The 62nd Rolex 24 At Daytona will carry the green flag at 1:40 PM ET, with 59 cars scheduled to kick off the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. The opening hour will be broadcast live on NBC.
Polesitters
Qualifying took place last Sunday during the Roar Before the 24 weekend. Pipo Derani was the top qualifier in the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing V-Series.R with a new record of 1m32.656s as Cadillac shut out the front row. Ben Keating, who will also drive the No. 85 JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche 963 during the race, took the LMP2 pole in the No. 2 United Autosports ORECA 07. AO Racing will lead the GTs to the green in a split start after Seb Priaulx claimed the GTD PRO pole in the No. 77 Porsche 911 GT3 R. Starting on the inside of the second row of GTs is the No. 12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 after Parker Thompson set the highest qualifying time for GTD.
Ganassi likes his chances
While much of the spotlight has been on Whelen Engineering sister Cadillac Racing which will start from the pole, Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 01 V-Series.R was also fast and will start from the outside of the front. queue.
“If you look at the training and qualifying you would say that we have come here for the first time in a few years, and I think we really have a chance to do that. So now it’s just a matter of doing the obvious things right,” says team owner Chip Ganassi, who expects to see everything that can happen in an entire season in the Rolex 24. One thing he hopes not to see : “A kind of plan you have been working on for eight or nine hours and is canceled out by a poorly placed yellow. But, he added, it’s part of the deal and you just roll with the punches.
WTRandretti is weighing his strategy
The two Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Acura ARX-06s did not show great pace during Roar and race week. Team co-owner Wayne Taylor isn’t concerned that the Acuras carrying the most weight – 42kg more than the lightest car in the GTP field – contributes to that. So the team had to come up with tactics to overcome that during the race.
The Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti crew plots the strategy for their two Acura ARX-06 GTPs. Richard Dole/Lumen
“We have two cars this year – there have been two Acuras in the field in past years, but it wasn’t a situation where you could split strategies and play that game,” said Ricky Taylor, driver of the No. 10 WTRAndretti ARX. -06. ‘We have that map. There are so many yellow colors that you can work a lot with strategy to get track position. And having two cars increases that a little bit, so we can keep people at a distance for a while, and who knows what happens. The wind changes a lot here and our car is very sensitive to wind. Little things like that can help us have a good day.”
Disaster times two mentality
Each team hopes that nothing goes wrong during the 24 hours of the race and that their fortunes come down to driving, technique and strategy. But when something goes wrong – a GT car you don’t see coming, racing too aggressively, or even just plain driver error – the old Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared” comes into play.
“We create what our team refers to, and I think most do, as a fighting bay,” explains Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing Team Operations Manager Chris Mitchum. “So if things go wrong and you have a problem during the race, our garage is set up with spare front corners, spare parts and a spare rear half. We have a very limited number of repairs that we will do in the pit lane, and those parts are in the pit lane. Everything else is staged in the garage. And you go so far – and I’m sure every team here will do pretty much the same thing – you have a set of bodies in your garage and a set of bodies in your pit lane. You work from a disaster times two mentality and try to be as prepared as possible.”
Fittipaldi replaces the injured Novalak at Inter Europol
Pietro Fittipaldi will replace Clément Novalak in the LMP2 No. 52 Inter Europol from PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA before the race. Novalak suffered a leg and hip injury in a pit lane incident during the practice session; Although the injury is not serious, he will be unable to compete for the remainder of the event. Fittipaldi will instead join Nick Boulle, Jakub Śmiechowski and Tom Dillmann in the number 52. He is well known to the Inter Europol Competition crew, having driven with the team in the ORECA 07 in the European Championship in 2022 Le Mans Series.
Because Novalak’s injury occurred in the last practice session, Fittipaldi will do his first fast laps in the car during the race.
Heritage Display is growing
One of the highlights of the Rolex 24 for racing history enthusiasts is the Heritage Display in the Fan Zone, along with the Saturday morning 20-minute on-track exhibition for participating cars. Highlights include the Dauer 962 LM that won the 1994 24 Hours of Le Mans, a Mazda RX-7 GTO car, the NASCAR Garage 56 Project car that raced at Le Mans last year, and a BMW CSL that won in 1975 won at Daytona.
Jenson Button takes a fan photo of the Garage 56 Camaro he raced at Le Mans last year. Richard S. James photo
Driving times
Minimum driving times for GTP and GTD PRO are two hours. For LMP2 and GTD the minimum driving time is 4.30 hours. No driver may drive for more than 13 hours, and no more than four hours in any six-hour period.
How to watch/listen
The entire Rolex 24 At Daytona will be broadcast live on NBC’s Peacock streaming platform. Sixteen and a half hours will be televised, with the start and finish on NBC. USA Network will carry the race from 2:30 PM to 8 PM ET and from 10 PM to midnight ET. Sunday coverage starts at 6am ET on the US and runs until 12pm ET. NBC will cover the race finish from noon ET to 2 p.m.
In addition, IMSA Radio will broadcast during the event.
Weather
This will be the hottest Rolex 24 in several years, with temperatures on Saturday peaking at 78 degrees Celsius around the start of the race. Overnight temperatures are only expected to dip into the mid 60s, and Sunday morning brings a slight chance of rain, with conditions expected to be partly cloudy and in the low 70s when rain falls.
The story originally appeared on Racer