Felipe Nasr, Julien Andlauer, and Laurin Heinrich have won the Daytona 24 Hours for Porsche, after a race-long battle with their team car, plus cars from Acura, BMW and Cadillac.
Heading towards the final hour of the race they were engaged in a battle with the #31 Action Express Cadillac of Jack Aitken, with Nasr having to dig deep and push hard to come out on top.
In the end, the Brazilian, winning this race for the third year in a row with Porsche, finished just ahead of the Briton in the red, Whelen-sponsored Cadillac.
In third was Kevin Estre in the #6 Porsche, the sister factory machine just missing out on the win after early-race delays through contact and subsequent damage which needed to be repaired, although it didn’t seem to affect their finishing position.
Renger van der Zande started the #93 Acura on pole but pretty quickly the Porsches took control, with Nasr, who started the #7 Porsche, taking the lead before the first full course caution was called for an incident at turn 1 between multiple LMP2s, including the #11 TDS Oreca of Tobias Lutze, which was at least partially responsible for causing the incident.
After the restart the order stood as Nasr, van der Zande, and Deletraz in the #40 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac in third. The #6 Porsche of Kevin Estre, though, was hungry to move forwards, and it didn’t take long for the Frenchman to move past Deletraz, then past van der Zande after the second caution and restart of the race, to form a Porsche 1-2 early on.
Porsche begin to control race from front
From then on Porsche began controlling Daytona. Estre took the lead from Nasr towards the end of the first hour, then the Penske-run factory machines began to stretch their legs.
After the first pitstops had shaken out, Estre had almost 3 seconds on Nasr, while van der Zande was a further 17 seconds back.
For much of the next few hours, Porsche were in the lead or close to it, battling with the likes of Alex Palou in the #93 Acura and Earl Bamber in the #31 Action Express Cadillac.
But it always seemed to be the Porsches at the front, catching a car ahead or pulling away from a rival behind. Indeed, at the 20 hour mark, Bamber told media including Motorsport Week, “ “The 7 and the 6 [Porsche Penskes] look pretty strong at the moment but there is still almost 20 hours to go.”
However, it wasn’t plain sailing for Porsche. The #6 encountered issues when Kevin Estre made contact with an LMP2 car, causing some kind of floor damage and requiring a pitstop which took them off the lead lap until the next caution. It seemed as though the #6 would struggle with the ramifications of this incident for the rest of the race, seemingly to lack pace compared to its sister car.
As darkness fell the track and air temperatures cooled, Tijmen van der Helm cycled to the front in the #85 JDC Miller Porsche. The only customer car in the field, the yellow Porsche is running the 2025-spec 963, whereas the factory Porsches are running the new and improved Evo updates.
Despite his deficit in machinery, van der Helm did extremely well to defend against Heinrich in the #7 Porsche. However, eventually the German found a way through on the Dutchman and took the lead, with van der Helm pitting soon after.
The next challenge with darkness increasingly falling was another weather-related issue: fog. The night before the race had been foggy and it seemed Saturday night-Sunday morning would be the same.
Regardless, the drivers raced through the darkness and increasing amounts of fog, with Porsche still at or near the front, mainly the #7 Porsche of Heinrich, with multiple FCYs for stranded cars or abandoned debris on track for the drivers to contend with.
The fog sets in for the night
With the two Porsches solidly in 1-2 formation and controlling the pace, the fog was getting worse and worse. This writer went up onto the roof of the grandstand at 11pm local time and could not see the bus stop chicane on the other side of the circuit, such was it shrouded in fog.
At 00:45 local time, with Motorsport Week back in the media centre after venturing out to the grandstand, the organisers and race control called enough is enough and put the Daytona 24 Hours under caution due to increasingly poor visibility.
It stayed that way for 6 hours and 33 minutes – not only the longest safety car or caution period in Daytona 24 Hours, but the longest in all of motorsport history.
