Porsche’s Felipe Nasr leads with 4 hours to go at Daytona, with Jack Aitkenb a further 3 seconds back in the red #31 Cadillac.
Nasr, behind the wheel of the #7 Porsche 963, replaced teammate Matt Campbell at the wheel midway through the 18th hour. Campbell had got the car into the lead with a fantastic move on Aitken at T1, moving the Brit in by using a GTD car then overtaking on the outside.
He and started to build a gap, which Nasr immediately extended when he replaced the Kiwi in the car, up to almost 20 seconds over the #31 Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R.
However, a full course caution came out for debris from the beleaguered #3 Sean Creech Ligier JS P217. This caused the gap to close up to mere tentha, rendering Campbell and Nasr’s work redundant — a common feature in IMSA racing, with the pack bunched up behind the safety car.
Mathieu Jamninet, in the #6 Porsche which had, very briefly, taken the lead before receiving a penalty for failure to adhere to ‘Controlled Powertrain Parameters’ — basically, using too much energy. Laurens Vanthoor replaced him in the car, now back in fifth after the penalty.
Vanthoor began to make his way through the field back up to the sharp end, first dispatching Louis Deletraz in the #40 WTRAndretti Acura ARX-06, and then Neel Jani in the #5 Proton Competition Porsche 963 to move up into third.
While the safety car hindered the leading Porsche of Nasr, eliminating his healthy gap he’d built, it massively helped the sister car, helping it close a gap of around a minute. Kevin Estre replaced the Belgian Vanthoor in the car, and is now chasing Aitken down for second — to create a Porsche 1-2.
The racing is, as Ricky Taylor described it to reporters, “getting spicy”, with 4 hours to go.With Nasr, Aitken and Estre in the top three, Deletraz’s #40 Acura teammate Colton Herta is fourth, and Jani is fifth.
In LMP2, Colin Braun leads in the #04 Crowdstrike Racing by APR Oreca 07-Gibson, with a gap of under a second to Christian Rasmussen in the #18 Era Motorsport Oreca 07-Gibson. Tom Dillmann is third in the #52 Inter Europol Oreca, just over 5 seconds back from the two leaders.
GTD Pro is proving, as ever, to be a hard fought contest at Daytona this year. James Calado in the #62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 is leading, 5 seconds to the good over Neil Verhagen in the #1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3. Third is Michael Christensen in the #77 AO Racing ‘Rexy’ Porsche 911 GT3.R, a further 37 seconds off the lead.
Indy Dontje leads the GTD class, for the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. He has just over 4 seconds to the #12 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3 of Aaron Telitz, who just overtook third place, the #023 Ferrari 296 GT3 of Onofrio Triarsi of Triarai Motorsport, when Triarsi was tipped into spin by Verhagen’s BMW. Triarsi is now over 13 seconds back, having lost around nine seconds due to the spin.
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