DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The 61st running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona has been a fierce battle. The two Acuras from Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian and Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport have spent significant time at the front of the field. They’ve been joined there by Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 01 Cadillac.
Through six hours, Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport’s Filipe Albuquerque leads by 19.014 seconds over Action Express Racing’s Pipo Derani. Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian’s Helio Castroneves is third, then Alex Lynn and Nick Tandy.
Reliability was always going to be a big story with the new LMDh cars. It did not take long for issues to crop up. BMW M Team RLL’s No. 25 with Nick Yelloly at the wheel suffered an MGU failure early on. The fix took more than two hours and put the team 82 laps down.
The No. 7 Porsche briefly cut off with Felipe Nasr at the wheel. He was able to reset and get back going quickly with a few lost positions. A bigger issue in the sixth hour resulted in the team going behind the wall to change a battery, costing them 25 minutes.
LMP2 saw pole sitter Ben Keating open up a decent advantage on the rest of the amateur drivers in the class. Once the first driver changes were made, the No. 52 came back to the rest of the class.
TDS Racing currently runs one-two with Rinus VeeKay leading by a lap over teammate Francois Heriau. PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports’ Nicolas Lapierre is third, then Julien Canal and Fred Poordad.
In LMP3, the big news is that Riley Motorsports is out early. The team led early and was in position to get their season off to an excellent start. However, the engine failed with Gar Robinson at the wheel late in the third hour. The team was effectively out on the spot.
For much of the early part of the race, Andrew Wojteczko Autosport’s No. 13 led the way. Then, Moritz Kranz ran in the back of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon when Dixon was slowing to avoid a spin. That dropped the team down the order. An extra pit stop dropped the team to sixth, one lap down.
At the six-hour mark, Andretti Autosport’s Rasmus Lindh was leading by 68.632 seconds over Sean Creech Motorsports’ Nolan Siegel. James French in the MRS GT-Racing entry was third, then FastMD Racing’s James Vance. AWA’s Thomas Merrill was fifth.
GTD Pro was dominated early on by WeatherTech Racing. Jules Gounon set laps faster than anyone in the class qualified while…
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