kurtz is going to be racing the CORE Autosport #54 entry, making this probably the first connection between a Daytona 24 Hour starter and a US impeachment trial.
 
Grand Touring
Premier GTs at Daytona are GTLM, the second all-pro class and as with DPi, consequently one of the smaller entries. Still, enjoy it while it lasts. Two factory Corvettes, two of Bobby Rahal’s BMW M8s and private-ish single-car entries from Ferrari and Porsche. Let’s hope they all keep running.
 
Corvette Racing C8.R

Mid-engined Corvettes still look strange to me. They presumably no longer look strange to Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg, who are back in the #3 car after a fourth-place finish last year. The #4, which spent a lot of time in the garage at last year’s race, has a new pair of drivers to go with old hand Tommy Milner, as Nick Tandy needed somewhere to go post-Porsche, and Alexander Sims is presumably free to see for whomever he pleases after ending his e-relationship with BMW. They’re going to be hard to beat!
 
Risi Competizione Ferrari 488

Ferrari do their traditional thing of letting some US privateers enter their car Stateside and then parachute in some drivers from Maranello. James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Davide Rigon know each other very well from the WEC, and their team in the #62 is completed by Jules Gounon, son of Jean-Marc and two-year veteran of Risi’s attempts at Le Mans.
 
Weathertech/Proton Racing Porsche 911 RSR

Porsche dispiritingly pulled their factory team out of IMSA at the end of 2020 but like some kind of non-giving-up racing team one of their cars has re-emerged, prepared by the Proton team and sponsored by Weathertech, who manufacture car mats, liners and the like, and also have their name on all the IMSA logos. The boss’s son Cooper MacNeil will be behind the wheel of the #79 car, backed up by crack pros Richard Leitz, Kevin Estre and Gianmaria Bruni, all drivers with long and decorated CVs. This team has Narrative behind them.
 
Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan BMW M8

BMW announced their entry fairly last-minute, but this being the team that won the last Rolex 24 they presumably know each other’s first names, which side of the car the fuel nozzle goes into, etc. Last year’s Daytona-winning #24 team is back almost unchanged: longtime BMW works drivers John Edwards and Augusto Farfus will be racing with almost-as-longtime BMW works driver Jesse Krohn and ex-DTM guy Marco Wittman. Philipp Eng, Timo Glock and Bruno Spengler make it three more DTM guys in the #25 – American Connor de Phillippi is the odd one out in his lack of experience driving German non-touring cars, but it’s all GTs in Germany now, isn’t it?
 
So GTLM is withering away, which leaves the maniacs in GT Daytona who sort of hire anyone, race all manner of GT3-spec cars and generally ensure a base level of chaos that the rest of the field has to edge around cautiously. I can’t do an orderly run-down of this field, but please tell us all which ones you’ll be following through the race. I’ll be looking out for the Heart of Racing #23 Aston Martin, because 1. it’s an Aston Martin, 2. it’s raising money for a children’s hospital in Seattle and 3. it’s funded by the guy who made Half-Life; and the #42 NTE Sport Audi because JR Hildebrand is driving and I think we all owe JR something. This class is the one that is most affected by IMSA’s Balance of Performance book so expect some gainsaying of whoever looks fast on race day. But the racing, having no alternative, will still be close.

So that’s a lot of words. But then, it’s a long race. Who are you following? How are you following? Why? When? Etc.

[HeadFirst]

Always enjoy this race, though I admit to only following the top prototype class, and whatever GT class(s) piques my interest on the day. Relieved to see that Justin Beiber has yet to find his way into a race car, or did I miss something?

[jonpollak]

TheSeasonStartsHere.
Thanks for this tremendous OP Risil.

EDIT: Your spotters guide.
https://spotterguide..._DAY_ONLINE.pdf
Jp

Edited by jonpollak, 29 January 2021 - 09:28.

[Peat]

I'm a bit apprehensive about the inclusion of LMP3. 

From what I saw of the Qualy race, they are a bloody nuisance like the LMPC days. A well driven GTLM will be faster than an averagely driven LMP3. Given that most of these are 'Gentlemen', I can see this conflict being the source for most of the cautions. 

That said, I remember the first year without LMPC felt a bit flat as there was huge long Green Flag runs allowing cars to get whole laps on one another and neutralising the race somewhat. 

Edited by Peat, 29 January 2021 - 10:05.

[djparky]

Is this on imsatvlive channel like the race last week??

[Stephane]

Most probably, yes

[jonpollak]

“Who are you following? How are you following? Why? When?”
88-Twitch-I love TheChristina-all24,hopefully.
Jp

[paulb]

Great OP, Risil!

 

One thing to note is that the GTD filed is stacked more than ever with driving talent. A number of GTLM drivers are now in GTD, like Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor. It's going to raise the level of competition of an already tough division.

 

As pointed out, the LMP3 division could make the race much more "interesting". I really hope that reds and double yellows are scarce.

 

And the #20 LMP2 car is striking, its one of my favorite liveries.

[KWSN - DSM]

Go Kevin!!

 

Go Christina!!

[Youichi]

Cracking finish to the Global MX-5 race.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=4KR47csl2L8

[ANF]

Cracking finish to the Global MX-5 race.
 
https://www.youtube....h?v=4KR47csl2L8

The second MX-5 race is set to start in 20 minutes.
Live streamed on https://www.imsa.com/tvlive/

Edited by ANF, 29 January 2021 - 14:57.

