Rolex 24 – Cold Beginning to Start a Sizzling Racing Season

Castroneves’ second consecutive Rolex 24 victory.

With a record entry list of 61 cars running, bumping, swapping paint while pushing flat out after the green flag dropped at a cold Daytona, the 2022 sports car racing season in the US debuted. In IMSA racing, races are tilted toward racing – with gaps reset during Full-Course Yellow periods with faster classes waived though the pack for the restart. It makes for fierce competition throughout and rarely any stints of boredom for fans. (AutoInformed – IMSA Rolex 24 at Daytona – 61 Cars Entered

Acura took a one-two finish in the top DPi class. Helio Castroneves held the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Acura ARX-05 ahead of the field during the final 30 minutes to give MSR and co-drivers Tom Blomqvist, Oliver Jarvis and Simon Pagenaud victory Sunday in the 60th anniversary of the Rolex 24 At Daytona. They drove 2709.160 miles. (Full results click here)

It was Castroneves’ second consecutive Rolex 24 victory. Last year, he won the race as part of Wayne Taylor Racing, then climbed a fence in Victory Lane. This year, Castroneves battled the pole-sitter No. 10 WTR Acura and driver Ricky Taylor to win, then stopped at the start-finish line and climbed the catch fence. “It sounds cliche, but it’s all about believing,” Castroneves said. After winning last year’s Rolex 24 with WTR, Castroneves won the Indy 500 with MSR, tying A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears for most Indy 500 wins in a career.

Ricky Taylor finished 3.028 seconds behind Castroneves with WTR teammates Filipe Albuquerque, Will Stevens and Alexander Rossi. The 1-2 Acura sweep came 18 hours after both cars fell off the lead lap and trailed the five Cadillacs in the Daytona Prototype international (DPi) class. Loic Duval brought the No. 5 JDC Miller MotorSports Cadillac DPi-V.R home in third place with teammates Tristan Vautier, Richard Westbrook and Ben Keating.

LMP2 was just as competitive, with four LMP2 cars on the lead lap when the checkered flag dropped. The No. 81 DragonSpeed USA ORECA LMP2 went from five laps down to win the P2. It was DragonSpeed’s first ever victory in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race. It was a hard-fought podium. A technical problem complicated pit road visits,  resulting in multiple speeding penalties that put it behind early. But the team finally got the electronics sorted.

Sports car veteran Eric Lux and relatively young IndyCar Series drivers Colton Herta, Pato O’Ward and Devlin DeFrancesco kept at it before handing over the car to Colton Herta in the closing laps to secure the number one podium spot. DragonSpeed led ~100 consecutive laps Sunday morning before getting passed by the No. 8 Tower Motorsport car on a re-start with 30 minutes remaining. But Herta, driving multiple consecutive stints, was determined – catching and hitting the No. 8 in the Le Mans Chicane that sent the No. 8 off track for Herta to retake and hold the lead.

DragonSpeed had a 7.089-second victory over the No. 29 Racing Team Nederland car co-driven by Frits van Eerd, Giedo van der Garde, Dylan Murry and IndyCar driver, Rinus VeeKay. Tower was on the LMP2 podium in third with drivers John Farano, Louis Deletraz, Rui Pinto de Andrade and Ferdinand Habsburg-Lothringen.

In LMP3, the No. 74 Riley Motorsports team defended its Daytona title. Gar Robinson, last year’s LMP3 driver champion, joined Felipe Fraga, Kay van Berlo and Michael Cooper to claim class honors once again. The winning car ran 723 laps with a margin of victory of one lap. Robinson has a series-leading six career LMP3 wins. In a new class as of last year.

Fraga, who took the car to the checkered flag, has five wins. “It was a very special day for me,” Fraga said. “They won this race last year and I was supposed to be here, but I couldn’t get into the country because of Covid-19… This has been the best day of my life.” The No. 74 went into first at the 20-hour, 28-minute mark (612 laps) with van Berlo at the wheel.

The No. 33 Sean Creech Motorsport Ligier JS P320 driven by Joao Barbosa, Seb Priaulx, Lance Willsey and Malthe Jakobsen took second-place. Barbosa is a four-time Rolex 24 winner. Third on the podium was the No. 54 CORE Autosport Ligier JS P320 of Jon Bennett, Colin Braun, George Kurtz and Nic Jonsson. The No. 54 was running hard, potentially trying for the lead, but was received a drive-through penalty after passing under the yellow flag with 30 minutes remaining. This moved the No. 33 to second place. The No. 54 finished two laps behind the class winner.

