DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—For fifty years sports car racers—and fans—have been coming to Daytona International Speedwat at the end of January for a grueling but exciting 24-hour ordeal, a beautiful but brutal endurance test, one of the first races, and one of the biggest races of the global sports car season.
The IMSA WeatherTech Rolex 24 at Daytona is the latest incarnation of this proud sports car tradition, and it looks to be one of the best editions of the past several years.
IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship has ironed out a lot of imbalances and incorporated a lot of new cars and new ideas. For the first time in several years, many different cars of many different types have a chance at the overall win, while there is more variety in the various classes than has been offered in a decade.
Judging by Internet input, even some of the more skeptical fans are excited about this year’s race—and pleasing the fans is always the hardest task.
This year, the LMP2-derived prototypes dominate the grid, but the updated Daytona Prototypes still have the better record of reliability. Because there was only a single hour of dry practice for what will be a dry race, how teams adapt to changing conditions will matter more than it usually does.
As always, experience will play a major role—being fast in the frst hour is exciting, but being fast in the final hour is all that really counts. Getting the car to last until Sunday afternoon is what matters. Multiple endurance-race winners like Chip Ganassi Racing and Action Express aren’t going to worry that Extreme Speed Motorsports and Shank Racing are ahead on the starting grid.