When the race resumed at 7:18am, with the sun having risen and burnt off the worse of the fog, the race resumed to cheers around the circuit, after more than 6 hours of running behind the safety car.
“Absolutely boring,” said 19-year-old rising NASCAR star Connor Zilisch when asked to describe what it was like running behind the safety car for a 4 hour stint in the car.
“Not much else to say about it. It was probably some of the most miserable hours I’ve ever had inside of a race car. But I tried to sing to myself and tried to make it as enjoyable as possible.”
When the race resumed, the #7 Porsche was back in the lead and was, once again, the car to beat in this final third of the race. Matt Campbell, in the sister #6 Porsche, restarted fourth with the two BMWs, Robin Frijns in the #24 and Kevin Magnussen in the #25, in between him and his teammate.
However, Frijns got a drive through penalty for a pitlane infringement and Campbell found his way past Magnussen, giving Porsche another 1-2 at the front of the field.
They did not have it all their own way in the final 8 hours or so though. While the two cars were undoubtedly the class of the field, the #31 Action Express Cadillac was, perhaps, the only car which could truly challenge.
Aitken comes alive in final hour
In the final hour, this challenge came alive. Earl Bamber gave the car over to teammate Jack Aitken. The Briton went on a tear from third, closing down Estre and Campbell’s teammate in the #6 Porsche, Laurens Vanthoor, with his sights ultimately set out the lead car, the #7 of Nasr.
With Aitken on his gearbox, L. Vanthoor pitted and handed over to Estre, who took the car to the flag. When Aitken pitted a lap later, though, he was able to jump Estre as the Cadillac required less fuel to get to the end thanks to fuel saving earlier from Bamber and Aitken.
Aitken then set about catching, and ultimately coming very close to passing, Nasr. However, try as the Briton might, he could not find a way past the talented Brazilian, who was positioning his car just right in order to not allow Aitken by.
And that was how it finished, Nasr crossing the line 1.569 ahead of Aitken to take victory at Daytona. Dries Vanthoor finished third in the #24 BMW, with Kevin Estre fourth in the #6 Porsche and Nick Yelloly fifth in the pole-sitting #93 Acura.
#04 Crowdstrike by APR win Daytona
The #04 Crowdstrike crew of George Kurtz, Malthe Jakobsen, Alex Quinn and Toby Sowery won the Daytona 24 Hours LMP2 class, beating out their rivals from Inter Europol, United Autosports and AO Racing.
The #43 Inter Europol Oreca of Jeremy Clarke started on pole, but almost immediately a caution period was thrown for a multi-car crash involving Tobi Lutke in the #11 TDS Oreca, collecting multiple cars in the process.
When the race went back to green, Clarke lost the lead to PJ Hyett in the #99 AO Racing car.
These two were on the backs of the #04 Crowdstrike by APR crew for the whole race, chasing them down. Kurtz started the #04 Crowdstrike car 8th and gradually moved up to slowly put the car in contention over the first half of the race.
When the caution for fog was called at 00:45 local time, with Malthe Jakobsen in the car, the Dane sat 5th, and told media in the post-race press conference that he was unable to see his turn in point when he braked for the bus stop.
Regardless, the race was neutralised for the six and half hours. When the race resumed, Sebastien Bourdais in the #8 Tower Motorsports LMP2 held the lead of LMP2 with Nick Cassidy, in the #343 Inter Europol, behind.
By this point Jakobsen was back in the car having climbed out shortly after the caution was called. He moved the car up to 3rd, before handing over to teammate Alex Quinn, who took the lead and retained it until the end.
Second, 9 seconds back, was the #43 Inter Europol machine which had started on pole in the hands of Jeremy Clarke, alongside his teammates Antonio Felix da Costa, Bijoy Garg, and Tom Dillmann.
The sister Inter Europol car, the #343 Oreca of Jakub Smiechowski, Georgios Kolovos, Nolan Siegel and Nick Cassidy were third, a lap down on the class winners and their teammates.
READ MORE: Daytona 24 Hours GTP results
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