GTD Pro – a new class this year – was the most entertaining racing in AutoInformed’s view. This was a take no prisoners bumping, sideswiping paint-swapping exhibition at high speeds. Mathieu Jaminet and the No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R emerged from a door-banging match with the nearly identical No. 2 KCMG Porsche driven by Laurens Vanthoor through Daytona International Speedway’s Le Mans Chicane on the very last lap of the Rolex 24 At Daytona. It was that way for the two factory Porsche drivers during the final two hours.

During the last five minutes, Vanthoor gained the lead and held it for three intense laps leading to the white flag. However, Jaminet kept pushing. The Pfaff driver duplicated  Vanthoor’s pass around the International Horseshoe hairpin to regain the lead on the final lap then defending the position into the Le Mans Chicane on the backstretch of the Daytona oval. The two Porsches negotiated the initial left-hander side-by-side before coming together as they entered the next right-hander. Both skirted the grass to the inside in a combined drift. Jaminet maintained control; Vanthoor skidded to a stop before resuming. By the time they reached the finish line less than a minute later, Jaminet had a 2.185-second advantage over the No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GT3 driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi. Vanthoor in the Porsche claimed third place, 4.687 seconds behind the winner.

Corvette Racing barely made it through with its C8.Rs in their new GT Daytona (GTD) PRO configuration. The No. 3 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette of Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg – 2021 winners in the GT Le Mans class – obtained a sixth-place finish. In the middle of the night an electrical issue cost the team 13 laps in the garage. The No. 3 C8.R is the team’s full-season entry in the new-for-2022 GTD PRO class.

The No. 4 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette of Tommy Milner, Nick Tandy and Marco Sorensen looked to be the strongest of the Corvette Racing entries in the opening hours until rear contact after a restart with Sorensen at the wheel caused significant damage near the 8.5-hour mark. Sorensen had to brake hard to keep from hitting a LMP3 car, which also just missed collecting Catsburg in the No. 3 Corvette. The No. 4 team lost nearly 2.5 hours replacing the diffuser, exhaust pipes and starter, among other components. It eventually salvaged a top-10 class finish. (Corvette Racing Entering Two C8.Rs for Daytona Rolex 24; Corvette Racing at Daytona – Same or Different?)

Daytona marked the only scheduled IMSA appearance for the No. 4 Corvette, which moves to the FIA World Endurance Championship’s GTE Pro class starting with the 1,000 Miles of Sebring. It is part of a combined weekend with IMSA, which will see Garcia, Taylor and Catsburg race in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

The un-ultimate racing machine, so far…

Things were just as bad for BMW. After a race full of challenges, BMW M Team RLL’s two MOTUL BMW M4 GT3s finished in seventh and ninth places in the GTD-PRO class. Both cars suffered problems with their underbodies early in the race. Work had to be carried out on the rear diffusor multiple times which cost a lot of time and saw both cars drop well down the field. Turner Motorsport made an impressive comeback back in the GTD class and was running in the top five until they were forced to retire after a night incident. Sharing the driving in the #25 MOTUL BMW M4 GT3 were John Edwards, Connor De Phillippi (both USA), Augusto Farfus (BRA) and Jesse Krohn (FIN). They finished seventh in their class after 698 laps. The second car, with Philipp Eng (AUT), Sheldon van der Linde (RSA), Marco Wittmann (GER) and Nick Yelloly (GBR) at the wheel, finished ninth in the GTD-PRO class.

The #96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 started from the back of the field but they went on the offensive in the first few hours and managed to fight their way back into the top five. Alternating in the cockpit were Bill Auberlen, Robby Foley, Michael Dinan (all USA) and BMW M works driver Jens Klingmann (GER). The car was damaged in a collision in the night however, and consequently had to be parked up in the garage.

BMW M Team RLL and Turner Motorsport now have roughly six weeks until Sebring (USA). They will be joined there by Paul Miller Racing with a BMW M4 GT3 in the GTD class.

GTD is for the traditionalists, running with what used to be called gentlemen drivers in expensive sportscars was also an entertaining and hard-fought class race. What was in full view was a wealth of super serious racers with 22 entries  – including Katherine Legge – in the in the highly-contested GTD class. Finishing first was a McClaren. In Second Aston Martin recorded its best-ever finish with new-for-2022 IMSA team partner Magnus Racing, which charged through the field. Aston Martin has been at Daytona periodically since 1964. It has frequently led its class, but until 2022 it never occupied the podium. Third in GTD was a Ferrari 488 GT3.

Round Two of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season is March 16-19 with the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, sponsored by Advance Auto Parts.