DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian’s Tom Blomqvist won the race off of pit road during a caution with 105 minutes to go. From there, Blomqvist was able to pull away from the pack to successfully defend the Rolex 24 at Daytona Sunday (Jan. 29). For Helio Castroneves, it is his third straight Rolex 24 victory, having won in 2021 for Wayne Taylor Racing. Blomqvist and Simon Pagenaud went to victory lane for the second straight year, while Colin Braun claimed his first Rolex 24 overall victory.
The margin of victory was 4.19 seconds over Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport’s Filipe Albuquerque, Louis Deletraz, Brendon Hartley and Ricky Taylor. Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 01 Cadillac for Sebastien Bourdais, Scott Dixon and Renger van der Zande was third, followed by teammates Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook. Action Express Racing’s Jack Aitken, Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims were 12 laps down in fifth.
Blomqvist started from the overall pole and ran off and hid early on. The Acura ARX-06 appears to have a top speed advantage over the other LMDh cars and Blomqvist was able to take advantage to pull away and catch up when they were behind.
Reliability issues were considered to be a big story in the race, but eight of the nine GTP cars were running at the end of the race. That said, there were problems.
BMW M Team RLL’s No. 25 had an MGU failure in the second hour, which resulted in Nick Yelloly having to use the new Hybrid Vehicle Safety Area. The team spent a couple of hours in the garage changing the MGU before rejoining. Additional issues meant that the team finished 131 laps down, but still managed to finish.
Both of the Porsche 963s ran into issues. The No. 7 Porsche had to change a battery early on, costing the team 15 laps. The No. 6 was the only one not to finish after they had a catastrophic gearbox failure.
The Acuras had a contamination issue that resulted in flushing the oil being necessary. The first time this happened was at the halfway point. It went off without a hitch for MSR.
However, the oil couldn’t be flushed on the WTR No. 10 due to a broken bracket. That resulted in a quick trip to the garage in order to fix the bracket. That resulted in the team losing two laps. They spent the majority of the race trying to catch back up.
MSR also had a gearbox issue of their own. The gearbox was too hot internally. As a result, the team made the decision to run it…
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