Dyson lead reduced at Daytona

Drivers James Weaver, Max Papis, Elliott Forbes-Robinson and Rob Dyson lost half their six-lap advantage early on Sunday morning when their R&S MkIII required attention to its Lincoln-badged Lozano V8.

Dyson team manager Pat Smith said: "We saw some blue smoke, so we decided to check it out. The valve gear looked okay when we took the cam covers off.

"An exhaust valve had burnt out, but the engine isn't going to blowup."

The best of the Cadillac Northstars, driven by Andy Wallace, Butch Leitzinger and Franck Lagorce, had fought up to second place ahead of the battle for GTO class honours, but the car required a gearbox change just after the 18-hour mark.

That left the best of the ORECA Chrysler Vipers to take the fight to the ailing Dyson R&S.

The lead Viper GTS-R of Olivier Beretta, Karl Wendlinger and Dominique Dupuy held the class lead by nearly a lap over the first of the Chevrolet Corvette C5-Rs at three-quarter distance.

Beretta said: "We've haven't had any problems. The car is running like a clock, but there is still a long way to go."

The Chevy of Justin Bell, Ron Fellows and Chris Kneifel was running without problems after the factory Pratt & Miller team had overcome the fuel pick-up problems that had afflicted the car early on.

Former Champ Car driver Kneifel said: "We had a pretty good night. For first 12 hours we were swimming against the tide; now, we are where we need to be."

The second Corvette was a further 13 laps behind after a 15-minute gearbox change.

The highest-place GTU contender at 18 hours was the G&W Motorsports Porsche911 GT3-R, but the car would suffer a terminal engine failure minutes later.

German Uwe Alzen couldn't hide his disappointment.

"We were more than 10 laps ahead and the car was running perfectly. The only problems we had were with a broken seat and something wrong with the jacking system."

That handed the GTU lead to the Alex Job Racing Porsche, which had lost nearly half an hour just before midnight when the water pump required changing.

The Daytona 24 Hours, the first round of the Grand American Road Racing Association Championship, finishes at 13:00 local time [18:00 GMT].