[ANF]

Green, green, green

[paulb]

Other drivers of note in the 24, Jeroen Bleekemolen, in the #91 LMP3 Ligier and Gabby Chaves in the #7 Duqueine LMP3.

 

#88 is 6th (Bamber) in Practice 4.

[ANF]

The 4-hour Michelin Pilot race is about to start: https://www.imsa.com/tvlive/

[juicy sushi]

The 4-hour Michelin Pilot race is about to start: https://www.imsa.com/tvlive/

*Rubs hands with glee*

[Risil]

Hey, Spencer Pigot is driving a McLaren!

 

What's the class structure for Michelin Pilot Challenge? GTs and touring cars?

[Myrvold]

Going to do a 1.5hr online race at Daytona with LMP2/DPi and GT's tonight. That's a proper warmup

[FLB]

Hey, Spencer Pigot is driving a McLaren!

 

What's the class structure for Michelin Pilot Challenge? GTs and touring cars?

GT4 and TCR:

 

https://www.imsa.com...scover/classes/

[juicy sushi]

I think the GT4 BOP may be slightly tilted too far for the bigger mid-engined cars. But that’s just a vague hunch.

[ARTGP]

line up in the JDC Miller Cadillac is underrated. That is all. 

[BobbyRicky]

Whoever it was that came up with the idea of having TCRs do endurance-racing deserves the Nobel Prize for awesomeness.

[Ben1445]

Hyundai's ETCR car did a demo run at Daytona yesterday. John Doonan says that they are hoping to bring the ruleset into the IMSA portfolio as soon as it makes sense to do so. 

 

Looking forward the main event though, I do love a good endurance race... 

[jonpollak]

Good luck out there pb.
Jp

[GlenWatkins]

C8.R Corvettes are staring 1 and 2 in GTLM, will be interesting to see how they do

[djparky]

What time does race start in the UK- about 8pm??

[GlenWatkins]

3:30 pm here in the northeast US

[paulb]

Good luck out there pb.
Jp

I’m not out there this weekend. Have plans with the wife in Tampa tonight. Happy wife, happy life.

One other pic to post from the ROAR has to do with the [covid] virus. Each morning, you had to have a filled out contact questionnaire and the code from IMSA confirming you were good to be at the track. Even with that, you had to go through a checkpoint where they would take your temp and scan your code this was the line at 7:30am on Saturday.

 

 

[edited by jcbc3]

[FLB]

Whoever it was that came up with the idea of having TCRs do endurance-racing deserves the Nobel Prize for awesomeness.

Yep!

 

 

And you do realize the race was won by *another* son of a Canadian bilionaire (Kuno Wittmer's co-driver, Orey Fidani, is Carlo Fidani's son).

Edited by FLB, 30 January 2021 - 15:30.

[Dan333SP]

Pumped for this race today. Was looking at practice times and it occurred to me that the fastest GTD cars are now faster than the best qualifying pace of the early Daytona Prototypes in the 2005-2006 era. Not sure how much that says about car development rather than how bad those DPs really were, but interesting nonetheless. 

[Branislav]

I can't find starting grid on official website

[Risil]

Pumped for this race today. Was looking at practice times and it occurred to me that the fastest GTD cars are now faster than the best qualifying pace of the early Daytona Prototypes in the 2005-2006 era. Not sure how much that says about car development rather than how bad those DPs really were, but interesting nonetheless.

I don't want to get high on negativity but those original Daytona Prototypes looked like Homer Simpson designed them.

They could take a battering though.

[Kev00]

What time does race start in the UK- about 8pm??

Coverage starts at 8.35 on IMSA.tv I believe

[djparky]

Coverage starts at 8.35 on IMSA.tv I believe

Thanks

[Branislav]

Grid?

[Branislav]

[Branislav]

I'm blue

[DanardiF1]

Fantastic OP Risil!! Looking forward to the Rolex 24 as always!

 

As usual will be cheering on the Mazda...

[Risil]

For some reason my eye keeps being drawn to Greenland.

[Gemini]

Fantastic OP Risil!! 

 

 

+1 

Edited by Gemini, 30 January 2021 - 17:51.

[loki]

I can't find starting grid on official website

On NBC from the results after ROAR.

 

https://motorsports....100-results.pdf

[Izzyeviel]

I think this might be a livestream on youtube:

 

Edited by Izzyeviel, 30 January 2021 - 18:06.

[Branislav]

On NBC from the results after ROAR.

 

https://motorsports....100-results.pdf

 

Why is BMW Team RLL that low?

[ANF]

Coverage starts at 8.35 on IMSA.tv I believe

Green flag at 20:40 according to the schedule. Which in IMSA could mean 20:38!

[FLB]

Let the season begin!

 

[jonpollak]

That IMSA website is beyond terrible
Jp

[FLB]

Well, I wouldn't say 'beyond terrible'. It was OK circa 2010.

 

 

It just hasn't aged very well, comparatively.

[Risil]

I wonder why they start 24 hour races so late in the afternoon.

[jonpollak]

If Brani can’t find the starting grid for their biggest race anywhere on the site... it’s beyond terrible.

Jp

[loki]

I wonder why they start 24 hour races so late in the afternoon.

So it ends in a prime Sun afternoon viewing time for US network TV.

[Myrvold]

I'm blue

 

da ba dee da ba daa