Daytona 24 hours: 'Vette outlasts the big guns

Chevrolet claimed an unexpected victory in a Daytona 24 Hours that quickly developed into a race of attrition. The faster prototypes hit problems one by one through the race, which allowed the best of the GTS class Corvette C5-Rs to come through to win.

The lead Chevy inherited victory three and half hours from the finish when the number one Dyson Riley & Scott blew its engine. Such was the Ford-engined prototype's superiority that it took the 'Vette exactly an hour to overhaul its lap total.

Team leader Ron Fellows said: "Winning the class was always our priority, but the overall win is a bonus. We knew after last year [when a GTS car also won] that it was a possibility."

Butch Leitzinger, who was at the wheel of the Dyson car he shared with Britons Andy Wallace and James Weaver when the engine blew, said: "It looks like the engine threw a rod. There was no warning at all; it just blew up. We were coasting, so this is just one of those things."

The high rate of attrition allowed second place to go one of the hordes of GT class Porsche 911 GT3-RSs that started the race. The White Lightning team car, raced by Randy Pobst, Lucas Luhr, Christian Menzel and Mike Fitzgerald, finished just 10 laps down on the leader.

A further four laps adrift was the similar Freisinger 911 GT3-RS of Wolfgang Kaufmann, Lance Stewart and Cyril Chateau. Fourth place was the second Chevrolet, whose drivers included NASCAR stars Dale and Dale Jr Earnhardt. Two halfshaft failures and a couple of stops for repairs after minor 'offs' left the machine 14 laps behind its sister car.

Former Grand Prix driver Alex Caffi headed a team of Italians in a Seikel Motorsport Porsche that claimed fifth, while a Canadian-entered Porsche 911 GT1 Evo took sixth overall and third in GTS class.

The prototype category was won by Jim Downing's slow but steady Kudzu-Mazda, which finished down in an astonishing 11th place. The Dyson car, meanwhile, had completed enough laps to be classified second in class.

The Risi Competizione Ferrari 333SP, in which Allan McNish led the early stages, took the fight to the Dyson R&S into the small hours before engine failure brought its race to a premature end.



Ron Fellows/Chris Kneifel/Franck Freon/Johnny O'Connell (Pratt & Miller Chevrolet Corvette C5-R) 656 laps
Lucas Luhr/Randy Pobst/Mike Fitzgerald/Christian Menzel (White Lightning Porsche 911 GT3-RS) 648
Wolfgang Kaufmann/Cyril Chateau/Lance Stewart (Freisinger Porsche 911 GT3-RS) 644
Andy Pilgrim/Dale Earnhardt/Dale Earnhardt Jr (Pratt & Miller Chevrolet Corvette C5-R) 642
Alex Caffi/Fabio Babini/Fabio Rosa/Gabrio Rosa (Seikel Porsche 911 GT3-RS) 637
Larry Schumacher/James Holtom/Harry Bytzek/John Brenner (Bytzek Chevrolet Corvette C5-R) 632
Kyle Petty/Gian-Luigi Buitoni/Leo Hindery/Peter Baron (Orbit Porsche 911 GT3-RS) 630
John Morton/Michael Schrom/Bob Mazzuoccola/Stu Hayner (G&W Porsche 911 GT3-R) 629